A Little Jewish Village Between Heaven, Earth and the White House - by Daniel Greenfield

...In Amona, you will find deer meandering through the street. The Nizri family, with eight children, sees to the casks of French oak in the winery. There are raspberries to pick, tools to mend and a life to build. It is not mere height above sea level that enables the people of Amona to tower above their enemies. It is their determination to live lives of ordinary courage. They have attracted the ire and enmity of some of the most powerful people in their country, their region and the world. And yet they go on. Obama boils in his anger like a lobster in a pot. The UN Security Council has scheduled a special meeting where Israel will be denounced by the likes of Venezuela and Angola. And in Amona, the children play.

Daniel Greenfield..
Frontpagemag.com..
13 October '16..

Halfway to the sky sits a tiny village of little white houses that has attracted the ire of the White House.

The village of Amona with its small white houses and red roofs could easily be mistaken for some lost Italian village or a dusty California town. But the White House would not have “boiled in anger”, as one anonymous official claimed, over the doings of some Italian village.

There’s only one place on earth that makes Obama’s blood boil. It isn’t Iran or North Korea. It’s Israel.

Amona’s small scattering of houses have a fraction of the square footage of the White House. The 40 families living there in defiance of Islamic terrorists and left-wing lawfarers would hardly be noticeable if they all crowded into the White House foyer. And yet they’ve been condemned by the State Department in more virulent tones than most Muslim dictators.

What is it about this handful of Jews caught between heaven and earth that outrages so many?

(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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The Bottom Line: Much-Maligned Settlements Equal Security - by Evelyn Gordon

...Most Israelis aren’t ideologically committed to the settlements. But as long as the world rejects positions that Israelis consider essential to their security, their support will only grow for the one thing that has proven effective in averting IDF withdrawals – large concentrations of much-maligned civilian settlers.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary magazine..
14 March '16..

One of the most intriguing findings in the sweeping Pew survey of Israel released last week was a sharp rise in the proportion of Israeli Jews who said settlements are beneficial to Israeli security. As recently as 2013, the survey noted, a plurality of Israeli Jews (35 percent) accepted the global consensus that settlements harm Israel’s security. But in the new poll, an even larger plurality deemed settlements beneficial to Israel’s security – 42 percent, up from 31 percent in 2013. Only 30 percent deemed settlements detrimental, while 25 percent said they make no difference to Israeli security. This shift in public opinion reflects both a growing conviction that Israel’s security requires the Israel Defense Forces to remain in at least part of the West Bank, and a growing recognition that settlements are the anchor keeping the IDF from leaving.

Three significant events occurred between the earlier poll, conducted in March-April 2013, and the latest one, conducted from October 2014 to May 2015: the Gaza war of summer 2014, the virtual collapse of UN peacekeeping forces on the Golan Heights, and the failed Israeli-Palestinian talks led by Secretary of State John Kerry. All had a major impact on how Israelis understood their own security.

The war solidified an Israeli consensus that the unilateral pullout from Gaza was disastrous, with even opposition leader Isaac Herzog admitting that “from a security perspective, the disengagement was a mistake.” There were two reasons for this. First, despite two previous wars with Hamas since the 2005 disengagement, Israeli casualties in both were low enough that on balance, the pullout seemed to have saved soldiers’ lives. This time, military casualties were so high (66 soldiers killed) that, as I explained in detail here, keeping the IDF in Gaza would actually have cost fewer lives than leaving did. Second, while Hamas had bombarded Israel with thousands of rockets and mortars ever since the pullout, it had previously mainly targeted the south. During the 2014 war, sustained rocket fire for the first time hit the center of the country, where most Israelis live.

In short, what this war proved was that, far from being deterred by previous wars, Hamas had only more grown stronger and more dangerous from war to war. By contrast, in the West Bank, the surge in terror that had followed Israel’s handover of part of the territory to the Palestinians in the mid-1990s had given way to a sharp, steady decline in terror since 2002, when the IDF retook security control of the territory to stop a deadly wave of suicide bombings. The lesson couldn’t have been clearer: Terror soared when the IDF ceded control to the Palestinians and dropped when the IDF regained it.

