The Provocateurs at the Wall

Again this week on Rosh Hodesh, the first day of a Hebrew month, there was the planned provocation at the Kotel, the Western Wall, by a group of self-proclaimed reformers demanding that Israel in general and the Kotel area in particular be made more accepting. They deem it a necessity that the traditions and rules which currently exist and are mostly kept by unspoken agreement be torn asunder and room made for universal acceptance of practices and attitudes from within the broad spectrum of the Jewish faith. These “Women of the Wall” feel that having the Kotel and environs be controlled and run under Halacha, the traditional religious interpretations of the Law and Commandments also referred to as Talmudic Law is too restrictive and foreboding, making the wall unwelcoming to many lesser religious Jews. These are the traditionally accepted practices and more by which traditional Orthodox Jews live their lives. The Women of the Wall want that Reform and Conservative Jews be permitted to hold their religious practices, especially those which run contrary to Halacha. Their argument is that by only allowing the most stringent interpretations of Judaism to be permitted at this the holiest place on Earth to Jews that there are numerous Jews who are being left out and unable to participate in activities or even to pray at the Wall.

 

There are those reading this and asking why cannot the Wall be made more inclusive. The answer to this question was recently taken up by Jewish Authorities and the Knesset and a compromise was offered where a new section of the Western Wall has been cleared near to the Robinson Arch as an additional area adjacent to the traditional Kotel established where those who would prefer a less traditional set of practices be observed or held can be done without disturbing the peace and holiness that is preserved at the Kotel. The Women of the Wall initially had said that this was adequate and that they were satisfied and accepted this new arrangement. That was before the first of a new month where apparently they have changed their minds or something is awry as they were once again holding their “service” at the Wall which includes directly challenging Jewish Traditions and accepted practices as a provocation. Another claim they have made is that visitors from outside Israel might feel put off by the traditional and Halachic rules at the Kotel and that all the varied forms of Judaism should be granted acceptance of their rules, law, and commandments as they practice their faith and not be basically struck over the head with the stringent rules currently in place. Their demands that there basically be no rules regarding practices and services at the Kotel remind me of a quote attributed to Alexander Hamilton which states, “If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.”

 

I feel a confession should be made about myself. I would not be considered to be an overly religious and practicing Jew under Halachic Law and was not raised as an Orthodox Jew as is the case for the majority of Jews in the United States and elsewhere outside of Israel. I have been to visit the Western Wall and did not feel out of place any more than my normal nervousness to being at a holy place which, in many ways, far exceeds my life’s experience of being Jewish and Torah observance and actually found some peace that this place was run under rules of strict observance that honored the traditions and the time honored values of Judaism as it was practiced over the centuries when the Jews, the Hebrews, the Israelites lived and ruled the Promised Land and observed and lived by the Torah, the rules handed down from on High. Personally I would not desire the Western Wall be changed in any way except possibly have scheduled classes for those seeking to reclaim their heritage, but that can be done most anywhere in Israel if you truly desire to do so.

 

Some might demand to have explained why this has caused such a ruckus and why cannot the rules be liberalized to allow for such practices from less observant Jewish sects. The first question that needs to be raised to answer this is exactly how far will it be necessary to redefine what is acceptable and what when the new lines are challenged and further changes are demanded? Eventually such a route would lead to complete anarchy and no rules what-so-ever.  Furthermore, the solution put in place should have satisfied all involved as a new section was made available for those practices outside of the Orthodoxy. Let us for a moment change the solution around and see if we can predict what would have happened if the main section of the Western Wall had been made to conform with the Women of the Wall’s demands and the Orthodox traditional Halachic rules were made to be applied in the newly opened section. I feel extremely comfortable in predicting that had that been the new arrangement, then these ladies would have held their protest observance at the new wall demanding it also be adjusted to their definitions of what is acceptable. Their leaders have made their true intentions known in slips during interviews when they admitted their ultimate aim is to redefine Judaism away from the strict Orthodoxy and make everything bend to accommodate the Conservative, Reform and other sects and to erase any vestiges of the Orthodoxy. Their aim is not to establish universal acceptance of all forms of Judaism but rather the universal rejection of traditional Orthodox Judaism.

