Why Does Israel Continue to Exist Today?

 

Ask the average American irreligious or slightly religious Jew, many call them secular Jews or twice a year Jews who only visit the synagogue for the High Holidays and celebrate Hanukkah almost as if it were the Jewish Christmas even to having what they call a Hanukkah Bush (it really is a Christmas Tree with a six pointed star on top instead of a five pointed star). Ask the Jewish leadership of the Anti-Defamation League. Ask Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of the Union for Reform Judaism. Ask Gideon Levy who writes for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Ask J-Street, B’Tselem, Peace Now or any of the plethora of misnamed human rights groups which act as Palestinian Arab critical support and fifth column against Israeli interests. The list of people and groups one can ask extends throughout Europe and the entire world with an ever growing number vocally screaming foul over the latest law passed by the Knesset which makes the Jewish communities anywhere west of the Jordan River legal, even those in the, dare we say it, West Bank, formerly known as Judea and Samaria for close to three thousand years. All these protesters keep repeating that this law will destroy the Israeli democracy and disenfranchise Arabs in Israel. This is total bunk. The Israeli Arabs will not be affected by this law in any way or by any means, period. Arabs will still be permitted to work in any position they are qualified to and desire, they will continue to be doctors, nurses, lawyers, Ministers in the Knesset, judges including on the Supreme Court, drivers, construction, engineering or anything they can dream. They will still own their homes, live where they choose, attend schools of their choice, attend church, Mosque, Synagogue or other religious institution of their choice, drive, ride all forms of transportation, vote in all elections and everything else as citizens of Israel. Guess that democracy thing will survive.

 

I hear the yelling already, “What about the Palestinians voting?” Well, tell you what, whenever Mahmoud Abbas decides that elections are due, then they can have elections. Abbas is serving his twelfth year of a four year term which started in January 2005. The reason the Palestinian Arabs have not voted is because the Palestinian Authority, which means Mahmoud Abbas who has become its dictatorial ruler, has suspended their democratic processes as Abbas knows he would never win in a fair election and the deceit necessary to have him win is beyond his personal ability to manage as there are those standing ready for any opportunity to replace him. Israel has absolutely no control over elections for the Palestinian authority any more than it has over elections in Gaza ruled by Hamas. Where Israel is often faulted for the lack of opportunity to vote for their government by the Arab Palestinians, it has no validity and nothing to do with Arab Israelis who have full rights and do vote in Israeli elections. What happens to the Palestinian Arabs has more to do with their true intentions and the actual and real meaning and purpose of the State of Israel. We will try and clarify both in the remainder of this article and hope we can at least set a few misconceptions straight.

 

First, let us cover the easiest misperception, that Israel was founded to be a democracy. Not even slightly true. Israel was founded to be the homeland for the Jewish People. It is that simple. Read the Balfour Declarations (see image below) and you will see nary a word about democracy throughout. Read the San Remo Conference and again nary a word about elections, democracy or anything covering governance. Everything in every treaty, conference, document and even the Mandate Rules written by the League of Nations have no reference to democracy or anything about how the State of Israel was to be governed. The main points were that it was to be the homeland for the Jewish People and it could not deprive the residents residing in the land of their freedoms to own property, practice their religion and all civil and religious rights but says nothing about political rights. According to all of the laws etcetera regarding the making and founding of the State of Israel, the form of governance is completely unmentioned leaving it up to the Jews, the Zionists, to decide as they formed their nation. Technically, Israel could legally limit the right to vote to Jews or even to practicing Jews. Israel did not take that path. Israel gave full rights to their population whether Jewish or not. That is why Arabs are full voting citizens of the State of Israel as are many other peoples who were present or have been allowed citizenship as refugees from persecution. The Arabs who remained in Israel did not join the Arab forces who attacked Israel in the 1948 Arab War of Genocidal Intent launched by the Arab World on Israel’s founding morning of May 15, 1948.