The Zionist Response To Terror - Settlements - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...Besides deterring Arab terror, it would serve to bolster the morale of the Israeli public by offering it a positive emotional outlet through which to respond to Arab terror. By establishing living memorials, Israel would be effectively saying: "We are on the map. Terror will not vanquish." It is said that the Arabs decided to make peace with Israel when they came to the conclusion that they could not destroy the Jewish State on the battlefield. By the same token, settlement activity today may very well convince the Palestinians that they must compromise now or face the prospects of a considerably worse deal in the future.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
 3 February '16..

Historically, settlements were considered the "Zionist response to terror."

A look at the map of modern Israel finds it sprinkled with the names of settlements named in memory of the victims of various Arab attacks.

Today's terrorists are popular folk heroes in Palestinian society. The cost to the Palestinians of terror, in the form of restrictions on movement and commerce, may be painful, but the pain is temporary in nature.

In point of fact, recent restrictions in response to terror haven't even lasted a 24 hour news cycle!

Terrorist attacks may, in fact, be viewed in the long run by the Palestinians as serving their interests by softening Israel's resolve.

Back on September 22, 2013 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to the murder of Sgt. Gabriel Kobi in Hebron by ordering the immediate resettlement of Beit Hamachpela, a Jewish owned building near the West Bank city’s Tomb of Patriarchs which was previously boarded up by order of the Defense Ministry.

PM Netanyahu declared that "those who attempt to uproot us from the city of our forefathers will achieve the opposite effect. We will continue on one hand to fight terror and to harm terrorists and on the other hand to strengthen settlements."

Unfortunately, protracted legal wrangling with Defense Minister Yaalon's civil administration has prevented families from moving in to this very day.

So what was supposed mark a return of the Netanyahu Administration to the "Zionist response to terror" turned out to be no more than a "rhetorical response to terror."

And now, two years later, the Netanyahu Administration has pretty much exhausted the alternatives.

So let's give the "Zionist Response" a chance.

With a simple schedule of "prices" for terror:

(Video) Meet "The Settlers"

...We are talking about a very diverse society combined of wonderful goodhearted people. 2 minutes. Small taste.

Ezri Tubi..
08 December '15..

"You've probably heard about them. You know - those backward brutal racist religious bigots. The ones with the big nose. Now they are the biggest moral problem in the Middle East. So first of all - we're not settlers. We're Jews living in our Biblical land. And second: We are talking about a very diverse society combined of wonderful goodhearted people. 2 minutes. Small taste.



Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvfZu9y-Elg

Become involved by supporting a good cause at http://asif.la/stt

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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Machinations and the Settlements Dodge

...We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil,” declared Slaughter. But this is pretty astounding stuff. Would Slaughter describe an Arab living in Israel as “planted on Jewish soil”? Indeed, he’d cause a minor crisis within British politics if he started describing Pakistani immigrants to Britain as colonizers “planted on English soil.” Presumably, Slaughter’s belief that the very soil of the West Bank is somehow intrinsically and exclusively Palestinian stems from his equally misguided view that the West Bank is a foreign country.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
15 October '14..

Responding to Monday’s Palestinian statehood vote in Britain’s parliament, Times of Israel editor David Horovitz penned an op-ed provocatively titled “It’s the Settlements, Stupid.” Horovitz argues that the erosion of Israel’s diplomatic standing that made Monday’s vote possible has in large part been on account of Israel’s settlement policy. If true, then we live in strange times, where building homes for Jews can cause more outrage than Hamas stockpiling rockets and Iran developing nuclear weapons with which to murder those same Jews. And yet the following day, Sir Alan Duncan, Britain’s envoy to Yemen and Oman, gave a shocking speech asserting that those endorsing settlements should be considered on par with racists and hounded from Britain’s public life. The reality is, it is not the settlements that have eroded Israel’s standing, but rather the completely warped narrative that now surrounds them. And what’s worse, many Israelis have in no small part helped to create that narrative.

