The leader of the Fatah Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas, insists that Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem be denied the right to build for their needs. On the one hand, this reminds me of earlier efforts, during the 20th century, to deprive Jews of their rights, which was carried out under the Nuremberg laws.
Here is part of a Wikipedia article on the Nuremberg laws that the Nazis enacted.
"The Nuremberg Laws or Nürnberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism. There was a rapid growth in German legislation directed at Jews.
The lack of a clear legal method of defining who was Jewish had, however, allowed some Jews to escape some forms of discrimination aimed at them. The enactment of laws identifying who was Jewish made it easier for the Nazis to enforce legislation restricting the basic rights of German Jews.
The Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood".[1] These laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans.[2]
The Nuremberg Laws also included a ban on sexual intercourse between people defined as "Jews" and non-Jewish Germans and prevented "Jews" from participating in German civic life. These laws were, to some extent, an attempt to return the Jews of 20th century Germany to the position that Jews had held before their emancipation in the 19th century.
The laws were a legal embodiment of an already existing anti-Jewish boycott movement. See Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses."
Today, there is an anti-Jewish boycott movement, known as the BDS movement, which is carried out by antisemites throughout the world, and is directed against the Jewish state.
In areas controlled by Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority, it is against the law for Jews to buy or rent property. Abbas has stated many times that no Jew will be allowed to live in a Palestinian state under his control.In areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, it is a capital offense to sell land to a Jew -- somebody convicted of selling land to a Jew is subject to the death penalty.
Abbas' demand that the Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and even in Israel's capital city in the northern, southern, and eastern parts of the city, not be permitted to build can be viewed as a continuation, in a lighter way, of the Nuremberg laws that the Nazis enacted. For example, while an Arab living in Jerusalem can exercise his property rights, according to Abbas a Jew may not. If Jews are living in an area that was conquered and occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan from 1948-1967, Abbas wants the Jews to not be permitted to build any extensions to their homes, not to build playgrounds for the kids, not to build prompt care medical facilities for their children, not to build any kindergardens or classrooms of any kind, not to build any security facilities such as fences or bomb shelters, not to be able to build anything at all that they need.
In a different analogy, it's as if he wants the Jews to be living in dhimmitude, with their rights and freedoms limited as if they were conquered by the Palestinian Arab Muslims. In that analogy, the jizya payment corresponds to the demand that Israel do revenue-sharing with the hostile regime, which soon will be a Hamas-Fatah regime. The humiliation that accompanies dhimmitude will come from the UN. And best of all from Abbas' point of view, none of the dhimmitude will be imposed by a conquering force, but will be done voluntarily by the Jews' own government, according to the demands of Abbas. Self-imposed dhimmitude.
Some of the humiliation specific to this may have already begun. For example, President Barack Hussein Obama has already declared that it is illegal for Jews to build anything at all in lands that were conquered and occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan from 1948 to 1967. What is the precedent for this? Is it Nuremberg Lite, or is it Dhimmitude?
This is very different from domestic law, which has to actually be passed by Congress. For international law, it's different, it doesn't have to be legislation actually passed by a body elected by the governed. Apparently you just have to say "it's international law", and presto, it's law. That's what Obama did -- he proclaimed it to be international law, citing nothing at all.
This seems to be Obama's giving his retroactive blessing to the defunct 1948-1967 occupation by Transjordan (which renamed itself Jordan after this conquest), and the defunct expulsion of the Jews by Jordan after some Jordanian massacres (e.g, in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem). That exile ended, but can it be that in the mind of Obama, that horror, in which the Jews were forced into exile and were banned from their ancestral homeland in Judea, Samaria, and northern, southern, and eastern Jerusalem, and had their synagogues destroyed, and holy gravestones turned into latrines for the Jordanian forces, can have a rebirth of sorts through this proposed imposition of disabilities on the Jews? And the remarkable thing is that it won't be forced upon the Jews by foreigners, but it is supposed to be forced upon the Jews by their own government of Israel.
Is this a version of Nuremberg Lite law, or is it a version of the law of Dhimmitude?
