Israel; Whose Land is it Anyways?

 

This will be a short piece, or so is our intent. We have been watching another argument as to whether a piece of Judea and Samaria where parts of Amona are situated is Jewish land or Arab land. Without demanding deeds or other proof, the leftist Israeli Supreme Court decided that since if an Arab is monetarily for real estate they own they will be put to death by their semiautonomous governance under, you will love this, former Jordanian law which makes selling land to a Jew a capital offense. Thus if an Arab claims land on which Jews reside, the Jewish homes must be destroyed as the land may not be purchased. Jordanian law when they were removed from their illegal occupation over half a century ago? Who does such insanity? The Palestinian Authority and the Israeli left are mostly fanatics who are definitively anti-Zionist and fully a subsidiary of European governments, the European Union and European NGOs who masquerade as human rights groups watching out for Palestinian Arab rights but not their betterment. They have no regard or care that the Arab Palestinian has no right as to how to profit or dispense their land and never want to either as they prefer being able to dismantle their homeland piece by piece. By their standards we should bring a Palestinian Arab’s claim from, oh, say Beverly Hills, who claims to have owned the lands under their leadership’s home and see what the Supreme Court, and they as well, would do. If they did not order a demolition in Tel Aviv then we would reveal a sad case of hypocrisy. But let us look for a moment on land and who really owns it.

 

Who owns land which had been occupied and lived on as long as the State of Israel as defined as from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea all depends on the when. That is, to what period of time are we referring? Remember the Canaanites? Well, during the time of Abraham they were ruled by several kingships so no one entity ruled the lands we will define as Israel for this exercise and as a form of simplicity. The Canaanite lands were, at times, conquered, and thus owned, by the Hittites. So perhaps we should reference Hittite law. Then often the Hittites were pushed out and replaced by the Egyptians (not the same people as the Egyptians of today) so perhaps we should be applying the appropriate law of Pharaohs. After the Exodus the Israelites were ruled by individual Tribal leaders and overall by the Prophets and Judges who applied Torah law and their own Hashem directed judgements which would require some extremely special people who are likely rarer than hens teeth. Then Israelite Kings Saul, David, Solomon etc. also owned the lands so perhaps a return to their laws, Torah laws. The Babylonians occupied these lands so perhaps we need apply Babylonian law. Then Israel was a semiautonomous province of the Persians which would demand a mix of Torah and Persian laws of Cyrus the Great through a series of successive kingships. Then there were the Greeks, the Polemic Greeks, the Assyrian Greeks, the Romans, Byzantines then finally the first Arabs of the Caliphate, then a series of Arab and Kurdish rulers, then the Ottoman Turks, then the British. Apparently about the only world powers not to ever have possessed these lands are the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Netherlands, the United States and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Obviously, when it comes to whose laws under which Israeli society, even in the territories, should be ruled, there could be many differing views depending which governance you prefer over the past almost five millennia.

 

While we are talking about such things as what rules, should all of Lebanon south of the Litani River be ruled under the laws of the Israelites when the Twelve Tribes were ruled separate placing much of that land under the Tribes of Asher, Naphtali and Dan? Then there is the question of what rules for Syria. While much of Syrian history had a similar set of rulers by kingdoms similar to those which ruled over the lands of Israel with the biggest differences being the French instead of the British and the Assyrians and some of the Kurdish and Arab rulers using Damascus as their capital city making them a kind of home body, there was a period under the rules of King David and Solomon when Syria was conquered largely by the Israelites. Egypt has had outside rulers. Iran used to be Persia until recent history and was at one time ruled by the Mongols. The United States consisted of a great number of Native American nations, parts were ruled by the French, the Spanish and the Russians and both Texas and Hawaii were at one time nations of their own (the Republic of Texas and the Kingdom of Hawaii). The Kingdom of Hawaii was established in 1795 and in 1810 the entirety of the archipelago was unified when Kauaʻi and Niʻihau joined the kingdom willingly and without bloodshed or war. Absolute power was vested in the King by a Constitution drafted in 1887. The succeeding Queen attempted to return to the “old ways” but she was overthrown in 1893 largely at the hands of the American plantation owners and American society. Hawaii remained a Republic until annexed by the United States in 1898 and was finally made a state on August 21, 1959. Descendants of the monarchy are alive today but who would be the rightful heir to the throne is debatable with many likely to claim that lineage, but the need is unlikely to arise except maybe to marshal a parade. Many, if not every, nations have had multiple claims to sovereignty over their soil. The British, Spanish and Arabs are three of the largest colonial powers with only the Arabs continuing to hold rule over most of the lands they conquered between 622 and 750 (see map below). One could easily claim that the Arab expansive empire has been the longest enduring of empires with the longest history of colonialism. But when your religion claims that the entirety of the world was made simply to be placed under your rule, perhaps such explains why in their minds they have been denied their rightful ownership of everything.

