By MARTIN SHERMAN
The impending destruction of the Jewish community of Amona reflects failure of political will and ideo-intellectual bankruptcy of the elected government rather, than the inevitable culmination of a legal battle.
To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means. – Thomas Jefferson, September 20, 1810
In Israel, the negative impact of the judicialization of politics on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already beginning to show its mark. Over the past decade, the public image of the Supreme Court as an autonomous and impartial arbiter has been increasingly eroded as political representatives of minority groups have come to realize that political arrangements and public policies agreed upon in majoritarian decision-making arenas are likely to be reviewed by an often hostile Supreme Court. As a result, the court and its judges are increasingly viewed by a considerable portion of the Israeli public as pushing forward their own political agenda… – Prof. Ran Hirschl,Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism, Harvard University Press, 2004.
I confess that over the past five years, I have used these citations in several articles dealing with the growing encroachment of the judiciary into the sphere of politics—and indeed, increasingly into the realm of common sense and natural justice.
However, I make no apology for lack of originality in re-cycling them this week. For in light of the Amona fiasco, the message they convey has never been more apt, more instructive and more compelling.
Only one grim political reality
There are of course divergent legal interpretations of events that led up to the fate of the community of Amona. Likewise, there can, of course, be differing chronological narratives of what transpired in the past, and why.
But at the end of the day, there remains only one grim political reality.
In essence, as any course on Political Science 101 will (or at least should) reveal, politics is a social science discipline that focuses on the administration of power and influence. It is the field of human endeavor that deals with whose will prevails over whom.
Accordingly, in the final analysis, whichever way you slice it, the only political reality that remains is the following: A small radical “Left-wing” splinter group, with miniscule domestic public support and generously funded by foreign government sources, masquerading as a “human rights” organization to further their anti-“settlement” political agenda, managed to impose its will on the incumbent democratically-elected government, allegedly the “most Right-wing” in the country’s history. Not only did the government prove unable to preserve the community set up two decades ago and endorsed by all its predecessors since 1996, but it failed to prevent its total demolition.
This vividly illustrates the veracity of my previous diagnosis of the disturbing dysfunctionality of governance in Israel, in which marginal civil society entities, financed by taxpayers in foreign countries, can not only “stymie the policies the government was elected to implement [i.e. preserve the Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria], but … [compel it] to implement measures it was elected to prevent [i.e. the demolition of Jewish communities in Judea-samaria].”
“The law is an ass”?
While there may be various conflicting accounts of how and why Amona came to be established on its current site, there can be little doubt, that given the prevailing realities that have emerged on the ground after two decades, one thing is beyond dispute: By any conceivable criterion of common sense and/or natural justice, the decision to evict the residents and to raze the homes to the ground is staggering.
For not only is it a decision that will benefit no-one involved, other than the malicious radical ideologues, who initiated the legal proceedings, but it will undoubtedly contribute to the steep ongoing erosion of public confidence in the judiciary, in general, and in the Supreme court, in particular.
Legal systems are not immutable products of natural laws. They are the result of human decisions which evolve over time to reflect various changes in prevailing circumstances and societal perspectives. Things once sternly forbidden, can later be permitted (say, homosexuality). Conversely, things once allowed, can later be forbidden (say, smoking in public places).
Without such adaptions to changing realities, whether political, societal or technological, prevailing laws may well be perceived as anachronistic, irrelevant, even unjust and hence unenforceable.
Clearly, given the Amona fiasco, and after half a century of Israeli administration of Judea-Samaria, the time has come for a rethink of the structure of the legal apparatus required for future governance of these areas. But this is a challenge that requires considerable political resolve, and even more ideo-intellectual commitment and clarity—something that has been disturbingly conspicuous by its absence in successive “Right-wing” governments to date.
Therein lies the rub
Indeed the dire need for change was succinctly expressed by Caroline Glick this week when, commenting on Amona, she aptly remarked that “the existing legal system is incapable of protecting the civil and legal rights of either the Israelis or the Palestinians living under it.”
After all, it is not difficult to imagine outcomes that would serve the civil and property rights of both Jewish residents and the Arab plaintiffs far better than eviction and demolition. However, any other such alternative would involve material compensation to the alleged Arab owners of the disputed land.