 

Their desire is to tear down rather than to build and that is where the problem lies. To accommodate these ladies’ demands would be to accept the pretext that Judaism has no traditional laws, no true standards and that anyone may define what is permitted in their view and practice of Judaism and nobody else has any right to claim that they have missed the mark of being a true and observant Jew. Traditions are necessary and the Orthodoxy and their holding to the ancient laws and enforcement of the Commandments is what will allow Judaism to survive. This is far from the first time that there have been Jews who claimed they were modernizing the religion of Judaism and making it relevant to the times. The most obvious was when the ancient lands of the Jews broke into two Kingdoms, the northern Kingdom named Israel which felt that their views of the traditions and laws needed to be accepted, and the Kingdom of Judah which was the southern Kingdom which observed the older traditions. In time the Northern Kingdom fell to invaders and were carried off where they either ceased to exist as Jews through assimilation or simply not having the traditions on which to hold their religion close. These became the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel who were deemed not to return until the final redemption and the return of all Jews to their Promised Land. The Kingdom of Judah did also eventually fall but the Jews from Judea had their traditions and Halachic Laws to keep their religion alive and separate from all other religions thus keeping them from assimilation. This survival of traditional Judaism has ramification even into modern times if one looks deeply enough knowing what they seek but perhaps that is a subject for a later article.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

State Department Joining Palestinians to Assault Israel by Peace Process

Last week Secretary of State Kerry exaggerating his accomplishments by announcing that the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process negotiations will resume in the next week or so in Washington DC. There are already cracks appearing in the façade of these meetings actually being about peace or to address any of the final status issues. What the upcoming talks will be addressing will be the what steps will be required presumably by both sides, though in all honesty the demands will easily exceed four-to-one in favor of the Palestinian desires, with Abbas attempting to persuade Secretary Kerry to squeeze concessions out of Israel in a concerted effort between the Palestinian representatives and the State Department. The first indications of this eventuality have already surfaced as Israel has been coerced into releasing close to one-hundred of the longest held terror prisoners from their prisons. Almost every last one of these terror prisoners have extensive Jewish blood on their hands and had been serving multiple life sentences and were among the prisoners which Israel placed on the refuse to release list when negotiating with Hamas in order to gain the release of Gilad Shalit. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken the step of announcing the intent to grant building tenders for one-thousand new housing units in the near future while negotiations are proceeding. Presumably this announcement is supposed to alleviate some of the doubts and pain which will be felt by many, especially the families and friends of those murdered by the to be released terrorists, when the terrorist release is formally announced and the actual names of those being freed reach the Israeli people. There have been rumors that these terrorists being released will only be the first of a series of prisoners being released with some estimates ranging as high as three-hundred-fifty prisoners over a the next few months with around one-hundred of the released including men held since before the Oslo Accords which were signed in September of 1993. This is an unprecedented concession by Prime Minister Netanyahu and crosses some definitive and hard red lines which will cost Netanyahu politically. If these terror prisoners who are released return to murder more Israelis and should no true peace result from these efforts, then Prime Minister Netanyahu may be ending his political life as many will turn against him for making a sacrifice that were understood as being beyond the cusp.

 

