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

 

Gaza and Sinai Vexing Egyptian Military

Since the overthrow of Mubarak as the President of Egypt there have been increasing difficulties with extreme lawlessness in both the Sinai and the border with Gaza. When President Morsi, who had the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, made up the government in Egypt these problems grew in scope and severity. Reports told of al-Qaeda camps being established leading to radicalization of the Bedouins who found the offers to assist the weapons smugglers paid far better than their previous occupation of herding. The Egyptian government under Morsi began to try and combat the growing menace in the Sinai and even found it necessary to try and restrict the flow of arms into Gaza to Hamas and other terrorist groups there. After an attack on the Rafah border crossings where a band of terrorists murdered fifteen Egyptian border agents in the process of stealing some armored vehicles with which to cross into and attack Israel the Egyptians ramped up their presence for the first time and have done so as deemed necessary since. Their assault into Israel was met and repelled destroying at least one of the stolen armored vehicles. With the military inserted government which replaced the Morsi government after the coup that shall not be named a coup took over they increased the efforts to reinstate the rule of law in the Sinai and concurrently restrict the smuggling tunnels through which arms and other goods enter Gaza and fund Hamas. Despite the risks which any governance of Egypt would face working with Israel, both the Morsi and the Military backed governments have consulted and kept all agreements with Israel though not actually warming to any great extent. One guess is that the Egyptian governments, no matter who it is aligned with, have more than enough problems that since keeping relations with Israel at least non-confrontational if not warm and mushy were an easy investment that paid dividends when they entered into operations in the Sinai.

 

It is interesting that the Egyptians have had almost the same threats, difficulties and challenges which have plagued the Israelis over the years and they seem to have a similar attitude towards how to address these problems. The Egyptian government escalated their response soon after the military took over governing Egypt. With Israeli understanding and blessings the Egyptians sent armor supported forces in numbers into the Sinai supported by helicopter gunships. These offensives have met with somewhat limited success as the terrorists and smugglers are extremely adept at melting into the natural environment. The most recent escalation was somewhat shocking when the Egyptians stationed a pair of heavy tanks at the Rafah crossing as a response to the recent bombings pulled off by terrorist factions within Gaza. This escalation is a whole new strategy as I do not remember the Israelis stationing tanks within the Philadelphia Corridor when they controlled the Gaza border with Egypt. The Egyptians recently widened the cleared area on the Gaza border which resulted in their demolishing some houses which were revealed to have been used as tunnel entrances. This is the same reaction for which the Israelis were pilloried in the international press and heralded as brutes taking horrific and unnecessary destructive measures against the poor and unfortunate Palestinian civilians. Somehow, the recent actions though identical except having been committed by the Egyptians have passed by silently without even a murmur from the world media or the various NGOs which cursed similar actions by the Israelis. I guess it matters whose troops are exercising precautions taking the needful steps in order to make the environment safer for their troops operating along that border.

 

It will be interesting to watch as the Egyptians continue to meet the ever escalating challenges in the Sinai and along the Gaza border, though finding reports on such can be a bit difficult. It is expected that the Egyptians will resort to similar methods, precautions, demolitions, walls, blockades, vibrations sensors for tunnel detection, and all of the other overt and imposing appearing necessities for which the world’s media, governments, spokespersons, NGOs and United Nations Agencies challenged the necessity for when implemented by the Israelis. It can be expected that whenever there are comments about the similarities between the Egyptian methods and activities with those of the Israelis will be to note how the Egyptians are using good judgment, incremental escalations and only doing those actions which proved absolutely needed and not going to irrational extremes as the Israelis had done. An objective and rational observer would assess the actions of the Egyptians, when compared to the historic methods used by the Israelis, and report that they matched very closely and that the major exceptions would be the Egyptians went further than the Israelis by giving no or less warnings before demolitions, used heavy armor such as tanks, and the violence level implemented generally by the Egyptians was heightened with less regard for those who posed any level of perceived threat. But don’t expect any real coverage of the Egyptian actions nor will there be any apologies coming to the Israelis over their being berated and demeaned for their actions in the past. Where the actions and means employed may be similar, the reactions from the world will be completely different. If pushed for a reason the world is reacting differently to the Egyptian use of force versus the Israeli use of force, the answer will likely be a shrug and their asking what you are talking about, the Israelis use of force was completely different and what the Egyptians are doing is perfectly understandable. Where the Israelis use of force was measured and performed under strict rules and limitations and the Egyptians are allowing a more liberal implementation of force to a lesser threshold of provocation and are placing fewer restrictions on their forces which will be understood with their loss of troops being higher than the Israelis had suffered. I do not really care how the world reacts and simply wish the Egyptians success and hope they are able to end the lawless culture in the Sinai and close the smuggling into and out of Gaza, especially Gaza as the revolving door which potentially could result from failure would pose a huge threat for Israel as well as Egypt.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Bedouin Land Giveaway Proves Netanyahu Willing to Cede Eretz Yisroel