As Horovitz points out, settlement building was referenced some 40 times during the Westminster debate. That is certainly testament to the extent to which this issue has been turned into the weapon of choice for those looking to pour scorn on Israel. Horovitz also gives examples of the kind of talk about settlements that he’s referring to. One Conservative MP, who began by professing his deep friendship for Israel, went on to say that the recent “annexation” by Israel of 950 acres of West Bank land had outraged him more than anything else in his entire political life. He explained that, given all his support for Israel in the past, this move had made him appear the fool. But the truth is, many people had been fooled by the way that this event was willfully misrepresented, first by the Israeli left, and then by the international media. For as Eugene Kontorovich pointed out here at the time, there had in reality been no annexation whatsoever. Israel had simply come to a factual administrative finding about the status of the land in question (much of it purchased by Jews before Israel’s founding), but the world was encouraged to imagine privately owned Palestinian property being appropriated for colonization.

This sense of alien colonization of Palestinian land sits at the core of what many feel about the settlements. That was certainly the notion promoted in the other statement referenced by Horovitz, this time from Labor’s Andy Slaughter. “Who can defend settlement building — the colonization of another country? We are talking about 600,000 Israeli settlers planted on Palestinian soil,” declared Slaughter. But this is pretty astounding stuff. Would Slaughter describe an Arab living in Israel as “planted on Jewish soil”? Indeed, he’d cause a minor crisis within British politics if he started describing Pakistani immigrants to Britain as colonizers “planted on English soil.” Presumably, Slaughter’s belief that the very soil of the West Bank is somehow intrinsically and exclusively Palestinian stems from his equally misguided view that the West Bank is a foreign country.

There is of course an argument for turning the West Bank into a Palestinian state one day, but like the misbelief that the green line holds some sacrosanct status under international law, it is hard to understand why the territory seized and occupied by Jordan for just 19 years represents the precise boundaries for any future Palestinian state. Besides, long before anyone starts trying to determine exactly which areas should constitute a Palestinian state, someone has to come up with a model for making the land-for-peace transaction workable. So far this exchange has proved catastrophic. Gaza is the most obvious example, although there are several others. But in Gaza the Israeli experience has been one of removing settlements and getting a security nightmare in return.

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.

Current Events and This Day in History

Rick Richman..
Commentary/Contentions..
14 April '13..

Today is the ninth anniversary of one of the key documents in the history of the “peace process”: the April 14, 2004 letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon, reiterating a “steadfast commitment” by the U.S. to “defensible borders” for Israel, and recognizing that Palestinian refugees would return to a Palestinian state, not to Israel. In Tested by Zion, his invaluable account of the Bush administration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Elliott Abrams describes how carefully considered the letter was: there were “many drafts, as words, phrases, and paragraphs came in and went out.” At the end, “the headline was clear: There would be no return to 1967 and Israel could keep the major settlement blocks.”

The letter was more than a statement of U.S. policy. It was part of a deal. One of the most troublesome signs of the new approach adopted by President Obama in 2009 was the repeated refusals by administration spokespersons to answer whether the U.S. was bound by the letter. At 22, I stopped counting the number of times the question was asked and not answered, as the administration signaled Israel that the prior U.S. commitment was no longer reliable. But last week, on his return visit to Israel seeking to re-invigorate the “peace process,” Secretary of State Kerry was asked about it again.

Paula R. Stern - Why Do I Live in the “Settlements”?

Paula R. Stern..
Times of Israel..
05 September '12..

In a lot of ways, writing the introduction to this blog was easy. This is who I am; accept me as I accept you. That’s simple. The next question someone might ask is why do you live there?

I had a choice when I moved to Israel – the whole country was open to me. It wasn’t like I had family living in a place they expected me to move to or any other compelling reason to choose one place over another. I knew what I didn’t want; I knew what I did. So let me explain.

