A people cannot be called ‘settlers’ in their own ancestral homeland

Why are Arab communities in Judea and Samaria called villages, while Jewish ones are called “settlements”? 

By Victor Sharpe, INN   Nov 22, 2022, 6:00 AM

Jews of Judea and SamariaFlash 90

When did it become accepted that a delusional peace between Israel and the predominately Muslim Arabs, those who call themselves Palestinians, requires Israel to give away it’s very own Biblical birthright in the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria (the so-called ‘West Bank’)?

When did the Oslo Accords, the Wye Agreement, the Roadmap, ad nauseum, supersede the eternal possession of the Jewish people to their God given heartland? To even ask the question is a monstrous tragedy, so enormous as to spit in the face of G-d.

Who are they who dare to try to divide the land that the Almighty bequeathed to Abraham and to his descendants through Isaac and Jacob?

Who are they who would give any part of tiny Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) to the Arabs, they who already possess vast lands throughout the Middle East and North Africa?

Unlike the deeply appreciated previous incumbent of the White House, President Donald J. Trump, too many U.S. presidents have displayed pro-Muslim Arab policies, which created a clear and present danger to the very existence and survival of the reconstituted Jewish state. And so it is with President Joe Biden.

And then there was Barack Hussein Obama whose hatred of the Jewish state surpassed even that of the lamentable Jimmy Carter. Remember Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, who came numerous times to pressure and threaten Israel, thus ushering in an even more baleful time for the embattled Jewish state?

The so-called Palestinian Authority was encouraged by Kerry and Obama to harden its insufferable and arrogant demands, even as it continues to this very day its barbaric murder of Israeli civilians. And how many times do we hear Mahmoud Abbas, the Holocaust denying leader of the Palestinians, tell us that the “Palestinian Arabs will never accept Israel.” Period.

Kerry spewed his own poison by stating, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Abbas, that Israeli “settlements” are illegal. Adding to his egregious lie, he deliberately used the pejorative term, “settlements” to demean and delegitimize Jewish villages and towns.

According to Caroline Glick in her latest published article, titled, “The Biden administration weaponizes the FBI against Israel,” President Biden and his advisers are demonizing America’s most powerful and loyal ally in the Middle East. She points out:

“The progressive and Marxist base of the Democratic Party backs Palestinian terrorists. It supports their terror campaigns against Israel and rejects Israel’s right to exist and the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.”

Since the liberation of Judea and Samaria during Israel’s 1967 defensive war against Arab aggression, a hostile world increasingly demonizes Jewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria thanks to an enormously well-funded Arab propaganda campaign of lies and blood libels. Jewish communities, especially throughout Judea and Samaria, are built on the very sites upon which Biblical Jewish communities existed millennia ago. On the Golan, numerous sites abound where 34 ancient synagogues existed over two thousand years ago.

The Biden administration and all who oppose Israel’s rebirth should read Genesis 12:3.

How odd that every Arab community in what they call the ‘West Bank’, especially those which trace their origins back only to the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Arabs from the surrounding stagnant territories illegally flooded in during the British Mandate era, are automatically called villages.

Yet Jewish communities, on the other hand, whose origins can be traced back to ancient Biblical times, are still dishonored with the insulting term,“settlements.” In the English language the word “settlement” denotes a “colony.”

This is both rank anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hatred and why lovers of Zion should avoid using the pejorative term, “settlements.”

• As long ago as 2003, Professor Talia Einhorn wrote about Judea, Samaria and Gaza, or as it is known by its Hebrew acronym, Yesha: In 2003, it still included Gaza but was abandoned in 2005 by Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who forced some 10,000 Jewish families to leave their homes and farms for the sake of peace! But what a monumental disaster for the Jewish state that abandonment became. Hamas, the junior branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, now occupies Gaza and its charter calls not only for the destruction of the Jewish state, but for the extermination worldwide of all Jews. Thousands of rockets launched from Gaza made that move a nightmare.

Professor Einhorn stated clearly that Israel, the Jewish state, is not an “occupying force. This is what she wrote:

• “Up until 1948, Judea, Samaria and Gaza were a part of the British Mandate. In Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, Egypt illegally grabbed the Gaza Strip and Jordan illegally took Judea and Samaria, calling it the so-called West Bank. Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but Jordan decided, in 1950, to annex Judea and Samaria. This illegal annexation was not recognized by international law. The Arab nations objected to it, and only Britain and Pakistan recognized it – and Britain did not recognize the illegal Jordanian annexation of the eastern part of Jerusalem.

• “In 1967, after the Six Day War, these territories – which were originally meant for the Jewish National Home according to the Mandate Charter – were finally liberated by Israel.”

Professor Einhorn added that, “according to international law, Israel has full right to populate the entire Land of Israel and thus actualize the principles set by the League of Nations in the original Mandate Charter of San Remo in 1920.

“At that time, the Mandate to the Land of Israel was granted to the British and an introduction to the Mandate Charter states clearly that it is based on the international recognition of the historic ties between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. Clause II of that Mandate charged Britain with ‘ensuring the existence of political, administrative, and economic conditions that will guarantee the establishment of the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel.”

But in 1921 Britain reneged on its promises and undertakings. Britain tore away all the mandate territory east of the Jordan River (some 80% of the Palestine Mandate) and gave it away to Sherif Hussein’s son who thus became the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. Professor Einhorn pointed out that the subsequent UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, merely recommended that a Jewish and Arab state in what was the geographical territory known as Palestine “shall come into existence.”

Thus Jordan, now occupies 80% of the original Palestine Mandate territory and, with a population that claims to be 80% Palestinian Arab, Jordan is the present-day Palestinian Arab state.

Though the Jewish leadership reluctantly accepted the subsequent 1947 UN Partition Plan, it was rejected utterly by the seven neighboring Arab states, which invaded Israel thus voiding the UN’s recommendation of any legal basis. The decision, however, by the Jewish leadership to reluctantly accept the UN Partition Plan was deeply painful for them. After all, the armistice lines where the invading Arab armies had been stopped left the Jewish state a mere nine to 15 miles wide and with Judea and Samaria (the so-called ‘West Bank’) and half of Jerusalem occupied illegally by hostile Jordanian Arab Legion troops.

The assessment to reluctantly accept the 1947 Partition Plan was motivated also by the desperate need to give sanctuary to the 800,000 Jewish refugees driven from their ancient homes throughout the Arab world, and to provide a haven for the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.

As previously pointed out, in June 1967 Israel was forced to fight yet another defensive war of survival against Arab genocidal aggression. It liberated Judea and Samaria from Jordanian occupation and Gaza from Egyptian control.

The subsequent leftwing Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin tragically allowed the Egyptian born arch-terrorist, Yasser Arafat, to return to Israel from Tunisian exile and set up his base in Ramallah. Arafat immediately broke all promises made to Israel and instigated a campaign of terror, which his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, continues to this day.

Simply put: The Jewish people are not “settlers” or “colonists” in land that already belongs to them from time immemorial.

Victor Sharpe is a prolific freelance writer and author of several published books including the four volumes of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.