In defense of ’settlements’
Jerry Gordon comment: My chavera, Lori Lowenthal Marcus sent this note along with the Medad opinion piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times:
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT JEWS HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE WHEREVER THEY CHOOSE (I.E. YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN APARTHEID WHEN APPLIED TO JEWS), THEN PLEASE GO TO THE LA TIMES WEBSITE AND REGISTER YOUR NO VOTE IN THE POLL THEY ARE RUNNING NEXT TO THE OPINION PIECE BELOW. NOTE ESPECIALLY. THAT NOW JEWS LIVING IN THE GOLAN HEIGHTS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE “WEST BANK” OF PLACES MOST OF THE WORLD IS PREPARED TO FORBID JEWS FROM LIVING. ASK YOURSELF - WOULD THE WORLD TELL ARABS TO LEAVE THEIR HOMES IN THE DISPUTED TERRITORIES? IF ANYONE DID, IMAGINE THE RIOTS THAT WOULD ENSUE.
Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in Israel.
by Yisrael Medad, Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2009
No one, including a president of the United States of America, can presume to tell me, a Jew, that I cannot live in the area of my national homeland. That’s one of the main reasons my wife and I chose in 1981 to move to Shiloh, a so-called settlement less than 30 miles north of Jerusalem.
After Shiloh was founded in 1978, then-President Carter demanded of Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the village of eight families be removed. Carter, from his first meeting with Begin, pressed him to “freeze” the activity of Jews rebuilding a presence in their historic home. As his former information aide, Shmuel Katz, related, Begin said: “You, Mr. President, have in the United States a number of places with names like Bethlehem, Shiloh and Hebron, and you haven’t the right to tell prospective residents in those places that they are forbidden to live there. Just like you, I have no such right in my country. Every Jew is entitled to reside wherever he pleases.”
We now fast-forward to President Obama, who declared on June 15 in remarks at a news conference with Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that Jewish communities beyond the Green Line “in past agreements have been categorized as illegal.”
I believe the president has been misled. There can be nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born. To suggest that residency be permitted or prohibited based on race, religion or ethnic background is dangerously close to employing racist terminology.
Suppose someone suggested that Palestinian villages and towns in pre-1967 Israel were to be called “settlements” and that, to achieve a true peace, Arabs should be removed from their homes. Of course, separation or transfer of Arabs is intolerable, but why is it quite acceptable to demand that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the area? Do not Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in the state of Israel? (Continue Reading this Article)
It’s great that this article was given space in a mainstream publication. The overwhelming majority of people have not heard this side of the story. All they hear incessantly are lies about how Jewish settlements are “illegal” and that Israel illegally occupies palestinian land. So I’m pleasantly surprised that the LA Times would give a voice to Yisrael Medad.
Comment by Laura — June 29, 2009 @ 10:43 pm
There is racism against Jews. Ethnic cleansing and apartheid is acceptable when the targets are Jews. Funny how no one sees it. Israel should not be enabling it.
Comment by NormanF — June 30, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
Let’s get back to basics. According to the San Remo Conference of 1920 which was later adopted by the United Nations and thus valid in International Law, the West Bank belongs to the Jewish people and thus to Israel. Thus there is no “occupation” and no “settlements”. The Arabs, in attempting to take poliitcal control of the West Bank, are acting contrary to accepted International Law and should be dealt with accordingly. See Howard Grief’s book, Gauthier’s thesis and, for a quick read, Eli Hertz’s pamphlet put out by Myths and Facts inc.
Comment by Jonathan — June 30, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
Therefore Jewish settlements are not illegal and the Palestinians should consider moving to Jordan or Egypt.
Comment by rongrand — July 1, 2009 @ 12:31 pm
http://samsonblinded.org/blog/arab-problem
Advocates of peaceful coexistence forget a minor thing: to ask the Arabs. Would they agree to forfeit their land to Jewish colonizers? Would they accept welfare money in lieu of national aspirations? Would they continue subscribing to a fictitious monogamy by which Israel treats three of their four wives as single mothers and subsidizes them accordingly?