There are two major reasons why people choose to live in the areas known as Yehuda and Shomron, Judea and Samaria, the West Bank. The first was/is economics. It’s usually cheaper (not always) to live in a settlement. When we moved to Israel, I could buy a small apartment in an Israeli city, or I could buy a beautiful house located on a nice-sized plot of land. Economics.

Nope, I didn’t make my choice based on where it was cheaper – I went for the house in the yishuv (settlement) not because of the house, but because of the yishuv. I had a garden that I loved – I planned it out myself. My husband kept asking me what the plan was…and I would look at him and say – an orange tree here, please. Oh, a lemon tree there. I want a mango tree on this side. Flowers, I want flowers. And grass, let it swirl this way around these rocks. I loved my garden. There wasn’t a room without at least one curved or angled wall. I was enchanted.

(Read full "Why Do I Live in Settlements"?)

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The Settlements Issue: Distorting the Geneva Convention and the Oslo Accords

Alan Baker
JCPA
Vol. 10, No. 20
05 January '11

- Palestinian representatives at the UN have prepared a draft resolution that will seek to declare that Israeli settlements are "illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of peace." The issue of the legality of Israel's settlements policy has long been a central issue on the agenda of the international community.

- It is claimed that settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians (1949). But both the text of that convention, and the post-World War II circumstances under which it was drafted, clearly indicate that it was never intended to refer to situations like Israel's settlements. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Article 49 relates to situations where populations are coerced into being transferred. There is nothing to link such circumstances to Israel's settlement policy.

- During the negotiation on the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Arab states initiated an addition to the text in order to render it applicable to Israel's settlement policy. This was indicative of the international community's acknowledgment that the original 1949 Geneva Convention language was simply not relevant to Israel's settlements.

- The continued reliance by the international community on the Geneva Convention as the basis for determining the illegality of Israel's settlements fails to take into account the unique nature of the history, legal framework, and negotiating circumstances regarding the West Bank.

- A special regime between Israel and the Palestinians is set out in a series of agreements negotiated between 1993 and 1999 that are still valid - that govern all issues between them, settlements included. In this framework there is no specific provision restricting planning, zoning, and continued construction by either party. The Palestinians cannot now invoke the Geneva Convention regime in order to bypass previous internationally acknowledged agreements.

Palestinian representatives at the UN have prepared a draft resolution dated December 21, that will seek to declare that Israeli settlements are "illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of peace."1 The claim is not new. The issue of the legality of Israel's settlements and the rationale of Israel's settlements policy have for years dominated the attention of the international community. This has been evident in countless reports of different UN bodies, rapporteurs, and resolutions,2 as well as in political declarations and statements by governments and leaders. In varying degrees, they consider Israel's settlements to be in violation of international law, specifically Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of August 12, 1949.3

But apart from the almost standardized, oft-repeated, and commonly accepted clichés as to the "illegality of Israel's settlements," or the "flagrant violation" of the Geneva Convention, repeated even by the International Court of Justice,4 there has been little genuine attempt to elaborate and consider the substantive legal reasoning behind this view. Yet there are a number of very relevant factors that inevitably must be considered when making such a serious accusation against Israel. These factors include:

- the text of the sixth paragraph of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the circumstances of, and reasons for, its inclusion in the Convention in December 1949;

- the unique circumstances of the territory and the context of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship that has developed since 1993 through a series of agreements between them. These agreements have created a sui generis framework that, of necessity, influences and even overrides any general determinations unrelated to that framework.

What Does Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention Say?

Immediately after the Second World War, the need arose to draft an international convention to protect civilians in times of armed conflict in light of the massive numbers of civilians forced to leave their homes during the war, and the glaring lack of effective protection for civilians under any of the then valid conventions or treaties.5 In this context, the sixth paragraph of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states:

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.6

What is the exact meaning of this language?

(Read full "The Settlements Issue: Distorting the Geneva Convention and the Oslo Accords")

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Is settlement growth booming?

