CLEARING OUR MINDS OF HAMETZ
Daniel Doron
Jerusalem Post, April 17, 2011
In his “insecure nationalists” (Ha’aretz, April 6th) Tel Aviv University Law Prof. Meni (Menachem) Mautner criticizes the Knesset for enacting a law that will deny funding to bodies “that recognize [Israel’s] Independence Day…as a day of mourning.”
Mautner attacks the “aberrant approach” of Zionists who present the conflict between Arabs and Jews from a “one-dimensional” Jewish angle, denying the Palestinian Arabs’ tragedy. Forbidding the teaching of an “Arab narrative” in our schools because it considers the establishment of Israel a disaster is unfair and counterproductive, he avers. “The founding of the state entailed the destruction of Arab society in this country.…”
In his “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell lamented the politicians’ habit of perverting language by using “newspeak,”—insinuating subversive meanings into seemingly innocuous words. “A simple truth [is] mistaken for simplicity” Shakespeare called it.
By demanding that we embrace the Arab “narrative” to show empathy toward the Arabs, Mautner in effect asks that we endorse Arab lies about the nature and consequences of the Arab-Jewish conflict.
Mautner is no innocent; he is a learned man. He must know that the Arab claim that Jews stole “Palestinian lands”…[is] sheer fabrication. The land which the Palestinian Arabs tried to grab in 1948 was land given by The League of Nations in 1921 to the British as a mandate over Palestine (including what is now Jordan) for the express purpose of building a Jewish National Home.
In 1947 the UN recommended the partition of Palestine subject to agreement between the Jews and Arabs. When the Arabs rejected the partition recommendation it became null and void, and the primary legal claim to the land reverted to the Jews, as it was under the Mandate.
Most of the land in the British Palestine Mandate was barren government land taken over from the Ottoman Empire that had ruled it for centuries. This is why it could be given by The League of Nations as a national home for the Jews. It was given with Arab consent. A deal was struck with Emir Feisal, who represented the Arabs at the 1922 San Remo Peace Conference. In compensation for relinquishing a putative right to Palestine, the Arabs were given over 99 percent of the former Ottoman lands in The Middle East and North Africa.
Then they demanded the rest.
But “Palestine” was never legally Palestinian. There were no Palestinians then, in fact, and those who later became such held title to very little of the land, at most 5%.
The 7% of the mandatory land that was privately owned was either occupied by cities and villages or belonged mostly to absentee (non-“Palestinian”) landowners. They exploited dirt-poor Arab tenants to work the land, and sold to Jews the barren, worthless parts of this depopulated and empty country that Mark Twain described as “a prince of desolation.”
The Jews charmed it back to life. The revival of Palestine by the Jews attracted waves of immigrants from neighboring Arab countries. Most Palestinians are their descendants When the Arab assault on the Jewish community in 1948 failed to destroy the nascent state and kill its inhabitants, they lost marginal Arab-owned lands on the periphery of their habitat. But they claimed to have “lost” large chunks of Mandatory government-owned land designated for a Jewish National Home, which they had grabbed by force. It was not land they legally owned, privately or communally. It was not their property, so no-one could “steal” it from them.
So much for the Big Lie that Jews stole “Palestinian lands.”
As for the destruction of Arab society: During British rule, Palestinian Arabs mostly expanded their settlement along the spine of the Judean Hills from Nablus to Hebron. Protected by Arab armies and “volunteers” from Jordan, Egypt, Syria and even Iraq and Saudi Arabia, it was barely touched in the 1948 war.
The war raged at the Western fringes of these areas, around the smaller cities of the plain like Ramle and Lod; and in the then-empty Negev and sparsely populated Galilee, where the 1949 armistice lines were eventually drawn. It was not at the heart of Arab habitation. Therefore, despite massive flight from Haifa and Jaffa, and from smaller cities and villages like Acre, Ashdod, Ashkelon and BeerSheba, most Arab society was in fact not physically affected by Israel’s Independence.
