The right of annexation

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

A powerful wind is now shaking the settlement enterprise and bringing with it new possibilities and new calculations. The new administration in Washington is still learning and “consolidating,” but the settlements are surely no longer a thorn in its side: The radical Left succeeded in forcing the national “right-wing” government, though the High Court of Justice, to evacuate a 20-year-old settlement, and it is now investing its efforts in additional “Amonas.”

And there is also the Judea and Samaria Regulation Law, which is not really a milestone, but a byroad. The High Court of Justice will probably close it to traffic soon.

Byroads of this kind, of craftiness and chicanery, which have been used for decades to establish the settlement project as the most correct and the most Zionist in the heart of the land of Israel, have exhausted themselves. The time has come to get back on track, to raise the bar with the United States, to try to achieve more.

In 1949, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, saying that even though the decision would receive only one vote of support at the United Nations — Israel’s — this was the deciding vote. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin applied sovereignty to the Golan Heights. Now it is Judea and Samaria’s turn.

In my opinion, the “Palestinian state minus” paradigm to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred was from the outset nothing more than a maneuver that bought us time, a type of smoke screen. The world never bought it, and rightly so. It also brought a building freeze in the settlements and in Jerusalem upon us, and mainly an unrealistic expectation on the part of much of the world that the idea would be realized.

Netanyahu was once the best at providing arguments against the 1993 Oslo Accords. His writings then, including “A Place Among the Nations,” remain convincing today. But now the world asks us: How can you promise the Palestinians a state while at the same time building and expanding Jewish communities in the “occupied” territories that are seemingly meant to be handed over when it is established? How would that work out?

I don’t believe it does.

On Feb. 15 at the White House, we must tell President Donald Trump and the world that we are returning to our basic truth: our right to the land of Israel. We are not the conquerors of our own land. The opposite is true: We have emancipated it from the occupation of others. Trump needs to hear that our interest in Judea and Samaria is first and foremost of a historical-religious-nationalist-conscious nature, and that security is a tool for realizing that right, and not the opposite. The Palestinians stick to their truth and speak in the language of rights. We should also go back to that.

The “settlement bloc” paradigm created by former Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, the aim of which is the implementation of the Palestinian state paradigm, should also be taken off the agenda. Its real aim is to return to the 1967 borders, with a few moderations. It was born in sin on the Left. It would be best if that is where it remains.

This about-face should be accompanied by expansive construction and the historical step of annexation — the application of Israeli law over the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, as we did in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. This is necessary to make it clear to ourselves and to the world that we will not be confused again.

February 7, 2017 | 30 Comments »
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  1. I’m not getting too excited about Israel’s new settlement law. It’s going to be DOA – dead on arrival at Israel’s Supreme Court.

  2. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    xxx

    Sebastien, I think you’ve hit on it. It was always familiar even from childhood.. There are so many “Hear Oh Israel”s and other “Oh Hear Me”s etc. in the Torah that it would be the most natural explanation.

    Yes, it’s astonishing to read about 16th, 17th 18th century people, ordinary people who actually could read write and speak Hebrew, Latin and Greek as part of their normal education. And…if you’ve seen examples of books of that era, with tiny black print, and lines very close together, and in reading about those times, much of their study would have been done after the working day, at night, by the light of a candle, often flickering and etc. How they achieved such, is astonishing to me.

    We moved into a particular house when I was 6. Next door was the larger home of the Presbyterian minister whose Church was down the side street. One day he came to our house, and said that he had a gift for me. This must have been shortly after barmitzvah. The gift was a beautiful TANACH, all soft leather bound with gold scrolling, and completely in Hebrew, with NO English translation on the opposite pages. He said that he’d used it in his studies in becoming a minister. He assumed that I, as a Jew, would naturally know my own language and be religious, etc. I was a fairly fluent speaker and reader of Biblical Hebrew in Chaidar, and my teacher of the time, (later to become the famous Professor Menachem Mansoor of Wisconsin University who wrote so many important books), had told me that I should dig into my studies as I showed good promise.

    Anyway, believe it or not, (I know you’ll believe it) I was able to really read the TANACH, but not really understand other than parts I was familiar with, like “Bereschit, Barah Elohime et HaShomayim Ve Ha’Aretz” etc. basically the parts we’d studied. One must know the context as meanings of the same word differ. So I knew it would not be just “digging in”, as Maurice had said (he went by Maurice when in Ireland (got his Gold Medals in Trinity College) it would have meant many years of slavery.

    A side note; About 5 years later when I had grown up, I was with my girl-friend at a dance in the shool hall, and someone crowded close beside me asked to dance with my girl-friend. I was not very tall, about 5’7″ or 8″..I looked around and all I saw was the top of a very curly head of dark hair. It was Mansoor, but the man I remembered, as a kid, as tall, was not more than 5″. But the same man indeed. Nice, decent, and a rake with women….. He happened to be visiting to receive another degree and came to the Community dance.. He was from The Yishuv….

