T. Belman. 3 days ago I posted WSJ: A Jordanian Future for the West Bank?. And now this video. They are both selling the Jordan Option after years of silence. I think both have been planted to start the public dialogue so that the idea can move forward. Expect more such articles and statements to prepare the public for this..
That doesn’t mean that these articles reflect the actual deal being contemplated. I opposed the idea of creating a Palestinian State on J & S so was against a confederation. What it really is about is connecting Area A and maybe B to Jordan. Obviously the rest goes to Israel. The monologue does not confirm the title. But I think it is more correct as to what is happening.. Just as Jordan made the West Bank part of Jordan in 1949, Israel is now making it the “Israel Bank” save for Areas A,
Another happening not yet connected to this is that Likud is proposing a Bill to extend Israel Sovereignty over Area C. Judea & Samaria sovereignty bill heads to ministerial committee. That was a shock as, at best, we were hoping to extend sovereignty to the settlements and the Jordan Valley only.
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@whereamI
Very good points made by Victor. If you surrender the control of language, you allow others to shape the very reality around which thoughts are hung.
Share9
June 14, 2022
Words and Consequences: ‘West Bank’ vs. Judea and Samaria
By Victor Sharpe
When did it become an accepted truism that peace between Israel and the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians requires that Israel give to them its very own Biblical birthright in the Jewish heartland? When did the Oslo Accords supersede the eternal possession of the Jewish people to that God-given heartland of Judea and Samaria, the territory a hostile world insists on calling by its illegitimate Jordanian name, the West Bank?
Who are they who dare 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 alleged descendants of Ishmael, who possess vast territories throughout the Middle East and North Africa?
Judeophobes (aka Anti-Semites) may not like being told this, but the following facts are truths that cannot shrivel away.
Unlike the deeply appreciated last incumbent of the White House, President Donald J. Trump, too many previous U.S. presidents displayed pro-Muslim Arab policies, which created clear and present dangers to the very existence of the reborn Jewish state. It is thus with the present Democrat president, Joe Biden. He, like his malign handlers, should take note of Genesis 12:3.
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? He 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 demands to insufferable and arrogant levels. It required Israel to essentially commit national suicide. And how many times did we hear Mahmoud Abbas, the Holocaust-denying leader of the fraudulent Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, tell Kerry that the ‘Palestinian Arabs’ will never accept Israel. So much then for a delusional peace!
Kerry insisted, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Abbas, that Israeli “settlements” are illegal. He deliberately used the pejorative term, “settlements” to demean and delegitimize Jewish villages and towns. The PA and the PLO, along with the Iranian-funded and supported Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, were thus encouraged to initiate more criminal violence and murder against Israelis. The Kerrys of this world have much to answer for as the Jewish death toll relentlessly mounts.
All these notions of “land for peace” and a “two-state solution” erode the millennial and inalienable rights of the Jewish people to their tiny land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. But tragically too many Israeli left-wing politicians still allow themselves to believe in false Muslim promises (tekiyah) of peace. Do they not remember Jeremiah’s prophetic words? ”Peace, peace but there is no peace.”
Fifty-five endless years have been squandered by Israeli leaders since the June 1967 Six Day defensive war against genocidal Arab aggression. This indefensible delay in liberating the Jewish heartland has emboldened a hostile world to demonize Jewish towns and villages in Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank). Thus, these Jewish communities are delegitimized again and again with the use of the pejorative term: “settlements.”
Remember, there has never in all recorded history ever existed a sovereign, independent state called “Palestine.”
Jewish villages, like the one above, are not inhabited by alien “settlers.”
The Jewish population of Judea and Samaria inhabit and redeem their own ancient and ancestral land. These men and women and children are not “settlers” in what is already theirs by virtue of millennial historical and spiritual attachment. Indeed, many present-day Jewish villages, especially throughout Judea and Samaria, are built upon the very Biblical Jewish sites which existed millennia ago. On the Golan, for instance, numerous sites abound where ancient synagogues existed over two thousand years ago.
I personally consider it anathema to describe Jewish communities in the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria with the odious term, “settlements.” For too many Israelis, as well as pro-Israelis, to continue calling them “settlements” without thinking is almost as if they have resigned themselves to demeaning ancestral and Biblical Jewish history. This is the linguistic terminology used by rank anti-Semites and those who peddle anti-Israel hatred and should never be used by Israelis or defenders of the Jewish state.
