The best weapon against the propaganda, and half-truths we are bombarded with everyday by the MSM, and the professional Arab/Islamist taqiyah organizations is education. It is in this vein that I present to you the following op-ed.
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In Defense of The (So-Called) “Settlements”
by Israel Medad
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?
Some have questioned why Jews should be allowed to resettle areas in which they didn’t live in the years preceding the 1967 war, areas that were almost empty of Jews before 1948 as well. But why didn’t Jews live in the area at that time? Quite simple: They had been the victims of a three-decades-long ethnic cleansing project that started in 1920, when an Arab attack wiped out a small Jewish farm at Tel Hai in Upper Galilee and was followed by attacks in Jerusalem and, in 1921, in Jaffa and Jerusalem.
In 1929, Hebron’s centuries-old Jewish population was expelled as a result of an Arab pogrom that killed almost 70 Jews. Jews that year removed themselves from Gaza, Nablus and Jenin. The return of my family to Shiloh — and of other Jews to more than 150 other communities over the Green Line since 1967 — is not solely a throwback to claimed biblical rights. Nor is it solely to assert our right to return to areas that were Jewish-populated in the 20th century until Arab violence drove them away. We have returned under a clear fulfillment of international law. There can be no doubt as to the legality of the act of my residency in Shiloh.
I am a revenant — one who has returned after a long absence to ancestral lands. The Supreme Council of the League of Nations adopted principles following the 1920 San Remo Conference aimed at bringing about the “reconstitution” of a Jewish National Home. Article 6 of those principles reads: “The administration of Palestine … shall encourage … close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands.” That “land” was originally delineated to include all of what is today Jordan as well as all the territory west of the Jordan River.
In 1923, Britain created a new political entity, Transjordan, and suspended the right of Jews to live east of the Jordan River. But the region in which I now live was intended to be part of the Jewish National Home. Then, in a historical irony, a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah, fleeing the Wahabis, was afforded the opportunity to establish an Arab kingdom where none had existed previously — only Jews. As a result, in an area where prophets and priests fashioned the most humanist and moral religion and culture on Earth, Jews are now termed “illegals.”
Many people insist that settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. But that convention does not apply to Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza district. Its second clause makes it clear that it deals with the occupation of “the territory of a high contracting party.” Judea and Samaria and Gaza, which Israel gained control of in 1967, were not territories of a “high contracting party.” Jewish historical rights that the mandate had recognized were not canceled, and no new sovereign ever took over in Judea and Samaria or in Gaza.
Obama has made his objections to Israeli settlements known. But other U.S. presidents have disagreed. President Reagan’s administration issued a declaration that Israeli settlements were not illegal. Support for that position came from Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, who determined that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria did not constitute “occupation.” It also came from a leading member of Reagan’s administration, the former dean of the Yale Law School and former undersecretary of State, Eugene Rostow, who asserted that “Israel has a stronger claim to the West Bank than any other nation or would-be nation [and] the same legal right to settle the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as it has to settle Haifa or West Jerusalem.”
Any suggestions, then, of “freezing” and halting “natural growth” are themselves not only illegal but quite immoral.
Tags: Arabs, Israel, Jewish Settlements, jews, Judea and Samaria, Palestinians, Yesha
FIRST! (abortion, Kahane, 9/11 Truth, Intelligent Design, Obama’s Birth Certificate…)
While the world concentrates on homes being built by law abiding Jews who just wish to live in peace and raise a family on arguably disputed land, Hamas is buying up tracts of land in Jerusalem in order to create a terrorist base there, and kick out the Jews.
The entire policy behind concentrating on Jews building homes instead of Arabs committing acts of homicide is horribly askew, and probably Anti-Semitic. I just don’t understand how one can, without Jew hatred, promote a policy where only Jews are prohibited from owning land, raising families, and building homes.
Do Jews not have the same rights as Christians, and Arabs who are completely unrestricted as to where they can live, buy land, build homes, and raise families?
Sheesh, Wrath! You’re preaching to the choir here. This is a question that should be asked of the Israeli government and no one else.
I don’t care what world opinion is, the problem is with governmental policy that not only allows this, but seems to promote it.
