WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: I wrote last week that Jews have the right to live in the land of Israel freely, without fear of discrimination, persecution or murder just for being Jews. That right was Holocaust-level violated last week by Hamas. Israel’s response must make this the last pogrom in the Promised Land. But we Diaspora Jews must join in getting across to the world that the land of Israel, Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria included, is historically and legally Ours, and that Palestinian Arabs have a Palestine homeland in Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan and in entirely theirs Gaza, and had been offered local autonomy in part of Judea-Samaria.
The LAST Pogrom in the Promised Land?
Reread, if you will, the single paragraph constituting the entirety of my #1185 last week, on the heels of Hamas’ pogrom in Israel. Pick out the sentence stating the aspiration of we Jews in our homeland that has never to date been fulfilled:
“Bottom Line
“The land of Israel, birthplace of the Jewish people, is still today historically and legally ours – our internationally acknowledged, never-abandoned, next native state after Judaea, Jewish national home, where today millennia-persecuted Ingathered Exiles are home. Our people have every right to live there freely, without fear of discrimination, persecution, murder simply for being Jews. That day in 1948 that Israel’s sovereign independence was re-declared, it was invaded by Arab nations on every side, and that invasion was thrown back by a homeland army of homeland Jews. So don’t tell us after all this that this land isn’t ours. But our people’s enemies still do. Once again, Israel’s citizens’ army has to defend it, and we Diaspora Jews, all of us, have to stand by them in that continued struggle for fulfillment in our time of the Dream of Generations for our people’s homeland’s sovereign rebirth. It’s ours, and God knows we need it.”
This is that line:
“Our people have every right to live there freely, without fear of discrimination, persecution, murder simply for being Jews.”
Long ago, our people was decimated in the Great and Bar Kochba Revolts against Rome, but hung on still for some time as the majority in the land, which we never fully left. In 614 twenty thousand or more joined in self-mustered battalions alongside the invading Persians against the hated-Romans’ Byzantine heirs. The Byzantines regained control and went on a Jew-murdering rampage. When the bloodthirsty Crusaders came in 1099, “proportionally to their numbers, the Jews probably lost more than any other group on the conquest of the country,” Parkes, Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine, p. 97. Thereafter, attacks on Jews punctuated the four-century rule of the Turks. See, e.g., chapter 9, “Dhimmi in the Holy Land,” in Peters, From Time Immemorial. It goes on for 24 pages. And then the Mandate saw repeated pogroms in Jerusalem, Haifa and elsewhere.
And now this week, seventy-five years into Israel’s renewed independence, let there be no euphemisms – this was a Pogrom:
*** World Israel News, 10/11/23, “After Doubts Online, Israeli Government, Biden Confirm that Babies Found Decapitated”
*** Geller Report, 10/11/23, “The Jihad Against the Jews: “Barbarism and Depravity Against Jews on This Scale Hasn’t Been Experienced Since the Holocaust’”
*** Algemeiner, 10/11/23, “Israeli Medic Confirms Babies Beheaded at Kibbutz”
*** Jerusalem Post, 10/12/23, “Photos of Babies Being Burnt, Decapitated Confirmed”
*** CNN, 10/12/23, “Children Found ‘Butchered’ in Israeli Kibbutz, IDF Says, as Horror of Hamas’ Attacks Near Border Begins to Emerge”
*** NBC News, 10/13/23, “‘Top Secret’ Hamas Documents Show that Terrorists Intentionally Targeted Elementary Schools and a Youth Center”
And how did “The Palestinians” in Judea-Samaria, our “moderate” two-state solution Arab peace partner respond?
Algemeiner, 10/11/23, “‘Moderate’ Palestinian Fatah Urges People to ‘Land More Blows on the Enemy’”
*** Algemeiner, 10/13/23, “‘Moderate’ Palestinian TV Praises Hamas Terror Massacre on Israel”
But, surely, the UN, that great bastion of international integrity that condemns Israel more than, combined, all the other nations on Earth?