 

Balfour Declaration and
Initial Proposed Map and Lands

 

As a result of that war, what in Israel is euphemistically called the Israeli War of Independence and is celebrated as a victory as Israel survived, yet the reality comes to territory where Israel lost major parts of Judea and Samaria to Jordan who renamed that area the West Bank while Egypt took over the Gaza Strip. There were some Arab villages which harbored fighters which attacked the Israeli forces from behind the lines which lead to the Israeli forces dispossessing the entire village as that was the expedient way of addressing the situation most efficiently and immediately deciding that the villagers were at the least partially responsible for the use of their areas for staging a rear attack and that they were acting as a fifth column. Much has been misrepresented about these actions claiming that these villagers were dispossessed of their lands simply because they were Arabs and nothing else, ignoring their harboring of Arab forces which were planted in order to attack Israeli forces from behind and cutting off their routes of supply and assaulting the civilians claiming that every Jew was a legitimate target. These differences will never be resolved and can only be mitigated by what means will allow.

 

We have settled that the only real meanings behind the founding of Israel was to take some desert, swamp lands and rock strewn hills into the Jewish homeland. The few people residing in these lands at the end of World War I, a sparse set of peoples strewn here and there, were guaranteed their civil and religious rights such as continued ownership of lands, herds, business, residence and other properties as well as rights to worship in their traditional methods and follow their religions freely. The existing residents were not guaranteed political rights which were reserved technically for the Jewish People if this were the decision of the Zionist Congress upon the founding of the state. When Israel was founded on May 15, 1948 one might say that everything hit the fan as forces from more than a half dozen Arab armies and militias attacked Israel from every possible direction. Peace was not achieved for over a year and when the decision of governance was finally addressed the leadership from the Zionist Congress and the other groups such as the Haganah reached the decision to extend full political rights to all the residents in the nation, Arabs, Jews, Christians, Bedouins, Druze, Baha’I and other smaller minority groups all as one democratic nation. This was the first actual decision on using a democracy and it is notable that the democracy was all inclusive of those who were not opposed to the Jews having their own state. This is how and why Israel is a democracy.

 

When the State of Israel was founded, the Palestinian Arabs were not citizens of Israel but were Arabs residing in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia as well as some Iraqis, Turks, Yemenis and others who were part of the invading forces and who remained on the lands or were actually driven onto the lands by their governments in order to make what have become known as facts on the ground. The claims that all of the Palestinian Arabs came from inside Israel is a common factual lie which has been repeated so often with such force and echo-chamber reinforced, the world now accepts it as factual. This is the main drive behind the two state concept as the claim is Israel owes the remnant of her invaders their own nation. This misconception has poisoned the waters so permanently that a solution would be difficult if this was the sole difficulty. There is a further problem in that the Arabs do not believe that the Jews have any right to a homeland within what they see as the Muslim Ummah. Their claim is that throughout all history, which for the Muslims begins in 625, there have been no Jewish lands within the lands they conquered and colonized. The reality is that the Arabs have the longest running and most extensive colonial enterprise in world history. They also are under the belief that the problem with the world is that it has not yet, emphasis on yet, come under the rule of Allah and the dictatorial rule of Islam. Until they are disabused of this notion, Israel, as well as the world in total, can never feel safe from the next Islamic offensive, something the Europeans should remember from their own history as Islam has attacked through Spain only to be turned at Tours by Charles “the Hammer” Martel and twice from Turkey Ottoman Empire being turned back at the Battle of Vienna, the first attack being stopped in 1529 and the second assault turned back by Polish King John III Sobieski in 1683.

 