Want my opinion (rhetorical question)? If I were in charge I’d declare it a Jewish State and kick every muslim out of the place. Non muslims are not allowed to live in the 57 islamic states. One teeny Jewish state shouldn’t bother anybody – and to heck with those it does bother!
re: #2 by vapig
Every time I find this type of article/op-ed etc., I acknowledge such to myself but then decide that even though, the “word” must be given out.
I hope that people who do not already agree read it and it opens their mind. But for those who are already the “choir” I hope that I am giving them more ammunition to go out and change hearts and minds.
There is a moral, ethical, legal, religious, and common sense right for Jews to be able to live outside Pre-1967 borders of Israel and we who believe this must go out there and push this message and use the facts.
Your comments about the double standard of what the Islamic countries are allowed to get away with, and how they accuse Israel of exactly what they themselves do is 100% correct and I believe should be the core message of Israel. When called on “home building” or a so-called “racist policy” Israel should simply ask why Saudi Arabia is allowed to forbid all non-Muslims into the entire cities of Medina and Mecca yet the World criticizes Israel for building one home.
When the world attacks Israel for not accepting the Islamic Demand of Return, Israel’s only response should be that they will consider it when the Arab/Islamic states return property and land to the Jews the forced to leave.
The situation today is Israel is asked to give, give, give and the Arabs/Islamists give nothing. Israel (with our help) needs to reshape the argument, and the dynamic to something a of at least balance.
1/2 of Jerusalem for 1/2 of Medina, etc.
…..and on that note, I must run…..
(go forth, and spread the good word)
G’nite, Wrath! I’m out too!
re: #2 by vapig
re: #3 by WrathofG-d
Absolutely!! Could never understand why Israel,experts on self preservation while living amongst seething enemies, does not have a much better PR machine. I mean the Arabs have trumped them in this aspect. Why?
re: #5 by vagabond trader
I’m not sure if that was a rehetorical question, but I have an actual answer.
The reason is two-fold.
(1) Israel is working towards peace and thus trying to find common ground with their enemy. They have believed that in order to do so, they had to give a little, admit fault, and self evaluate.
(2) Israel is an open, and free society. As such their media is not part of a larger movement with a common goal (as the Arabs are: destroying Israel). Instead their media is an independent body that will call as they wish. You get opinions that range the entire political spectrum from Israel – including the negative anti-Israel ones. Like the U.S., the most Anti-Israel, self-despising, liberal types go into the media. The same goes for their Government. Unlike the Arabs who don’t have an economy to run, don’t have to please their constituents and get elected, etc., the “Arab-Israel Conflict” is just a portion of their political mandate. Lastly, on both the aforementioned fronts, in Israel you get either ignored, vocally criticized, but most likely lauded by “speaking truth to power” and going against your Countries policies. In Arab countries you get killed for doing this.
(then I guess is the underlying psychological aspects of Jewish Israeli vs. Arab cultures)
If so many Israelis believe this (and there is every reason that they should), why didn’t they make Netanyahu their president ages ago?
re: #7 by Cuffy Miegs
A desire for peace.
Israelis have at the core of their existence (always have, just see their independence declaration, or many of their actions/proclamations after 1967 war) a desire to live in peace with their Arab neighbors.
To achieve this they are willing to be suicidal and go against their wants, and desires. They are naive, when they see even a sliver of hope they are willing and wanting to sell the farm for it.
Yes, Israelis are strong, but so is their desire to just live in peace with their neighbors.
Wrath
Check your email
Israel should annex land for terror; every terror attack should add and settle land. Say nice things to the idiots but settle, build, kill if need be. Is Israel at war?
(I know, crazy talk).
re: #7 by Cuffy Miegs
I believe the Prime Minister in Israel has more power than the President. I know Wrath would know that.
re: #11 by savage
Yes the President is pretty much a ceremonial position, and the Prime Minister has all the power.
I presumed however that Cuffy Miegs meant P.M. however, and was just confused.
Re: The President Of Israel ( http://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Israel_Presidents.htm )
re: #12 by WrathofG-d
Thanks for the clarification, Wrath