WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Jonathan Tobin pleaded this week for non-Orthodox rabbis to call on their High Holy Days attendees to stand with Israel and Zionism, our people’s national liberation movement. Right, but we grassroots American Jews who believe that historic Jerusalem [Temple Mount, Western Wall and all] and Judea-Samaria are inherent core parts of our homeland of Israel can talk peer-to-peer, closer than pulpit-to-pew, with our fellows.
It may be that many American Jews’ support of “the two-state solution” is predicated upon the Reform and Conservative movements’ erroneous statements in their “two-state solution” supporting letter to then President Trump [a] that the 1949 ceasefire lines constituted “Israel’s 1967 borders” and [b] that applying Israeli law beyond those lines would constitute “annexation.” Debunking those misstatements might induce rethinking on such people’s part regarding sacrificing historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria, the heart and heartland of our people’s homeland, for “peace.”
Not Just Rabbis, But We Grassroots American Jews Must Speak Out for Israel and Zionism, Including, By Us, Against “Two-States”
JNS Editor Jonathan Tobin’s JNS article Tuesday, Can Reform and Conservative Judaism Support for Zionism Be Revived?, 9/20/22, rightly called on American Reform and Conservative rabbis to plead with their High Holy Days crowds to stand with Israel and the Zionist idea:
“Rabbis in non-Orthodox congregations must use the unique opportunity for reaching Jews on the high holidays – especially now that the coronavirus pandemic has subsided – to reaffirm the need to stand with the Jewish state and the Zionist idea that is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The alternative is to cravenly stand by as a rising tide of anti-Semitism, fueled by left-wing myths, is allowed to further sabotage the ties between American Jews and Israel.”
I of course won’t argue with that. But that task’s not just on the shoulders of those American rabbis who’ll heed Tobin’s plea. We grassroots American Jews who share Tobin’s belief in this need must not just nod our heads, but actively get across to our own community our need to support the monumental Jewish history event – fulfillment of the Dream of Generations for our homeland’s sovereign rebirth – that’s taking place [not has taken place] in our time.
One way is to avail ourselves of our peer-to-peer, closer than pulpit-to-pew, relationship with our fellow American Jews who’ve been bitten by “the two-state solution” that would sacrifice for “peace” the heart and heartland of our homeland, historic Jerusalem and defensible Judea-Samaria. But rather than just bluntly stating our agreement with former-PM Bennett this week (Israpundit, 9/22/22, Bennett Slams Lapid) that “there is no room for another state between the sea and the Jordan,” we can cite to our fellows whose support for “two-states” may be predicated upon the case made by the U.S. Reform and Conservatives et al 4/12/19 letter to then-President Trump that two understandings on which that letter’s support for “two-states” was based are erroneous.
[1] The letter misstates the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines, expressly declared in their defining document not to constitute international borders, as Israel’s “1967 borders.” The letter indeed rubs in that mischaracterization of mere ceasefire lines as borders by demanding that any “territorial adjustments” thereto be formalized by a both-sides signed writing. Reform and Conservatives’ letter:
“… While that [two-state] solution is unlikely to hew precisely to the 1967 borders, any territorial adjustments must result in a signed agreement between the two sides.”
This isn’t mere semantics. There’s a fundamental international law permanence difference between “borders,” which have a gravitas surviving renewed fighting between the same sides (both times initiated in this case by Jordan) and ceasefire lines, which are obliterated by renewed fighting. And in this case a fundamental security difference. The 1967-fighting ceasefire line is a geographically natural border of the Jordan River backed by the steep on the east side Judea-Samaria ridge. Compare the 1949 ceasefire lines not only being just nine-miles-wide in the lowland middle but excluding historic Jerusalem with Arab-held hills [Latrun on one side, the Radar Hill to Ramallah-Jerusalem Road ridge on the other] inherently threateningly dominating the narrow new Jerusalem access corridor.
[2] A second misperception in that Reform and Conservatives et al letter to President Trump is that it misperceives Judea-Samaria, which it called “the West Bank,” as beyond the legal and historical claim of the Jewish people to our homeland of Israel. The letter called on the American President to oppose
“annexation by Israel of any territory in the West Bank.”
“Annexation” is defined by Encarta Dictionary (enshrined in Microsoft Word) as “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state.” Judea-Samaria is west of the Jordan River, part of the 22% of Palestine specified as the Jewish national home in the internationally endorsed Palestine Mandate. Palestinian Arabs have never ruled Judea-Samaria (or Jerusalem) ever, and foreign Arab empires only between 638 and 1099, much of that under the sway of the Turks.
Nor of course should the Reform and Conservatives’ letter to the American President have referred to Judea and Samaria as “the West Bank.” The name “West Bank” was coined by the invader Jordan in 1950 for the same reason the Romans eighteen hundred years earlier had renamed Judaea as “Palestine” [after the long-gone “sea people” Philistines, not Arafat’s ancestors] – to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews. (And btw, Haaretz this week parroted the mainstream media’s mocking of “Judea and Samaria” as “the biblical name for the West Bank,” Terror-State: Lapid’s Plan To Promote Two-State Solution at UN Faces Domestic Backlash, notwithstanding those Hebrew-origin names having remained in use for three thousand years, including by the UN itself in 1947.)
So in your peer-to-peer chats with “two-states”-bitten Jews these High Holy Days, make the case that the 1949 Israel-Jordan ceasefire lines that the Reform and Conservatives’ letter miscalled “Israel’s 1967 borders” are not among the Holy Land’s holy places; that “Judea and Samaria,” Hebrew-origin place names that remained in use between Judaea’s fall in 135 and Israel’s sovereign rebirth in 1948 as the land of Israel’s next native state are not “the West Bank,” and that Israel applying Israeli law thereto is not “annexation” of a different sovereign state’s lands. Maybe that will induce American Jews whose “two-state solution” support is predicated upon the Reform and Conservatives’ letter’s misstatements of those historical facts to reconsider whether the Jewish people has an American Jews’-supportable historical and legal claim to our land of Israel homeland including its heart and heartland, historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria.
L’Shanah Tovah,
Jerry