WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The most dangerous canard is delegitimizing our right to the historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria heart of our Jewish people’s homeland. The US administration denied our claim to our homeland’s heart Friday. Like Muslim-Americans, let’s not let the President take us for granted.
Blinken Betrayal on Friday: The Heart of Our Homeland’s Not Ours!
Some pretty severe charges are being hurled at our Jewish people these days – the Jewish state’s subjecting Palestinian Arabs in Judea-Samaria to “apartheid,” committing “genocide” in Gaza, etc. Secretary Blinken on Friday hurled at us the most irreversible-if-implemented delegitimization of all: The heart of the land of Israel – defensible Judea-Samaria biblical hill country heartland, historic Jerusalem (Old City, Temple Mount, City of David, Western Wall, Jewish communities) – aren’t ours; Jewish “settlements” there [i.e., in what the UN calls “occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem”] are “inconsistent with international law.”
Understand this: If anybody there’s committing “apartheid” (e.g., judenrein eastern Palestine [Jordan] and Gaza; PA prohibition of selling land to a Jew) and “genocide” (e.g., “From the River to the Sea,” successor to “Throw the Jews into the Sea”; Oct. 7 and “pay for slay”), it’s them and not us. But one’s behavior towards others, however horrendous, one can change. But international borders stand. If we concede Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem as not being ours, we can’t get them back.
See, e.g., INN and Israpundit, Friday, 2/23/24: Blinken: Settlements are Inconsistent with International Law. Blinken made this statement Friday following Israel’s announcement of building homes for Jews in Maale Adumim, a suburb of Jerusalem, following a murderous terrorist attack there.
What’s going on here is thoroughly explained in Trump Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s book Sledgehammer, pp. 162-166. He wrote that initially the territory Israel had gained in the 1967 Six Day War “was viewed generally as disputed, with Israel thought to have the best claim.” President Reagan found Jews living in Judea-Samaria not inconsistent with international law. But in 1978, President Carter had Herbert Hansell, legal advisor to the State Department, write “the Hansell memo,” in which he concluded that Israeli “settlements” there were “illegal.” At Amb. Friedman’s instance, Trump Administration Secretary of State Michael Pompeo reviewed the matter, including the San Remo Treaty and Palestine Mandate with their Jewish national home, and stated:
“After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this administration agrees with President Reagan. The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”
I would like you to read two knowledgeable instant comments to the Israpundit version of Friday’s news article. First, Amb. Friedman’s:
“Blinken is 100% wrong. I researched this for over a year with many State Department lawyers. There is nothing illegal about Jews living in their biblical homeland. Indeed, Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow, also the Dean of the Yale Law School (who negotiated UNSCR 242), stated that Israel has the best legal claim to Judea and Samaria. For Blinken to announce this in the middle of a war and when the Jewish Sabbath already has begun in Israel is unconscionable.” [emphasis added]
And now Mike Pompeo’s:
“Judea and Samaria are rightful parts of the Jewish homeland, and Israelis have a right to live there. President Biden’s decision to overturn our policy and call Israeli ‘settlements’ illegal will not further the cause of peace. It rewards Hamas for its brutal attacks on October 7th and punishes Israel instead. These Israeli communities are not standing in the way of peace; militant Palestinian terrorism is.” [emphasis added]
By me, Bravo! to both. But more than “bravo,” a little American Jewish bravado, is needed. I write grassroots to grassroots. JNS’ Jonathan Tobin had an article Friday (2/23/24) pertaining to us, Is Biden Worrying About Losing the Wrong Voters? And see also Herb Keinon’s Jerusalem Post article last week (2/17/24), Arab-Americans Are Not the Only Ones With Political Leverage in the US Elections. Both articles discuss Biden’s efforts to secure his support in heavily Muslim-American key state Michigan (see also Tobin in Federalist, 2/15/24, Biden Kowtows to Dearborn’s Terror-Justifying Mayor To Retain Antisemitic Votes). But both articles also discuss, homeplace for me, Pennsylvania.
Tobin in JNS:
“… even a slight shift in the Jewish vote in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where Jews outnumber Muslims by 3-1, could turn the election as surely as any shift in the Arab vote could swing Michigan.”
Keinon in JPost:
“Michigan, however, is not the only state Biden will need to win in November to get reelected, nor are Arab-American voters the only ones he needs. He will also need to carry Pennsylvania, where there are nearly 300,000 Jewish voters, according to a Jewish Electorate Institute report in 2021, or almost 3.5% of the state’s registered voters.”
The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent’s “poll of the week” this week asked an important question: “Do you support a two-state solution?” As a few of you know, I don’t, but I’m not as far-out among Philly’s grassroots as I’d thought. Response when I voted was only 55.47% for, and substantial 44.53% against.
When I said “bravado” above, I didn’t necessarily mean all of the Jewish American grassroots should actually vote this time for Trump (not that I’d oppose that, but I’m once-an-election a realist). As Tobin just wrote: “It would still be astonishing if Biden didn’t win the Jewish vote in November.” Just sew a doubt in his mind, as the Muslim-Americans are not secretly sewing. Tobin concludes, and I agree with him:
“… when you consider a surge of left-wing antisemitism and a president who seems more worried about offending antisemites than winning over Jews he clearly thinks are already in his pocket, it would be unwise to dismiss the possibility of a historic shift in Jewish votes.” [emphasis added]
We deeply believe that the land of Israel, historic Jerusalem and defensible Judea-Samaria biblical hill country heartland included, is our Jewish people’s national home, and that Palestinian Arabs are not “unbearably suffocatingly occupied,” bur are the majority population of three-quarters of the Palestine Mandate, Jordan, and all of Gaza, and can perhaps have autonomy in part of Judea-Samaria. We have to make this indelibly clear to Secretary Blinken and President Biden.