At the same time—it is too often forgotten—hundreds of Jewish communities in The Middle East, around the Persian Gulf and in North Africa were assaulted by their Arab neighbors without provocation. They were brutalized, murdered and evicted—more than a million souls, whose forefathers had inhabited these countries for centuries before the advent of Islam.
When bemoaning the Arab “tragedy,” should not Prof. Mautner have mentioned that it also “entailed” an attempt by these Palestinian Arabs, assisted by seven Arab armies, to destroy the fledgling Jewish state and kill its citizens just because they were Jews? Should he not have mentioned that this unprovoked attack was a major cause of “the Arab tragedy”? The apparent hopelessness of achieving their “peace now” fantasy has done something peculiar to the moral compass of Israel’s self-styled “liberals.” Otherwise, how could a top academic ask for empathy for Arabs shortly after Arab terrorists butchered children in Itamar? How could he castigate Jews for lack of empathy at the very hour when Arabs, their leaders and their institutions revealed the depth of their depravity by not really condemning the Itamar slaughter? How can one explain Prof. Mautner’s insistence that we teach the lie that “the creation of Israel was responsible for the destruction of Arab society…” when in fact the major reason Arab society is being destroyed is the rule of oppression, terror and corruption imposed on it since the 1930s by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini and his heirs, Yasser Arafat, Abu Mazen and their followers?…
But [left-leaning organizations such] as “The Council for Peace and Security” [continue to] ignore “the dark side” in the Arab camp, the murderous Arab intent, the wish to destroy Israel. They keep demanding that Israel make more and more territorial concessions in order to secure a questionable paper peace. They do not explain why…we must believe that after the failure of Oslo and of the retreat from Gaza, which they fervently supported, more territorial concession will not result merely in the irredentist use of these territories as a base for inciting Arabs to murder Jews, and eventually for attacking Israel.
Lenin called Western liberals “useful idiots” because they supported the communist tyranny—as some [Israelis] support an oppressive corrupt Palestinian “authority”—because of their illusionary belief that dictatorships can deliver freedom.
Celebrating a revolt against dictatorship on Passover is a caution against such illusions. It is also a time to cleanse minds from the crusts of misinformation and outdated notions that prevent us from looking reality in the face, from realizing that Exodus from slavery to freedom was never easy or cost-free; you cannot cross the red sea of conflict on bridges made of lies and paper agreements.
(Daniel Doron is director of the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress.)
HEBRON BESIEGED
Jerold S. Auerbach
American Thinker, April 17, 2011
Passover, 1968: several dozen Jewish families returned to Hebron to celebrate the holiday of Jewish memory. They remembered slavery in Egypt, the exodus to freedom, and the journey to the promised land. But they also remembered the unique place of Hebron in Jewish history and they intended to restore a Jewish community in the most ancient Jewish city in the world.
In Hebron (according to the Biblical narrative), Sarah was buried on land purchased by Abraham from Ephron the Hittite. Rejecting the generous offer of a gift, Abraham paid Ephron’s full asking price—400 silver shekels—to assure the indisputable legitimacy of title. It was the first land holding of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.
Abraham, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah were also buried there. From Hebron, King David reigned for seven years before relocating his throne to Jerusalem. Over the ancestral burial site King Herod built the magnificent edifice that is still intact two thousand years later, known to Jews as Ma’arat Hamachpela.
With the Muslim conquest the Machpelah shrine was converted into a mosque which, for seven centuries, Jews were prohibited from entering. During the Arab massacres of 1929 that swept through Palestine, sixty-seven Hebron Jews were brutally murdered. British authorities removed terrified survivors from the city and Hebron became Judenrein for nearly forty years. When Israelis entered Hebron after the Six-Day War they discovered the abandoned Jewish Quarter in ruins, synagogues destroyed, and the ancient cemetery desecrated.
Now seven hundred Jews live in Hebron, two hundred yeshiva students study there, and seven thousand Israelis live in nearby Kiryat Arba. It has been a precarious existence, repeatedly punctuated by Palestinian terrorist attacks. Six Jews were killed outside Beit Hadassah, the restored medical clinic. A yeshiva student had his throat slit in the market; another was murdered on his way to evening prayers at Machpelah. Two Soviet refuseniks were killed at the entrance to Kiryat Arba. A rabbi was stabbed to death in his trailer home on Tel Rumeida, the site of ancient Hebron. A ten-month-old girl was shot in the head by a sniper. A dozen Israeli soldiers and security guards were ambushed and murdered by Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad.
