by Alex Rose
What he should have done was quote an expert historian to prove Jewish indigenous rights to Israel, but he may not believe in them.
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PM Lapid before taking off to New York for UN General Assembly Avi Ohayon/GPO |
"They want an Israeli politics without traditional Judaism" [Yoram Hazony]
"Rabbis call on Lapid to resign as prime minister", [Israel National News 28/09/2022]
"If we want a Jewish state, Lapid is not the answer" by MK Simcha Rothman[Israel National News 28/09/2022
There
are homo sapiens who above all believe in themselves. Typically, they
are sure of themselves, full of arrogance, irrational, ignore protocol,
ignore established procedures or laws and display certainty in their
actions.
The actions of the interim prime minister of
Israel conform to the above, giving rise to the very question, "Who's
Against a Two-State Solution?" As far back as July 20, 2010, it was
raised by Ephraim Karsh in Jewish Ideas Daily and then repeated
in The Tikvah Fund. Apparently, President Barack Obama had used the
words, "Two states, living side by side in peace and security" as the
solution to the century-long conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs
in the Middle East.
Karsh's paper commences around April 1920
when the newly formed League of Nations appointed Britain as the
mandatory power in Palestine, who were committed via the Balfour
Declaration to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in
Palestine.
Because they were repeatedly confronted by violent
Arab opposition despite appeasement, on March 1921, and in order to
reward the Hashemites for their help in WWI, they severed the vast and
sparsely populated territory east of the Jordan River [Transjordan] from
the prospective Jewish national home and made Abdullah, the emir of
Mecca, its effective ruler.
This action, which some historians
regarded as a betrayal, resulted in 2 British White Papers in 1922 and
1930 respectively, which limited Jewish immigration to Palestine and
imposed harsh restrictions on land sales to Jews.
Notwithstanding
this major concession, the violence continued, resulting in a great
reward to the Arabs on July, 1937 when a British commission of enquiry,
headed by Lord Peel, recommended repudiating the terms of the mandate
altogether. Instead the infamous two-state "solution" was born, the
partitioning of what was left of the Palestine promised to Jews, this
after lopping off Jordan, into an Arab state [85%] and a Jewish state, a
miserly 15%. The commission had the nerve to say that "Half a loaf is
better than none" as if each party received 50%.
But to no avail.
Surprisingly, the Zionist leadership gave the plan its half-hearted
support while Arab governments and the Arab leadership in Palestine
[with the sole exception of Abdullah] dismissed it out of hand. Given
Churchill's favorable acknowledgement of Israel's position, the Jewish
positive response was less than comprehensible. Ben Gurion, however, was
desperate for a place that would welcome Holocaust survivors and needed
a state at any price.
Churchill had said, "It is manifestly right
that the Jews , who are scattered all over the world should have a
national centre and a national home, where some of them may be reunited,
and where else but in Palestine, with which for 3,000 years they have
been intimately and profoundly associated?" And no such verbiage about
the Arabs or Palestinian Arabs!!
Further the same happened in
November 1947, when shortly prior to the expiration of the British
mandate, the UN General Assembly voted to partition 'Palestine'.
However, on this occasion there was no acceptance of it by the Arab
nations, who rejected it outright, while the Arab violence backfired.
Neither
Egypt nor Jordan permitted Palestinian Arab self-determination -
because they did not see the Arabs living in Palestine as a people - in
the parts of Palestine they occupied during the 1948 war. Jordan annexed
the 'West Bank' in April 1950, while Egypt kept the Gaza Strip under
oppressive military rule. Following the conquest of these territories by
Israel during the Six Day war, their political future would be
determined on the basis of UN Resolution 242.
The PLO was
established in 1964 due to the initiative of Egypt's President Gamal
Abdel Nasser. During October 1974, the Arab League designated it as the
"sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,," a new
designation, following which PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat became the 1st
non-state leader ever to address the UN General Assembly.
