Occupation? There are no Jewish settlers on the West Bank - by Jason D. Hill

If there are occupiers in Judea and Samaria, then we may ostensibly point to them as the war settlers who are the Jordanian-Palestinians. They are the real occupiers and improper settlers of the land.

Jason D. Hill..
JNS.org..
27 November '19..

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently announced that America would no longer consider civilian settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank as a violation of international law. Many Israelis have warmly embraced this move as a great moral victory for the Jewish state. And to be sure, Pompeo’s declaration reversed a 40-decade-old policy that regarded the settlements as a violation of international law.

The only proper response to Pompeo’s announcement is that it’s a long time coming. And, along with the U.S. announcement, moral citizens of the world must begin a radical reversal of certain anti-Israeli and anti-Jewry references to the so-called “settlers” of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and what has been mistakenly referred to as “Occupied Territory.”

To begin with, the Israeli Jews are not settlers in Judea and Samaria. From here on, they should be referred to as “heroic pioneers” on re-founded land in Holy Israel.

(Continue to Full Column)

Jason D. Hill is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy and American politics. He is the author of several books, including “We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People.”

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Okay, I'll Talk About Occupation - by Yisrael Medad

For all Birthright participants, past, present and future, who are worried they may not really be told anything on occupation when in Israel (or were told something on their campuses/from friends and were hoping to learn something to combat what they felt are lies), here's the nitty-gritty:

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
17 July '18..
Link: http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2018/07/okay-ill-talk-about-occupation.html

There is an occupation. Two, in fact. At least.

As a result of non-stop Arab terror throughout the 1950s and 1960s (heard of the fedayeen and the PLO's Fatah, all operational before 1967?), Israel was forced to defend itself in June 1967. Yes, defend. The administration of the territories taken in that war is a "belligerent occupation". That's the first occupation.

But don't be fooled. The term "belligerent" doesn't mean that Israel's administration is belligerent (some will try to fool you and rewrite the definition like this: 'Military occupation occurs when a belligerent state invades the territory of another state'. Israel was not 'belligerent' in the way that is phrased. It was threatened, water route closed off, UN supervisors kicked out of Sinai and Jordan actually invaded Jerusalem and shelled Israeli locations. Oh, and there was no "state of Palestine"). The use of 'belligerent' was simply to indicate that it resulted from a war like in this definition: "belligerent occupation [is] established as a consequence of an armed conflict, that is to say through the conduct of hostilities". And Israel fought a war that was defensive, against hostile countries. And it was a just war. And justified. And moral.

Just by the way: "the 1949 Geneva Conventions do not contain a definition of belligerent occupation".

UPDATE: Some claim this - "The Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the West Bank, to the Gaza Strip, and to the entire City of Jerusalem, in order to protect the Palestinians living there." Others point to the fact that the Convention is between High Contracting Parties and as there never was a state called "Palestine", and no legal political sovereignty therein, Israel need protect anybody there but not because they are "Palestinians" but because they are humans who deserve humanitarian rights. What anti-occupationists do is to extend this misrepresentation and use humanitarian law to leverage political rights. That's cheating.

The second occupation could very well be the Arab occupation of Eretz-Yisrael but more on that later.

There is nothing wrong in using "Judea & Samaria".

Judea and Samaria (in Hebrew, Yehuda v'Shomron) is the correct name for the territory that Jordan occupied beginning in 1949 until Israel assumed its administration in 1967. As regards who is the legal sovereign, there is a dispute. So, okay, it's "disputed territory". Some actually think it is "liberated territory". For sure it was included in the area of the historic Jewish homeland that was to become the Jewish state as decided by the League of Nations in 1922.

Cheering for illegal settlers is okay as long as they’re not Jews - by Stephen M. Flatow

...Ultimately this question boils down to one thing: advocates of the Palestinian cause want to give large parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. If advancing that goal requires them to be disingenuous or intellectually inconsistent, then so be it.

Judea and Samaria's former
 Amona community

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
12 September '17..

The Jewish left, the United Nations, and the international news media have been telling us for years that illegal settlers in the “occupied territories” are the main obstacles to Middle East peace. So they all should have been rejoicing at this week’s news that a group of settlers were evicted from their home.

What happened was that Israel’s Supreme Court forced a group of settlers who had taken over an apartment in eastern Jerusalem that Israel took control of in 1967 — a place that is deemed “occupied Arab territory” by advocates for the Palestinians — to vacate the premises.

The court actually issued the eviction order back in 2013. But those diehard settlers, no doubt backed by pro-settler money from abroad, managed to exploit the Israeli legal system and drag the proceedings out for more than four years. Finally, this past week, the settlers were compelled to leave the property they had been illegally occupying.

So you would think Peace Now and its allies would be celebrating.

Instead, Peace Now issued a press release calling the eviction of the settlers “a dangerous trend that could threaten a future compromise in Jerusalem.”