Showing posts with label Islam jihad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam jihad. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Arab leaders urged Palestinians to leave
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote an article recently that was published as an op-ed piece by The New York Times. One of his distortions was that he neglected to point out that Israel accepted the UN partition plan, but the Arab states did not, and the Palestinian leadership did not. After the British pull-out from the land, Israel declared itself an independent state, and the Arab League states declared war on Israel and threatened genocide. The media today do not mention that May 15, the Naqba Day, is the anniversary of the Arab League's threat of genocide: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." -- Arab League Sec. Gen. Azzam Pasha, May 15, 1948, the day five Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel. [Source: Myths and Facts 1982, edited by Davis and Decter.]
To facilitate this genocide, without causing casualties among the Palestinians, the Arab leaders urged Palestinians to leave.
The organization Stand With Us has provided a collection of quotations from Arab and independent sources documenting that Arab leaders urged Palestinian Arabs to leave, which can be found at:
http://www.standwithus.com/pdfs/flyers/biglies06.pdf
"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem."--- Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph September 6, 1948 (sae appeared in The London Telegraph, August 1948).
"The most potent factor [in the flight of Palestinians] was the announcements made over the air by the Arab-Palestinian Higher Executive, urging all Haifa Arabs to quit... It was clearly intimated that Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades." -- London Economist October 2, 1948.
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem." -- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949.
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." -- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948 (quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz).
"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa." -- Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, page 25.
"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war." -- General John Glubb [commander of the invading military forces from the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan], The London Daily Mail, August 12, 1948.
...
"The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees." -- The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, February 19, 1949.
Source of above quotes: BIG LIES: Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel, by David Meir-Levi.
Read the rest. One quote is especially illuminating, because it comes from Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) himself, whose op-ed in The New York Times suggests that he seems to have forgotten or deliberately omitted what he said earlier. "Abu Mazen Charges that the Arab States Are the Cause of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" (Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2003): "Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote an article in March 1976 in Falastin al-Thawra, the official journal of the PLO in Beirut: 'The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zioinist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe."
Source: BIG LIES: Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel, by David Meir-Levi.
To facilitate this genocide, without causing casualties among the Palestinians, the Arab leaders urged Palestinians to leave.
The organization Stand With Us has provided a collection of quotations from Arab and independent sources documenting that Arab leaders urged Palestinian Arabs to leave, which can be found at:
http://www.standwithus.com/pdfs/flyers/biglies06.pdf
"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem."--- Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph September 6, 1948 (sae appeared in The London Telegraph, August 1948).
"The most potent factor [in the flight of Palestinians] was the announcements made over the air by the Arab-Palestinian Higher Executive, urging all Haifa Arabs to quit... It was clearly intimated that Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades." -- London Economist October 2, 1948.
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem." -- Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949.
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." -- Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948 (quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz).
"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa." -- Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, page 25.
"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war." -- General John Glubb [commander of the invading military forces from the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan], The London Daily Mail, August 12, 1948.
...
"The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees." -- The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, February 19, 1949.
Source of above quotes: BIG LIES: Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel, by David Meir-Levi.
Read the rest. One quote is especially illuminating, because it comes from Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) himself, whose op-ed in The New York Times suggests that he seems to have forgotten or deliberately omitted what he said earlier. "Abu Mazen Charges that the Arab States Are the Cause of the Palestinian Refugee Problem" (Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2003): "Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote an article in March 1976 in Falastin al-Thawra, the official journal of the PLO in Beirut: 'The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zioinist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe."
Source: BIG LIES: Demolishing the Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel, by David Meir-Levi.
Monday, May 16, 2011
what peace means for Israel
On Feb. 11, 1980, Mahmud Abbas' mentor, then PLO-Chairman Yasir Arafat, explained to the Caracas, Venezuela newspaper El Mundo what peace means to him and his cohorts: "Peace for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations."
Likewise, the Fatah constitution calls for the destruction of Israel.
.
Similarly, Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel. For Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, peace means the end of the Dar al Harb, and the entire world becomes the Dar al Islam with everyone ruled by Sharia. There is no place in Hamas' concept of "peace" for the existence of Israel, and they have shown by their terrorist actions in bombing buses full of women shopping during the holidays that they are genocidal. They quote their scripture calling for genocide against the Jews, and their actions show that they mean it.
Recently, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained what peace means to Israel, giving a vision of peace held by a majority of Israelis. The requirements for peace, according to the Israelis, are:
1. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jews.
2. Any peace agreement with the Palestinians should end the conflict and all future Palestinian claims on land.
3. The Arab refugee problem must be solved outside of Israel's borders. No Arab refugees in Israeli territory.
4. A Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized, and a peace treaty must safeguard Israel's security. This must include a continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.