But therein lies the rub.
As Glick notes: “In Amona, 40 Israeli families are about to be thrown out of their homes because Jordanian law doesn’t allow Jews to…purchase land from Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority has made selling land to Jews a capital offense.”
So the real legal obstacle to any amicable settlement that will not trample the rights of either the Jewish residents or the Arab plaintiffs is the Arab legal system that Israel permits to operate in Judea-Samaria.
Thus, even assuming their claims to the land are valid, Arab claimants are precluded, on pain of death, of accepting any material offer, no matter how generous, that would allow the Jewish residents to continue to live in the homes they have occupied for years with the approval of successive Israeli governments –both “Left” and “Right”.
Farcical façade
This, of course, tears away the mask covering the true motivations of the radical Left instigators of the legal action for the evacuation of Amona, and exposes their professed concern for human rights as nothing more than a farcical façade.
For they clearly care nothing about the human rights of the Jewish residents ,who were given every reason to believe that their community was sanctioned by the government, and are quite happy to see them stripped of their property and thrown to the wolves.
Moreover, they do not really give a hoot about Palestinian human rights either.
For if they did, surely their efforts would be directed against the draconian capital punishment laws that prevent Palestinians from making unfettered decisions on how to maximize the benefits from their property ownership, without the threat of execution hovering over their heads.
Indeed, condoning this kind of threat entrenched in the Arab legal code smacks of blatant Judeophobia and certainly should not be brooked by the Jewish state or any of its institutions.
Accordingly, the removal of such menacing obstructions to free interaction between potential buyers and sellers should be a prime objective for anyone genuinely concerned with the preservation of civil and property rights of both Jews and Arabs in Judea-Samaria.
Root of all evil: Failure of political will
But the legal system is not empowered to change itself. For that political enterprise is required.
Accordingly, to rationalize and standardize the legal system for Judea-Samaria and to remove the brutal preclusion of asset acquisition by Jews, the Israeli political leadership must… lead. But this has been something it has been painfully loath to do for decades.
Indeed, it has been almost four decades since Menachem Begin managed to break the Labor Party’s hegemonic grip on power in Israel. Since then, apart from several short interludes, the government has been headed by prime ministers drawn from the ostensibly “Right-wing” Likud, favorably inclined towards maintaining and securing a sizeable Jewish presence beyond the pre-1967lines. Indeed, much of the support it acquired from the voters was due to this professed inclination.
As the Amona debacle dramatically demonstrates, under existing conditions, even decades of existence and sustained government support cannot ensure the durability of Jewish presence on the land.
Sadly, government after government has failed to fulfill the spirit of their electoral pledges, allowing the state of legal limbo, and resulting legalistic labyrinth, to persist, never able to muster the political will to enact what is necessary to ensure the permanence of Jewish presence in the cradle of Jewish history.
Mindless, myopic—and malevolent
Israel’s misplaced reticence in staking Jewish claims for political control of the ancient Jewish homeland has led to a situation of dangerous ambivalence and a sense of impermanence—something that has heartened and emboldened its adversaries
This is a situation that can only be remedied by a bold political initiative which inevitably will entail imposition of Israeli sovereignty, or at least Israeli law, to Judea-Samaria so that situations such as Amona can be averted/resolved by means of some rational system of compensation.
(This, of course, leaves open the question of the fate of the Arab population resident in these territories. But this, however weighty, is a separate issue and one I have addressed in repeatedly in the past – see here . Accordingly its discussion must be left for some future opportunity.)
To drive home the point, a sum of upward of NIS 150 million is reportedly allocated for the demolition of Amona and relocation of the evacuees. Imagine if a small fraction of this sum —say 5% —was offered to the Arab claimants for their tiny rocky plot of land on the windswept hills of Eastern Samaria.
Indeed, this simple example demonstrates just how mindless, myopic—and malevolent—the demolition of Amona really is.
For with an iota of goodwill, alternative outcomes, which would benefit all parties—except for those intent on undermining Jewish presence in Judea-Samaria—were easily available, and which would have left the Jewish residents in their homes and the Arab claimants vastly better off—either with generous financial remuneration, or ownership of alternative land.
But legalistic intransigence and political dogma would have none of that.