Each terrorist attack spurred renewed attempts to build the community. The major obstacle, for nearly forty-five years, has been the government of the State of Israel. Regardless of the party in power, prime ministers from Levi Eshkol in 1967 to Benjamin Netanyahu in 2011 have thwarted the growth of the Hebron Jewish community.
The government has made it virtually impossible for Jews to buy property from willing Arab sellers, or build new homes on Jewish-owned land (including property purchased in 1807). The Supreme Court has ruled that for “security” reasons there is no obligation to return property to its original Jewish owners, thereby leaving Hebron residents even less secure.
Little more than a year ago eight families were forcibly evicted from a building purchased for the community by a New York businessman whose parents and grandparents had lived in Hebron. A community representative noted bitterly that when Abraham purchased Machpelah “there was no Supreme Court, Attorney General or government to take it from him.”
When Prime Minister Netanyahu recently announced his intention to “refurbish Israeli heritage sites,” Hebron was conspicuously omitted. (Imagine a list of American heritage sites that excluded Plymouth or Gettysburg.) Under intense political pressure, he relented and added the Machpelah shrine.
But the struggle over Hebron…continues. Foreign countries and the European Union have provided millions of dollars for Arab housing that will flank the only road linking Hebron and Kiryat Arba, posing a severe security danger to Jewish residents of both communities. But the Israeli government has declined even to replace a shredded tarpaulin covering the main courtyard of Machpelah, a Jewish prayer site, with a permanent roof lest Muslims take offense.
Whenever there is discussion about which settlements will remain part of Israel in any peace agreement Hebron is omitted. Why? Because it is the flash point for the continuing struggle over Zionist legitimacy. Hebron Jews are routinely demonized as Jewish “fanatics” or “zealots” by their fanatical and zealous secular opponents.
Should Hebron once again become Judenrein, religious Zionists—and the Jewish people—will lose a vital living source of memory and identity. That is sufficient reason for secular Zionists to want to excise it from the Jewish state.
Not long before his incapacitating stroke in 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked a journalist: “Can you conceive that one day Jews will not live in Hebron?… If we were a normal nation, when a visitor arrived here we would take him not to Yad Vashem but, rather, to Hebron. We’d take him to where our roots are.… No other people has anything like it.”
Settling the Land of Israel—in Hebron no less than Tel Aviv—has always defined Zionism. But a nation that forgets its heritage relinquishes its primary source of spiritual sustenance. Indeed, according to the Baal Shem Tov, the 18th century founder of Hassidism, forgetfulness “leads to exile.” That is why, every Passover, Jews remember their liberation from slavery. Hebron is the most tenacious community of Jewish memory in Israel. Should it be abandoned, Zionism itself would slide into Jewish exile.
(Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Hebron Jews:
Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel[200]).)
A RECIPE FOR PEACE
Conrad Black
National Post, April 16, 2011
There is something faintly nostalgic about former U.S. national security advisor Brent Scowcroft’s Financial Times op-ed…calling for Barack Obama to “broker a new Mideast Peace.” The man, the media and the message are all, as Hillary Clinton would say, “so yesterday.” It’s a little like watching vintage films from the era when American leaders were first “brokering peace” in the Mideast, such as American Graffiti or The Graduate.
Brent Scowcroft was the U.S. national security advisor to President Gerald Ford, and he returned to the post under President George H.W. Bush. He is a distinguished foreign-policy and strategic-policy specialist, but has never been considered overly original, a reputation that will not be shaken by his new suggestion.
The Financial Times is a justly respected newspaper, but its editorial line is always the urbane, gentlemanly, British impulse to speak softly, move in increments, generally advance the conventional wisdom; and don’t stretch the imagination, catch a cold thinking outside the box, or get seriously riled up over anything short of a genuine outrage. In this case, however, the conventional wisdom is nonsense. The counsel for President Obama to “broker peace” is on par with Pakistani President Musharraf ‘s advice to Tony Blair to “do Palestine.” The Palestinians could have peace with Israel tomorrow if they wanted it.