5. The settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel. Jerusalem will remain the united, undivided capital of Israel.
Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu also said that the majority of Israeli were united in their belief that Israel's borders must be defended, that the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan must be kept intact, and Iran's nuclear weapons program must be kept in check.
The reasons for these should be obvious.
First, the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. This is the first step toward ending the hatred and judeophobic incitement that has been going on among the Palestinians, as well as in the Arab world, and as well in the Muslim world, for a long time. Their leaders have spread the lie that the Jews have no historic connection with the Land of Israel. They have spread the lie that there is no Jewish people. Although international bodies have long called for a Jewish state, the leaders of the Palestinians have sought to abort the present Jewish state, and to even pretend that a Jewish state doesn't exist, in order to better set the stage and arrange excuses for killing the Jewish state. This is now recognized by Israelis as a key reason why past efforts at peace have failed: because the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
Secondly, a peace agreement must end the conflict, and terminate all territorial claims. When Arafat met with Israeli leaders at the White House Rose Garden, and promised peace, he also went before the Arabs and explained, in Arabic, that this was like the Treaty of Hudaybiya. That meant to them that it was a temporary deal, to allow the Arabs to strengthen themselves in preparation for future war and terrorism. It was merely a hudna. Hamas wants a hudna, in order to consolidate their gains, to prepare themselves for future war against Israel, so that they can better choose their time for their next attack. Hamas' goal is the destruction of Israel, and Israel of course does not share that goal. So it has no reason to cooperate with Hamas' efforts to realize that goal, including a hudna. Israelis want a peace agreement to end the conflict, not merely to give Hamas (or Fatah for that matter) time to build armaments for a more deadly war against Israel in the future.
Thirdly, the Arab "refugee" problem must be solved outside Israel's borders. I put "refugee" in quotes, because a special definition is used for refugees here to include people who have never set foot in Israel. These are descendants of refugees, and descendants of descendants, and descendants of descendants of refugees. They have been brutalized for generations by the Arab states, to have warriors to meet their goal of destroying Israel. If these millions of hostile Arabs were allowed into Israel, they would produce a civil war that would make Lebanon's civil war seem a frolic by comparison. They would also wage the jihad of the womb, and before long Israel would cease to exist as the Jewish state, and would cease to exist as any functioning state. This just becomes another method to destroy the Jewish state. Destroying Israel may have been Arafat's definition of "peace", but it is in fact completely contrary to the aspirations, rights and needs of Israelis. What sort of "peace" would this give -- the peace of the graveyard? It's not for Israel.
Fourth, there needs to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, there need to be safeguards for Israel's security, and there needs to be an continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River. Tawfik Hamad wrote about the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world, including the Arab world, and including the Palestinian Arabs. He wrote: "Pro-Palestinian Muslim demonstrators across the world repeatedly use the chant 'Khyber Khyber Ya Yahood.. Gaish Muhammad Sawfa Yaood,' which reminds the Jews that the army of Muhammad is coming back for a repeat of what was done to the Jewish Khyber tribe. According to authentic Islamic history books, the Islamic army, let by Muhammad, annihilated the Jewish tribe of Khyber, raping its women and killing all its men." It will take generations of re-education to repair the damage done by the continual anti-Jewish incitement by the Palestinian leaders, and to repair the damage done by the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. The de-nazification will take generations, if it ever gets done. Until that time, if it ever gets done, Israelis need to be safe. So there has to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, and safeguards for Israel's security. The examples of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and of Hizbollah in Lebanon, show the danger of allowing a hostile entity to receive smuggled rockets and missiles, which they will launch against Israelis. So of course Israel has to maintain a military presence along the Jordan River, to prevent weapons, missiles, and mujahadeen from reaching a hostile entity in Israel's heartland, in Judea and Samaria. And, of course, to also be able to put up a defense in case there is conventional war due to some regime change in the Arab states to the east of Israel.As the revolts in Arab states have shown, no regime can be assumed to be invulnerable to revolution and regime change.