Signaling impermanence of Zionist endeavor
The Amona demolition entails a myriad of detrimental effects.
– It has left hundreds of Jews displaced and deprived of their homes;
– It has deprived the Arab claimants of maximizing the benefits of their property;
– It has diverted millions of shekels in the state budget, required to cover the cost of demolition and relocation of the Amona evacuees, from other worthy causes.
But perhaps more than anything, much like the 2005 Disengagement in Gaza, it sends a clear and unequivocal signal to the country’s adversaries that no product of Zionist endeavor is permanent. With sufficient patience and ingenuity, everything the Zionists build will be destroyed—perversely, often by their own hand!
It is difficult to overstate the pernicious effect this will have on future stability, and firm steps must be undertaken to ensure that these are held in check.
Those radical ideologues, who initiated the process to demolish Amona, must be taught that their spiteful efforts will be counter-productive and that their endeavor to curtail the development of Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria will bring about precisely the opposite effect.
They must be shown that, even within today’s legal framework, for every house demolished, three more will be built—until the Government of Israel can summon up the political will, and the ideo-intellectual courage to extend Jewish sovereignty over all the land—from the River to the Sea.
Unless it can do that, the Amona debacle will mark a strategic defeat for Zionism. For, it will clearly demonstrate that those wishing to uproot Jews from their homes in the Jewish homeland proved that they could impose their will on those who wished to prevent it.
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. (www.strategic-israel.org)
@ yamit82:
Moshe Dayan, who fought heroically in 1948 and 1967 and won battles against terrible odds was a Sabra who gave away the Temple Mount and persuaded the fleeing Arabs not to go after winning the 6 day war.
Aharon Barak who created Israel’s present Judicial tyranny, was a Litvak refugee who studied at Harvard for 2 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aharon_Barak
Herzog is a Sabra. His grandfather was chief rabbi of Ireland, He is the son a former President of Israel and a famous general. Herzog is the leader of the let’s give away the store party.
Ehud Barak is a Sabra of Litvak descent. Military hero. Quisling PM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehud_Barak
Rabin Sabra. Part Hero, Part Quisling.
Peres – born in Poland. Part Hero. Part Quisling.
No German Jews here folks. Keep moving. Nothing to see.
@ yamit82:
For some reason some comments are delayed before being released. I don’t know why. In any event they are published before I get to them.
Ted my comment got botted pls retrieve and post
Here again I tend to disagree with Sherman , not his facts but his conclusions which are correct if one does not delve deeper re: cause and effect.
Before the 1930s, Jews knew their enemies clearly, and their enemies were Arabs.
The situation started to change with the Nazis’ rise to power. Arguably, it might have changed anyway, as the Jews matured and became moderate. Be that as it may, in real history the change began with the Nazis.
Supreme Court of Israel originated with Nazis
In repressions against Jews in Germany, Zionists saw a great opportunity to further their emigration to Palestine. Importantly for the fledgling Jewish Agency, the new immigrants were generally affluent, which also sat well with the British occupiers. German Jews were normally able to amass the minimal amount required to qualify them for “capitalist” visas. Assimilationist Jews who wished to stay in the Diaspora screamed treason. Rabbi Stephen Wise tried to organize a worldwide boycott of Nazi Germany, but the Zionists frustrated his plans: they felt they had to use the opportunity to bring many more Jews to the Land of Israel, rather than protect them in the Exile. The argument was cynical but true. Zionists also pointed out that Wise’s boycott would greatly endanger German Jews, as indeed happened. For Wise, too, the boycott was largely a political thing. Later events showed how little that American rabbinical leader cared about Jews; he lashed out against Hillel Kook and refused to put any pressure on the US Administration to bomb the death camps. In all probability, Wise’s boycott attempt was one of Roosevelt’s ploys against Germany.
Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Movement was torn between the desire to increase the flow of Jews to Palestine and the traditional right-wing goal of protecting them in the Exile. Jabotinsky, a witness to Ukrainian and Byelorussian pogroms at the turn of the twentieth century, could not abandon the German Jews. The Nazis tolerated Betar training camps because their ultimate goal was ridding Germany of Jews. In the end, Jabotinsky nominally divested from German Betar to avoid endangering it in his own boycott activities.