Israel, conceived, initiated and founded to be the homeland of the Jewish People has faced the difficulty of a Palestinian Arab irascible obstinacy demanding they are the rightful owners of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and that the Jews have no rights in these lands and deserve to be exterminated. This has been their first, second, and final demand and they refuse to compromise and accept anything less. Their demands are often couched in coded verbiage such as their demanding they receive their 22% of the Mandate Lands. The western leadership will almost always take that to mean that they are demanding 22% of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea this meaning Judea and Samaria or Judea, Samaria and Gaza. What Abbas actually means and has explained as his meaning is 22% of the entire of the Mandate Lands, the 22% which consists of all the lands not taken to make Jordan which was 78% of the original Mandate Lands, the entire of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Yasser Arafat and after him Mahmoud Abbas both demanded that Israel be destroyed and replaced by Palestine. Abbas has actually offered one compromise; his idea of a two state solution. His two state idea is for an Arab Palestine which will be completely free of Jews and an Arab ruled State of Israel where the Jews have no rights and are allowed to live at the indulgence of their betters, the Arabs which will include over five million Arabs brought from refugee camps from around the Arab world and even within Judea and Samaria and Gaza and who knows how many additional Arabs who simply claim to be refugees seeking economic betterment. Anyway one cuts it, finding a solution which will satisfy the Palestinian Arab leadership and their Arab League backers, it would require sacrificing the Jewish State making the Jews once again stateless.

 

The problem with the Arab reasoning is that history did not begin in 625 AD, especially in the lands of Judea, Samaria and the rest of the lands of the Twelve Tribes of Israel (see map on right below). The Twelve Tribes of Israel were founded when Joshua crossed the Jordan River and defeated the first Canaanite King of Jericho. This was followed with another victory at Ai and continued until the Holy Lands were conquered following numerous tactical routes first heading through the central Judean hills, then southward and finally the northern areas (shown in the left map below). This conquest began approximately 1275 BCE. Since that time virtually every conquering empire outside those in the Americas, China, Japan, and Russia but even to including the Vikings if one believes that the Greeks were originally Vikings who found the Greek climate preferable to Scandinavia, surprise, surprise, and their Triremes were modified Long Ships; they all have invaded and occupied without ever naming Jerusalem as a capital city even for a province unless the province was expressly for the Jews as was the case under the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great. The Jewish People have an extensively long history uninterrupted with Jews residing in the lands and especially in Jerusalem constantly starting soon after the entrance of Joshua through the expansive times under Kings David and Solomon through the First Temple Period, their Babylonian exile of most of the population and their subsequent return and building of the Second Temple and expanding the Temple Mount and the remainder of their history through to the modern period. That is the real history and Israel was founded recognizing the entirety of the history, not just that which is fancifully convenient for the Islamic sensibilities.

 

Israel Through the Ages Joshua Enters to the Twelve Tribes

 

Then there is the biggest fallacy of them all, that Israel conquered Palestinian Lands in the Six Day War in 1967. First thing is there has never been anything called Palestine for their land to be stolen. Palestine is the name of the region and the original use of the term Palestinian was for the Jews during the British Mandate period where the Arabs were referred to as Arabs or Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Druze, Bedouins, Egyptians or other designation of origin or tribe. When Israel regained the lands of Judea and Samaria in the 1967 Six Day War they were not conquering new lands, they were liberating their own lands which had been occupied by the Jordanians since the 1948 War. The only occupation of Judea and Samaria was by Jordan and the claim that Jordan gifted these lands to the Palestinian Arabs is a great misconception, a great invention of propaganda. The lands were originally and always Israeli and were occupied by Jordan. One cannot give away stolen lands and thus Jordan could not gift the lands to the Palestinian Arabs as it was stolen land occupied illegally by Jordan. The entire world with the exception of Britain and Pakistan refused to recognize these lands as Jordanian. Even Egypt and the Arab League refused to recognize the Jordanian occupation. Lastly, Jordan signed a peace with Israel surrendering the occupied lands of Judea and Samaria back to Israel and it was not until two years after that treaty that Jordan officially claimed to have gifted the lands to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Arabs. That makes these lands doubly not Jordanian to give as they were not even occupying the lands when they claimed to have given them away. What is next, the Iranians claiming they gave away Hollywood to the Arab Palestinians community of Southern California? That would be just as legal as the Jordanian claims to have given land they did not even possess at the time to the Palestinian Arabs and they even made the claim retroactive to attempt to grant it some degree of validity. That simply does not wash and the land remains Israeli until such time as Israel gives it away in a treaty, something seeming more and more remote by the day.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Reasons for NOT Moving the Embassy to Jerusalem

 

