Hat tip Arutz Sheva
Orange County Rabbi Dov Fischer is a friend and associate who does fabulous work in Orange County. In this op-ed with Arutz Sheva, Rabbi Fischer sounds off on the UN, our abstention in the Israel resolution, J Street and other issues.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19954
Well stated, Rabbi. There is plenty of shame to go around. Hopefully, J Street is now exposed as an enemy of Israel. Any organization supported by George Soros cannot be anything else. As a gentile, I must say that American Jews who consider themselves supporters of Israel and President Obama must be examining themselves. It is clear that Obama has nothing but hostility for Israel. While there are some Democrats like Charles Schumer who support Israel, it is also clear that it is the Republican party that supports the Jewish state. Schumer himself must be wondering how much influence he has held with the Obama administration.
No doubt Donald Trump will be a much greater friend to Israel than this current administration. I also hope he will take a big first step toward the eventual demise of the UN by dramatically reducing our funding. This poisonous organization is not only dangerous to Israel but the US as well.
January 20 cannot come fast enough.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
The UN resolution was perfectly reasonable and long overdue. Israel has no legal or moral right to build settlements in territory is seized by military occupation. To imply that those who expect Israel to respect legal norms therefore want Israel destroyed are on no better a foundation than those who indulge the inane chant "From the river to the sea..."
I suggest you re-read the section in "War and Remembrance" where a Polish resistance outfit launches an attack on German settlements in occupied Poland. The term "lebensraum" is tainted for a reason.
You can call yourself a millionaire, but it doesn't put a dime in your pocket.
Israel exists as an internationally recognized nation because of a UN resolution on the disposition of the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine. You could say, the Zionists found a vehicle to get what they want without negotiating with the Palestinians. Not that the Palestinians then, or the Netanyahu cabinet now, show any interest whatsoever in negotiating. The West Bank and Gaza are not "disputed territories" except in the sense that the Sudetenland became a disputed territory when the German regime decided they wanted it.
It is not Israel's fault that the borders are somewhat different than initially envisioned... that was done by the armies of Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, and of course the fortunes of war when they lost. But, it was part of the resolution that created a Jewish state that there would also be a state for all the non-Jewish Arabs who had already been living there. What Israel held before June 1967 was Israeli territory. The rest was taken by military occupation. The application of the usual laws of war are clear, and Israel has no more legal basis to settle civilians there than Germany had to settle German farmers in Poland.
Now, if Israel had been really smart -- and I must admit I only thought of this with the benefit of many years of 20/20 hindsight -- Israel would have taken the initiative in 1967 to announce that they were going to implement the UN resolution, which had been blocked by the unlawful occupation by Jordan and Egypt, and would sponsor a process for the Palestinian State to be formed, under the protection of the Israeli army. But nobody thought of that at the time.
Your last suggestion sounds good and the Arabs could have accepted the UN idea in 1948 (the Israelis did).
As for occupied territory, let's face it: When you start a war of conquest and lose, you often lose territory yourself. Just ask the Germans. Should Germany demand that they get back East Prussia or Breslau or Stettin?
And don't be fooled by the term, Palestine". If you called someone a Palestinian in the early 20th century you could just as easily been referring to a Jew as an Arab, right? And just when did Arabs start calling themselves "Palestinians"? In the 1960s under the leadership of Arafat, if I am not mistaken.
I don't, and the UN resolution does not, question Israel's right to occupy the territory on which the state was founded after Ralph Bunched banged enough heads together to hammer out an armistice in 1948. The UN resolution, in calling upon all nations to distinguish between the territory of Israel, and the territory of a future Palestinian state, has explicitly rejected all that "from the river to the sea" fantasy.
One problem with this "war of conquest" line is that the Arab population of the former British Mandate of Palestine were not the ones who primarily fought against Israel. They were told by the armies of several neighboring countries to leave their homes so that the armies could drive the Jews into the sea, and then they would be allowed back. We know how that worked out. So, although they have been used, and sometimes volunteered to be used, by these surrounding nations, Israel too the territory from Jordan and Egypt, not from those Arabs who for lack of any other term, came to call themselves Palestinians. What should they have called themselves? The West Bank Arab Republic?
One could argue that the German loss of territory in eastern Europe was the result of Soviet imperialism, demanding territory from Poland to be compensated at the expense of Germany, but no, after fifty years, I don't favor uprooting people all over again to try to redraw the map.
If Israel could successfully incorporate the West Bank and Gaza into Israel, as full voting citizens with full rights of citizenship, that might not be a bad solution. I've heard from a man now a U.S. citizen, who fought in the 1967 war, that he met a lot of west bank Arabs who said they looked forward to being part of Israel, which looked like peace and prosperity and opportunity to them. But I don't think most Israelis want that now.
The conflict is not going away until the stateless Arab people of the former British mandate have a stable national economy and political leadership. Eventually, they will find trading with Israel a better bet than getting entangled in the affairs of Iraq.
The problem is that they have been indoctrinated into wanting it all. For the past decade I have personally seen and heard US-based Arabs chanting, "from the river to the sea....".
Yes Gary, nobody who reads your site could have missed that. But its not what the UN resoultion calls for.
Palestinians are actually a rather diverse people. By and large, if most of them had a homeland with secure borders in which to build an economy, they wouldn't have time to go bomb buses in Israel. Some would still try, but they would have less support, less ability to fade into the woodwork, and they would be fewer over time. Sometimes, the best course is to concede what is just, and then firmly refuse to give more.
Do you how many concessions the Israelis have given hoping for peace? What about Gaza?
Post a Comment