For mainstream Zionists, the year 1933 started a windfall of haavara, an exchange in which Germany allowed its Jews to leave for Palestine with large amounts of money and possessions. Short of foreign exchange, the Germans devised a solution acceptable to the Zionists: the departing German Jews would pay for local goods with deutschmarks; the goods would be then exported to Palestine, where Zionist enterprises would sell them and pay the arriving immigrants. The solution was a win-win one: Germany rid itself of some Jews, and the Jewish Agency received about a 35 percent profit on the transactions. Unbeknownst to German Jews at that time, they also profited handsomely—by having their lives saved. Still, only about a tenth of German Jews moved to Palestine.
They were unlike those who had come before. The religious Jewish immigrants were not hugely productive but highly charged ideologically. Zionist immigrants were not religious but hugely productive. German Jews (yekkes) were neither. Like most of the 1990s Russian aliyah, the yekkes were fleeing domestic troubles rather than ascending to the Land of Israel. The assimilated mob hardly even associated itself with Jews, and not at all with Zionists. Many expected to return to Germany after the Nazis’ rule was over. In the haavara scheme, Zionists played with the devil and lost: German Jewish immigrants amalgamated into a powerful anti-Zionist force. They spoke German, scorned the redneck Palestinian Jewish culture, ignored religion, and snobbishly viewed themselves as Europeans in an Asiatic land. Common Jews answered them in kind, and the alienation grew. Detested and scornful, German Jews were the Peace Now of that time.
Lacking Zionist ideals, the cosmopolitan yekkes became the major voice behind the idea of a binational state, or even Jewish autonomy under British rule. They advocated peaceful solutions and accommodation of Arabs. The German Jews were remarkably pacifist as a matter of law-obedience. They had an aversion to mob violence, and they suffered from guilt. They lived under the tremendous guilt of “the drowned and the saved.” They could not forget that the immigration certificates handed to them were refused to others, who subsequently perished. By helping the Arabs, they mitigated their failure to help European Jews
The British occupiers turned the Jewish Agency (Sohnut) into a Judenrat. The British issued to the Sohnut a limited number of immigration permits, which it distributed at its own discretion. In effect, the British made Jews to perform selektzia, choosing between life and death for their compatriots. The Sohnut acted sometimes cynically, other times sensibly or desperately. It distributed visas to Palestine among its socialist supporters and to young people with agricultural training. But before Germany occupied Poland in 1939, Sohnut passed half its visas to German Jews who, at 500,000, were just 17 percent of the total number of Jews in Poland. Naturally, the Jewish Agency thought the German Jews were in more immediate danger than the Polish ones. The yekkes, accordingly, lived with the knowledge that they had received their visas as a matter of Sohnut’s misjudgment, even though they weren’t qualified by age and profession.
Many German Jews who came to Palestine did not have a trade or means to secure productive employment. Nor did they want one, as they viewed redneck Jews with disdain. Later, the Israeli “cultural elite” became infected with this attitude.
When the Jewish state had been formed, the yekkes were the only educated class. Automatically, they became academics, media professionals, and judges. They imprinted German values on their students. Those were the extremely nihilist values of the most assimilated Jewish community of the time. If God had a purpose in the Holocaust, it could only have been stopping the assimilation, preventing that plague from coming to the Land of Israel, just as a generation of the Exile had to die in the desert. That purpose had failed, as yekkes exerted disproportionate, overwhelming influence over the Israeli educated class.
Politically, the Germanized court system received a major boost when Herut-Likud first came to power almost 40 yr. ago. Socialists recognized that the changing Israeli demographics would spell an end to their dominance: Sephardic Jews had bitter personal experience with Arabs and would vote for right-wing parties. Here came the Supreme Court option: if the court elects its own members, it becomes completely insulated from the changes in public opinion—and incidentally, from Zionism too. Common Israelis may vote for whomever they like, but in the end the Supreme Court would control legislation—striking down some laws, ammending others still in the Knesset by informing MKs of the court’s opinion—and dictate new laws in the court’s decisions. The Supreme Court has even assumed executive power by ruling on the army’s actions, the route of the separation barrier, and myriad other issues, which amounted to its managing the country.