The question sounds simple. And building has certainly resumed since the 10-month moratorium ended in September. But the true picture is far more complex.

Tova Lazaroff
Frontlines/JPost
30 December '10

Palestinian moves to censure Israel in the United Nations Security Council over settlement construction are the latest in a series of steps they have taken to place West Bank Jewish communities at the heart of the conflict. Now that the US has failed to sway Israel to continue forcibly curbing such activity, the Palestinian Authority has held fast to its stance that no talks can be held while West Bank Jewish building continues. The intensified focus on settlement construction has generated confusion and misunderstanding over what is actually happening in the settlements, particularly when it comes to growth. The following is a guide which answers some of the fundamental questions.

What exactly constitutes a settlement?

Settlements are communities located in any area over the Green Line – other than in east Jerusalem – that were given legal status by the government, in most cases through a cabinet decision. They were created between 1967 and 1999. Unlike other communities, settlements fall under the jurisdiction of the Defense Ministry, and all construction in them must be approved both by that ministry and by the Prime Minister’s Office.

(Read full "Is settlement growth booming?")

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Budgeting West Bank Settlements

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
01 January '11

(What I disagree with in this piece is known and should not require any further explanation, however his main point certainly requires our attention. Y.)

One of the meta-narratives of Israel's political Left these past three or four decades has been that the settlement project costs billions, and if it didn't exist there would be lots and lots of money for worthier things. Haaretz handed the job of presenting the case this year to Akiva Eldar, a veteran reporter with great command of his material. Of course, he's also first and foremost an ideological journalist, which means that while he'll never lie, he'll routinely cast his data in the mode he thinks will best serve his agenda. This also means that if a reader has his own command of the data, Eldar's articles can sometimes lead to surprising and unintended insights.

Here's his presentation, claiming the national budget which just passed allocates more than 2 billion NIS to the settlements. Feel free to read it in its entirety before continuing with my comments.

Eldar's first omission is the overall size of the budget. It's about 350 billion NIS (the $ is currently about 3.5 NIS). Which means less than 1% of the budget goes to West Bank settlements.

How many Israelis live on the WB? That depends how you count them. If you mean all Israelis who live beyond the Green Line including in Jerusalem, it may be about 500,000, though to them you'd need to add the 270,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem who also benefit from the budget. Say, 800,000 people from a population of 7.7 million. And they're allocated less than 1% of the budget? Is this possible?

(Read full "Budgeting West Bank Settlements")


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Israel Replies To NYTimes "Settlers" Slur

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
05 December '10

NYTimes allows official Israel opinion to appear:

Residents of Jerusalem

To the Editor:

In “Eviction of Palestinian Family, After a Legal Battle, Underlines Tensions Over Jerusalem” (news article, Nov. 24), you call Israelis who move into homes legally purchased from Palestinians in Jerusalem “settlers.”

Today, hundreds of Palestinians are moving legally into homes owned by Jews in Jerusalem. We, however, do not disparage them as “settlers.” Rather, we call them “residents” and “neighbors.”

The notion that some areas of Jerusalem — the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years — should be off-limits to Jews, while the entire city is open to Arabs, is deeply prejudicial. The suggestion that Jews, or any other ethnic group, would be denied residence in an American city would instantly be condemned as racist.

(Read full post)

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My tour of the Israeli settlement of Eli

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
31 October '10

The demonization of Israeli “settlers” – those Israelis who live beyond the “Green Line” – is a narrative that is simply reflexive in much of the mainstream media. The Guardian represents an especially egregious case of employing such caricatures to describe Israelis who live outside of the 1949 borders. My tour of the settlement of Eli was an attempt to understand the settler movement and, more importantly, to understand what motivates Israelis to move to communities in Judea and Samaria. Here is my snapshot of the community.