In1993,
Israel's Labor Government signed the "Oslo Accords" providing for
Palestinian Arab self-rule in two out of three areas of the 'West Bank'
(96% of the Palestinian Arabs live in those two areas of Judea and
Samaria and the rest were free to move there instead of staying in Area C
where all the Jjewish population of the 'West Bank' lives) and the
entire Gaza Strip for a transitional period not to exceed 5 years.
During this period, the parties were committed to negotiate a permanent
settlement.
At the American convened peace summit in Camp David on
July, 2000, then Israeli PM Ehud Barak, of his own volition, offered
Arafat a complete end to the Israeli presence, ceding virtually the
entire territory of the 'West Bank' and the Gaza Strip including a
breathtaking concession with respect to Jerusalem The response? War, at a
level of local violence unmatched in scope and intensity since the
attempt to abort the creation of a Jewish state in 1948.
In a
televised speech on May15,2005, Abbas described the establishment of
Israel as an unprecedented historic injustice and vowed his unwavering
resolve never to accept it
Two and a half years later, at a US
sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, he rejected then PM's Ehud
Olmert's proposal of a Palestinian Arab state in 97% of the 'West Bank'
and the entire Gaza Strip. He also categorically dismissed the request
to recognize Israel as a Jewish state alongside the proposed Palestinian
Arab state. Instead, he demanded a full implementation of the "right of
return," suicide for Israel as it includes the millions born after the
War of Independence.
Ephraim Karsh asks the question, "But is
there in fact a fundamental distinction between Hamas and Fatah when it
comes to a two-state solution?" and answers "Neither faction formally
accepts Israel's right to exist; both are formally committed to its
eventual destruction." Professor Ephraim Karsh's conclusion is a
reflection of his deep intellect.
"For the lesson of history
remains: so long as things on the Arab side are permitted, or
encouraged, to remain as they are, there will be no two-state solution,
and therefore no solution at all."
In Yoram Hazony's January 1997 masterpiece, "The Zionist Idea And its Enemies", we do find a solution.
With
the signing of the Oslo -PLO agreements in 1993, Israel was suddenly
inundated by cultural artifacts intended to flaunt a new openness. But
in the wake of the Nov. 4, 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin by a fanatic from the religious community who had no support
group, all the fantasizing about a fraternal and entertaining cultural
war had quickly dissolved.
This left the entire Jewish people
suddenly finding themselves staring into the immediate future. It was as
if the war with Arafat had been replaced by another very real war.
"With
few exceptions, the Left intelligentsia, both in Israel and abroad,
took the assassination as the ultimate proof of everything it had long
believed on the subject of those tribal, law-breaking ,
anti-intellectual, violent theocrats - traditional Jews."
Amir,
the Left said, was 'a boy next door - from a stable, religious family',
'just your average religious right-wing hard liner; the product of the
best religious- Zionist schools in Israel.' He 'came out of the
mainstream religious Right, and carried the same banners, shouted the
same slogans, believed the same doctrines as most other Orthodox Jews in
Israel'. "By dint of simple arithmetic, 'if a boy next door' like Amir
was capable of such craven, fratricidal bloodletting, then so was
practically any traditional Jew.
Hazony then proceeds with a
review of Theodor Herzl's outlook, as the man opposed to how Leftists
perceived him. Many of the intellectual and political figures were
advocating separating traditional Judaism from the Jewish state,
imagining that to be what Herzl sought. However, while Herzl was no
preacher of secularism, Jews could still benefit from his ideas on the
place of religion in the Jewish state. It was precisely his unique
understanding of what constituted real national power that led him to
regard the strengthening of Jewish tradition as a proper and essential
interest of the state.
Hazony explains further ideas from Herzl's
"The Jewish State" published in February,1896; his theory that the true
core of national strength is the idea of the nation in the minds of the
people. He believed, contrary to conventional beliefs, that nations are
built from the mental achievements of peoples.