Fifth, the settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel, and united Jerusalem, undivided, will remain Israel's capital. The settlement blocs are population centers in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, where Jewish kings ruled and where Jewish prophets gave their immortal messages. I hear of the inalienable rights of the Palestinians, of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, and President Obama has reminded everyone of the needs of the people of Gaza. But, maybe I missed it, but I have never heard President Obama recognize that the 500,000 Jews living in what he calls "settlements" -- in Judea and Samaria, and in northern, southern, and eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem -- are also people, with their own inalienable rights, legitimate aspirations, and needs. Those rights, aspirations, and needs do not include being massacred, being expelled from their homes and communities, nor being denied basic freedoms such as having property rights and the right to build for their needs. As President George W. Bush understood, in a letter to then-prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon, the U.S. expects Israel to insist on recognizing that history has produced centers of Jewish population in the land once occupied for 18 years -- 1948-1967 -- by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, and that Israel will insist on keeping that territory. Israel will not abandon 500,000 of its citizens to the fate that would be dealt them by the ethnic cleansers.
As for Jerusalem, as everyone knows, the Muslim prays toward Mecca, while the Jew prays toward Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3000 years, since King David made it his capital city. As long as Jerusalem is under the sovereignty of Israel, people of all faiths will continue to be able to exercise freedom of religion, including the right to make pilgrimage to holy places of Jerusalem. But when it was occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan for 18 years, Jewish synagogues were destroyed, the Jews were not allowed to visit the Temple Mount, nor allowed to visit the Western Wall, and holy gravestones were taken by Jordanian soldiers and used for latrines. Under Israeli sovereignty, all the residents of Jerusalem can live where they wish, and can build on their property. But under the laws of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, it is a capital offense -- punishable by death -- to sell land to a Jew. Holy Jerusalem is no place where such bigotry can be allowed to flourish, and to avoid that situation of anti-Jewish bigotry, of destroying synagogues, of desecrating tombstones, of preventing pilgrimages to holy places, Israel must continue to have sovereignty over united, undivided Jerusalem.
Likewise, the Fatah constitution calls for the destruction of Israel.
.
Similarly, Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel. For Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, peace means the end of the Dar al Harb, and the entire world becomes the Dar al Islam with everyone ruled by Sharia. There is no place in Hamas' concept of "peace" for the existence of Israel, and they have shown by their terrorist actions in bombing buses full of women shopping during the holidays that they are genocidal. They quote their scripture calling for genocide against the Jews, and their actions show that they mean it.
Recently, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained what peace means to Israel, giving a vision of peace held by a majority of Israelis. The requirements for peace, according to the Israelis, are:
1. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jews.
2. Any peace agreement with the Palestinians should end the conflict and all future Palestinian claims on land.
3. The Arab refugee problem must be solved outside of Israel's borders. No Arab refugees in Israeli territory.
4. A Palestinian state will have to be demilitarized, and a peace treaty must safeguard Israel's security. This must include a continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River.
5. The settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel. Jerusalem will remain the united, undivided capital of Israel.
Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu also said that the majority of Israeli were united in their belief that Israel's borders must be defended, that the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan must be kept intact, and Iran's nuclear weapons program must be kept in check.
The reasons for these should be obvious.
First, the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. This is the first step toward ending the hatred and judeophobic incitement that has been going on among the Palestinians, as well as in the Arab world, and as well in the Muslim world, for a long time. Their leaders have spread the lie that the Jews have no historic connection with the Land of Israel. They have spread the lie that there is no Jewish people. Although international bodies have long called for a Jewish state, the leaders of the Palestinians have sought to abort the present Jewish state, and to even pretend that a Jewish state doesn't exist, in order to better set the stage and arrange excuses for killing the Jewish state. This is now recognized by Israelis as a key reason why past efforts at peace have failed: because the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
Secondly, a peace agreement must end the conflict, and terminate all territorial claims. When Arafat met with Israeli leaders at the White House Rose Garden, and promised peace, he also went before the Arabs and explained, in Arabic, that this was like the Treaty of Hudaybiya. That meant to them that it was a temporary deal, to allow the Arabs to strengthen themselves in preparation for future war and terrorism. It was merely a hudna. Hamas wants a hudna, in order to consolidate their gains, to prepare themselves for future war against Israel, so that they can better choose their time for their next attack. Hamas' goal is the destruction of Israel, and Israel of course does not share that goal. So it has no reason to cooperate with Hamas' efforts to realize that goal, including a hudna. Israelis want a peace agreement to end the conflict, not merely to give Hamas (or Fatah for that matter) time to build armaments for a more deadly war against Israel in the future.
