Our base is broader
A recent op-ed penned by Michael Freund promotes the idea of an immediate annexation of all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria to Israel. His reason, and seemingly his sole reason, is that "these areas are ours by Divine right ... the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel because the G-d of Israel said so." He further writes:
I also consider a religious right a justification for claiming territorial rights (after all, the Temple Mount, once it becomes the Haram E-Sharif, is then Muslim property, right?) and I would never ignore the primary formative element of Jewish nationalism which, as Professor Harold Fisch discussed in chapter two of his The Zionist Revolution: A New Perspective, is the Covenant. There is a contractual configuration between the Jewish people and the ideals which define them as a people, a community, a religio-ethnic group. "Israel's strange existence," writes Fisch, "is defined by the Covenant ... [it] is the central experience of Israel ... it became, for Israel, the key to the understanding of all reality: political, social, historical ... it endowed the whole people with a common task, a sense of unity and purpose ... [and it] has a bearing on the moral history of the world as a whole...." A Jew's relationship to his homeland is different than any other community-nation-people and, in fact, Menachem Begin never employed the term "annexation" for, as he said, "how can one annex one's own country?." True, that relationship is intrinsically religious with commensurate ritual obligations, commandments and practices, some which are kept solely as a searing reminder even though their source no longer exists, as in the case with many of the Temple rites. Most of all, there is the most unique of all realities in the definition of the physicality of the land as a sacred and holy element. Nevertheless, that relationship of the Jewish people and its land evolved also as an historic one, one that is quite apparent and could be proven without necessary recourse to divinity. That is, one need not be religiously observant to recognize that Eretz Yisrael is the Jewish national homeland - or even Jewish! And where were you born?
The Jerusalem Post informed its readers on Tuesday that the US State Department considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem as included in the US demand that Israel halt "settlement" construction, including for natural growth purposes as State Department spokesman Ian Kelly admitted. And that is an appropriate introduction for me to expand on a matter of State Dept. deviousness. As American citizens are aware, their children, if born in Jerusalem, whether west Jerusalem or east, I emphasize, are not recognized by the US State Department as being born in Israel. Their birth certificates and subsequently, their passports, will list the "place of birth" as simply "Jerusalem", a seemingly stateless location. Imagining Palestinian settlers
In a recent Jerusalem Post op-ed piece Imagine Palestinian settlers in Israel, the idea was suggested to Israelis and others who support a Jewish civilian presence in the areas of Judea and Samaria:
Of course, did it not occur to the writer that many Israelis have actually not only imagined that but, especially over the past decade, truly feel that that is the situation with Israel's Arab minority. Why do you think Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu party achieved 15 seats in the Knesset? It is no imagination that forests were burned down, that religious fanatics are copying the Mufti of Mandate times and claiming Jews are trying to destroy Al-Aqsa, that illegal construction is in the thousands of units, that aid and assistance to terrorists have been extended and that Arab MKs openly identify with the goals of the most radical Muslim nationalists and have been particularly foul-mouthed in the Knesset. A topsy-turvy world; at least for the Jews
I have spotted two additional linguistic oddities that confound me. As you have read at this blog previously, I prefer "revenant" rather than "settler", or, at the least, "resident". I use "community" and not "settlement". I live in Samaria and not in the "West Bank". Well, it seems that language is fluid and different standards of semantics are being used. For example, Israel is pilloried for supposedly being a "colonialist" power lording over "occupied territories." Getting lost in the Green Line
As a CAMERA alert informed me, one written by Tamar Sternthal, the papal trip of Benedictus XVI to Israel has confused the Los Angeles Times newspaper, which allowed some errors of fact about Israel to appear in its pages. One of them seems to been a stumble over the Green Line, as if it were a tripwire for political geographic correctness. Duke Helfand, an LA Times reporter, erroneously states in one article that the Pope will arrive at:
Ooops. Yad Vashem, for sure, is not in the "West Bank" and I would suggest that neither is the Western Wall. They are located in Jerusalem. And, if one wants to get nitpicky, Yad Vashem is actually in the western section and was under Israeli control prior to 1967, that watershed year when maps got redrawn, Biblical locations became rediscovered and the Green Line became, well, obsolete to a great extent. Green line language
A May 1 New York Times story included this information about Jerusalem:
Now, I am not certain that the numbers above are exact but, for the moment, that is less a concern to me than the language used. No going back to 1967
With the return of George Mitchell to Israel, and his seeking long-term office space (jealous of Tony Blair, I would guess) as well as the purported statement of Rahm Immanuel which can be summed up as "you give us what we want, we give you, maybe, want you need," the media is hopping with commentary of the issue of the Jewish revenant communities in the areas of the Jewish national home (as fixed by international bodies between 1917-1922) not under Israeli political sovereignty. One of them is a Washington-based policy analyst, Yousef Munayyer, affiliated with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In the Philadelphia Inquirer he wrote, "inter alia", about Jewish towns and villages:
Green Line Fever
The issue of Jewish civilians living across the Green Line is one that stirs passions. Anyone who, like me, seeks to stay up-to-date on the matter, both historically as well as in contemporary media commentary and news reports, cannot be but overwhelmed at times at the downright nastiness of some of the language used. For example, here is Paul Mirengoff of the Claremont Institute in a recent piece: "In my view, the continued expansion of settlements is the most toxic activity that is undermining the negotiations process and [that] actually, in the long term, will assure a deterioration in America's support for Israel." Or, take Tom (Breira) Friedman of The New York Times, who has a hang-up about me and my friends and neighbors: "The West Bank is so chopped up and divided now by roads, checkpoints and fences to separate Israel's crazy settlements from Palestinian villages... " Back on January 25, he published in his column an article which referred to "the fanatical Jewish settlers." True, it is not my wish to censor any one's expressions of disagreement. It's just that it's quite obvious to me that such reactions, from people who should both know their facts better and how to use the language better, seem to indicate a loss of control - or worse, a seeking-out of the most disparaging and derogatory terms. They literally seem to lose it, as if their pens were "foaming at the point." A Red Line to the Green Line
The Jerusalem Post has reported on an upcoming court case that human rights group Yesh Din, which opposes Israel's continued presence in Judea and Samaria, claims that "Israel's practice of transferring 75 percent of the rock and gravel it mines in the West Bank into areas within the Green Line is illegal," and they hope that the High Court of Justice will issue a ruling that "Israel's mining activity constitutes blatant infringement of international humanitarian law and the laws of occupation, and may even constitute pillage and/or war crimes." The attorneys representing Yesh Din, Sfard and Avisar Lev, have written in their petition that continued quarrying was "a practice reminiscent of occupation patterns in ancient times, [when]
the winner was entitled to plunder the occupied territory, enslave its economy and citizens for its own purposes, and transfer their treasures to his own land." Is the US selling Israel damaged goods?
Among other concerns, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is touting the new Palestinian Authority security forces being trained by American army and police personnel. Millions of dollars have been sunk into constructing training camps and providing the PA with the know-how to keep the general peace, the idea being that if it can control the terror threat, Israel could then exit these territories. |
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