WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: I can’t remember a week I’ve virtually clipped more articles on physical and verbal attacks on Jews than this week. I’ll be brief. The land of Israel, all of it, is our three-millennia homeland, not a “settler-colonial project,” and Israel meekly walking out of the heart of it into a Jewishly meaningless, militarily indefensible ghetto-sliver ‘two-state solution’ will neither win Israel peace and security nor our people respect and affection of those who hold contempt for us.
“If I Am Not For Myself ….”
Among the old American West’s legends is that of The Donkey Who Could Count. Amazed onlookers would watch as its owner said to the animal, e.g., “Donkey, how much is two plus two?” and the donkey would stomp its foot four times. One day a skeptical newspaper reporter showed up and, seeing the owner not present, and feeling himself a little bit foolish, asked, “Donkey, how much is two plus two?” Nothing. He repeated the question several times. Nothing. The owner appeared, and sizing up the scene, picked up a two-by-four and smacked the donkey hard between the eyes. He then asked, “Donkey, how much is two plus two?” and the donkey stomped his foot four times. Turning to the reporter, the owner explained, “First, you have to get his attention.”
There is no doubt the world this week, led by “Progressives,” smacked the Jewish people between the eyes. What’s at issue is whether that got our attention.
By me, the clearest expression of much of the world’s contempt for us is voiced by the Black Lives Matter movement – Israel is a “settler-colonial project” and we’re out “to dismantle” it. Middle-East history seemingly not being BLM’s shtik, so where did they come by this horribly erroneous assessment of our three-millennia Jewish homeland of Israel?
Start, but don’t stop, with the pejorative-laden Israel-reporting lexicon of the mainstream Western media: “Israel was created and founded in 1948 … West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured/seized by Israel in 1967 … Jewish settlers and settlements vs. nearby Palestinian towns, villages, neighborhoods … occupied territories, Palestinian territories, Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories … Jews vs. Palestinians … etc., etc.” The place is called “Palestine,” for gosh sakes, and WE, the Jews, who claim it’s our three-thousand-year homeland, ourselves go around calling Arabs there “THE Palestinians.”
Some rethinking on our part is needed. E.g., per the Times of Israel (‘Black Lives Matter’ Declare Groups Representing Majority of US Jews in NYT Ad, 8/29/20), a penner of that ad explained:
“‘We were starting to see the far-right concoct conspiracy theories that Black Lives Matter was being manipulated by Globalists and Marxists in an anti-Semitic attempt to undermine the Black-led movement,’ Sasson said. ‘This brought an opportunity to unequivocally state as a large swath of Jewish community organizations that we stand behind Black Lives Matter and that any attempt to divide that movement will not land.’”
That sentiment of “a large swath of [U.S.] Jewish community organizations that we stand behind Black Lives Matter,” opposition to some of the platform and actions of which (e.g., “dismantling” the “settler-colonial project” that’s Israel) is hardly “far-right conspiracy theories,” was, put most charitably, not reciprocated by the organization Black Lives Matter in support of we Jews’ millennia-long claim to our homeland. We need to distinguish between Blacks’ lives, freedom and dignity, like everyone’s lives, freedom and dignity, mattering, and “Black Lives Matter.”
But the broader lesson we must draw from BLM’s gratuitous attacking of our homeland as a “settler-colonial project” needing to be “dismantled,” is our need to make clear to those in the world who might listen the millennia-long historicity, not to say over-and-over-proven necessity, of our Jewish homeland of Israel. We must make these points:
[1] that we never physically abandoned our homeland all during the eighteen hundred year exclusively foreign empire rule between Roman destruction of Jewish Judaea in CE 135 and Israel’s rebirth in 1948 as the land of Israel’s next native state (see, e.g., Verlin, Israel 3000 Years, Amazon); and
[2] that this never-abandoned Jewish homeland intrinsically, indeed fundamentally, includes historic Jerusalem and the Judea-Samaria hill country heartland, which render it Jewishly meaningful and militarily defensible.
Believe that Israel meekly walking out of historic Jerusalem, three times native Jewish state capital with its renewed Jewish majority since the pre-Zionist 1800’s, and the Judea-Samaria hills, none of which Palestinian Arabs have ever ruled ever, back to a ghetto sliver remnant of the Mandate’s Jewish national home, would be beyond unhelpful. Succumbing to that “two-state solution” envisioned by others will not win us Jews the affection and respect of Black Lives Matter, the UN and EU, and others whose affection and respect for us border on zero. The case we must make to those who might listen is that the land of Israel, western Palestine save for the old Sea-people Philistine stronghold of Gaza, is and for the last three millennia has been our homeland, and that eighty percent of Palestine, Palestinian-Arab-majority Jordan, 78% of the Mandate, and Palestinian-purely Gaza, are the Arab part of Arab-Jew-divided Palestine. We cannot settle for less and survive as a homeland and people. Nor does justice require we do.