Short of simply shooting the traitors, the battle to have the Knesset appoint judges is the next best thing.
Arabs can murder, rape, starve, maim, torture, deport, excommunicate, honor-kill, abuse, extort, rocket shell, assassinate, suicide bomb, behead, humiliate, jail without due process, occupy, mutilate female genitalia, Sex Traffic, honor kill , and enslaving of 90 Million people around the world all in Muslim countries. Where Is The UN Outrage? Haaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Bear Klein Said:
I agree Too bad winning is not a government or a BB consideration… Question: Why isn’t it?
@ Dogan Akman:
“Jewish Poverty Skyrockets in NY” Nothing to do With Settlements.
http://forward.com/news/breaking-news/178160/jewish-poverty-skyrockets-in-new-york-doubles-in/
But denying housing to Jews in Eretz Israel might have a tad to do with Jewish poverty.
” to Israel: Build in Jerusalem for Arabs, but not for Jews
Ahead of Biden’s visit to Israel, Obama administration is pulling out all the stops to prevent new Jerusalem housing projects.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/208692
YA THINK?
—
And, while I’ve never heard any of the allegations against the armed forces in Lebanon and your predictions of dire defeat since 1982, ha ha, Tokyo Rose, I do agree that the army, courts, police, intelligence, media, academia, film and theater industry, even music if you count that idiot, Barenboim (let me know if I left anything important out*), needs a thorough purge. Leftists out! Go Shaked, Go Bennett, Go Trump, and above all Go (in the opposite sense meaning, “Get Out.”) Progressivists (liberals, Leftists, ,Muslims, J-street Kapos and other fellow-travelling idiots, whatever) and every other kind of conscious or unconscious anti-semite:
GO!!!!!!! already. Geez!
Never again!
I see Sisi, Israel’s “moderate muslim” ally after pulling his anti-Israel proposal under Trump’s condemnation, thank you President-Elect Trump, and seeing the Obama/Biden/Kerry/Pal (“damn dem” for short) – one go through, said he just didn’t know it would succeed and anyway Egypt is not just demanding killing Jewish Settlements in the “Palestinian Cause,” the schmuck actually said it was about refugees and borders, too. In other words, kill Israel but without bullets and bombs (since they know that won’t work, that’ s how Oslo was born after they miraculously lost 5 wars against tiny Israel.)
Reminds me of
Apocryphal quote very loosely attributed to Marco Polo but apt nonetheless:
“The moderate Muslim holds the infidel’s feet, while the radical Muslim cuts off his head.”
—
* Oh, yeah, the Knesset. This was a good start:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Arab-MK-agrees-to-forfeit-immunity-in-terrorist-phone-smuggling-affair-476174
“…Arab MK Ghattas was officially stripped of his parliamentary immunity from search and arrest Thursday, while an investigation into suspicions that he aided terrorists was ongoing. Police found 12 cellphones and 16 SIM cards on two Palestinian security prisoners in the Ketziot Prison in the Negev after Ghattas had visited them….Ghattas visited Ketziot Prison, some 70 km. southwest of Beersheba, on December 18, where he met with Walid Daka, who is serving a life sentence for torturing and murdering 19-year-old soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984, and with Bassel Basra, who is serving a 15-year sentence for security offenses. Both men are Fatah members…”
@ Dogan Akman:
And since you quoted Martin Sherman out of context:
The price of moderation by Martin Sherman
Mar 17, 2011
http://www.martinsherman.org/153/the-price-of-moderation-2/
”
Op-ed: Supporters of two-state solution have sown seeds for the de-legitimization of Israel
Martin Sherman
“…The maximum that any government of Israel will be ready to offer the Palestinians … is much less than the minimum that any Palestinian leader can accept.”
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, Febuary 2009
The foregoing citation from the former chairman of Israel‘s National Security Council underscores the essential futility of pursuing what has become to be regarded as the sine qua non for a resolution of the Palestinian issue and hence a lasting Middle East Peace – and by implication for eradicating the basic cause of friction between the West and Islam: The two state solution.
