Celebrating liberation in Gush Etzion - by Vic Rosenthal

..The strategic and spiritual value of these lands is more important today than ever. Celebrating their liberation is appropriate, because they both make our country defensible and give us something important to defend, the historical heartland of the Jewish people. And what better place to celebrate it than Kfar Etzion?

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
14 April '17..

In September of this year, Israel plans to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan heights. The main event will be held at Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, in the Gush Etzion area of Judea, south and slightly west of Jerusalem.

Zahava Galon, the leader of the Meretz party, which represents approximately 4% of Israeli voters with its 5 Knesset seats, and Chemi Shalev, writing in the left-wing Ha’aretz newspaper expressed their outrage that anyone would celebrate what they consider an oppressive and evil occupation of “Palestinian” land, and that Israel would add insult to injury by holding the ceremony in what they insist on calling the “West Bank.”

I know it’s a little thing and that most of my readers already know this, but I can’t say it too often: it was called Judea and Samaria from biblical times until 1948 when Jordan occupied it, ethnically cleansed it of Jews, and renamed it the “West Bank.” We really ought to stop calling it that.

Let’s talk a little about the Gush Etzion area, and specifically Kibbutz Kfar Etzion.

(Continue to Full Post)

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. 

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Remembering the 35 Heroes of Gush Etzion - A Bravery Fiercer than Death (Video)

Toldot Yisrael presents the tragic yet inspiring story of the 35 Haganah soldiers who gave their lives in January 1948 trying to bring much needed supplies to the kibbutzim in the besieged Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem.

ToldotYisrael..
First Posted 15 January '13..

"I don't know if there was any company in the Israel Defense Forces or in any army in the world that assembled such splendid manpower, pure bravery, and spiritual abundance as this company, who will forever be known by our people as the "lamed hey" (the thirty-five)...These lions of Israel were a mix of youthful spirit and glory, superior wisdom...and bravery fiercer than death."
- David Ben Gurion



This movie is the fourth episode in the "Eyewitness 1948" short film series produced by Toldot Yisrael.

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. 

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Looking beyond the BBC’s trite and facile portrayal of Gush Etzion

...Unlike Gideon Levy, the BBC is obliged to provide its funding public with journalism which will enhance their “awareness and understanding of international issues”. The repeated promotion of the trite and facile narrative of ‘occupied land’ not only obviously defeats that object and hampers the ability of its audiences to reach informed opinions on the topic but also denies them insight into the complex and fascinating history of land purchased by Jews nearly a century ago, conquered by Jordan and then regained by Israel.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
07 March '16..

On February 25th the BBC News website produced an article which described a terror attack as having taken place “in the occupied West Bank” and went on to state:

“Gush Etzion, a bloc of Jewish settlements located between Jerusalem and Hebron, has been one of the focal points of a five-month surge in violence between Israelis and Palestinians.”

There is of course nothing novel about that portrayal of Gush Etzion as being located on “occupied” land and neither is the BBC’s presentation much different from the general trend seen in much of the Western media – or indeed some Israeli media outlets.

Last week Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz produced an article in which he described Gush Etzion Junction as having been “built forcibly on their [Palestinian] land”. That article – and that sentence in particular – prompted a response from Professor Asa Kasher on Facebook.

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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 as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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From the ashes of the Etzion bloc a state arose

...Moshe ("Mush") Zilberschmidt, the commander of the Etzion bloc who was killed in a battle for the Russian Monastery, coined the phrase that would guide the Etzion fighters throughout their ordeals -- "Netzach Yerushalayim" (Eternal of Jerusalem). One of his subordinates, who was also killed in the fighting, wrote the following last words to his loved ones: "I don't know if we will prevail, regardless our dear children will be free citizens in a free homeland, and for this we are prepared to fight ... this is Jerusalem's forward position. We are defending its walls."

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
First published 04 May '14..

"Queen has fallen," was the radio transmission from Aliza Feuchtwanger from the burning bunker at Kfar Etzion on May 13, 1948. "Queen" was the code name for the Etzion bloc. For about half a year, its defenders sacrificed their lives to hold their positions against larger and better-armed Arab forces, and on the verge of the war's end and the country's independence they could hold out no longer. "A desperate Masada-like battle is taking place in the village," Feuchtwanger told headquarters in Jerusalem in her final transmission. "The Arabs are everywhere. There are thousands of them." A few minutes later, she climbed onto the roof of the bunker and placed a white, blood-drenched sheet on the bunker's antenna to signal surrender.