 

Islamic Expansion

 

Back to Israel and which rules should be followed. If one were to ask which legal system has ruled Israel the longest, that answer would surprise most other than students of ancient history and Torah. The area of Israel was ruled by the Israelite people (incorrectly referred to as Jews because Jews was a shortening for Judeans which were those of the Kingdom of Judah which was the southern kingdom when the Israelites split into the northern kingdom of Israel which contained ten tribes and the southern kingdom of Judah with two tribes, see map below) were ruled by Torah. The strictness of its application has wavered during those times but it was the basis of rule from the time of Joshua through the times of Prophets and Judges and through the Kingdoms ruled by Saul, David and Solomon and a presumably beyond though many of the observances grew lax at times causing misery and troubles for the Israelite people. Even after the Kingdom split into northern and southern kingdoms, both presumably remained ruled by Torah though again exactitude was not maintained. Jewish history blames the eventual conquest of Israel and Judah and all other conquests on the lack of observance by the people as a whole, something which does have a ring of truth about it. Under such history, perhaps Israel as a whole should be following the Torah and we are not ones who would argue with such.

 

Kingdoms of Israel and Judah and Surrounding States

 

Israel becoming a Torah observant nation where Torah rules would be the source for the laws of the land would present many a difficulty. The first item is the applicable laws for the society would be the Oral Law. In ancient Israel (and Judah) the Oral Law was exactly that, oral. As such the Oral Law could be adapted to different societal needs. As the situations and the civilization changed, some might say advanced, we will call it transitioning to new discoveries and realities, the Oral Law was flexible enough to adapt to the changes. These alterations in the law would be gradual and likely not overtly evident as time passed. The Prophets and learned Rabbis, pending on the period, would advise on Torah and the level of stringency demanded to keep the Oral Law within the guidelines of Torah which while not changing the revelations within the Torah would come out as understanding of the world around us progressed. When the Romans spread the remainder of the Judeans to the far corners of the Roman Empire the Rabbinate decided that as the people were now dispersed there needed to be a more defined and stringent Oral Law and this situation necessitated writing the Oral Law into codified texts. This resulted in a work over many generations where the Talmud was written. None of us are Talmud scholars so we will not even attempt to describe the discussions and how conclusions were reached or any of the other particulars and leave that to individual interests to spur any further research. Warning, understanding Talmud can take a lifetime of intense study and where a formal education cycle averages seven years.

 

The Talmud is defined as having two components: the Mishnah (Hebrew: משנה, c. 200 CE), a written compendium of Rabbinic Judaism’s Oral Torah, and the Gomorrah (c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. Whatever the definition, the important item are the dates when it was debated generally and compiled. While more commentaries have followed, one would not find corporate law or other required rules for a modern society in its pages. Yes, much of it might apply but too much of modern life is outside the strict definitions and other sections have been relegated unnecessary by modern conveniences. Much of the writings deal with day to day living as a Jew and observances and other religious determinations as it was composed as a religious guide as the Jews were living under sets of secular laws other than Torah or Jewish law and the Talmud simply was the guide to maintain a Jewish compliant life. Israel requires a complete set of laws if the nation of Israel were to come under Torah law. This would require a whole new and different Oral Law which would be partially written codes and social laws which would hopefully largely remain oral and flexible. As stated above, it was an Oral Law for a reason but the life and society were quite a bit more simple two to four thousand years ago and the laws were largely interpersonal relations and simple property rules. The laws were few enough that they did not require being written though we can be assured that records were kept and laws governing taxes and the like were written though they were subject to change at a moment’s notice. When it comes to fees and taxes, at least that has not changed as anyone attempting to understand IRS codes fully understands. So, before Israel can even consider becoming a nation once again ruled by Torah, the Rabbinate need get very busy composing a new Oral Code of Law which is complete enough to justify trusting Israeli society to Torah judges. Just for the record, these Torah judges should be appointed by some combination of the Rabbinate and the people in each community where the communities have the greater say in who will stand in judgement of their lives. This will take quite a while and we would bet that by the time the new laws are ready and approved that Israel will have evolved to a point where such a change will be welcomed.