*** World Israel News, 10/11/23, “‘How Many Dead Jews Does It Take?’ Israeli Ambassador Slams UN Equivocation on Hamas Slaughter”
*** Geller Report, 10/11/23, “Monstrous: UN Security Council Refuses to Condemn Hamas Unspeakable War Crimes Against Israel”
*** Fox News, 10/13/23, “UN Still Does Not Label, Sanction Hamas As Terror Group Despite Murderous Attacks”
And how about our Jewish people’s beloved friends, the West’s mainstream media?
*** Honest Reporting, 10/8/23, “Wire Disservice: Reuters, AP Misrepresent Hamas’ Terror Attack”:
“Three disturbing patterns emerge from recent pieces by Reuters and the Associated Press: Victims and perpetrators are lumped together, terrorists’ atrocities are minimized, and full paragraphs are devoted to rationalizing the barbaric acts.”
So, where are we, and where do we go from here?
Where we are, except for at least the moment the United States, so long as Israel unilaterally plays by “war’s rules,” is pretty much Alone. And what must be done now by Israel, backed by us Diaspora Jews, seems clear:
[1] What happened this past week must be the Promised Land’s last pogrom. After eighteen hundred years, we Jews are back in charge of our people’s homeland. The physical consequence to Hamas must make the cost of attacking Jews in our homeland prohibitive, not least to those whose very charters vow our homeland’s destruction.
[2] We must unequivocally make the case that our Jewish homeland, intrinsically including Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, is Ours. Our enemies don’t call “the West Bank” and “East” Jerusalem “disputed.” They unequivocally call them “theirs.” We must adamantly call it Ours, and in doing so ourselves cease using pejoratives deliberately designed to delegitimize us.
[3] We must get across to the world that its precious “Palestinians” aren’t homeless. Palestinian Arabs are [a] the majority population of Arab-ruled Jordan, which sits on 78% of the Palestine Mandate (which could become a “Democratic & Arab” constitutional monarchy like England under Chuck), [b] the entire population of Arab-ruled Gaza, and [c] the majority population of the part of Judea-Samaria which under the Trump peace plan they would have internal autonomy sans military, security and electronic spectrum control, to which I’d add prohibition against archeology destruction, which they’ve done and announced more plans to do.
[4] We must get across to, inter alia, ourselves that “the two-state solution” is suicide. Yoram Ettinger, 10/12/23, “Hamas Atrocities – What Went Wrong?”, this week expressed the existential danger this way:
“Will the Israeli, US and Western policy makers and national security and intelligence establishment conclude the common-sense lesson of the Gaza-based Palestinian terrorism, and read the 60-font-writing on the wall of the proposed Palestinian state on the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, which would dominate Jerusalem and the 8-15-mile waistline of Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and 80% of Israel’s population and infrastructure?”
In a lengthy JNS article, 10/11/23, “Hamas Atrocities Explode the Two-State Myth,” Jonathan Tobin began
“The United States may finally be prepared to let Israel defeat the Islamist terror group. But that shouldn’t lead to a push for a Palestinian state after that is accomplished”
and ended
“Oct. 7 provided even more proof not just of the insanity of calls for Israeli territorial withdrawals, but why a two-state solution is a formula for enabling the shedding of Jewish blood rather than advancing the cause of peace. Anyone prepared to look at the truth soberly and without the false preconceptions that have guided the peace processors since 1993 can now see that calls for two states are incompatible with Israel’s existence or peace. It’s time to realize that … and to stop taking those who continue to peddle such terrible and dangerous ideas seriously.” [emphasis added]
What should totally shake every Jew in the world this week only starts with long-planned Holocaust-horrors inflicted by Hamas this week on Jews, including women and children, in Israel. It extends to Fatah urging people “to land more blows on the enemy” and Palestinian Arab TV praising Hamas’ terror massacre on Israel. There can be no splitting of land of Israel sovereignty between Jews and these people. The viability of even the less-than-a-state Trump peace plan, under which Israel retains security control west of the Jordan River, is severely shaken. There’s no living with these people who hate us so barbarically, so incurably, and as we must get across to the world, so historically, legally and morally unjustly.