Huh? Aren’t settlers the obstacle to peace? Wouldn’t their expulsion increase the chances for compromise and reconciliation?

(Continue to Full Post)

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Let's talk about the 'occupation' - by Dror Eydar

...And now a point to think about: From the Palestinian perspective, an occupation is a colonialist project by a foreign political group that came from the outside with Western assistance and took over another nation by determining state laws and systems. I know of a country like that: Jordan. Jordan's King Abdullah I was born in Hejaz (today in Saudi Arabia). The sweet British gave him the eastern Transjordan as compensation for the Hashemite family's war against the Ottomans. And so they tore away four-fifths of the mandate territory designated for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
30 December '16..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=39169

1. Let's talk about the occupation. Both about the occupation of territory, and about control over another nation. As I have already expressed several times, in my view the heart of the internal Israeli conflict is not control over another nation, but specifically sovereignty over those swathes of the land -- Samaria, Judea and Jerusalem -- whose symbolic weight goes beyond their existence as geographic territory.

This is the question of all questions that has been driving us crazy since our return to history as a living nation with a political claim: Who are we? The question of our identity, which is made up of two parts that formed within us over thousands of years: nationality and religion. The widespread Israeli discourse (which impacts the global discourse) almost always favors the occupation and its consequences.

There are three types of occupation in the western side of the Jordan River. Since the Oslo Accords, we do not rule over the Palestinians as in the past. They enjoy broad autonomy: government, budgets, security forces, foreign relations, a flag and an anthem. Israel does not intervene and does not even control the constant incitement in the Palestinian education and political systems against everything Israeli and Jewish. It is true that the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency are stationed along the perimeter and control movement in the territory. The simple reason: Without a buffer of security, the Palestinian Authority would turn into a major terror zone that will, from the top of the mountain, threaten Israel's population centers and vital arteries.

The Palestinians also enjoy the buffer of security. A glance at the countries around us is enough to make one understand that a similar fate will befall the Palestinian Authority the moment Israel removes its defenses. Hamas is strong in the Palestinian street, and Islamic State, al-Qaida and all manner of evil sleeper cells are awaiting the signal to take over the territory. WikiLeaks documents published a few years ago showed that, behind the scenes, the Palestinians are demanding our protection. Senior officials told me that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would not survive for an hour without our protection. By the way, neither would King Abdullah II of Jordan.

2. When it comes to Israel, the concept of "occupation" expands a lot. It is clear to everyone that since the summer of 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the situation there is completely different from what it was before. Israel has completely withdrawn, demolished its settlements and taken its dead, just as Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish suggested in his famous poem. And still, the Left and part of the world insist: The occupation is ongoing.

Much to our grief, the warning of the Right came to fruition. The moment that Hamas took control, the Gaza Strip became enslaved (not always at the residents' will) to the near-sole motive for the existence of the political Palestinian: the destruction of Israel. There are many paths to achieving this goal: military, terrorist, diplomatic. The PLO's "Phased Plan" is no fairy tale; it is alive and kicking. Go to the Palestinian Media Watch and Middle East Media Research Institute websites and see for yourself. Do not rely on intermediaries.

As a result, Israel keeps watch over the entry of goods into the Gaza Strip, so that weapons and explosives are not brought in. Experience teaches us that the moment the checkpoints are removed, the Gaza Strip will become a ticking time bomb. The Hamas government has no greater goal than sacrificing its subjects in exchange for a fatal attack in Israel and the killing of Jews. Read the Hamas charter (available online) that serves even now as the movement's manifesto. It is a Nazi document. And so, the "occupation" continues in Gaza too.

Still lamenting that the fledgling Jewish country was not “ethnically cleansed” at birth - by Yarden Frankl

If the exile of all Jews and the destruction of any evidence of Jewish habitation is not “ethnic cleansing,” then what is?

Yarden Frankl..
Times of Israel..
19 September '16..
Link: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-jerusalem/

Prime Minister Netanyahu has been condemned from all sides for a video in which he accused the Palestinians of seeking to “ethnically cleanse” Judea and Samaria. His charge that the Palestinians are seeking a state in which there would be no Jews was met by shock and revulsion from the international community. The media reported the reactions by the U.S. State Department and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon dismissing the Prime Minister’s claim.

The message was clear: How dare the Israeli Prime Minister make such a baseless accusation. What would lead him to think that the Palestinians would want a state with no Jews?

It seems that everyone who condemned the remarks needs a brief history lesson. Because in 1948, ethnic cleansing was exactly what was done to the Jews in Jerusalem and parts of Judea — the exact same places that the Palestinians demand as part of their state.

There had been a Jewish community living in the Old City of Jerusalem for thousands of years in 1948. Some residents’ families had lived there for generations.

But in an instant, this continuous Jewish presence was forcibly destroyed. Some Jews were murdered at gun point. The rest were forced out with nothing but the shirts on their backs.