 

One last note, for those waiting for the reaction to the Security Council vote, tomorrow, hopefully tomorrow.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel Palestinian Peace Must be Around the Corner

 

We have heard things must be prepared to fall into place and negotiations resume with an end clearly in sight. How can this not be as President Obama has made a slight aside to distract those opposing him by claiming he doubted any progress could be made before he leaves office. Don’t let this fool anyone; he still has his eyes on a second Nobel Peace Prize by forcing peace on Israel no matter how much of Israel he will need to destroy before stepping down next January. Throwing his weight into the mix is another man facing a lackluster career as Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon has thrown his support behind Palestinian terror giving his understanding of the frustration having forced their acts of wanton murder of Israelis (read Jews). He preceded that with throwing a hissy fit because Israel had not taken whatever was demanded of them and had not resumed the peace talks with Mahmoud Abbas. Ban Ki-Moon was probably daydreaming about Pope Francis when he prayed at a carefully chosen segment of the anti-terror barrier near Bethlehem which had painted in English its comparison with the wall around the Warsaw Ghetto. The montage below is just a sample of the numerous pictures taken and released with who knows how many other pictures were given to the numerous NGOs which do their best to ravage Israel around the world in the many media outlets. This is the very Pope Francis who praised arch terror master and financial procurer for the Munich Olympics terrorist murders of Israeli Olympic team members Mahmoud Abbas as an Angel of Peace when hosting him at the Vatican, probably the most horrific mischaracterization in modern history.

 

With the visions of Pope Francis, the status and media availability at the beck and call of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon seeking his legacy and the other leader in search of a legacy and President of the United States Barack Obama all focusing laser-like glares at Israel demanding that they do whatever their darling, Mahmoud Abbas, demands of them to make peace at long last. They claim simply by returning to the boundaries of the 1949 Armistice Lines, the Green Line, and the removal of those infernal settlers and make the land pristine and devoid of any Zionist menace to threaten Palestinians into committing terrorist acts and allow the formation of Palestine. What could go wrong and defeat the efforts of such monumental efforts pressing Israel and aiding Mahmoud Abbas and the long stricken and stateless Palestinian Arabs whose existence without a state of their own has gone on longer than can be measured. What is insane is that is actually a true statement as it was that in 1770 the British colonists in the Americas along the Atlantic Ocean who were demanding their own nation too had waited to establish their nation since the beginning of time. These two peoples had something in common, neither had ever had a nation of their own and any claim they were making was to establish a nation on lands which had an aboriginal peoples already living on them. The American colonists were sharing lands sort of with the Native American Indians and the Arab Palestinians are sitting on lands which sole surviving aboriginal people which are the Jewish descendants of the Tribes of Judah and Benyamin and their surviving priests of the tribe of the Levites which included the Levites and the Kohanim. The reason the surviving Israelites are called Jews is because after having lost of the Ten Tribes of Israel after they were taken into captivity and enslavement by the Assyrians and then nothing as they assimilated or moved to the fringes of the Assyrian Kingdoms and then beyond seemingly lost to the rest of the remaining Israelites until recent times. The southern Kingdom which resisted the assaults of the Assyrians and eventually fell to the Babylonians and were freed and allowed to return and build the Second Temple by Cyrus the Great of the Persians as he conquered the Babylonians setting the Judeans and the remaining members of the priesthood and the tribe of Benyamin who reestablished Judea which lasted until the Roman dispersion. The Judeans were referred to by both the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire thereafter as Judeans and the slang was to call them Jews, it stuck.

 

 

Montage of Pope Francis Impromptu Stop At the Safety Barrier Near
Bethlehem Where the Pope Prayed Giving the Media Ample Time to
Get the Best Angles Which Gave Voice to Graffiti in English For all the
World to View and Get His Message Of Contempt and Anger Over the Wall

 

 

But little items such as the truth and promises and treaties reached after World War I which redrew the maps of much of the world outside of the Americas, China, Russia, southern and central Africa, and the Far East. The Austria-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire being defeated and this ended the self-rule of the latest version of an Islamic Caliphate and its colonization of the Middle East outside the Arabian Peninsula on across North Africa and into the Balkans and Caucuses around the Black Sea and into Spain where the spreading colonization had lasted an average of 900 to 1250 years replacing numerous indigenous self-ruling nations by force of arms. The average of 30 to 50 years of colonialization by European powers are constantly scorned for their sins of colonialism and slavery. The slavery trade by the Islamic societies long predated the Modern European period of slavery (post Roman Europe). If all of history were to be used to measure some of what modern Western society has judged to be vile and hateful activities are now used by the very societal descendants of those who had committed the sins of slavery and colonization long before, during and even after the Western nations and societies had relegated such practices to the dustbin of history.