In any event, Barack Obama is not trusted by Israel. His chief initiative in the area to date has been to deny the existence of the agreement George W. Bush made with Ariel Sharon, whereby Israel would vacate Gaza, would dismantle some West Bank settlements, and would confine extensions of other settlements in contested areas to natural population growth. (The world’s obsession with settlement abandonment as the key to peace—which Obama seems to share—is foolish: If Israel dismantled every settlement, or even turned them over for occupation by returning Palestinians, a new pretext to keep the pot boiling would be devised.…)
Always, it is claimed that a return to the 1967 borders is the basis of peace, although those borders would leave Israel nine miles wide on its Mediterranean shore, and the West Bank and Gaza sections of Palestine separated by 50 miles. The Arabs effectively had those borders, under the control of Jordan and Egypt, in 1967. Yet they went to war and lost—events that would not normally be expected to generate reverence for the status quo ante.
The facts, which must be perfectly well-known to Brent Scowcroft, are that it is impossible to deal with the Palestinians while Hamas controls Gaza and the PLO the West Bank; that it is impossible to broker anything while the surrounding Arab powers are in turmoil; that this U.S. administration is not taken seriously by anybody in the area after the denial of the Bush-era settlements arrangement and the failure of its Iran policy; and the solution, when the Palestinians are ready, has, as Scowcroft himself notes, largely been identified already.
There will have to be some exchanges of territory, to make Israel wider between the Mediterranean and the West Bank. Scowcroft envisions a united Jerusalem serving as the capital of both countries. I don’t think so; I think sideby-side Jerusalems, with the Arabs controlling their area beyond Orient House and a special arrangement and assured access to designated holy sites for all faiths throughout both countries. The Palestinian right of return would be to Palestine, and this fairy tale of one big happy Holy Land where all would be brothers, but in fact the Muslims would outnumber the Jews and expel or massacre them yet again, should finally have a silver stake driven through its heart.
A clairvoyant is not required to see that this is where it will end up. Nor is one required to see that, as Arab populations have begun to stop being distracted by the red herring of Israel and have focused on the misgovernment from which they have suffered, no Israeli flags have been burned nor Palestinian flags waved about by non-Palestinians.
Israel is absolutely legitimate as a Jewish state, and was so constituted by the unanimous permanent members of the United Nations Security Counsel.… The borders have been open to legitimate debate. But when the Palestinians determine that they will no longer be used as cannon-fodder, a cause celebre that enables the leaders of the Muslim powers to misgovern, oppress and pillage their countries, and deflect discontent by waving the bloody shirt of Palestine, the borders could be quickly established along the lines mentioned. If the Palestinians could draw the lesson of the spectacular economic growth of the West Bank, which Israel has assisted, and where Prime Minister Salam Fayyad favours peace and is the first Palestinian leader whose CV does not contain a long stint as an extremist or terrorist; and of the contrast with the collapsed economy in Gaza, which has happily served as a launch-site for rockets aimed at Israeli civilians since Sharon vacated it; then peace would be imminent.
For a sensible and experienced man such as Brent Scowcroft to suggest that President Obama is in any position to broker anything in a Middle East where the Arab governments are fighting for their lives with their own people and Hamas is still trying to kill all the Jews, is disconcerting. Even Richard Goldstone, the token anti-Israel Jew recruited by the United Nations to write a smear job on Israel’s hugely provoked reprisals against Gaza, has recanted his fraudulent report.
Israel has its faults, but it is a legitimate Jewish state, a successful society of laws and enterprise. The Palestinians have grievances, but a remedy is at hand. Israel will take half a loaf. If Palestine would also, there would be peace. But it won’t happen until it is clear what Egypt, Syria and Lebanon will look like, and whether anything will be done to curb the baleful influence in the area of Iran. If he was minded to, President Obama could do something about that, but it isn’t a matter of brokerage and there is no sign of it coming.