This has been the most and greatest coverage we have seen since the Inauguration of President Trump when covering his promises and the possibility that he might falter. Every article has mentioned different choices predicting which promises the President Trump would renege upon. Many claimed he would never build the wall along the Mexican border. Some kind of cheated by claiming that he would merely use a fence or even cameras with computer monitoring for motion detection and alerting the Border Police instead of building a wall along the entire border. Some would claim that the terrain would prevent it being a wall along the entire border but these arguments were disingenuous as the wording of a “wall along the Mexico border” simply meant closing the border through the use of combined deterrents, walls, fences or monitoring through advances of technology in the most difficult terrain or least used crossing locations and simply closing the border using all means necessary and required. Others claimed he would be unable to deport all the illegal immigrants as promised. First off, that was not the promise. He promised to deport illegal immigrants with felony convictions and to work at finding an equitable solution in which deportation may be an integral part of the equation.

 

The one item which made virtually every article’s list was the promise to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Almost, well, honestly every article we read claimed that President Trump would not be capable of moving the embassy as the threats, dangers, political pressures or even that Trump would use moving the embassy to force the Israelis to make the next concession of dividing Jerusalem and returning to the 1949 Armistice Lines with very minor land swaps making a final peace deal. What the problem with the claim is that the Congress passage and the signing into law of the Jerusalem Act “recognized Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty.” That makes an undivided Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty United States law and thus holds any President to standing either actively for the undivided capital of Israel as being all of Jerusalem or remaining silent, no matter how President Obama attempted to divide Jerusalem as he disregarded numerous laws including the United States Constitution. Even some Israeli media has come up with lists for why President Trump will not, or should not (Haaretz), move the embassy to Jerusalem claiming things so extreme as stated by Haaretz, “Relocating its embassy to Jerusalem would mean the U.S. taking a partisan stance on a central and sensitive issue, a source of controversy between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Israel and the international community.” That is a falsehood unless moving the embassy to western Jerusalem would be taking a position that western Jerusalem would remain part of Israel. Is Haaretz indicating that Israel should leave western Jerusalem and if that is the meaning, then what else should Israel surrender or does Haaretz stand with the most extreme position such as that expressed by Helen Thomas who stated on May 27, 2010, when asked whether she had any comments on Israel? “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” she replied. “Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, it’s not Poland.” When further asked where they should go, she answered, “They should go home.” When asked where’s home, Thomas replied: “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.”

 

 

The American Embassy could easily be moved to even the most western edge of Jerusalem and be as far as possible from any lands under dispute and still there would be whole hosts of people screaming that the United States is persecuting the Palestinian Arabs and determining to cheat them out of their homeland. This might at first glance appear as a ridiculous position to take as it could be so easily repudiated except that the Palestinian Arab claims include all of Jerusalem. The reality is the United States has already made a statement that is determined to cheat the Palestinian Arabs out of their homeland by leaving their embassy in Tel Aviv as the Arab claim is to all of Israel just as the students chant in campuses across the United States, Europe and beyond, “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.” The Palestinian Arabs are actually the entire Arab world’s crowbar and will be their implement by which they continue to wage their war to destroy all of Israel. The truth is the existence of a United States Embassy is an affront to the Palestinian Arab claims to their “rightful” country which would be built on the ruins of the Jewish State as anything less would be an aberrance to their stated demands and eventual goals. This is part of why Mahmoud Abbas, and Yasser Arafat before him, refused even offers which granted them with over 90% of Judea and Samaria along with all of Gaza and east Jerusalem as their capital when offered in 1999, 2000 and in 2008.

 