The dozens of fighters who were still alive gathered in an empty lot adjacent to the school and old German monastery in order to surrender themselves and their weapons to the enemy, but their captors instead chose to slaughter them. Most were killed in a hail of bullets. A few managed to escape and survive. On that day, 127 fighters, men and women, some of them survivors of the Nazi death camps and ghettos, gave their lives. Only four, among them Feuchtwanger, lived to tell the story.

In total, 240 residents and fighters died in the battles for the Etzion bloc, of which Kfar Etzion was one of four communities at the time. Many of the fighters were taken captive by the Jordanians. The Knesset would subsequently make the fall of the Etzion bloc the date for Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers. Few remember this fact today. The State of Israel rose amid the flames of the burning Etzion bloc. "Queen" fell, and a state rose.

Even fewer people remember that during the siege on the Etzion bloc, its defenders were not only busy protecting the communities, but also disrupting enemy movements toward Jerusalem. The Etzion fighters attacked enemy forces along the Jerusalem-Hebron road, the main artery connecting the Arab Legion and the armed gangs in Hebron to Jerusalem. Yohanan Ben-Yaakov, a researcher of the Etzion bloc's history, notes that at the beginning of May 1948, an Arab Legion officer fighting in the area said the Arab Legion had concluded that reaching and conquering Jerusalem would be impossible as long as the Etzion bloc remained in the way. The Etzion bloc, therefore, became the de facto forward position for the defense of Jerusalem, and essentially sacrificed itself so that Jerusalem could remain in Jewish hands.

David Ben-Gurion recognized this and would later write: "I can think of no battle in the annals of the Israel Defense Forces which was more magnificent, more tragic or more heroic than the struggle for [the Etzion bloc] …If there exists a Jewish Jerusalem, our foremost thanks go to the defenders of [the Etzion bloc]."

Some Facts About the Battle Over Israel’s ‘Etzion Bloc’

...Peace is presently impossible due to continuing Palestinian refusal to accept the permanence and legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel and the terrorism, aggression and incitement to hatred and murder against Jews and Israel that flows from this –– not due to Israel duly designating state lands.

Morton A. Klein/Dr. Daniel Mandel..
Frontpagemag.com..
22 September '14..

While the Middle East burns and tens of thousands of corpses pile up in Syria and Iraq, Jewish residence anywhere beyond the 1949 armistice lines –– in eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, transfixes the attention of foreign governments. Just recall the Obama Administration saying nothing when, in March 2010, the Palestinian Authority (PA) named a public square in Ramallah in honor of blood-soaked terrorist Dalal Mughrabi –– but condemned Israel for announcing a program of building Jewish homes in eastern Jerusalem the day before.

Now, Israel has designated 988 acres in the Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem as state land, leading the Obama Administration to condemn this “settlement announcement” as “counterproductive to … a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s “blocking back,” the faux “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street organization, has gone still further, urging President Obama in the pages of the Los Angeles Times to start calling Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines “illegal.”

There is some relevant history here. In 2011, President Obama vetoed a UN Security Council resolution making this false declaration –– although that was only after he unsuccessfully attempted have the U.N. Security Council baselessly call them “illegitimate.”

Clearly, J Street is trying to push the President in a direction he’d like to go but can’t, due to legal and factual hurdles that would cost him politically to straddle, but which J Street would like to ameliorate.

Factually and legally unsound, J Street’s agitprop on this issue is simply designed to isolate and increase pressure on Israel, not defend the cause of peace that is actually unthreatened by this Israeli administrative action.

The Etzion bloc was home to substantial Jewish communities even before Israel was created. It’s widely accepted that it would be incorporated into Israel in any feasible peace treaty, should one emerge one day.

Even an anti-Israel partisan like former President Jimmy Carter has publicly stated regarding the Jewish communities in the Etzion bloc that this “area is not one I ever envision being abandoned or changed over into Palestinian territory.’

So why the furor? It’s not as if the designation changes the land’s pre-existing status. Since the days of the British Palestine Mandate, the land in question has always been classed as public land. Its designation as ‘state land’ merely reaffirms this, following exhaustive investigation to ascertain that such a designation was not in conflict with any private property rights.