Bolsheviks were not even 0.01 percent of the Russian population when they staged their revolution. Few Germans joined the Nazis in 1929. Hamas numbers hardly 1 percent of Gaza’s population. Numbers don’t matter; determination does. And Palestinian nationalists are very determined to rid their country of Israel.
Jews were perfectly integrated into Spanish society in 1492, into Russian society in 1905, and into German society in 1933. In the 1920s, religious Jews had such good relations with their Arab neighbors—and no intention of building a Zionist state—that they rejected Haganah’s protection in Tiberias, Tzfat, Hebron, and Jerusalem. Those relations, however, changed in a second. Europeans and Arabs massacred Jews, who had no political aspirations; consider therefore how much more certain the Arabs are to rise against their Jewish colonizers. Routine attacks on Jews by Israeli Arabs, disdain for Israeli law evidenced in massive illegal construction and tax evasion, and Israeli Arabs’ support for the PLO hint at the iceberg of hatred below the surface of media reports. The Israeli Arab population is experiencing a youth bulge; ten years from now, masses of unemployed, unproductive youth will watch their Jewish neighbors with jealousy. Defeated by European refugees, insulted by dhimmi dominance, and lacking work ethics, Arabs cannot be integrated into Israeli society. Worse, the government continually provokes them by paying for compliance and tolerating utter misbehavior.
A recipe seems clear: Israeli should be strong and her Arabs will be quiet. But why do we need such neighbors? Enforced quiet is an attitude expected from enemies or criminals, not neighbors. Israeli Arabs are a fifth column, which must be kept fearful. If so, why not just expel them and live comfortably? The assumption of permanent strength is unsupportable. Already now, many areas of Arab settlement in Israel are off-limits to Israeli law-enforcement. Lod, a town few miles from Israel’s only meaningful airport, is one example. Lod’s Arab districts are off-limits to Israeli officers of the court, and police only enter them in armored vehicles. Arab villages and towns of Galilee are similarly autonomous of Israeli justice: from tax evasion to drugs to firearms, they are beyond the Israeli judicial system. Arabs feel free to riot even in Jerusalem; whereas Israeli police act brutally against Jewish demonstrators, often thrashing their neighborhoods (such as Mea Shearim), Arabs are accorded near-polite treatment. Israeli courts routinely sentence Jews much more harshly than Arabs. Older Israeli Arabs, recalling the events of 1948 and 1967, habitually fear Jewish heavy-handedness, but the new generation lacks that experience and recognizes the weakness of the Israeli law-enforcement colossus. Arabs accept Jewish partition of their land into two states only as a temporary solution. Any assertions to the contrary remain on the paper of peace treaties.
Israel can achieve her goal of a Jewish (not mixed) state by transferring the Palestinian Arabs thirty miles to Jordan—a mild cruelty by the standards of statehood; and no gentler means will work. It remains to be seen whether the expulsion would work. Historically, the expulsion of aborigines has only been successful after large-scale extermination campaigns have reduced to insignificance their will and capability to fight back.
The Torah retains its applicability because human nature remains the same. Alexander the Great would wonder at Merkava tanks at first, but he would soon recognize their strategic similarity to his cavalry. Weapons change, but the face of war has remained the same from the earliest clashes of hunter-gatherers up to our times. The instructions given to Joshua for dealing with the Canaanites resound with Ben Gurion’s policies—and fit exactly the Muslim attitude on obligatory vengeance, intigam. To Arabs, the Jews who abstain from exacting vengeance upon Palestinians for terrorist acts are weaklings, unworthy of peace and friendship. Assimilated Jews shrug at their history, but Arabs respect history greatly.
No modern state has been formed differently from the ancient ways, and no war was ever fought differently. Idealists claim that other ways exist; somehow, hundreds of earlier generations missed those humane ways. Jews are not lab rats suitable for experiments; let someone else try to establish a state peacefully. We prefer the old-fashioned, tried and proven, and only known way of statecraft: in the blood of our enemies.
Comment by yamit82 — July 1, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
Only one people can stay in Judea and Samaria! Why are we so generous?
“Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into [the hearts of] the enemies, of God and your enemies” Quran 8:60
Comment by yamit82 — July 1, 2009 @ 6:58 pm