So, why should President Trump move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem according to us here at Beyond the Cusp? Well, we could use our favorite reason when trying to win an argument as kids with our parents when life got between us and a promise to go somewhere fun, “But you promised,” but we know that does not wash when things are on this level. First, it would send a message that there really has been a change in Washington D.C. and that the change will very likely be permanent for all intents and purposes. The world’s train is racing towards oblivion and nobody is manning the breaks. The old steam engine is racing with its speed balls spinning full out threatening to blow off their spinners. Everything about the old globe is screaming, whistles blowing and rivets near popping and the boiler exploding and the Deadman’s switch rig disabled and there is nobody in the cabin. Well, there was nobody in the cabin. This was the picture of the world not long ago and hopefully things will be saved before we hit a sharp curve and it all goes off the tracks. Brexit was step one and President Trump is step two but nobody knows how many steps it will require for sanity to rescue the world. Will the needful steps be taken or will the next cataclysm strike before the world regains sanity. What are the necessary steps that will bring the world back within the bounds, who can tell? The world has been slowly gaining reckless speed slowly slipping out of control and towards untold violence. There are those forces which would welcome the untold violence. They loudly proclaim their love for violence and the death it brings. They claim to worship death and that this allows them power over all who worship life. Their claim is that death conquers life. Those who love life claim that death is the rest one receives after a full, long and hopefully well spent life. These are opposing views which cannot be reconciliated, one must prevail. The good news is that President Trump is aware of the challenge though he has spoken only about it through allegory and indirect references. Moving the United States Embassy would be a strong message when it is announced as a definitive and executable policy decision. Perhaps that is the future for the moving of the United States Embassy, a declaration that the United States and life will declare over death and those who believe it is primacy. Yes, perhaps the moving of the Embassy will be a greater declaration than what the debaters believe it will be. Perhaps there is a grander plan than we are aware, perhaps the plan is greater than men and from beyond our understanding. This may be a greater issue than a mere embassy and the city in which it sits. Jerusalem had been more than a city and perhaps this is more than a simple embassy. Lastly, if the reason not to move the embassy to Jerusalem is because it reportedly will inflame Muslim passions moving them to further animosity and in turn greater acts of violence, then there is no reason not to move the embassy as from all observations of the Middle East, especially Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Libya and both Sudan and South Sudan as well as the levels of terrorism in Europe, more so Western Europe and also in the United States, though there it has been reported as anything but terror, especially Islamic driven terror, the levels could not conceivably be any higher. Violence, thy name is Islam, has become a truism of our times and thus simply move the embassy as there is no possible additional levels other than war, and that will happen whether the embassy is moved or not. If we had our way and the United States had not already purchased the land, then we would call for the embassy not only to be moved to Jerusalem but to the Jewish sector of the Old City as well. After all, did not Trump promise that his Presidency would be a brave and bold rebeginning for America and her relations with her friends? Well then, let’s get it off on the right foot.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Anti-Semitism’s Israeli Amplifier of Inaction and Timidity

 

The existence of anti-Semitism across Europe, Canada, the United States and the rest of the developed world, particularly on college campuses, is growing and will soon be beyond control and spread throughout society. The first waves will soon break out as today’s college students being steeped in anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic programs and virtual pogroms graduate and bring their toxic views into the political world and then the workplace and society as a whole. These indoctrinations are presented as presumed pro-Palestinian protests such as Israel Apartheid Week, mock checkpoints, demonstrations blocking campus access portraying the Israeli security barrier as the modern version of the Berlin Wall or the Warsaw Ghetto Walls as well as faux eviction notices placed on Jewish and pro-Israel students’ dorm rooms claiming their rooms are to be demolished as protest of terror home demolitions and simple, straight out physical intimidation of Jewish and pro-Israel students. For further observations and documentations one can start with these two articles; Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain and Hotbeds of Anti-Semitism in British Academia or use the results from a simple search engine results for anti-Semitism on college campus we performed as a free service to make life easier.

 

This article is not out to bang the drum which already has been accomplished to the point that a complete percussion section has been added to the anti-Semitism orchestrated noises around the world just covering college campuses and in some cases it spreading to public high schools. This is following a normal progression for many politicized items as has been tracked with other subjects such as global climate change, equal opportunity, affirmative actions, LGBTQ rights and other highly charged political subjects from our modern societies. We will be taking a different tact driving to perceive what is probably the one major change which if taken would help rid the entire developed world from this pernicious evil. We will leave the proof to the links above and what will probably be more than sufficient numbers of articles which are sure to continue to surface. That could change and do so with a rapidity that would astonish the world and could be right around the corner if only some specific events and particular actions taken by some crucially critical people would materialize, but such things are unfortunately not looking ready to occur. So, let’s dive in and see what needs to be shaking.