Getting the 'State Land' Story Right - USA Today 1, The Guardian 0

...As USA Today tells readers, “the Gush Etzion bloc’s core communities [in the West bank] were founded before Israel’s establishment in 1948 on land purchased by Jews in the 1920s and 1930s. “Arab soldiers destroyed the communities when they fought against Israel's founding during the 1948 war”

Eric Rozenman..
CAMERA Snapshots..
18 September '14..

News media often refer erroneously to the West Bank as “Palestinian land” or “Palestinian territory” and Israeli acquisition or development there often get reported as “land grabs.” For example:

Referring to Israel’s decision to declare almost 1,000 acres adjacent to the West Bank community of Gva’ot as state land, The Guardian (U.K.) wrote, “Israel has published tenders to build 283 homes in a West Bank settlement, days after announcing its biggest land grab on occupied Palestinian territory [emphases added] for three decades.” (“Israel to build 283 homes in West Bank”, Sept. 5, 2014)

USA Today, by contrast, eschewed hyperbole for context. Special Correspondent Michele Chabin reported of Gva’ot and the newly-designated state land that “this community of 17 Israeli families, apartments for disabled adults, a school for disabled children, several horses and a petting zoo is accustomed to solitude. So [Rachel] Pomerantz, who rents a small prefab home here, was surprised by the sudden international attention on the settlement since … the Israeli government announced it would designate a swath of land next to Gva'ot as state-owned property.”

Gva’ot is close to the 1949 Israeli-Jordanian armistice line and the adjacent 988 acres at the center of the media-diplomatic dust-up lie between it and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc just south of Jerusalem. As USA Today tells readers, “the Gush Etzion bloc’s core communities [in the West bank] were founded before Israel’s establishment in 1948 on land purchased by Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.

“Arab soldiers destroyed the communities when they fought against Israel's founding during the 1948 war” (“Quiet strip of land, a loud dispute”, USA Today, Sept. 5, 2014)

C'mon folks, get a grip, There’s no grab!

...We call on the government to instruct the Civil Administration to renew the survey process with full force, not as retribution for terrorist attacks, that are ongoing, but in order to continue developing communities and give a Zionist answer to the systematic and organized attempts of the Palestinian Authority and its collaborator NGOs to take over vast areas of Judea and Samaria and deprive the Jewish people of their legal right to live there.

Gevaot, located in the Etzion settlement bloc..
(photo credit:Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)

Ari Briggs..
Opinion/JPost..
09 September '14..

Last week, the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria declared that some 1,000 acres in the area of Gush Etzion was public (state) land. This step was taken in accordance with decisions of the Security Cabinet following the kidnapping and horrific murder of three boys three months ago in Gush Etzion.

As expected, the extreme left-wing NGOs in Israel, led by Peace Now, exploded with an intensive campaign against this step, and shortly thereafter, the US, the UN and certain European countries began to condemn the move and demanded that Israel repeal its decision.

In a malicious manner intended to throw sand in the eyes of the international community, and to blacken the name of Israel, Peace Now purposely misrepresented this step – which was simply the formal completion of a well-known process – as expropriation of land, and another example of “occupation, expulsion and theft.”

However, an accurate analysis of this declaration and its basis in law completely disproves the claim that Israel has taken over privately owned land. The opposite is actually true – this entire process, implemented by the government, of surveying and officially declaring land to be state land, is intended to ensure that no private property rights will be harmed and that new or expanded communities will be established only on land that belongs unequivocally to the sovereign power according to international law, and not to a private individual.

What is the process of survey and declaration? In 1978, Prof. Aharon Barak, who was then the legal adviser to the government, declared, “The basic assumption in determining ownership of land is that all land is public land, except if it has been acquired by an individual.

Thus, any land which is desolate and against which no private ownership claim has been registered is assumed to be public land.” This mirrors land law in all western countries where there is only public land or private land.

Once again the tedious ritual of international condemnation and outcry of the Left

...The laymen of the greatest power in the world have found the time to highlight Israel's natural process of declaring 4,000 dunams -- which don't belong to any private interest -- as state land. And in the theater of the absurd, Great Britain has made the noise of the White Papers and Russia has issued a condemnation bemoaning the annexation. It is experienced in that. The Islamic State (ISIS) has seized tens of thousands of square kilometers from Iraq and Syria, and yet the international community is barely moved. Good for them they aren't Jews.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
02 September '14..