Tragically, Judea and Samaria have still not been redeemed and brought into sovereign Israel. These lands are the very warp and woof, the very fabric and fiber of Jewish history, both during and since Biblical times. The endless delay by successive Israeli governments for fear of upsetting a hostile world is to betray God’s eternal gift to His people.
As long ago as 2003, Professor Talia Einhorn wrote about Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, or as it is known by its Hebrew acronym, Yesha: meaning in Hebrew, Yehuda, Shomron, and Azza. Yehuda means Judea and yehudim is the Hebrew word for Jews. In a sane world that irrefutable connection should impress even the fraudulent Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. But, alas, this is anything but a rational world.
Simply put: The Jewish people are not “settlers” on land that already belongs to them from time immemorial. And the indigenous Jewish people cannot be called “settlers” in their very own ancestral, Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria — or in Gaza for that matter.
Finally, the world — whether it likes it or not — must hear about the unassailable Jewish rights to the Land and not the fraudulent claims by Palestinians or from the rantings of miserable Judeophobes who infest the BDS movement, the media, and increasingly pollute college campuses.
Don’t make the job of the haters of Israel any easier. Help to honor the Jewish villagers and townsfolk living in their ancient and Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria — often in great danger from Arab terror — by rejecting the use of the hurtful and illegitimate terms; “settlers” “settlements” and “West Bank.”
Please dignify them with appropriate words to describe the villages and towns of Judea and Samaria. After all, words have meaning and consequences.
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. https://www.amazon.com/Politicide-Attempted-Murder-Jewish-State/dp/B0029J7XSM
© Victor Sharpe 2022
@ Reader “
@peloni
Everything you said is perfectly lovely except Israel doesn’t have the government or even the defense establishment (and I think it won’t in the near future) which is capable of even thinking in those terms.
Of course, I hope I am wrong and Israel will actually declare next week or so that the “disputed/occupied territories” are the Jewish Biblical land and they are not giving an inch of it to anyone, and that they don’t owe the Arabs (who need to move out with compensation with their citizenship revoked) anything, and that they are not going to pay for peace with their territory, and that they repudiate the Oslo accords and no one is going to tell them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, etc., etc., and so forth.
@Reader
I quite agree with all of this, but your next statement is
Offhandedly pull a stunt like this? Really? Israel has had possession of the lands in question for 55yrs. She declared the Golan as sovereign after only 8yrs. Yet you find declaring sovereignty over Judea and Samaria to be an offhanded stunt, having waiting 55yrs? If this event has not been long enough delayed already, I dare suggest it will never be so.
Regarding the international responses, Israel does not need the international community to support her decision, they don’t even have to accept it. As with the Golan, that will come in time of its own making. What Israel does need is to determine what image she would design as her own future. From that point, Israel will have set the mark by which all clocks will be set and by which all arguments will be structured. Failing this, Israel will simply allow this void to subsequently be filled by the interests of others, as occurred at Oslo when her enemies moved to set Israel’s borders for her. Remember, Israel’s enemies do not begrudge her the right to her lands, they begrudge her the right to exist.
The action of claiming what is hers in the face of international protests will demonstrate the level of commitment which the Israeli people have for their own property. Such demonstrations of strength provide a consequence well above the simple actions taken. It provides protections to the citizens, and establishes facts on the ground which can not be easily ignored, but it will do a great deal more than this.
Arabs respect strength and they exploit weakness. It is a human tendency from which the Arabs never waiver. In the 50+yr hesitation by Israel to claim her own property, the Arabs have moved to sever all connection between the Jewish people and the land of Judea and Samaria, even renewing the Roman tactic of renaming the land as if the Jews had no rights to it, describing the lands for which the Jews are named as being occupied by their presence.
It is well past time Israel chose to respect herself, act for her people and deal with the consequences of being a sovereign nation. Such consequences are not insurmountable, and may ultimately prove to be much less challenging once the task is truly taken in hand. Either way, it is a task that requires attention, and it is long past time of being addressed with the gravity I hope will be provided to it on this Sunday’s vote.
@peloni
This supports my logic perfectly:
Read the comment about the international law under the article.
@peloni
My logic is no more bizarre than yours.