Even knowing the severity of this concession from Israel we fully expect that when the talks convene the initial thrust from the Palestinian negotiators will be to demand further concessions from Israel while the Israeli negotiators will push for taking the negotiations directly to the final status issues and the fashioning of an actual peace treaty. The Palestinians will present their demands not couched as preconditions or as demands but will claim that these are items that Israel owes the Palestinians because these were discussed previously and have become expectations that the Palestinians hold inviolable. Assuming that the Palestinian claims are to be taken as valid and truthful, Secretary Kerry has presumably given them in writing his guarantees that the borders of any Palestinian State will be fashioned using the 1949 Armistice Lines, also referred to as the 1967 Lines, as the default setting for the borders with mutually agreed land swaps to be permitted. This appears to have been a guarantee, again if it was indeed given, was provided without any consultation with the Israelis and would definitely be an indicator that Secretary Kerry may not be the impartial mediator advertised and may be more akin to being an additional negotiator for the Palestinians. This would not be all that surprising when one figures in the history of the State Department vis-à-vis Israel in the past. It was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who during an aside at the peace talks in Annapolis was quoted saying, “I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian. I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness. As a black child in the South, (she remembers) being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants.” Secretary Rice included references to the Jim Crow South making parallels with the Palestinians being discriminated against and the Israelis as the majority whites of southern America of her youth. The error in her logic is simple to point out as Arab Israelis are treated equally and face the same freedoms as do Jewish and all citizens of Israel while the Palestinians are actually foreign citizens and not Israeli citizens. The vast majority of Palestinians either personally held Jordanian citizenship or their parents or ancestors held Jordanian citizenship and were disinvited by Jordan in order to allow them to claim to be Palestinians after the Six Day War placed these West Bank Palestinians into what had reverted to Israeli ownership and being called the names they held throughout history, Judea and Samaria. Palestinians are foreign citizens and thus are not given equal treatment as Israeli citizens. The more applicable comparison would be day workers from Mexico transiting in and out of the United States being stopped at the border crossing. But it is likely that if there is an existing bias from the representatives of the State Department, they are more likely to favor the Palestinians than the Israelis.

 

Already the Palestinians have made claims that they plan to confront the negotiations with more preconditions and expect that Secretary Kerry will assist them in realizing the meeting of their demands. It would be a very pleasant surprise if Secretary Kerry would insist that the negotiations proceed to reaching an accord on final issue items and work towards crafting a peace treaty that ends the violence and establishes a Palestinian State and satisfies as much as can be met for both sides. If both sides end up feeling equally shorted by the results, then there may be an agreement that represents an actual fair and balanced plan. Unfortunately, the most likely result will be no treaty and simply the Palestinians continuing to play the meetings and negotiations in order to force as many concessions from Israel as they are able; and when it appears that progress has been made towards an actual agreement, the Palestinians will let loose a barrage of demands they know are deal-breakers; and when Israel refuses to give them ample considerations with an honest attempt to actually give in on these preposterous demands of last refuge, as I like to call them, the Palestinians walk away, and if they follow Yasser Arafat’s modus operandi, they will start an intifada. Some examples of such are the full Right of Return for five to six million Palestinian refugees and their descendants, surrender of the entirety of Eastern Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, the Old City, the Western Wall and the Kotel Plaza surrendering any rights for a Jew to visit these and all other ancient Jewish Holy Sites, acceptance without any changes the 1949 Armistice Lines as the borders between the Palestinian State and Israel, and the right for the Palestinians to continue their resistance until the remainder of occupied lands are liberated which is another way of claiming that all of Israel is occupied Palestinian lands and they have the right to continue to use demonstrations, terrorism and other forms of resistance to liberate all the lands and if they allow any Jews to remain between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea it will be as Dhimmis living under the protection of the Islamic State. The final demand is not one they have ever presented in negotiations but is a popular claim and rallying cry utilized at demonstrations when they rally for the eventual conquest and superiority of Islam over all of what was previously Muslim lands as once lands belonged to Muslims it must always remain theirs and if lost no effort is to be spared in the reconquering of such lands. No matter if the initial negotiations are portrayed by Secretary Kerry to the press as making huge strides with peace being just around the corner, these negotiations will end with nothing to show for them except whatever concessions are squeezed out of Israel and hard feelings. The one sign that peace might be attainable will be when once and for all Israel refuses to grant concessions in exchange to sit and talk. Israel should only offer any concessions in exchange for signatures on a real and enforceable peace and nothing less. Giving concessions even to please the United States mediators in order to facilitate negotiations is a waste of position and signals the weakness of desperation which will only lead to more concessions but never to peace or truthful, honest dealings.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Time Has Come for Israel to Change the Discussion

The time has come for Israel to make a declaration which will alter for all time the debate over the formation of any Palestinian state. Quoting the rights provided the Zionists, and thusly Israel, to make claim under the promises contained in the Churchill White Papers, the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations dispositions under the Mandate system, and confirmed by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, Israel is exercising their rightful claim to all the lands west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israelis willing to make a one-time offer of a concession releasing their proper claim to Area A and negotiate final borders which will come to exist within points in Area B. This offer will be open for six months from the date of this offer after which Israel, should the Palestinian leadership refuse to negotiate, will also annex all of Area B and leave Area A to be utilized for a Palestinian State along with the Gaza Strip to be formed at the Palestinian convenience. Whatever the borders are defined on said date six months from today will denote the defined borders for the State of Israel and will be defended as such. Any Palestinian living within these areas annexed into the state of Israel will be allowed to apply and after completing the required steps be allowed to become citizens with full rights as Israelis.

