#988 12/29/19 – This Year: THE Most Disturbing Action of American Jews

This Year:  THE Most Disturbing Action of American Jews

At year-end, every publication gets to pick THE most something-or-other during that year.  Weekly critic that I am of my fellow American Jews, I’ll pick THE most disturbing, counter-productive, self-disrespecting act that I’m aware of that they managed to do in 2019.  I award the prize for that distinguished accomplishment to nine august institutions of our community which wrote a joint letter to the President of the United States on April 12 of this year.

“Two-states” Would Do Worse Damage Than Just Undoing the Six Day War

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 of this framework [i.e., “a negotiated two-state solution”], including annexation by Israel of any territory in the West Bank.” [emphasis added]

It went on:

“… While that [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.”  [emphasis added]

Those highlighted terms – “annexation … the West Bank … the 1967 borders … adjustments” – are Jewish homeland-delegitimizing pejoratives self-respecting Jews should not use, as discussed below, but there’s deeper damage done to our people’s homeland in those important American Jewish organizations’ April 12 letter than just Jews mouthing those anti-Jewish pejoratives.

The ceasefire agreements ending the Arab-Israeli 1948-49 war left Judea-Samaria and the historic part of Jerusalem, including the Old City and City of David, on the Jordanian side of the ceasefire “Green Line.”  To the world, this was a de facto possession by Jordan, recognized only by a couple of countries.  Israel evicted Jordan from west of the Jordan River in the 1967 Six Day War.  If the Six Day War is reversed, if the world approves a “two-state solution” with borders hewing more or less to the 1949 Green Line, these core parts of the Jewish homeland – Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem – will become de jure territory of that new Arab state, not just part of its territory, but all of it.  Israel’s loss of these core territories will be irrevocable.  It will never get them back or even be legally entitled, as we argue now by the Mandate, to their possession.

Truncated Israel will be left existentially vulnerable, nine miles wide in the lowland middle, literally overlooked by Arab-held hills.  But no less a loss will be what Bibi rightly told the UN is the core of the core of our homeland – historic Jerusalem, with its Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David, etc.  In 1903, pogrom-plagued Russian Jews walked out of the sixth Zionist Congress in Basel, rejecting as ‘Zionism without Zion’ even a temporary way-station for them in Uganda.  An Israel without historic Jerusalem will be as Zion-less as Uganda.

By me, and I hope by you, those nine important American Jewish organizations, including the Reform and Conservative religious movements, rabbis and all, did our people, not just Israelis, a great disservice in joining the UN, EU and fellow non-fans of our homeland in championing such an inside-the-land-of-Israel “two-state solution.”

The Terminology Used in that Letter is Historically Wrong and Self-Disrespecting

The terminology – “annexation … the West Bank … the 1967 borders … adjustments” used in that letter is no less shameful.

The Encarta Dictionary, the thing that pops up when you ask for help on words’ meanings in Word, defines “annexation” as “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state.”  We Jews legitimately regard Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem as belonging to the land and State of Israel, not to “another political entity,” and we don’t regard Israel applying Israeli law there as constituting the taking over another country’s territory to incorporate it into Israel.  Our claim to that territory is, of course, disputed, but chanters of “from the River to the Sea” for the entirety of western Palestine don’t use “disputed,” and neither should we.

“West Bank” was coined by the invader Jordan in 1950 for the same reason the Romans renamed Judaea as “Palestine,” not after Arafat’s ancestors but the long-gone sea people Philistines, in 135 – to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews.  The media charmingly says “Judea-Samaria” is the old “biblical name for the West Bank,” but the Hebrew-origin names “Judea” and “Samaria” remained in use all through the post-biblical centuries, including by the UN itself in 1947: “The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River ….”  It is self-disrespecting for Jews to join in using “West Bank.”

The 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement expressly defined the “Green Line” (drawn with a green pen) that it drew between where their armies then stood as a military ceasefire line only, not a political border, and as such it ceased to exist when new fighting, again initiated by Jordan, erupted between the same sides in 1967.  But unlike military ceasefire lines, international borders have gravitas and survive fighting between the two sides.  The 1967 war ceasefire line, the Jordan River with the defensible Jordan Valley and Judea-Samaria hill country behind it, is infinitely more secure and homeland-meaningful for Israel than the old 1949 ceasefire “Green Line,” and both sides fully appreciate this.  It is a shanda for American Jews to imbue the old defunct 1949 ceasefire lines with the gravitas of being “the 1967 borders.”

Calling any deviations of the new “two-state solution’s” borders from the old defunct 1949 ceasefire lines not just differences but “adjustments” from them further imbues those old defunct ceasefire lines with an existing valid status from which differences constitute actual changes.

Palestine Has Already Been Divided Into Two States for Arabs and Jews

A final mischaracterization of “the two-state solution” is its implying that creating a new Arab state inside the land of Israel would constitute for the first time a division of Palestine into separate states for Arabs and Jews.

But Palestine has already been divided into separate states for Arabs and Jews.  The Palestine Mandate created by the League of Nations out of a small piece of the old Ottoman Empire after World War I included territory that today constitutes the states of Israel and Jordan.  The Mandate, which expressly recognized the Jewish people’s historical connection with Palestine and provided for reconstituting in Palestine the Jewish national home, included a clause allowing the Mandatory, Britain, to excise from its provisions the 78% of Palestine east of the Jordan River.  This Britain in short order did, creating the Arab entity Transjordan, today’s Jordan, leaving just 22% of the Mandate for its Jewish national home.

Today, Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan is ruled by British enthroned Hashemite Arab kings, not by its majority Palestinian Arabs, but the solution for that lies within that Palestinian Arab-majority 78% of Palestine, not in again dividing between Arabs and Jews the 22% of Palestine which the creation of Arab Jordan left for the Jews.

The 2020 Task for Grassroots American Jews

Two of the most devastating to the Jewish homeland international documents of recent years are the UN Security Council’s 2016 resolution UNSC 2334 and the EU 2019 product labeling decree for Judea-Samaria and historic-Jerusalem products, both of which expressly declare the Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem areas of the land of Israel to be “occupied Palestinian territory” and Jewish presence there “illegal settlements.”  While the US government has just declared Israeli “settlements” not to be ipso-facto against international law (reversing Carter and Obama administrations’ interpretations, not those, as some claim, of “forty years of America’s view”), our communal leaders are shamefully wedded to the UN and EU’s “two-state solution.”

By me, a valuable New Year’s Resolution, one to be kept, for grassroots American Jews is not to abandon their religious, political and other organizational affiliations, but to strive actively to direct those organizations’ and their leaders’ positions away from “the two-state solution” and toward support for a secure and meaningful Jewish homeland of Israel.  Toast this resolution with some good American bourbon or beer Tuesday night, if you will.

PS:  This #988 completes nineteen years of this weekly emailed “media watch,” more than I contemplated when, with some sense of chutzpah, I labeled that of January 7, 2001, “Media Watch #1.”  What has gotten me from 1 to 988 has been emails of support and encouragement from you.  I hope to keep at this in 2020, and I extend to each of You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly my very best wishes for your health and happiness in the coming year and for all of our continuing support for our country, the United States, which has uniquely in history included us as part of itself, and for our people and homeland of Israel.  j