  3. @ honeybee:
    “Hillary Clinton Declares Future Is Female”
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/07/hillary-clinton-praises-anti-trump-womens-march-claims-future-female/

    Remember this one?

    https://www.google.com/search?q=a+woman+needs+a+man+like+a+fish+needs+a+bicycle&safe=active&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS729US729&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=990&tbm=isch&imgil=Zr4rXr9kKMrbTM%253A%253BTDQohNSMBCe1GM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.quotesvalley.com%25252Fa-woman-needs-a-man-like-a-fish-needs-a-bicycle-26%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=Zr4rXr9kKMrbTM%253A%252CTDQohNSMBCe1GM%252C_&usg=__-SuQkXtWIyc0nwljnMVe6YckfeU%3D&dpr=1&ved=0ahUKEwj89LyKyP_RAhVJ2mMKHd-cArgQyjcIQQ&ei=JpGaWPzJFMm0jwPfuYrACw#imgrc=Zr4rXr9kKMrbTM:

    and

    https://youtu.be/GObRvQexOmI

    https://youtu.be/2iBFmKlO4BY

    https://youtu.be/V2PAzj7_zNA

    https://www.google.com/search?q=female+chauvinist+slogans&safe=active&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS729US729&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=990&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwil1IOZy__RAhXrz1QKHZeIAEoQ_AUIBigB&dpr=1#imgrc=JM432RUNZ9ZgzM:

    Ahh, Feminist hatred and chauvinism. Brings back memories.

    How the mighty have fallen

    “I’m a feminist and I converted to Islam”

    http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/14/opinion/muslim-convert-irpt/

    https://www.google.com/search?q=hillary+clinton+in+a+chador&safe=active&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS729US729&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=990&tbm=isch&imgil=zip6GaE-lE6AQM%253A%253B-g-dBbgdEonMnM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%25252F2015%25252F10%25252Fclinton-presidential-campaign-video-shows-hillary-in-hijab%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=zip6GaE-lE6AQM%253A%252C-g-dBbgdEonMnM%252C_&usg=__PnZ72Vjs10jZnX4ljcK9ZMcpDpY%3D&ved=0ahUKEwiflMS7zf_RAhUF9IMKHb5jDRoQyjcIKA&ei=y5aaWN-CGIXojwS-x7XQAQ#imgrc=zip6GaE-lE6AQM:

  15. @ honeybee
    Big improvement but comma after “Sir”. Are you familiar with that famous movie with Sidney Poitier about how the game of tennis revolutionized education in the inner cities, “To Sir With Luv?” Though in that case, it probably should have read, “Serve” instead of “Sir.” Misprint.

  22. @ Sebastien Zorn:
    Though, interestingly enough, I remember many a demonstration where somebody would shout a slogan and everybody would shout, “Presente” which does translate as “Here, Here” but with the meaning of “Hear, Hear.” I wonder if that began as a deliberate play on words. I googled, “Presente.” One of the first things to come up:

    “Presente – Strengthening the political voice of Latino communities
    http://www.presente.org/
    Stop Payday Predators. Recent news. PRESENTE ACTION: “WE’LL HAVE TO RENAME THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE THE DEPARTMENT OF RACISM!” …
    ?About Us · ?Help stop a white supremacist · ?Campaigns · ?Contact”

    Incidentally, I thought it might be funny if somebody were to do a skit about 18th Century Koreans (or Joseons?) trying to implement a British style – “Robert’s Rules of Order” – structured — Parliamentary system with bewigged jurors getting hopelessly mixed up trying to count the yeahs and Nays.*

    *”Yeah” and “nay” both mean “yes” in Korean. “No” is “anyo”, emphasis on “yo” (New York style.)

  26. @ Edgar G.:
    I wonder if they got the idea from the Shema. A lot of them were Hebraists.

    You know, as in, say, for example, the phrase, “Hear, Oh Honeybee, you lost and I won.”

    If we were betting serious Korean money I wonder how much won that would amount to.

    http://www.xe.com/currency/krw-south-korean-won

    (One way to cultivate a winner’s mentality is in the naming of money, apparently.)

  27. @ honeybee:
    I wasn’t sure either, at first, so I googled it before opening my mouth, so to speak, as you might have done.

    “Hear, hear is an expression used as a short, repeated form of hear him. It represents a listener’s agreement with the point being made by a speaker. … The phrase hear him, hear him! was used in Parliament from late in the 17th century, and was reduced to hear! or hear, hear! by the late 18th century.”
    Hear, hear – Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear“

  28. @ honeybee:
    xx

    It’s an old originally British Parliamentary method of supporting the position of another Member. Meaning they HEAR and agree, so thy put in a double HEAR, as emphasis. You-being American, would naturally spell it the wrong way in the lont-time slow murder of the purer English as she is da spik.