Herzl's 3rd asset
of the mind was the Jewish religion. This he considered to have been
indispensable in nurturing the national idea in the past - 'Next year in
Jerusalem', which he considered would continue to be essential in the
future - 'We recognize our historic identity only by the faith of our
fathers.'
The contemporary state of affairs in Israel on the Left
is sadly reflected in the past words of Amos Oz. "The dividing wall
---passes between those [in Israel] who aspire to Iranian- style
theocracy, and the state of Israel - between them and all of us. "
And
those of Ze'ev Chafets."To survive, democratic Israel must knock the
fundamentalist rabbis off their pedestals and lock up their violent
disciples. This means cutting off public funds to schools and youth
organizations that indoctrinate children in anti-democratic ideals." And
there are others.
Hazony concludes with a quote from a Religious
Zionist leader, "We have settled in the heart of the land, but we have
not even tried to settle in the hearts of the people." Hazony recognizes
it as precisely the same point that Herzl tried to teach in the brief
period he led the Zionist movement.
During 1939, Mojli Amin representing the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine is on file making the following recommendation:
"I
hereby propose that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be
divided up amongst the neighboring Arab Countries. In exchange for this,
all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to
Palestine." The latter mostly accepted, but the former declined in
response to their leaders.
On January 1951, Israel's 1st prime
minster, David Ben-Gurion, is quoted as telling members of his party,
Mapai, "These Arabs should not stay here, just as American Jews should
not stay in America.-----I think everything must be done so that an Arab
lives in an Arab state."
In The Political Chronicle
of January, 1997,we learn that Golda Meir was strongly opposed to
partition. She was in favor of transfer as the Arabs had vast
territories in which the Arabs of Palestine could settle.
According to the International Times
of 09/08/2014,as reported by Jack Moore, Egypt's Sisi offered Abbas
creation of a Palestinian Arab State in the Sinai Peninsula. He
allegedly said to Abbas in the meeting:"You are now 80 years old, if you
don't accept this proposal, your successor will." Elsewhere the report
was denied despite it making perfect sense to both Egypt and Israel.
What
did Yair Lapid mean by his foregoing statement? Did he mean 2 states in
an undivided Jerusalem or Jerusalem undivided as an Israel state with
the Palestinian Arab state established elsewhere? If the former, he
would find a majority in Israel would not accept this. If the latter, no
Palestinian Arab or Arab leader would accept it.
What he should
have done was to make use of an expert historian to proof positive
Jewish indigenous rights to the Land of Israel, After all, during Temple
Times , we learn of the Jews and the Romans. Subsequently the Greeks.
The words, "Palestinians" and Arabs" don't appear until many centuries
later.
To begin with, he could share the words of Lloyd George,
who was outraged by the claim that Arabs had been treated unfairly in
Palestine---":
"No race has done better out of the fidelity with
which the Allies redeemed their promises to the oppressed races than the
Arabs. Owing to the tremendous sacrifices of the Allied Nations, and
more particularly of Britain and her Empire, the Arabs have already won
independence in Iraq, Arabia, Syria, and Trans-jordania, although most
of the Arab races fought throughout the War for the Turkish
oppressors---[In particular ] the Palestinian Arabs for Turkish rule."[ A
Mandate for Israel by Douglas J. Feith].
Perhaps
the greatest lesson for Lapid is demonstrated by history - Appeasement
mostly does not work and it certainly does not win.
Alex Rose, alexrenee.rose@gmail.com, was
born in South Africa in 1935 and lived there until leaving for the US
in 1977, where he spent 26 years. He is an engineering consultant. For
18 years he worked for Westinghouse until age 60, whereupon he became
self-employed. He was formerly on the Executive of Americans for a Safe
Israel and a founding member of CAMERA, New York [Committee for Accuracy
in Middle East Reporting in Americaת one of the largest media
monitoring organizations concerned with accuracy and balanced reporting
on Israel. In 2003, he and his wife made Aliyah and reside in Ashkelon.
Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/361171
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