WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Disclosure this week of a confidential EU document stating its motivations and aims in aiding PA Oslo Accords-violating construction in Area C reveals both delegitimization and disdain. American Jews, even those favoring “the two-state solution,” have to join Israelis in defending our Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem homeland claim.
EU Not Just Bludgeons Into Area C, But Insults Us in the Bargain
By now, most of You Who Put Up With Me Weekly know that I believe that achieving Israeli-Palestinian Arab peace by conceding Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem makes as much sense as combating American city street violence by defunding police. And I know from your emails that some of you who favor “the two-state solution” feel it’s a long way off and there’s no need for us to argue over it now.
But things are not standing still. At the least, all of us grassroots American Jews have to join with Israelis in standing up against EU financing of expedited Arab building in Area C, while the world instantly expresses “concerns” (i.e., has conniptions) when Israel merely announces new building plans. We’re being vastly out-built.
See, e.g., JNS, Wednesday, EU Working With PA To Take Over Area C, Document Obtained by JNS Shows. It reports disclosure of a confidential EU document revealing that the European Union is in cahoots with the Palestinian Authority to EU us out of Judea-Samaria by financing Arab building, far outstripping Israeli building, in the Israeli-controlled under the Oslo Accords Area “C”:
“A confidential document composed by the European Union’s mission in eastern Jerusalem and obtained by JNS shows that Brussels is actively working with and on behalf of the Palestinian Authority to take over Area C of Judea and Samaria ….”
Israelis at least regard this as serious stuff. Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of the NGO Monitor think tank (quoted in JNS article):
“As this document confirms, Europe’s use of labels like support for ‘civil society’ and ‘human rights’ were designed to hide the millions of euros given every year to selected allied NGOs, particularly in Area C, to create facts on the ground. Now that the pretense is out in the open, the potential for a major confrontation between Israel and Europe, including over support for NGOs, is very high.”
How’s Israel doing these days, in its own backyard, versus the PA and EU? Not well enough, according to this JNS article, to justify Jewish complacency:
“According to a recent report by the Israeli NGO Regavim, Arab expansion into land in Judea and Samaria is far outpacing Israeli growth in the area. ‘In the past year, the rate of illegal Palestinian construction has increased by 80%,’ the researchers wrote last month.”
What does it all mean? JNS quoted Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, director of international law at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem:
“There is a rapid annexation of areas surrounding Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria by the P.A. and E.U. This is ‘land for peace’ without the fake promise of peace.’”
A Times of Israel article carried in Israpundit Thursday, Dozens of MKs Accuse EU of Blood Libel, Hatred After West Bank Plan Leaked, reported that 40 MKs wrote to the EU, bitterly accusing it of completely ignoring “our people’s historical affinity to our homeland,” with the MKs taking particular exception to the EU document’s call for monitoring Israeli archeological activities at Jewish heritage sites. The MKs letter stated:
“This singular call has but one goal: to subvert the deep and indestructible bond between the Jewish people and its country and homeland.”
[A personal note: A friend of mine’s an Israeli archeologist (along with being an Orthodox rabbi). I know how he works. This EU call “to monitor Israeli archeological activities at Jewish heritage sites” in Judea-Samaria is a blood libel on the professional integrity of Israeli archeologists, who have objectively uncovered Muslim as well as Israeli remains. Compare that to Palestinian Arab contempt for Jewish archeological sites – Temple Mount, Joseph’s Tomb, Joshua’s Altar, etc.]
TOI summarized what these MKs called on the EU to do:
“The letter called on the EU to halt illegal construction in areas under Israeli control, stop activities that damage heritage site and nature in the West Bank, and desist from funding NGOs that seek to delegitimize Israel.”
And those last words – “seek to delegitimize Israel” – should resonate with all us grassroots American Jews, not just “right-wingers” like me. There’s a huge difference between being for “the two-state solution,” if you must, as a compromise settlement of a conflict in which our side is giving up something to which it has legitimate claim, versus being for it as a mere concession of areas to which we have no legitimate claim.
When the American Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, along with several other major Jewish organizations, wrote the American President an open letter calling on him to oppose Israeli “annexation in the West Bank” (“annexation” being defined as “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state”), these letter writers were conceding that by them that West Bank was not an area to which Israel had a legitimate claim, a thing of value which it could offer as “consideration” in a contractual deal.
Of course, by me, Judea and Samaria are not just an integral parts of the homeland of Jews, but, along with historic Jerusalem, the most integral part, are not – in a “land for peace two-state solution” – to be bargained, let alone given, away. But if Land For Peace is your aim, bargained likely has a lot longer lasting effect than mere given. So even if you’d part with it in a land for peace deal, defend our historical presence and Jewish national home under the Mandate claim.
PS: This #1144 (1144 / 52 = 22) completes twenty-two years of these weekly emails of mine pleading for stalwart support of our people’s homeland of Israel by all grassroots American Jews. I remember considering it chutzpah for me to have labeled the first, January 7, 2001, Brith Sholom Media Watch Alert #1. Without you Gentle Readers’ emails of encouragement and support, there would not be this #1144. There would not have been #2. Merry Christmas to our Christian subscribers, and Happy New Year to all of You Who Put Up With Me Weekly. j