I realize that there will be an immediate outcry from the rest of the world and Israel very well might face sanctions imposed by some nations. Does any Israeli honestly believe in their hearts that such will not eventually become the reality at some point when the majority of the world’s countries call for replacing Israel with a Palestinian state? Mahmoud Abbas, the world’s imposed on Israel as a partner for peace, has made it clear that he and the Palestinian leadership, be it Hamas, Fatah, the PLO, the Palestinian Authority or whomever, will never surrender their right to use force to liberate all of Palestine from north to south and from the river to the sea, every square millimeter without surrendering a single square inch. There is no amount of land short of all the lands which will satisfy the Palestinians and those who support them in their pogrom to remove the Jewish existence within their holy Muslim lands. We have seen where the world stands when the United Nations overwhelmingly granted the Palestinians their coveted statehood. The near unanimity with which the world voted to remove Israel from possessing any position in the debate over Palestinian statehood should be heeded as the threat that it truly was. That was the shot across the bow warning Israel that the world is fully willing to give away all of Israel if that is what the Palestinian demand with future claims. The only path which will allow Israel to continue going forward to remain a nation among the nations is if Israel takes the initiative and defines unilaterally these are our borders and all who would cross these borders or attempt to take our lands will be met with the full determination of the state of Israel defending its rightful borders. Once Israel has made such a proclamation, then the world can begin to adjust and accept that reality as long as Israel makes their claim from a position of unity and honest determination standing strong and united.

It may come to pass that it will be necessary to limit those NGOs which are predominantly reliant on foreign funding from operating freely in the immediate aftermath of such a declaration. There is one easy way that this can legally be performed even in a democracy with freedom of speech. The Knesset would need to pass legislation directing the Supreme Court to forbid the funding to enter Israel from any country which imposed any form of boycott, divestment or sanction or other deleterious reaction to Israel’s legal application of promises given them by the world bodies in good faith and completely backed by the Geneva Accords rules of annexation of lands gained during a defensive war. As the Sage Rabbi Hillel famously stated, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when?”

Israel waiting for the world to realize the genocidal intentions of the Palestinian leadership and the Muslim world’s use of the Palestinians as the method by which they will be allowed to eradicate Israel is a foolish and perilous game that leads to only one end, the end of Israel and the Jewish People. The world will not intervene as all too many in the world support this very aim and enthusiastically cheer for its fruition. The sooner that Israel and Israelis realize and grasp the truth that our friends are few and far between, at least as far as friends who would be willing to stand with Israel and defend her from those intending evil and destruction, then the sooner Israel will enable their defense by placing a line in the sand and determinedly stating here is where we stop and will refuse to back from these lines. The sooner that Israel declares the borders, beyond which they will refuse to shrink, the larger the land of Israel will be. And until Israel declares such borders, she will remain vulnerable and will continue to be pushed into smaller and smaller land until there is none. After the Six Day War in June of 1967 the world would have accepted Israel retaining the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, Judea, Samaria, and the Sinai Peninsula as they all recognized that Israel was defending herself from overt aggressions by all her neighboring countries and beyond. When Israel annexed all of Jerusalem there was no outcry and it was not controversial. Now Israel is being demanded to return to the pre-war borders surrendering half of Jerusalem including every single holy site within the Old City, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. What will tomorrow bring? Are Israelis and their leaders willing to continue to talk and surrender to demands from those who cannot be mollified? What will the reaction be when the United Nations decides that Israel must return to the original planned divisions proffered on November 29, 1947? That will be the next claim by the Muslims and their steel glove perched on Israeli borders, the Palestinians. And the world will cheer and proclaim that it is only fair that this be granted. Israel cannot wait or rely on the world’s kindness as the world has no kindness for Israel and the hatreds are only growing. Make the stand now as waiting means death and the end of our dreams.

Beyond the Cusp