Here’s what happened next under Arab occupation: (SixDayWar.org)

Upon its capture by the Arab Legion, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City was destroyed and its residents expelled. Fifty-eight synagogues–some hundreds of years old–were destroyed, their contents looted and desecrated. Some Jewish religious sites were turned into chicken coops or animal stalls. The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where Jews had been burying their dead for over 2500 years, was ransacked; graves were desecrated; thousands of tombstones were smashed and used as building material, paving stones or for latrines in Arab Legion army camps. The Intercontinental Hotel was built on top of the cemetery and graves were demolished to make way for a highway to the hotel. The Western Wall became a slum area.

If the exile of all Jews and the destruction of any evidence of Jewish habitation is not “ethnic cleansing,” then what is?

The ethnic cleansing was not limited to Jerusalem. In Gush Etzion, Kfar Etzion, the last of the Jewish towns there were surrounded and attacked. When the defenders ran out of ammunition and surrendered, they were brought together and massacred.

Again, not content with erasing Jews, the local Palestinians set about erasing signs that Jews had ever been there. Every Jewish house was burned down. Even agricultural fields were burned.

Who's the 'Occupier'?

Rabbi Aron Hier
American Thinker
21 November '10

How do you bring two opponents to the peace table when their world views are separated by millennia?

In the Palestinian timetable, the Israelites' 3,200 years of history in the land of Israel have mysteriously vanished. According to the Palestinians' worldview, Israel Standard Time commences with the 16th or 19th century. They tell us of an incipient Palestinian nation but make no mention of a much older Jewish-Israeli civilization. And thus, they unilaterally decide when the historical narrative should rightfully begin.

History must start at the beginning. Here is one page from history (1948, Benny Morris) the Palestinians definitely don't want you to see:

The Jewish people was born in the Land of Israel, which it ruled, on and off, for thirteen centuries, between 1200 BCE and the second century CE. The Romans, who conquered and reconquered the land and suppressed successive Jewish revolts in the first and second centuries CE, renamed the land Palaestina ... in an effort to separate the Jews, many of whom they exiled, from their land. Among the Gentiles, the name Palestine stuck. [1]

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Living in the ruins of the Jewish West Bank

Point of No Return
(18 October 09)

It is not the place of this blog to say who should rule those disputed lands that the media like to call 'the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank'. Often overlooked in the current debate, however, is the long pre-Arab history of the region, once again 'ethnically cleansed' between 1948 and 1967 of its Jewish inhabitants. Here Bat Yeor, the groundbreaking historian of the dhimmi, lyrically evokes Jewish Judea and Samaria in an article she wrote in 1978:

"Silence. We have taken cover in the shade of an olive tree. Instantly the children have nestled in the branches, listening solemnly to our guide. Somewhere a fig tree perfumes the air...or is it merely the breeze of the Judean hills? Circular gesture by Ya'acov Meshorer, chief curator of archaeology at the Israel Museum, renowned numismatist and former supervisor of excavations in Judea-Samaria.

"Excavations in Judea have brought to light flourishing towns possessing numerous synagogues. The architecture as well as the ornamental patterns are typical of the attractive pre-Islamic Hebrew civilisation, represented in Galilee by the synagogues of Capernaum, Beth Shearim, Chorazim, Kefar Baram, Meron and other places. Between the years 70 AD and the Arab invasion and occupation in 640, these hills were dotted with Hebrew towns and villages where an intense national, religious and cultural life prospered. Deprived of its indepdendence, the nation concentrated its genius by reflecting upon the richness of the national past. This the period in which the Mishnah was elaborated and completed in the second century, shortly to be followed by the Talmud - monumental religious, legal and social compendia. Completed in about 400, this work was continued for another two centuries, keeping alive an intense Messianic fervour whose force was to be felt as far as Arabia.

"The Arab occupation scarcely modified the Hebrew place-names and the Jewish inhabitants, now considered dhimmis, remained on their land. It was only later that the relentless mechanism typical of every colonisation gradually wiped out the indigenous population, thereby encouraging a progressive Arabisation of the soil."

"In the former Jewish town of Bethar, there are now 1500 Arabs. They call the place where the Jewish vestiges stand Khirbet al-Yahud, the ruins of the Jews. Nevertheless, were the Israelis to return, the Arabs would not hesitate to chase them away with indignation, referring to them as foreign intruders. Mystery of the Oriental mind or logic of the occupant? These Arabs, hardly interested in a past which is not theirs, ignore totally the history of the places where they live. Of course they know that the spot was inhabited formerly by Jews, as the name indicates, but these ruins, relating to a people dispossessed and driven out, are only of interest as a quarry conveniently providing stones which others have hewn. But the excited comments from the olive tree taught me that many a Jewish child knows more about the history of this place than its Arab inhabitants.