Reply to Lady Catherine Ashton and Those of Like Minds

European Union Foreign Minister Lady Catherine Ashton proclaimed regarding Israeli moves to grant full legal status to three communities founded within Judea and Samaria, “I am extremely concerned about the decision of the Israeli authorities regarding the status of the settlements of Sansana, Rechelim and Bruchin in the occupied Palestinian territory. I call upon them to reverse this decision. The EU has repeatedly called on Israel to end all settlement activity. Settlements are illegal under International Law, an obstacle to peace and threaten the viability of a two-state solution.” She further complained that such actions went against the wishes of the Quartet and their mission as peace builders and “expressed concern about unilateral and provocative actions, including continued settlement activity.”

The United States State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland speaking to reporters basically echoed Lady Ashton’s rebuke of the Israeli actions stating, “We are, obviously, concerned by the reports that we’ve seen. We have raised this with the Israeli Government and we are seeking clarification. You know where we are on settlements. We don’t think this is helpful to the (peace) process and we don’t accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.” Unsurprisingly, France and Jordan condemned the Israeli decision as did United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon whose office released the following statement, “The Secretary-General is disappointed that such a decision comes at a time of renewed efforts to restart dialogue,” Rounding out the top tier of the regular condemning of Israel is Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member and lead negotiator Saeb Erekat who said that the Palestinian Authority may ask the United Nations Security Council for a condemnation of Israel’s move. None of these statements or positions came as even the slightest of surprises as these are the same people and groups which would decry if a Jew were to add a deck to the back of their house or remodeled their kitchen with new appliances.

I would like to take a moment to address those who are almost constantly demanding that Israel take self-destructive and injurious actions in order to prove their desire for a real peace yet do not even request the Palestinians come to the negotiation table. I would like to answer their claims that Israel has not made sufficient quantity or quality of sacrifices to satisfy the Arabs or the rest of the World. I would like to clarify the lies that are presented as fact in reference to the Israeli obligation to reestablish a Palestinian State for the Palestinian refugees who deserve to have their state returned to them. So let us start and try taking these items one at a time.

Starting with the last item, namely that it is an Israeli obligation to reestablish a Palestinian State for the Palestinian refugees who deserve to have their state returned to them. No matter what actions Israel could implement, they would never be able to reestablish a Palestinian State. A Palestinian State has either never before existed or was established when the British founded Transjordan which continues to exist today as the country of Jordan. Either way a Palestinian state cannot be reestablished as either the one which was established continues to exist thus is not in need of being reestablished or one never has existed thus cannot be reestablished. The main reason behind those professing the need for Israel to reestablish a Palestinian State where one has never existed is to establish a falsity of a preexisting Palestinian State in the minds of the world public thus allowing the inference that Israel had conquered the State of Palestine some time in their manufactured history thereby supplying the call for the return of their stolen land for a country named Palestine to be somehow accurate. This call and insistence that there once was a Palestinian State which was destroyed by Israel in 1948 and then again in 1967 is a bald faced deceit being plied in order to lead to the destruction of Israel in stages, the stated plan of the PLO and Hamas as well as the other myriad of terror groups gathered against the Jewish State and Jews worldwide. Pushing this deception is simply an attempt to destroy the Jewish people starting by destroying Israel as the first step towards completing a genocide which has been ongoing throughout much of human history. This has nothing to do with a Palestinian State as much as it has to do with the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.

Concerning the proposal that Israel has not made sufficient quantity or quality of sacrifices to satisfy the Arabs or the rest of the World, let us first list the sacrifices made by Israel and the Jewish People since 1900 to the present. The initial lands set aside in trust by the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations Charter, the Peel Commission, the Versailles Treaty, and numerous other documents and treaties included all the lands from the Mediterranean Sea to the western edge of Iraq. These lands included all of what today is Israel, Gaza, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), and Jordan. These lands which were the British Mandate were in truth mandated to become the state for the Jews which Britain was tasked with facilitating the immigration of Jews from wherever they resided in the World in a voluntary manner through enticement and being under the protection of the British Empire until such time as the Jewish population grew to become the dominant peoples when a Jewish State was to then be established. The inks had barely dried on many of the documents and treaties validating this obligation when the British decided, to quiet Arab rioting and disruptions reward the recently exiled Hashemite family who had aided Britain against the Ottoman Empire during World War I with the country of Transjordan. The British made a promise at this juncture that all of the remaining twenty-two percent of the British Mandate lands would be reserved for the Jewish State. That remaining lands was all of the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. So, the Jewish People already surrendered under force of the British Empire all the British Mandate lands east of the Jordan River to the western edge of Iraq. This included seventy-eight percent of the lands which were theoretically held in trust for the Jewish State. This was only the initial surrender of land which was legally reserved or belonging to the Jewish State, now for the rest.

When the United Nations General Assembly suggested in November of 1947 that the Jews allow for another Arab State to be given as an Arab State and the Jews settle for only half of the remaining lands promised with two-thirds of the land given for the Jewish State being the Negev Desert and much of the remaining land being a small strip along parts of the coast near Tel Aviv and the northern mountains of Samaria while the Arabs were to receive the fertile valleys of the central lands and half of the shore line of the Mediterranean. The Jewish authorities were willing to accept this suggestion but the Arab powers declined this deal and declared a war of total annihilation against the nascent Jewish State as soon as it was declared in May of 1948. When the Arab war failed to destroy the Jewish State a peace was signed establishing the Green Line as a temporary armistice line that, at the insistence of the Arab powers, was demanded to never be considered or used to imply or be in actuality as a border. The reason around this was the Arab countries were determined not to recognize the Jewish State thus Israel could not be allowed to have recognized borders. The theory was that should they succeed in denying a universally recognized border it would be easier to challenge and destroy Israel in the future. After the peace was established, Israel’s neighboring countries returned to their terror style guerrilla warfare which had been being waged against the Jews of the area since the early 1920s if not earlier. At this time and over the next decade numerous Arab countries expelled their Jewish citizens often confiscating their property, jewelry, savings, businesses, and anything of value allowing them a suitcase or two which were to only contain clothing.

When Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and barred all shipping from using the waterway the British and the French requested Israel to ally with them to reopen this vital waterway. When time ran out on the demand and the Egyptian President refused to concede to the demands from Britain and France, Israel fulfilled their part in the agreement while Britain and France moved to deploy troops and while Israel was taking the entire Sinai Peninsula the Egyptians relented and reopened the Suez Canal. The closing of the Suez Canal was the equivalent of an act of war which would have allowed Israel to retain the land gained but Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula almost immediately upon the request of the other World Powers, especially President Eisenhower who lead the demands upon Israel. When in 1967 the Egyptians closed off the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, they were breaking International Law and treaties thus committing an act of war. Egypt and Syria had both massed troops on Israel’s northern and southern borders while threatening to annihilate the Jewish state. By the end of the Six Day War and after Jordan joined the fight beside Egypt and Syria; Israel had once again taken the Sinai Peninsula as well as Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights. According to International Laws it would be permissible for Israel to annex the lands gained in a defensive conflict. Despite being legally entitled to incorporate the acquired lands, Israel offered to return all the areas lost by each country during the conflict in exchange for peace and a treaty. Despite the three no’s of the Khartoum Declaration; no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel; Israel offered to return both the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza to Egypt and Judea and Samaria to Jordan when each made their peace with Israel. Egypt accepted the return of the Sinai Peninsula while rejecting the Gaza Strip and Jordan refused to reestablish their influence over Judea or Samaria releasing their claims ceding the lands to Israel. So, Israel gave back the Sinai Peninsula which is many times the size of Israel itself. Do not pretend that Israel has not sacrificed any areas of land in order to make peace with their Arab neighbors. Israel has returned the Sinai Peninsula twice even though anybody interpreting International Laws honestly and seriously would be forced to grant that subsequent to the Six Day War Israel had a legal right to retain possession of the Sinai Peninsula but chose to return the area as a gesture of good faith. Israel already offered to return the Gaza Strip and the West Bank but the Arab nations in negotiations relented any claim to these lands which means they were ceded to Israel, period. Even if Israel retains these lands lost to her in a war she was forced to fight in self-defense, Israel is under absolutely no obligation to grant citizenship to those people living in these areas, especially in the West Bank as they had been granted Jordanian citizenship thus are free to return to their countries of origin, Jordan and Egypt.

In regard to the first concept that Israel must take self-destructive and injurious actions in order to prove their desire for a real peace, this demand is about as disingenuous as it gets. A quick reading of the United Nations declarations, almost all of which are nonbinding, will reveal they all refer to the establishing of boundaries which allow for a secure and defensible border securing Israel’s determined requirements. Technically, this determination could allow Israel to declare that the Jordan River is necessary to assure a defensible border as a maximum claim but minimally the first ridge of the Judean and Samarian ridge are the absolute minimal requirement to protect Israel and her citizens from coming under direct sniper fire as well as placing spotters on these ridges overseeing all of the plains to the sea who could adjust artillery and other indirect weapons fire. The Green Line, the armistice line which the Arabs insisted should never be used to designate a border is also indefensible which leaves Israel so vulnerable to attack cutting the country in halves that they truly are suicidal borders. Before the Six Day War there were documented reports of sniper fire from the Golan Heights from Syrian snipers and Muslim snipers also shot at Jews who happened to come within their line of sight from their vantage points in East Jerusalem. The numbers of infiltrations by suicide bombers and terrorist teams to attack Israelis were near impossible to prevent before the Six Day War but have been successfully curtailed significantly since the building of the anti-terror fence. So, at a minimum Israel would need to retain at least the lands west of the fence and also need to retain at least a military presence along the Jordan Valley and western shore of the Jordan River. Demanding any less shows a complete disregard for the people of Israel and likely reveals an antagonism towards the Jewish State that can only be interpreted as a modern day anti-Semitism, nothing less.

All of the people who make endless and repetitious demands that Israel surrender this or give back this or establish another Arab state or release terrorists from detention and never make a single demand of the Arab side of the equation reveal their true aims through their one sided and critical singular attention to Israel while forgiving any behavior by the Arabs and Palestinians. Those who hold Israel to the strictest of standards while ignoring similar and worse actions by the rest of the world reveal their true colors through such specialization of their convictions. It has gone beyond rhyme and reason how much of the world demand of Israel total and complete capitulation to the Palestinians while asking the Palestinians if there is anything else they would like them to press Israel to surrender. Between much of the European ruling class, the world leaders controlling the United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations related Agencies and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and the Islamic apologizers, the demands upon Israel are slowly evolving into an endless list of suicidal demands with no coexistent requests made of the Palestinians and have relinquished their rights to claim the title of peace-makers. They are plain and simple agents for the Palestinians against the safety or even the continued existence of Israel. My suggestion is simple, just pose the simplest of requests of the Palestinians, ask that they recognize that Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish State. Once you get the Palestinians to agree that the Jews have any right to self-determination, then we will talk of what Israel needs to do to make peace. I bet you will claim that I ask the unreasonable and impossible. If what I ask is impossible, then what can we make of your request for Israel’s destruction through the cuts of a thousand concessions?

Beyond the Cusp