It has become a common and tedious ritual: the international condemnation and the outcry of the Left. There is nothing to get excited about here. The Jews began the process, which could bring about the day when sovereignty is held over at least part of the ancient Jewish homeland. Good grief. There are two things forbidden to Jews: materializing any sort of sovereignty over the land of Israel, and defending themselves against the Arabs with arms. Too bad we have fallen back to history.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has been silent regarding almost every international front that had at one time been integral to U.S. interests, all but one: Israel. The laymen of the greatest power in the world have found the time to highlight Israel's natural process of declaring 4,000 dunams -- which don't belong to any private interest -- as state land. And in the theater of the absurd, Great Britain has made the noise of the White Papers and Russia has issued a condemnation bemoaning the annexation. It is experienced in that. The Islamic State (ISIS) has seized tens of thousands of square kilometers from Iraq and Syria, and yet the international community is barely moved. Good for them they aren't Jews.

Despite the propaganda of lies, let us go back to the basics: Judea and Samaria are not Palestinian lands, not even by international law. Moreover, these are disputed territories. From our perspective, these are Jewish lands that were stolen from us during the Muslim occupation, which began in the seventh century and continues till this very day. Despite all of that, the Palestinians continue to practice unilateral annexation all over the place, without meeting protest. While the Palestinians are subject to "the laws of nature," the Jews must oblige international law. If Israel wants to protect its control over the state -- not just in Judea and Samaria -- it must take the same actions in order to step up the application of its sovereignty; it is the natural behavior of the locals.

Hyperbole, the Israeli “Land Grab” and Hopes for Peace

...Livni didn’t condemn the Etzion announcement because she believes it actually could impact the terms of a peace deal. She knows it won’t. Rather, she thinks that the move will draw attention to the area and encourage Arabs and foreign governments to advocate for Israel to give up even this land that Jews originally owned. But whether or not attention is drawn to the bloc, the Palestinians are no more willing to let the Jews keep it than they are to let them keep any other part of the West Bank or those lands that were inside the pre-67 lines.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
01 September '14..

Those intransigent Israelis have done it again. Just when the world was hoping for gestures of peace, they’ve done something making the two-state solution with the Palestinians harder to implement. Or so most of the world is claiming today after Israel’s government declared that 988 acres of vacant land in the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem is “state land” and therefore might be used for development. But the diplomatic condemnation raining down on the Israelis today is illogical and has very little to do with the terms of what a real peace deal might look like. If the Palestinians really wanted peace, this move wouldn’t affect it in the least.

As the New York Times reported today, the seizure of the vacant land is being considered proof that the Netanyahu government doesn’t want peace. It was condemned by the Palestinian Authority, the United Kingdom, and even criticized by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. But the way the story is being presented in the mainstream press is highly misleading.

The New York Times simply refers to the land in its headline as “West Bank Land Near Bethlehem.” That’s true in that the place is in the area taken by Israel in June 1967 and it is near the city of Bethlehem. But savvy readers should have picked up on the mention in the story of the fact that it is “in” a settlement bloc. Though the Peace Now organization condemned the move as one that would “dramatically change the reality” in the area, since it is already inside an area that is heavily populated by Jews and claimed by the Jewish state, it’s hard to see how anything that happens inside it would affect the future of other parts of the West Bank which might theoretically be conceded to the Palestinians as part of an independent state.

But this isn’t just any settlement bloc; it’s Gush Etzion. That may not mean much to Americans, let alone Europeans who can be counted on to condemn anything the Israelis do, but it does put the matter of whether this decision actually affects possible peace negotiations in perspective.

It needs to be remembered that most peace advocates keep telling us that the terms of peace between Israel and the Palestinians are well known and that all that is needed is the will to implement them rather than more discussions about the details. But among those terms is the concept of territorial swaps that was endorsed by President Obama and even approved by the Palestinian participants in the Geneva initiatives. The swaps would allow Israel to keep the blocs of settlements—most of which are adjacent to the 1967 lines—in exchange for other territory to be given to the Palestinians. While there is some dispute as to which blocs are part of this consensus, there is no doubt that one of them is the Etzion bloc.

There are two reasons for the assumption that Gush Etzion stays inside of Israel even if a Palestinian state is created in the West Bank.