 

Anti-Israel Protests

 

One of the first items which everybody a week ago thought was fair accompli and about to happen as soon as all the arrangements were done and ground was broken was the repeated statement once more by a candidate for President of the United States that the American Embassy in Israel would be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Candidate Donald Trump promised, and we quote, “We will move the American Embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March. Further he stated this important add-on stating, “The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable.” Well, here we are in week one and already the moving of the American Embassy to Jerusalem has gone from we will to a process where ramifications and complications must be weighed and a cost/benefit analysis performed and all the other irrelevant items being spit out all in an effort to say we are going to do the same old same old. We have already heard of Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and other Arab allies having warned the White House of severe repercussions should it proceed with the move. The threats included a threatened review of bilateral relations with both the US and Israel plus warnings of an upsurge in violence should the embassy be relocated. Please do not tell us that the Trump campaign were not aware of these ramifications when they followed the well-worn path of lying to AIPAC knowing full well that they would turn everything over to the State department and Pentagon and either or both would come back with a report warning against such rash actions as they would inflame the world and the ramifications far outweighed any benefit if there could even be an argument that there exists a benefit. Further, they would question the expense and warn that such simply was politically risky should any of the threats of violence be traced to having moved the Embassy, which the State department would warn they would most likely find as the cause of any terrorism targeting American facilities overseas.

 

So, Trump is not going to be as pro-Israel as advertised, and why should he? Expecting President Trump to be more pro-Israel than Israel is ridiculous, as it should be. We learned this centuries ago and it was most succinctly stated by Rabbi Hillel who wisely asked, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?” When, as we mentioned yesterday, the Israeli Security Cabinet voted unanimously to delay discussion on any law annexing Maaleh Adumim, can we expect for President Trump to stick his neck out and move the American Embassy to Israel to Jerusalem when the Israelis main decision makers unanimously refused to even consider annexing just a suburb of East Jerusalem? Of course that would be ridiculous. For proof just read Hillel above and it plainly states that step one will always be us being for what we hold dear before we can expect others to act similarly in our interests. Perhaps it would be a good idea to inundate the members of the Knesset’s e-mails with copies of Hillel’s quote followed by a simply Yiddish question, “Nu?” implying to ask what have you done recently which changes anything. Israel acting weak and timid reflects on everything worldwide simply because Israel is the exemplary representation of Jewish pride and strength and of late Israel has shown neither for quite some time.

 

When Israel acts decisively and boldly projects strength and confidence taking whatever steps necessary to protect their people and the future of the Jewish State, it becomes reflected in the actions by Jews in the world and affects the way Jews are treated. When Israel demands respect as she did during the first half of her brief history, the world respected the Jews and allowed for Jews to be proud and live holding their heads high. As Israel has mired herself and given concession after concession with nothing to show for any of it as the land for peace more represented land for terrorism and Israel appeared weak and Jews started to wear long faces and are soon, if not already, hang their heads and shuffle along giving once again the image of the Jew ready to be kicked and ill-regarded. The ghetto Jews, as it had been called throughout much of modern history, was again the view. The Jews were those people who are to be blamed for all the ills in the world, all the wars, all the hatreds, all the destitution, all of any and every evil imaginable and the Jew could be kicked and spat upon and they would shuffle off accepting any scorn. This persona has become accepted on all too many college and university campuses in the developed world. As Israel is demeaned and seen as threatened and not really taking actions to protect themselves, this places the Jews across the world in jeopardy of attack and other forms of anti-Semitism. These acts have already made numerous cities across Europe actually dangerous to Jews to even so threatening that, as in Malmo, most of the Jews are packing up and departing. The numbers of Jews making Aliyah from France this past year was the highest since the end of World War II and many times the average for any year in the past half century. Further, the Arab world is using their oil wealth to finance those NGOs who coordinate numerous campus groups in anti-Israel and anti-Zionist programs with very obvious and well-coordinated demonstrations and events demeaning Israel and Zionism and by an extension anti-Semitism as many times these actions also lead to direct targeting of the Jews on the campus sometimes placing their lives and health in danger.