I recently toured the settlement of Eli, a few miles from Ariel, a community stretching over a vast area situated on a mountainous topography, including a cluster of neighborhoods with a total of 3,000 residents. The center of life in Eli is the pre-military academy that attracts religious students from all over the country. Maj. Ro’i Klein, an Eli resident and hero of the Second Lebanon War, was killed when he leapt on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers.

Quality of life is not a vague concept at Eli. There are cultivated gardens, breath-taking mountain views, the shades of its olive trees, and a well-kept regional sports center, which includes multi-purpose playing fields, a tennis court, a work-out facility & swimming pool. Eli provides health services, a small shopping center, and post office. Synagogues and ritual baths are scattered around the neighborhoods.

(Read full post)

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Some thoughts on Jewish settlements

Bataween
Point of No Return
03 October '10

It looks as though 'peace talks' between Israel and the Palestinians are in danger of breaking down because Mrs Cohen wants to build an extra bedroom or Mr Levy a garage. Daniel Greenfield in Right Side News has remarked on the absurdity and iniquity of blaming building in Jewish settlements for the absence of an agreement, especially when the Jews who are building are sometimes the very same people who have been evicted from their homes and communities in Arab countries. My comment on this thorny question follows:

Daniel Greenfield writes:

If you believe the newspapers, a kindergarten in a town built by Jewish refugees from Yemen is about to doom all hopes for peace in the Middle East. Forget the fact that there was never any peace long before a few dozen Jews who fled Yemen built themselves a small town where they could raise their families, without being murdered for their faith or driven into ghettos-- as is the fate of the last remaining Jews of Yemen.

(Read full post)

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New York Times blames the victims for Beit Hagai massacre

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
02 September '10

When it comes to differentiating between Israeli settlers and Hamas terrorists, the New York Times displays more sympathy for the latter than for the former -- as is quite apparent from its Sept. 1 coverage of the killing of four Israeli civilians, including a pregnant woman, in an ambush by Hamas gunmen ("Killing of Israeli Settlers Rattles Leaders on Both Sides" by Isabel Kershner and Mark Landler," page A4).

The article's lead paragraph makes perfectly clear where the Times thinks the primary blame for the deadliest terrorist attack on Israeli civilians in more than two years lies. The killing of these Israelis on the eve of peace talks in Washington, Kershner and Landler write, "underscored the disruptive role that the issue of Jewish settlements could play in the already fragile negotiations."

The only "disruptive role" mentioned in the article's lead is that of Jewish settlements. No mention that the murders might also underscore the "disruptive role" of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, including Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the terror wing of Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party. No mention of any "disuptive role" by Abbas-sanctioned incitement to violence in Palestinian Authority media, schools and mosques in the West Bank -- the kind of incitement that breeds terrorists like those who murdered these Israelis.

Instead, right up there in the headline and in the first paragraph, the Times points a finger of blame only at Jewish settlements in the West Bank. To drive home this point, Kershner and Landler don't just report that four Israelis were killed. They lead off by informing readers that the targets of Hamas terrorists were "Israeli settlers." Coupled with their primary emphasis on the "disruptive role" of settlements, they leave an obvious impression that these settlers basically had it coming. If anyone is to blame more than anyone else or any other group, it's the settlers, according to the Times version of events.

The Times basically wants the settlements -- not Hamas -- to disappear.

(Read full article)

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The Other Side: The Jews of Judea and Samaria, Part 3

nikudaproduction
09 August '10

Yisrael and Batya Medad live in Shiloh, in the northern part of Samaria. In this video we learn who they are, why they chose to live there and their thoughts about their lives.

Visit us at http://theothersidevideo.com/



The media invariably portrays the Jewish citizens of communities in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as fanatics and intolerant bigots. Yet no one really talks to them to see how they really are and what they really think.

This series intends to find out who these "settlers" are, why they choose to live there, and what their aspirations and fears are.

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Eldad Yaniv Mismaps Zionism and Settlements

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA/Snapshots
25 May '10

"Zionists are not settlers. Zionists are not racists" is the online headline of an Op-Ed in Ha'aretz today by Israeli attorney Eldad Yaniv, author of the National Left Manifest, who unfortunately errs about Zionism and settlements.

