#971 9/1/19 – Self-Flagellation

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: American Jews’ mistaken advocacy of restoring “the 1967 border” isn’t “occupation” ending pursuit of “Jewish values.”  It’s self-disrespecting surrender of what have been integral parts, in Jerusalem’s case the most meaningful part, and in Judea-Samaria’s case the most defense-needed part, of the Jewish homeland from the beginning.   

This Week:  Self-Flagellation

What’s Right In Prager’s Article:  Anti-Zionism Criticizes Israel’s Existence

Remember learning in high school history class about medieval monks who practiced religion by endlessly flogging themselves?  Their spiritual successors stalk Earth today – American Jews.

I’m talking here about the American Jewish mainstream, supporters of Israel, not “anti-Zionist” U.S. Jews, but even those who are, by me, the Best of Us sometimes fall short.  Dennis Prager, who’s one of our Very good guys, had a FrontPage Mag article this week (8/27/19), Criticism of Israel Is Not Anti-Semitism, But Anti-Zionism Is, that, in my view, falls short.

Prager rightly labels “anti-Zionism” not as mere criticism of Israel’s policies but of Israel’s existence, and he rightly calls anti-Zionists’ claim that only Israel, the world’s only Jewish nation, out of two hundred-plus nations on earth, is illegitimate tells you “pretty much all you need to know” about anti-Zionists’ motives.

Prager rightly states:

     “Zionism is the movement for the return of Jews to their ancient homeland, Israel.  Over the past 3,000 years, there were two independent Jewish states located in what is called Israel.  Both were destroyed by invaders, and no Arab or Muslim or any other independent country ever existed in that land, which was only named ‘Palestine’ by the Romans in an attempt to remove all memory of the Jewish state they destroyed ….”

And on other occasions, Prager has rightly mentioned that modern Israel is the land of Israel’s next native state after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea.  Every ruler in between was a foreign empire invader.  I wrote a book, Israel 3000 Years, which, after citing the extra-biblical evidence documenting the Jews’ biblical history, documents historian Parkes’ statement that the continuous tenacious presence of homeland Jews between Hadrian and Herzl wrote today’s Israelis’ “real title deeds.”

So What’s Wrong In it?  Israel’s Connection to “the West Bank” Doesn’t Date from 1967

 So what am I complaining about in Prager’s article?  What he also wrote in that article, in addressing the charge that Israel is “racist”:

     “Israel’s control of the West Bank has nothing to do with ‘race.’  Israel does not control the West Bank because Palestinian Arabs are of another race, but because Palestinians tried to destroy Israel in 1967, and they lost the war.”

This is inadequate.  Israel’s control of what the U.N. itself in 1947 called “Samaria and Judea” [a/k/a what Jordan later renamed “the West Bank” for the same reason the Romans had renamed Judaea as “Palestine”] is not because the Arabs lost the Six Day War, but because Judea-Samaria, like historic Jerusalem, has been an integral part of the land of Israel from its beginnings in early biblical times.

A few years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer, not the most pro-Israel paper in the Milky Way Galaxy, ran an editorial cartoon depicting Moses admonishing the Israelites, as he guided them across the divided Red Sea, not to build “settlements.”  But it wasn’t Moses or anything written in stone three millennia ago that made the Promised Land’s Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem sectors forbidden to Jews. It was “the green line” drawn in the 1949 CE ceasefire agreement between Israel and invading Jordan that did that, and that paper prohibition lasted for just 19 of those 3,000 years, and they ended more than a half-century ago.

American Jewish Advocacy of “the 1967 Border” Isn’t Advocacy of “Jewish Values”

In their letter this spring to the American President, American Jews’ Reform and Conservative movements, rabbis and all, sought to breathe new life into that old long-obliterated 1949 ceasefire line that its own defining document had expressly declared not to be a political border.   The border between the state of Israel and a new western Palestine Arab state, they wrote, should “hew precisely” to “the 1967 border” except for “any territorial adjustments” [i.e., changes] thereto in a signed writing by the two sides.

JNS’ Jonathan Tobin, in Israpundit this week, Disconnect: American Jewish Ideas About Israel and the Views of the Overwhelming Majority of Israelis, pointed out that it’s just us American Jews, not Israeli Jews, who are flagellating ourselves over “occupation” of Judea-Samaria:

     “… many American Jews have bought into the false notion that Israel is betraying Jewish values by not surrendering territory and creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem in the vain hope that this will magically produce peace as opposed to more bloodshed.”

Tobin points out that “a consensus that there is no partner for peace exists across a broad spectrum of Israeli society stretching from the center-left to the center-right,” and his message is that rather than taking umbrage at Trump’s recent comments, his American Jewish critics “would do better to think about why they are so out of touch with Israeli public opinion, rather than continuing the pretense that they know what’s best for the Jewish state.”

No self-flagellation by Tobin there, but, to borrow a term of his, what if a Palestinian Arab peace partner “magically” does show up?  Should Jews, here and in Israel, then opt for “surrendering territory and creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem”?

No.  But not because such a Palestinian Arab would not be a true peace partner.  Because Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem are not “Israeli occupied.”  They belong to us.  They’re ours.  History, acknowledged in twentieth century international legal documents, says so.  In the past 3,000 years, three Jerusalem-capitaled homeland Jewish states, and none others, have been independent there.  Jews have lived there for 3,000 years.  We have to stop flogging ourselves over our “occupation” of these parts of our historic homeland and unequivocally reject that we’re “occupiers.”

Making the Case that Palestine Has Been Divided Between Arabs and Jews

That sounds nice, but we still have to address, though not acquiesce in, the reality that most of the rest of the world, led by the EU and UN (2334), and of course the fifty-some Muslim states, call Jewish presence, even in the heart of Jerusalem, “occupation.”  Recall that when Israeli cabinet minister Bennett objected to CNN’s Christianne Amanpour’s use of “occupation,” she wasn’t misstating world belief in replying, “It’s an international term, Mr. Bennett.”

Western publics recognize that no Palestine conflict solution seems capable of implementation in the near future, but they see division of Palestine between Arabs and Jews as an eventual equitable resolution.  The key lies in defining what constitutes “Palestine.”  Following the end of the Turkish Ottoman Empire’s four-century benighted rule of the whole region, the League of Nations broke it up into Mandates, one of which – the Palestine Mandate – encompassed what are today Jordan and Israel.  In short order, the 78% of that Mandate’s area east of the Jordan River was excised as all-Arab Transjordan, leaving 22% of the Mandate, with its express recognition of  historic Jewish connection with Palestine and its call for establishment therein of the Jewish National Home with close settlement of Jews on the land, left for the Jews.

Today’s Arab argument is that that first division’s lopping off of 78% of the Palestine Mandate for Arabs doesn’t count, that what’s Arabs’ is Arabs’, that what was left for Jews is divisible.

Our response should be that the Palestine Mandate’s 3:1 Arab-to-Jewish division into what became two states for Arabs and Jews in fact occurred, and that the cure for Jordan’s Palestinian Arab majority not being in charge of the Arabs’ 78% of the Mandate is not to redivide between Arabs and Jews the first division’s 22% left for the Jews.

Redividing that remaining 22% once again between Arabs and Jews would deprive Israel of the defensible hill country and historic Jerusalem.  It would be security-wise suicidal and undo the Six Day War’s meaningful fulfillment of the long generational struggle for the Jewish homeland’s redemption.  American Jewish advocacy of that course is not honorable pursuit of what Jonathan Tobin called mistakenly-supposed Jewish values.  It’s self-flagellation.