WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: It may be that only a minority of the world’s population uses historically accurate terms – e.g.,“1949 ceasefire lines … Judea and Samaria” – and not Jewish homeland-delegitimizing “1967 borders … West Bank.” But that minority has got to include all of us, whether or not we individually favor or reject, e.g., “the two-state solution.” Unfortunately, some of our major American Jewish organizations don’t see it that way.
Major American Jewish Organizations’ First Obligation: Don’t Use Delegitimizing Terms
The fundamental issue concerning the open letter that major Jewish organizations wrote to President Trump is not whether American Jews should tell Israeli Jews, who defend Israel’s boundaries, what Israel’s boundaries should be. And I say this as a non-believer in “the two-state solution” they pushed.
The fundamental issue is whether major American Jewish organizations, in addressing the American President and American public, should use terms and expressions, however seemingly supportive of the case they’re trying to make, that inaccurately delegitimize the Jewish homeland of Israel. Of course, they should not. But they did.
So this week’s #962 isn’t about whether “the two-state solution” is good or bad for the Jews, or even whether those major Jewish organization letter-writers about it had standing to do so. It’s about the damage that’s done by the dirty words that they used.
That letter – signed by ADL, Ameinu, ARZA, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Jewish Women International, Israel Policy Forum, MERCAZ USA, National Council of Jewish Women, Rabbinical Assembly, Union for Reform Judaism and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism – called on President Trump
“to clearly express your opposition to unilateral measures outside this framework [‘a negotiated two-state solution’], including annexation by Israel of any territory in the West Bank.”
It added:
“While that [negotiated 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.”
The Arab-Israeli conflict’s loaded lexicon of poisoned pejoratives isn’t a random collection of terms and expressions that randomly in one way or the other inaccurately characterize that conflict. They work together to paint a one-way distorted portrait of respective Arab and Jewish Palestine rights. That open letter to the President is, alas, an example.
The impression purveyed by the letter’s language quoted above is that on the eve of the 1967 war a political border existed between Israel and a territory called the West Bank over which Israel had not even a disputed, let alone legitimate, political claim. Any territorial adjustment of that border could only be by signed consensual agreement between the two sides, in the absence of which Israeli exercise of sovereign authority in territory over that border would be annexation [Encarta Dictionary: “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state”].
Indeed the terms “the West Bank … the 1967 borders … annexation” clearly support the argument that a “two-state solution” that would “hew precisely to the 1967 borders” is the obvious peace solution, but these are loaded terms no supporters of Israel, whether supportive of “the two-state solution” or not, should ever use.
“Judea-Samaria” vs. “West Bank”
“West Bank” was invented by Jordan in 1950 for the same reason the Romans had invented “Palestine” in 135, to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews. The media calls the Hebrew-origin names “Judea and Samaria” the old “biblical names for the West Bank,” but it was those Hebrew-origin names that remained in use, evidenced by maps and writings, all through the post-biblical centuries, including by the UN itself in 1947. Israelis still use those names: Washington Post 10/10/17: “… the West Bank, which most Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria.” And so should all American Jews.
That those Hebrew-origin names “Judea and Samaria” remained in use evidences something further, that modern Israel is the land’s next native state after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea, every ruler in between having been a foreign empire invader (and mostly non-Arab at that). Judea-Samaria was part of the Palestine Mandate (as originally so was today’s Jordan) with its recognition of historical Jewish connection, reconstitution therein of the Jewish National Home, and close settlement of Jews on the land.
I got into an argument last year with wonderful media-fairness-to-Israel-championing CAMERA over Judea-Samaria vs. West Bank. They made the valid point that them asking the media to use “Judea and Samaria,” which “is used by only a very minute fraction of the world population,” would “immediately end up in the editor’s trash box”:
“Use of the terminology Judea and Samaria is historically justified. Nevertheless, the insistence that mainstream media outlets adopt a term which is used by only a very minute fraction of the world population, and which ignores the political reality for some 40 percent of the West Bank in which Palestinians rule themselves, guarantees irrelevance. An emailed request for use of the nomenclature ‘Judea and Samaria’ will immediately end up in the editor’s trash box.”
But that “very minute fraction of the world population” that uses “Judea and Samaria” is us, and the smaller fraction we are the more critical it is that we ourselves, and not least the important signatories to that open letter to the President, use it. It evidences the original and continuing Jewish homeland claim to that land.
“1949 Ceasefire Lines” vs. “The 1967 Borders”
The 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines were expressly declared in their defining document not to be political borders, and so were never among the Holy Land’s holy places. And even as military ceasefire lines, they were rendered void and replaced by the infinitely more secure and Jewish homeland redemption fulfilling ceasefire lines of the 1967 war. For American Jews in 2019 to resurrect and sanctify those old defunct ceasefire lines of 1949 as “the 1967 borders” delegitimizes Israeli claim to the Jewish people’s historical homeland beyond them.
So What are We Grassroots American Jews To Do?
It doesn’t matter whether each of us individually is for or against “the two-state solution.” Our individual task is not to write our own letter to President Trump, or to tell the mainstream media, without smiling, that it should say “Judea and Samaria” instead of “the West Bank,” and “1949 ceasefire lines” instead of “the 1967 borders,” etc., etc. But we should get our own house in order, using historically accurate terms and expressions ourselves, and pleading with our organizations of which we’re lay members to use them and not to echo the Jewish homeland delegitimizers’ loaded lexicon of poisoned pejoratives.