(Video) Showing Appreciation in a Big Way - Pina Chama, Soldiers Hospitality Hut

Sharon Katz..
voices1youtubization..
17 September '13..
H/T Paula Stern..

There's a cozy corner of Gush Etzion dedicated to the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. Manned by 350 volunteers a month, with more than 350 other volunteers baking cakes and cookies, the Pina Chama is Gush Etzion/Efrat's way to say "Thank you" to the soldiers for their dedication and care.



Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_Kzh0_e4MEQ

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. Check-it out!
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The Lamed Hey, the Defenders of Kfar Etzion vs. Google

Fresnozionism.org..
24 May '13..

Gush Etzion is an area southeast of Jerusalem, which contains several ‘settlements’. One of them is Kibbutz Kfar Etzion. Part of the Palestine Mandate from 1917 to 1948, and the Ottoman empire before that, it was purchased from local Arabs and settled by Yemenite Jews in 1927. They lived there on and off (they were driven out several times by Arab ‘riots’) until May 1948 when the invading Jordanian army overran it and massacred all but four of its defenders. All of the West Bank and East Jerusalem were made Jew-free by the Jordanians, who illegally occupied the area until 1967, when the kibbutz was reestablished.

The Haganah sent thirty-five men to relieve the besieged kibbutzim of Gush Etzion in January 1948, following an Arab attack. They were wiped out and their bodies mutilated after an Arab shepherd, whom they unwisely set free after encountering him on the way, reported their presence. They are referred to as the Lamed Hey, “the thirty-five.”

Let me spell it out more clearly: Jews lived there on land they owned. The kibbutzim of Gush Etzion (there were four of them) represented the realization of the promise made by the world to the Jewish people in the Palestine Mandate, that there would be a national home in the land of Israel. Arabs violently resisted their presence, and when Jordan violated the UN charter by invading and occupying Judea and Samaria in 1948, Jews were murdered or expelled. Not one Jew was allowed to remain on the Jordanian side of the cease-fire line. Because they were Jews.

But in the eyes of the ‘international community’, the ethnic cleansing of the area east of the 1949 armistice line and the 19-year Jordanian occupation thereof transformed Gush Etzion into Arab land, land that today ‘belongs’ to the new non-member-state of the UN, ‘Palestine’.

Apparently this magical transmutation was recognized by Google, because when Jewish residents of Gush Etzion tried to use Google’s search engine this month, they received a message suggesting that they switch to the appropriate page for their location, Google Palestine (Google.ps), in Arabic, rather than the Hebrew-language Google Israel (Google.il) they had been using. This follows Google’s recent decision to re-title Google.ps ‘Palestine’ instead of ‘Palestinian territories’.

Who are you Private Mizrachi?

Aryeh Savir..
Tazpit News Agency..
10 April '13..

Private Yitzchak Mizrachi is the only soldier who fell in the battle for Gush Etzion in the War of Independence whose relative have not been located.

During one of the bitterest battles fought by the Haganah prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, 241 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the final battle for Gush Etzion, which finally succumbed to the attacks of Jordanian Legionnaires and local Arabs on the fourth of, May 13, 1948.

The Legionnaires took 320 men and women into captivity, where they were to languish for many months. The next day, on the fifth of Iyar, David Ben Gurion proclaimed Israel’s independence. Gush Etzion was resettled after the Six-Day War in 1967, and many of those who returned to the Gush were children who were evacuated before the falling of Gush Etzion.

There is detailed archival documentation on all those who heroically gave their lives during these acrimonious clashes, except for one, Private Yitzchak Mizrachi.

All that is known is that he served in squad 9 of platoon 6, under the command of the renowned composer Tzvi Ben Yosef.

(+Video) The Lamed Heh - Remembering the heroic saga of Gush Etzion

Robert Werdine..
Times of Israel..
17 January '13..




The days following the partition vote of November 29, 1947 found the folk of Gush Etzion in celebration leavened with sorrow. The diaries of those inside the bloc tell the story:

”There is the sound of rejoicing and salvation among the hosts of Israel. The dream of many generations is being realized before our eyes. The State of Israel will soon become a reality, transforming the very foundations of our life in this country and our standing among the nations of the world…About midnight we heard the first news of how the voting had gone. A wave of joy swept through the village. We sang songs of rejoicing on the surrounding hillsides and danced in the farmyard…”

And,

“There is rejoicing in our hearts, but our joy is not complete. Our kibbutz is one of more than thirty Jewish settlements which have not been included in the borders of the Jewish state which is to arise…The painful partition of the Land causes every faithful Jew to feel a sense of distress in his heart. Jerusalem, the capital city of the Land of Israel, which has through the generations been the object of the yearnings and hopes of Israel, remains outside the borders…Nevertheless, we will not forget Jerusalem, nor Hebron nor Shechem nor hundreds of other Biblical sites that must be redeemed.”