Israel does not exist in a vacuum.
Not only that but the “world community” wishes for its destruction and considers Judea and Samaria “occupied territories” and the Jewish settlements to be illegal under the international law (whatever they mean by that) while any settlement by the Arabs is considered legal under that same “law” and all the Arabs’ actions, no matter how murderous, are judged as a just fight of the suffering people for their land and for freedom from occupation.
I think it is pretty bizarre to think that Israel can offhandedly pull a stunt like this without it producing some bad results or without it being a well agreed beforehand set up.
Maybe it is the price Israel has agreed to pay for its colonial master letting it supply some gas to Europe?
@Reader
I am sorry, but your logic going from A to B in this statement seems quite bizarre.
I hope they do succeed in securing the passage of the sovereignty bill. I have my doubts as to the likelihood of this, but in any case sovereignty has little chance of enabling the TSS.
@peloni
I am actually hoping they are posturing because if not, this means that they are consciously working to enable the two- state solution.
I don’t care one bit how it will affect them personally.
They have betrayed the country and the people by preventing the government from functioning in order to gain personal power for themselves and for their owner and, unfortunately, their political games will hit the people and the country the hardest.
I don’t care what happens to those miserable politicians.
@Reader
If the only, good that comes from it is that we get sovereignty over all of
area C, dyanu
If the Arabs in Area A and B remain there but under Jordan rule, dyanu
If many of them emigrate, dyanu
The original idea is that the JO would enable us to induce the Arabs to emigrate is still there but it takes time to effect.
Meanwhile getting rid of the PA and UNRWA would be great. I never even dreamed of its value lay in us getting sovereignty over C. That’s huge.
Now lets see how things pan out.
Nothing will happen without our consent.
@Reader
This could in fact be a move to expose the wayward Right as being more wayward than their rhetoric suggests, or less wayward than their coalition demands. In any case, the wayward Right hold all the control in deciding the passage of this bill, and all the responsibility to make what sacrifices are necessary for it to be successful.
If you are correct, suggesting that Likud is simply posturing to embarrass the wayward Right, it will certainly come back to haunt them when they do take power, with or without their wayward colleges. Should this be the course of events that takes place, just as the calls from the Right to move their wayward members towards passing this bill, the mocking calls from the Right today will act to both empower them and bind them towards such a policy in the next govt. There is too strong a support for this not to be perused and the Likud will not be strong enough to withstand the push for this policy from the other members, even if you suggestion proves to be accurate that this is actually their design, which I do not believe.
@Ted Belman
I used to think that your Jordan Option was about resettling the J&S Arabs (and, hopefully, the ones within the Green Line) in the existing borders of Jordan possibly with monetary compensation and some financial incentives for Jordan.
If they hand over a piece of J&S to Jordan, where is the guarantee that Jordan in the future won’t make this piece into an independent Arab state which might have the uncontrolled desire for more Lebensraum?
Where is the guarantee then against the repeat of the events of the year 1948 with modern weapons and the support for the Arabs from the “world community”?
And all the Jews will have to be expelled from the newly Jordanian territory, just as they would be from the new Pal. state.
As soon as Israel takes Area C, the Arab state will be declared in Areas A and B with the expulsion of the Jewish “settlers” which will be a 100 times worse than the “disengagement” from Gaza.
What are they planning to do with the Arab settlements in Area C?
Hand them over to the Pal. state to avoid an international outcry?
Have a mix of Israeli and Arab sovereignty all over J&S?
Are they going to abolish the Ottoman, Jordanian, Mandatory, and military laws that are still in effect in J&S?
Are they going to remove the freeze on all the Jewish “settlements”?
Are there going to be the Russian-style sanctions when Israel mentions that it is not ready for the “painful concessions” or tries to defend itself against the 6 million of the rioting Arabs (Gaza, the Green Line, and J&S), and states that Israel doesn’t consider the Jewish settlements illegal under international law like the “world community” does?
I think this is simply one of the ways Liikud is planning to get more votes ahead of the possible elections, i.e., it is a total and complete fake.
I might add that I was asked to hold my Webinar on the Jordan option a month ago. I was not told what would follow.
Ted, who the fuck gave you authority to give away Land of Yisrael? To even suggest this? Why don’t you give Arabs Pennsylvania or Maine?