 

As noted in the articles linked above, there are campuses in Britain where Jews do not even apply as the atmosphere is that toxic. This is a direct result of Israeli passive resistance to terrorism and apparent trepidation to acting boldly to suppress those acting against her. This has to end but for that to come to pass Israel will need to elect a far more active and bold leadership. This can be done but first an election is necessary and the Israeli Zionists and related activists will need find and promote someone to lead one of the existing parties and then support that party with sufficient votes that they either are the party making the coalition or be the main partner in a coalition with sufficient influence to force definitive action. The United States election set in place an opportunity of a lifetime. The election of Donald Trump as President and the fact that for the first time in memory the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House and soon even the United States Supreme Court will be Republican or conservative making support for Israel, especially as a fair percentage of Democrats in Congress also support Israel, a given, freeing Israel to act without any ramifications from Washington. This is a situation which has not been seen since the founding of the modern state of Israel and may never return again should it disappear in the next election, a certain possibility as the opponents to President Trump will throw everything they have to at least take back the House of Representatives if not also the Senate. There are no guarantees in American politics but the stars and planets have aligned along with the Congress and White House to favor a bold and take-action Israel, now all that is necessary is leadership willing to take action which will define the state of Israel and the state of Israeli politics for the foreseeable future.

 

The unfortunate unanimous vote by the Prime Minister’s Security Cabinet to delay considerations on annexing Maaleh Adumim must be laid in the lap of Prime Minister Netanyahu as well as any leaders of the presumed Zionist and Religious Zionist parties who are represented in the Security Cabinet such as Naftali Bennet. There can be no excuse other than fear of retributions from European nations who are acting with ill will already towards Israel and also allowing similar disregards for their Jewish citizens throughout their college and university communities and even in many cities and towns. The BDS movement is making strides thanks to the recent United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2334 which was facilitated by President Obama who had been rumored was personally involved along with his Secretary of State John Kerry as a means of tying incoming President Trump’s hands in dealing with Israel and in the Middle East. The best way to counter the disastrous implications of that UNSC Resolution is strong and defined actions performed as an in your face Israeli response. The UNSC will not be following up and passing any similar or other damaging resolution against Israel as President Trump will reinstate the American veto of such damaging resolution in the UNSC. The message must be delivered to the Knesset that the irons are hot and it is time to put the hammer to anvil and beat out a favorable fait accompli. The time to annex not only Maaleh Adumim, but Bet El, Ariel, Betar Illit, Modi’in Illit, Har Gilo, Gush Etzion at the least and all of Judea and Samaria returning the PLO, Fatah, and all other terrorist affiliated persons to Tunis or wherever in Europe they would be welcome and give the Arab Palestinians their first hopes for a bright and unencumbered future free of the kleptocracy which has stolen all hope from them for the past near quarter of a century. Will the world, particularly Europe, explode in indignation? Probably, but ride out their initial explosion and with time they will tire of complaining and when things here in Israel settle and the Arabs are slowly but surely incorporated into Israeli society and their lives improve immeasurably, there will be less and less reason to protest eventually leaving no reasons to protest. The future with a secure Israel, and this should be the sole consideration of the Knesset, is with Israel with all the lands promised us between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and not sharing it with any terrorist nest guaranteed to feed the world’s need to hate Israel, and by equal measure hate Jews. Israel could do more to guarantee her future and destroy anti-Semitism by simply annexing all of Judea and Samaria, removing those who would continue being a menace and reward those Arabs who desire living in peace with equality and security for all. By acting to assure Israel’s future and boldly protecting Israel, Israel would herself be combatting anti-Semitism in the world with better efficiency than any other actions could dream of accomplishing. The first question is can Netanyahu act or is he so damaged by the strains of leadership that he is no longer capable of acting definitively and securing the Israeli future? The last question is are the Zionist Israelis organized enough to start and continue programs and demonstrations demanding that the Knesset and the Prime Minister with his Security Cabinet act definitively with a minimum of delay as time is precious, and if we might repeat Rabbi Hillel, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”

 

Beyond the Cusp