Future historians will be baffled as to how such a manifestly disastrous and unworkable concept came to be so widely and warmly embraced – not only by those who had a vested interested in feigning support for it, but by those who had a vested interest in exposing it as the duplicitous subterfuge it is. They will be mystified as to why – despite the fact that it entailed devastatingly detrimental consequences for all involved – both Arabs and Jews – it became the acknowledged hallmark of refined reason.
An instructive example was the recent defense, by prominent Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, of Israel’s right to present its case which focused on the February 2010 incident at UC, Irvine, when Ambassador Michael Oren was prevented from addressing students by Palestinian hecklers. What made this particularly egregious in Dershowitz’s eyes was the fact that Oren was “a moderate supporter of the two-state solution”, thus, inadvertently perhaps, hinting that this would not be so had he opposed such an approach.
The point that many well-intentioned pro-Israeli advocates seem be to missing is that it is precisely “moderate supporters of the two-state solution” that have in large measure sown the seeds for the de-legitimization of Israel. While initially this contention may appear somewhat counter-intuitive, the logic behind it is unassailable. For, once the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is conceded, the de-legitimization of Israel cannot be avoided. The chain of reasoning for this is clear:
If the legitimacy of a Palestinian state is accepted, then necessarily any measures incompatible with its viability are illegitimate. However, Israel’s minimum security requirements necessarily obviate the viability of Palestinian state.
Israel’s security requirements
Ever since Abba Eban’s characterization of the 1967 Green Line as “Auschwitz Borders” it has been generally accepted that such a frontier cannot afford Israel acceptable levels of security – except under wildly optimistic and unrealistic assumptions. Iconic Labor party moderates such as Yigal Allon declared that “One does not have to a military expert to easily identify the critical defects of the armistice lines that existed until June 4, 1967,” warning that for Israel they could herald “the physical extinction of a large part of its population and the political elimination of the Jewish state.”
Shimon Peres concurred that the 1967 lines “constituted almost compulsive temptation to attack Israel from all directions …” and warned that “without a border which affords security, a country is doomed to destruction in war.”
Significantly, both Allon and Peres derided the oft-aired claim that modern weaponry largely diminished the strategic value of geographical expanse and topological structures. Allon observed that it “… not only fail to diminish the value of strategic depth and natural barriers, but in fact enhance their importance; while Peres again concurred that with the advances in modern military prowess “the defensive importance of territorial expanse has increased.”
This view has been endorsed by US military experts. A study conducted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to inform the president on the security concerns of Israel advised that “the security of Israel required Israel to receive parts of the territory of the West Bank as essential to its defense….(including) the prominent high ground running north-south.”
Eugene Rostow, who as under-secretary of state was the senior US diplomat involved in the formulation of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and hence clearly familiar with the its intent, remarked that “all the studies of the Israeli security problem reached the same conclusion – from the security point of view, Israel must hold the high points in the West Bank and areas along the Jordan River.” The position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was reaffirmed by a 1974 US Army Command and Staff College study which also concluded that Israel must control the high ground east of the central axis along the West Bank’s mountain ridge.
In a recent study by a host of senior Israeli military and diplomatic figures – including a former IDF chief of staff, a former head of Military Intelligence and the National Security Council, and ambassadors to the UN, US and France – concluded that to maintain minimum security requirements Israel must retain control of the mountain range in Judea and Samaria that commands the coastal metropolis, the Jordan Valley, and the air space up to the Jordan River
So what do these minimum requirements, which require Israeli control of wide swathes of territory in the “West Bank,” entail for the viability of Palestinian statehood?
Solomon’s wisdom
The answer is provided by an article, The Myth of Defensible Borders, in the January edition of Foreign Affairs. In it, the authors Omar Dajani and Ezzedine correctly point out that:
“A policy of defensible borders would…perpetuate the current sources of Palestinian insecurity, further delegitimizing an agreement in the public’s eyes. Israel would retain the discretion to impose arbitrary and crippling constraints on the movement of people and goods… For these reasons, Palestinians are likely to regard defensible borders as little more than occupation by another name.”
Recent events in the Mid-East, with the specter of an ascendant Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan and Egypt, are hardly likely to contribute to reducing Israeli threat perception and thus serve only to heighten the incompatibility between a viable Palestinian state and a secure Israel.