Thirdly, the Arab "refugee" problem must be solved outside Israel's borders. I put "refugee" in quotes, because a special definition is used for refugees here to include people who have never set foot in Israel. These are descendants of refugees, and descendants of descendants, and descendants of descendants of refugees. They have been brutalized for generations by the Arab states, to have warriors to meet their goal of destroying Israel. If these millions of hostile Arabs were allowed into Israel, they would produce a civil war that would make Lebanon's civil war seem a frolic by comparison. They would also wage the jihad of the womb, and before long Israel would cease to exist as the Jewish state, and would cease to exist as any functioning state. This just becomes another method to destroy the Jewish state. Destroying Israel may have been Arafat's definition of "peace", but it is in fact completely contrary to the aspirations, rights and needs of Israelis. What sort of "peace" would this give -- the peace of the graveyard? It's not for Israel.
Fourth, there needs to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, there need to be safeguards for Israel's security, and there needs to be an continued Israeli military presence along the Jordan River. Tawfik Hamad wrote about the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world, including the Arab world, and including the Palestinian Arabs. He wrote: "Pro-Palestinian Muslim demonstrators across the world repeatedly use the chant 'Khyber Khyber Ya Yahood.. Gaish Muhammad Sawfa Yaood,' which reminds the Jews that the army of Muhammad is coming back for a repeat of what was done to the Jewish Khyber tribe. According to authentic Islamic history books, the Islamic army, let by Muhammad, annihilated the Jewish tribe of Khyber, raping its women and killing all its men." It will take generations of re-education to repair the damage done by the continual anti-Jewish incitement by the Palestinian leaders, and to repair the damage done by the Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. The de-nazification will take generations, if it ever gets done. Until that time, if it ever gets done, Israelis need to be safe. So there has to be demilitarization of a Palestinian state, and safeguards for Israel's security. The examples of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and of Hizbollah in Lebanon, show the danger of allowing a hostile entity to receive smuggled rockets and missiles, which they will launch against Israelis. So of course Israel has to maintain a military presence along the Jordan River, to prevent weapons, missiles, and mujahadeen from reaching a hostile entity in Israel's heartland, in Judea and Samaria. And, of course, to also be able to put up a defense in case there is conventional war due to some regime change in the Arab states to the east of Israel.As the revolts in Arab states have shown, no regime can be assumed to be invulnerable to revolution and regime change.
Fifth, the settlement blocs will remain within the state of Israel, and united Jerusalem, undivided, will remain Israel's capital. The settlement blocs are population centers in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, where Jewish kings ruled and where Jewish prophets gave their immortal messages. I hear of the inalienable rights of the Palestinians, of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, and President Obama has reminded everyone of the needs of the people of Gaza. But, maybe I missed it, but I have never heard President Obama recognize that the 500,000 Jews living in what he calls "settlements" -- in Judea and Samaria, and in northern, southern, and eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem -- are also people, with their own inalienable rights, legitimate aspirations, and needs. Those rights, aspirations, and needs do not include being massacred, being expelled from their homes and communities, nor being denied basic freedoms such as having property rights and the right to build for their needs. As President George W. Bush understood, in a letter to then-prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon, the U.S. expects Israel to insist on recognizing that history has produced centers of Jewish population in the land once occupied for 18 years -- 1948-1967 -- by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, and that Israel will insist on keeping that territory. Israel will not abandon 500,000 of its citizens to the fate that would be dealt them by the ethnic cleansers.
As for Jerusalem, as everyone knows, the Muslim prays toward Mecca, while the Jew prays toward Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3000 years, since King David made it his capital city. As long as Jerusalem is under the sovereignty of Israel, people of all faiths will continue to be able to exercise freedom of religion, including the right to make pilgrimage to holy places of Jerusalem. But when it was occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan for 18 years, Jewish synagogues were destroyed, the Jews were not allowed to visit the Temple Mount, nor allowed to visit the Western Wall, and holy gravestones were taken by Jordanian soldiers and used for latrines. Under Israeli sovereignty, all the residents of Jerusalem can live where they wish, and can build on their property. But under the laws of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, it is a capital offense -- punishable by death -- to sell land to a Jew. Holy Jerusalem is no place where such bigotry can be allowed to flourish, and to avoid that situation of anti-Jewish bigotry, of destroying synagogues, of desecrating tombstones, of preventing pilgrimages to holy places, Israel must continue to have sovereignty over united, undivided Jerusalem.
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