Zipporah Porath, a Jewish-American student who came in the fall of 1947 to study at the Hebrew University, wrote home to her parents about her visit to Etzion Bloc in October 1947:

“About my tour to Gush Etzion. I went with G.I. Dov and Oded, a Sabra who lives in our student house and goes out of his way to bring the Americans closer to what he calls the real Eretz Yisrael [Land of Israel]. Oded, who served as our guide, joined the group when it went on hityashvut [settlement on the land] and was able to point out what had been accomplished in the two months since he had been there….The only problem is that they are smack in the heart of Arab territory. So what sense of security can there be?”

Indeed. Situated south of the City of David (Jerusalem), north of the City of the Patriarchs (Hebron), east of the Valley of Elah, and west of the Judean Desert, the settlement had seen two previously unsuccessful attempts to put down communal roots, in 1927 and 1935, both aborted in the face of Arab violence. A third attempt in 1943 to settle Kfar Etzion took hold, the young pioneers persisting in the face of the harsh environment, scarcity of resources, and Arab hostility. In time, the neighboring kibbutzim of Massuot Yitzchak, named in honor of the chief Rabbi Yitzchak Herzog, and those of Revadim and Ein Tzurim were established nearby, populating the bloc to some 470 at the time of the partition vote in late 1947, which placed them outside the Jewish state.

In the days following the vote, the Arabs had already begun to lay siege to the bloc, on December 11 successfully ambushing a four-vehicle supply convoy in which ten of the bloc’s defenders were killed. Among the 10 were one of Kfar Etzion’s founding fathers, Shalom Karniel, formerly the famous leader of the Hashomer Hadati youth movement in Krakow, Poland. Just a few days earlier he had written,

“Our homeland is the value without which we can expect ruin and constant degradation – we, in the land of our forefathers, and all the more so, our millions of brothers in the Diaspora who cry out for the Redemption.”

(Video) The 35 Heroes of Gush Etzion - A Bravery Fiercer than Death

ToldotYisrael..
15 January '13..

Toldot Yisrael (http://www.toldotyisrael.org) presents the tragic yet inspiring story of the 35 Haganah soldiers who gave their lives in January 1948 trying to bring much needed supplies to the kibbutzim in the besieged Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem.



"I don't know if there was any company in the Israel Defense Forces or in any army in the world that assembled such splendid manpower, pure bravery, and spiritual abundance as this company, who will forever be known by our people as the "lamed hey" (the thirty-five)...These lions of Israel were a mix of youthful spirit and glory, superior wisdom...and bravery fiercer than death."
- David Ben Gurion

This movie is the fourth episode in the "Eyewitness 1948" short film series produced by Toldot Yisrael.

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.

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View From The Judean Hills: Gush Etzion’s peaceful brewster

Josh Hasten..
Columnist/JPost..
26 June '12..

Nestled away and nearly completely hidden deep inside the Gush Etzion forest, 52-year-old Susan Levin spends her days inside a 50-meter building measuring and mixing, boiling and bottling.

With her hair always covered and her long skirt nearly hitting the floor, one might assume Levin is perhaps busy cooking up some matzo ball soup in bulk, maybe as a caterer for weddings or Bar-Mitzvahs.

In actuality Levin, who made aliya from the US six years ago, and was looking for a change in career, is the one and only female “settler” brewster in all of Judea and Samaria and is the co-owner of the Lone Tree Brewery, a boutique beer manufacturing plant which produces eight kinds of high-quality suds with an average output totaling 800-bottles per month.

Levin says that she is “proud and, even more so, privileged to be able to call Gush Etzion her home,” for its rich Jewish history, and is grateful to be producing “a completely natural and healthy product” that has been a staple of nearly every civilization throughout history.