In an effort to separate Zionism from a history of settlement, Yaniv fumbles:

[In an earlier Op-Ed Israel Harel] claims that Ofra is the equivalent of the prestate "tower and stockade" settlements, that today's settlements in the territories are a continuation of the pioneering enterprise of that time.

But when David Ben-Gurion and the Jews in Palestine encouraged settlement under the nose of the British, they were building Jewish sovereignty and creating a Jewish majority in places that the world had designated for a Jewish state.

In fact....

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Poor Old Joe & the Palestinian Status Quo

David Calling
National Review Online
10 March '10

Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Israel, and the very next moment some Israeli minister announces that they'll be building 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem. Poor old Joe! Settlements! More of those darned things! And just when he was going to play the conjurer, say abracadabra, and shake peace out of his sleeves. So upset is the VP that he turned up ninety minutes late for dinner with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Was he telephoning the geniuses in Washington who think these settlements are the key to the Middle East, or sobbing in the men's room?

Indirect negotiations, proximity talks, the Road Map, the Quartet, shelf agreements, the freelancing of Senator Mitchell and Tony Blair, and the drills of General Dayton have exhausted the lexicon of diplomacy and the ingenuity of lawyers. The reason for this should be crystal clear. The Palestinians are happy with the way things are; they see no reason for change; the present situation is playing profitably into their hands. If they'd really wanted a state, they could have had one any time since the 1992 Oslo Accords. Israel, the United States, the European Union, and even Saudi Arabia implore them to have a state.

But why should they? All these well-wishers are pumping money to them, and a state would force them to spend it on administration rather than themselves. They also have the pleasure of observing everyone — and specially Washington — putting pressure on Israel and making it unpopular. Sixteen-hundred more settlements gives them grounds for 1,600 more complaints, and then sitting down and rubbing their hands in expectation of commiseration and rewards. A state would oblige them to pull their own chestnuts out of the fire.

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Already there reaches the inspectors with their caravan

Tekoa
30 November 09

An officer of the government ticketing Jews for building in Judea. As is to be expected, also accompanied by the camp followers.

Why Have a Forced Marriage?

Ted Belman

israpundit.com

23 September 09

Sultan Knish suggests Why Israel is Losing the Military and Media Wars

The answer is simple enough. Defensive PR, like defensive warfare, never works. And Israeli PR and Israeli warfare has been on the defensive for decades now. If you break down Israel’s message to a single sentence, it’s “We didn’t do any of the things we’re accused of.” That is the kind of message you expect to hear from criminal defendants, and it’s a message that impresses no one. The only thing it does is produce a debate about the validity of the accusations themselves, which is to PR what Stalingrad was to the Russian front.

I go further. Our diplomacy, if it has any chance to overcome the demonization of Israel and win us a better deal, must be rights based.

Rather than resist the demanded freeze with the argument that such settlements must be permitted internal growth, we should have been asserting our right to build because it is our right.

Rather than hide behind the necessity for Palestine to be demilitarized or to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, we should be claiming our right to Judea and Samaria.

Rather than stand by failed agreements which have been honoured only in the breach, such as Oslo and the Roadmap, we should be discarding them.

Rather than wait passively for the next peace initiative to broadside us, we should have an initiative of our own. We must take matters into our own hands.

In a way, Netanyahu, with his economic plan for the “Palestinians”, is doing just that, but it is the wrong plan. It is premised on the basis that as the Palestinians develop a greater stake in peace, they will be more wont to preserve it. That may or may not be so. Essentially he is investing in a marriage, believing that it will work to our advantage in the long run. By doing so, he forecloses the option of squeezing the Arabs out of Judea and Samaria.

Many accept it as inevitable that we will have to live with them and must make the best of it. Others reject such a marriage, or separation or divorce if that’s what it leads to. They don’t want to get married in the first place.

Why struggle to share a house? Why not get one party to move out.
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