The land giveaway driven through the Prime Minister’s cabinet on Sunday could only have been accomplished with the approval of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Even if this granting of large swaths of land from the Negev which are within the Green Line could be just one more sign that Netanyahu is willing to cede any land to any who demand it even if the land must be stolen from Jews or the State. This underhanded and sly move by Netanyahu and Begin is reminiscent of how initially Netanyahu remained in Prime Minister Sharon’s cabinet, let alone not working to force a vote of no confidence thus not preventing the ceding of Gaza causing all that has followed. Netanyahu did not depart from the side of Prime Minister Sharon until it was impressed upon him how remaining would lead to the end of his political career. It was not so much Netanyahu disagreeing with the disengagement and the removal of many thousands of Jews from their communities, homes, synagogues, and lives as his extraordinary sense of self-preservation. Now we all sit and watch the disengagement from great amounts of lands to the Bedouins simply because they had the audacity to build illegal cities, towns and residences and claim the land for themselves. Apparently it is only Jews which Netanyahu denies having rights to Eretz Yisroel. Now Netanyahu is forming a new coalition with what he describes as a broad inclusive base. This sounds eerily familiar to the words of Ariel Sharon when he formed Kadima taking Ministers of the Knesset and other politicians from a broad and inclusive base including people from Likud to Labor and anybody in between.

We have watched as the man who ran a campaign that went to great lengths to unleash a viscous and vile campaign of innuendo, slander, slights, and even lies against the nationalist religious camp of the Jewish Home. His slights continued after the elections as he refused to call the leader of Jewish Home until he made his contempt obvious. He did this to an extent that even led to the decline of the Likud-Beitenu joined party. The other parties who have seen the folly of appeasement and regard the Oslo Accords and the entire land for peace fiasco to be the dead letter plan that it is must assure that Netanyahu does not breathe life back into them under the pressures of the United States, United Nations, European Union and the rest of those who hold no regard for Eretz Yisroel, no love for the Jewish people, and no respect for the Israeli Leadership. Would it be such a terrible thing if none of the leaders of all of the parties were unable to form a coalition? Imagine President Peres having to resort to telling the nation that nobody was able to form a coalition and the only option he sees is to hold another election in six weeks. That would set a precedence which would be a wakeup call for all the potentates of power that maybe perhaps there is something even more important than political power, there is the integrity of the Nation of Israel, the nation which spent forty years in the desert for their lack of faith in themselves and their G0d.

My hopes and prayers are going to take on an emphasis beyond the normal that the people of Israel and those who are tasked to serve them to walk with care and know that it is the people and land they serve that is of supreme importance and without that their careers are nothing. We have sacrificed more land than any nation in history relative to their size all in the name of seeking peace. What had it gained Israel other than enemies standing closer to the heart of the nation and all poised for her destruction. Was the short period of peace gained which now is only worth the paper it was written on as long as Egypt lacks the power and resources to believe they could erase all of Israel and that cost us the greatest barrier to attack Israel ever had, the Sinai Peninsula. We returned the buffer zone to Lebanon only to be attacked repeatedly by Hezballah and have the United Nations, after giving their blessings on the return being complete, renege and grant the claim that Israel still must surrender even more properties. We settled and made peace with Jordan who later turned around and claimed to grant terrorists ownership of lands they had surrendered to Israel by treaty. Remember well that the entire world decided the claim by the terrorists was more valid than all the promises and agreements signed granting Judea and Samaria to Israel from the Churchill White Papers in the twenties to the Jordanian peace treaty in the nineties. With the entire world attempting to whittle the Jewish homeland down agreement by agreement until it completely disappears, Israelis must remain wary of those promising peace, peace when there is no peace. The only defense the Children of Israel can count on is their pride to claim, keep, and protect that which is rightfully theirs from the Sea to the River and elect leaders who will never compromise on the land given us by its one and only true owner, the L0rd our G0d.

Beyond the Cusp