Tobin - New Efrat Homes No Threat to Peace

Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary/Contentions
13 December '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/12/homes-efrat-peace-un/

Once again, the announcement of a small housing project by Israel is causing the United Nations to claim that such settlement building prejudices the peace process. But the overwrought statement from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on this subject was even more off the mark than most such condemnations of Israeli actions. The plan that set off alarms at the UN and other Israel critics is for the building of 40 homes in the town of Efrat in the Gush Etzion bloc just outside of Jerusalem.

The place where the homes are being built is a town that even many Palestinians have conceded would remain part of Israel in the event of a peace deal. If there are to be the “land swaps” that President Obama has said would be part of his demand for negotiations on the basis of the 1967 lines, then there is no doubt that Efrat and Gush Etzion will be areas that are swapped. So how then would the addition of 40 new families or even 400 or 4,000 Jews to that settlement prevent a two-state solution in the event the Palestinians ever changed their minds and accepted one? More to the point, the history of Gush Etzion makes the effort by the Palestinians, and implicitly supported by the UN, to evict not only new settlers but also the existing inhabitations of Gush Etzion, particularly inappropriate.

Perhaps someone at the UN should point out to the secretary general that the Gush Etzion bloc was not a Jewish settlement that was created on disputed territory after the 1967 war. Rather, it was a Jewish community that existed prior to 1948 that was overrun by the Arabs and its inhabitants massacred or evicted. The return of Jews to this Jerusalem suburb after June 1967 was greeted with jubilation throughout all of Israel. It was a sign — like the revival of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City —that the Arab efforts to eradicate the Jewish presence in the land would not stand.

Establishing Facts on Ground - Netzer

NashimBeYarok
20 September '10

In Netzer, yet one more piece of Erets Israel was redeemed and saved from illegal Arab take-over.

Yesterday, Sunday September 19th, members of Women for Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green) and the Netzer committee were told that an Arab was plowing on stateland in Netzer,in the heart of Gush etzion, in broad daylight.



The activists immediately got organized and a few of them came to the place. One of the activists speaks Arabic. He explained to the Arab that the land on which he is plowing does not belong to him but rather to the Jews. A map of the area was shown to prove it.

In order to make sure that such so-called "mistakes' will not occur again on that piece of land, the activists of Women in Green and Netzer decided to gather at 5:00 the following morning, i.e. today Monday September 20 and plant the entire area. Some ten activists arrived, with tools, trees, waterpipes and thank G-d,after a few hours of work, this piece of land was saved from hostile take-over.

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Eretz Israel calls upon us - Netzer

womeningreen.org.il
13 July '10

In the heart of Gush Etzion, between Alon Shvut and Elazar, there are thousands of dunams of green and beautiful hills.

On this area, a determined battle is being waged on each meter of land- the same battle that is taking place all over Eretz Israel, in Judea, Samaria, the Galil, the Negev and Jerusalem.

In the past years, the Arabs, funded by international anti-Israeli organizations who disguise themselves as so-called "humanitarian" groups, have started a campaign to take over our lands, by agriculture. When the Arabs work the land a few years, they receive a "chazaka" (ownership) even though the land never was theirs. The representatives of the Civil Administration ignore the Arab take-over of our lands, and in this way we are losing our land reserves around our communities.



In 2005, after the expulsion from Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, a group of people from Elazar decided: No more!" The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. They started building a house on the hills outside Elazar, called the area NETZER. Eight times they built, eight times the government destroyed.

From building houses they went on to planting and agriculture. Since the founding of the YIBANEH fund for building and expanding in the hills of Judea, founded by Women for Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), we managed to plant, thank G-d, some 3 dunams with olive trees and vines. On each piece of land that is still vacant and that the Arabs have not taken away yet, we prepare the land with a tractor and plant.

Now there is a race- who will get the land first.

For us Jews it is hard to keep up with the pace. The Arabs are funded with millions of dollars from these anti-Israeli organizations. We only have you, lovers of Israel, to count on...

We started with operation "establishing facts on the ground" without any funds. Since the operation started we managed to already raise some monies and thank G-d our agricultural work camp started a few days ago in which we hope to redeem a few dunams (a video about this will be sent out shortly) but we need much more.

Twenty people each contributing $150 will redeem one dunam, in which 36 olive trees or 220 vines will be planted. Not everyone can be out in the fields, but everyone can donate. Be partners in redeeming the Land of Israel.

for details: www.womeningreen.org
Nadia Matar 050-5500834 or Yehudit Katsover 050-7161818

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