 

Still, despite the promises of the League of Nations, the allies met and reached a solution referred to as the Mandate System to assist in the formation of two separate states for Arabs under two leaders and societies, a Christian homeland and a Jewish homeland out of the French and British Mandates. That Jewish State was to border the Christian State of Lebanon on the north, Egypt at the meeting point of the Sinai Peninsula and the Negev Desert and Jordan at the Jordan River. After the War of Annihilation by over a half-dozen Arab militaries starting the morning of Israeli existence with the genocide of the Jews and other non-Muslims as well as any Muslims who refused to join in murdering the infidels as its battle plan. The entire operation was expected to take days, maybe a couple of weeks to completely destroy these weak and inferior Jewish upstarts. The Arabs were coaxed by the Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini to leave their homes and farms and join behind the massing Arab armies in camps for a few days and then they could return and share in the plunder of the Jew’s homes and other assets along with the invading conquerors of Arab armies. Something went wrong and the Jews, while losing lands did not lose entirely and remained on the lands the Arab armies were unable to conquer and built the State of Israel. Gaza was held by Egypt, the Golan Heights by Syria, and Judea and Samaria (West Bank) by Jordan. These lands belonged to the originating state of Israel and were the initial lands held by Israel on the morning that the Arab armies invaded and initially pushed the Jews before them until the Jews finally stopped the initial thrust and over the next year and a half the Israelis initially held the line and finally began to make headway gaining back the lands she had lost and that is when the world set the date when the fighting would end and an armistice line formed. Had the Israelis never had started pushing the Arab armies into retreats the war would have been allowed to continue in the knowledge that the Jews would eventually lose due to attrition as they would slowly be killed until a tipping point was reached where the numbers of defenders would leave the only solution a routing and annihilation of the Jews and their nascent state. The Jews winning would become a familiar point where every Arab Israeli war would be stopped.

 

But fear not as Pope Francis will likely assist as he is capable while United States President Obama and Secretary General Ki-Moon will combine their powers and efforts and press Netanyahu to get the peace process started or else they will make terms for settling this dispute finally and once and for all. They will demand that Netanyahu and the Israelis do whatever it takes to reach a peace agreement. The word will be they have spoken to President Abbas and he has pledged that he is ready to make peace if Israel and Netanyahu can get past their never ending demands that the Palestinians give up on their homelands and settle for living in Bantus just as the native South Africans were forced to do. Their use of the same word, Bantus, for the settlement areas they agreed upon in the Oslo Accords. But if one were to be honest, they would have paid attention to the demands and maps used by the Arab leaders of the Palestinian Authority, its predecessor the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), a near universally recognized terrorist organization, and the media and education systems well documented by a number of groups including MEMRI, PMW, and CAMERA. They all document the incitement and demands not for two states but for the eradication of the state of Israel and the genocidal slaughter of every Jew in Israel.

 

The masks are coming off and with only a year to go Ban Ki-Moon will be going full out to repay his masters who awarded him the position of Secretary General for one reason, to rid them of that ugly stain known as Israel and he has skillfully led a United Nations and various sister organizations and NGOs in the expanding of boycotts, divestments and sanctions through their assistance and supportive activities such as the labelling of every possible Jewish historical sites such as Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb as not belonging to any list of Jewish historical sites as they are in what the United Nations holds are Arab Palestinian lands and within Palestine. President Obama and the United States State department also raised complaints at Israeli insistence that these sites be renovated as Jewish historical sites. What does it matter if these tombs are four thousand years old, they have to be part of the Arab and Palestinian heritage. At the time Secretary of State Clinton was enthusiastic in supporting the Administration and UNESCO and other United Nations groups in the denunciation at this Israeli attempt to steal these Palestinian sites.

 

This will be a fateful year for the continuation or death of the state of Israel. You might think that such a dire existence would make Israelis nervous, worrisome and potentially frantic. You would be wrong as we have much practice at looking impending death in the face; we have been doing it as a peoples for the last three and a half millennia. There have been numerous empires (Roman, Greek, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, Spanish, various Caliphs, Wazirs, Emir, Sultan, Kings, Barons, Czars, Communists and you name it), maniacal leaders (Hitler, Stalin, Haman, Ramses and again you name them), and just about everything else you could name such as the Spanish Inquisition, and also from 1315-1326 Emir Ismael Abu-I Walid forced the Jews of Granada to wear a yellow badge. We are familiar with persecution and somehow despite our small numbers throughout history we are still here, we are still vibrant and we are still fulfilling our imposed role in our influence commanded to be as a light unto the nations when we as a people have our own lands as we also serve Hashem and in all things walk humbly with our Lord. Yes, it seems we are facing ever graver threats from all corners. We look around us at those closest who desired our demise and note their worlds are the ones in complete turmoil and unrest while despite our problems and even internal threats and challenges we will persevere and meet the challenges and mitigate the threats, both internal and external, and continue to discover and develop the needs and items for the future of mankind and eventually Hashem will allow us to be rewarded with the arrival of the Messiah, the rewarding time we currently can only dream about as there is more we need to conquer in ourselves before we would even recognize and follow our Messiah should the Messiah arrive tomorrow; bless Hashem.

 

And we did not even get to mention France, the European Union and at least a dozen others willing to give away all of Israel so they will be eaten last.

 

Beyond the Cusp