Thus, by accepting the admissibility of a Palestinian state, one necessarily admits the inadmissibility of measures required to ensure Israeli security. Conversely any measures required to ensure the viability of Israeli security, necessarily negate the viability of a Palestinian state. Accordingly for Israel to regain legitimacy, the notion of a Palestinian state must be discredited and removed from the discourse over the resolution of the Israel-Arab conflict.
This of course easier said than done. For rolling back the accumulated decades of distortion, deception and delusion that have become entrenched in the collective international consciousness will be a Herculean task. But the immense scale of the task cannot diminish the imperative of its implementation.
For the unpalatable – and unfashionable – truth is that between the (Jordan) River and the (Mediterranean) Sea, there can prevail (and eventually will prevail) either total Jewish sovereignty or total Arab sovereignty.
The side that will prevail is the side whose political acumen is the sharper and whose political will is the stronger. Indeed, never has the biblical wisdom of Solomon been more apt: Whoever agrees to divide that which is dear to him, will – at the end of the day- lose all of it. The Jews must realize that they can either be master of all the land west of the Jordan or none of it – and sooner that the better.”
@ Dogan Akman:
Bull. Though you did give me one good idea, come to think of it. A way, we here in the U.S. could pay down the national debt, subsidized badly needed infrastructure replacement and help for the neediest, among other things. Why don’t we just sell California?
From the horse’s mouth:
“California reigns as capital of liberal America”
“Now more than ever, California is the capital of liberal America. It will be a kind of Democratic government-in-exile starting in January…”
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-california-liberal-politics-20161117-story.html
You are all thinking and talking like meshugenes.
With what the government is doing about settlements,I hate to say it but Israel is presently on an apocalyptic path on which sooner or later Jews will end up fighting and killing Jews in a civil war, the army will splinter and at the end of the day Israel will self-destruct.
These settlements are keeping Israelis poor, because the money that goes to settlements could be used to help the poor and the not so poor to get decent housing.On a comarative basis, Israel has one of the most depressing child poverty rates.
As to the much vaunted army, we saw it in action in the second Lebanon war, in the last Gaza war, generals losing top secret information and all other kinds of fuck-ups including generals and superior officers fucking women comrades,a Minister of Defence who is clueless about military matters, a government that assigns and promotes generals on a partisan basis rather than on merit not to mention all kinds of other serious shortcomings… one big fuck-up and we are done for.
The way things are going reminds me of Martin Sherman’s joke: What is the difference between the State of Israel and a lunatic asylum.In a lunatic asylum at least the management (read the government) is supposed to be sane and the present coalition government is anything but sane.
I thought the saying was “boys will be boys” but I agree with your program. It’s the Jewish Man’s Burden. Ha Ha.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Treason is a legal word. Lawyers will be lawyers.
Leaders need to lead. We need a leader to make the case that we can only solve this by being resolute and determined to win this 100 year old conflict. Then lead by action. Clear out the terrorists and their supporters. Annex the Land starting with all Jewish Towns, Jordan Valley and any other land needed for security. Apply martial law in the PA Towns. This is step one.
@ Bear Klein:
And it’s not even Israeli Law!!!! But that of a long-gone long ago defeated enemy who ethnically cleansed our people from said land. Is that loony or what? Whose Supreme Court is this anyway? Does this seem as treasonous to you as it does to me?
The above quote and Martin are correct. What is going on is a battle for the Land of Israel. This is war lasting now about 100 years and the government is playing legal mumbo jumbo games.
This shows a lack of will to win this war for the land. The enemy uses all means at their disposal in this war. Israel is far stronger in capability put keeps playing politically correct games instead of showing the will and resolve to win this war.
We will have no peace until we defeat this enemy and not just hold them at bay.
I see that the eviction has been delayed another 45 days. That will put it past Jan. 20. I wonder if that will make a difference. I wonder if the court is worried about its eroding legitimacy in the public eye. All of these maneuverings seem to be about the Court trying to save face. They don’t seem to have any human feelings or genuine regard for justice. They are a gang. A machine, like Tammany Hall. This is starting to have the feel of “taxation without representation” the rallying cry in the American Revolution. Like Brexit. The Brits don’t want unelected bureaucrats in Belgium telling them what to do and especially when they are telling them to give away the store.