by Gerald A. Honigman
I thought the editors at the Free Press were above this…
Firstly, I realize that no nation is perfect and events occur at times deserving of legitimate and fair criticism.
Having said this, however, The Free Press recently published an article by Haviv Rettig Gur which falls into the same anti-Zionist trap that’s been around since the sole, resurrected nation of Israel Reborn survived immediate attack by a half dozen Arab nations, supplied to the hilt with enormous quantities of military equipment left over from the Rommel Campaign by the Brits and others in North Africa during WWII…
The editors don’t have to live in a speck of a nation constantly under attack, and made more vulnerable precisely due to the fact that lands which should have been part of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine and Balfour Declaration, were lopped off in 1922, and even more after Transjordan illegally seized Judaea and Samaria after the ‘48 fighting.
It’s easy, when you have no real identification with the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People to assail others who do. This means that such a nation must have rights that all others have, especially defensible borders, not suicidal, artificially imposed armistice lines.
For those at the Free Press, it’s evidently okay for Arabs to lay claim to over six million square miles of mostly other native peoples’s original territory in the
creation of the almost two dozen states that they possess, but…how dare Jews stake legitimate, historically corroborated claims to an Israel beyond the artificial ‘49, 9-15 mile wide armistice lines imposed by a hostile United Nations.
Furthermore, while an arms embargo was placed on Israel, the best fighting force the Arabs had was created by His Majesty’s numerous antisemitic military leaders led by Sir John Bagot Glubb—the Transjordanian Arab Legion.
An important footnote that repeatedly must be noted is that right from the get-go, ARABISM was awarded the lion’s share of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine in 1922, when Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill, the allegedly pro-Zionist British Colonial Secretary, gifted Arabs with almost 80% of the total Mandate.
After the May ‘48 Arab assault, when the Jews finally pushed back the invasion, the UN drew up Auschwitz/armistice lines in 1949 which made it virtually invisible on a world globe without a magnifying glass: 9-15 miles wide at its waist, where most of its population, international airport, Knesset, and infrastructure are located.
This extremely vulnerable situation existed until the’67 War, started by an illegal Egyptian naval blockade and Transjordanian shelling of the Jewish half of Jerusalem, along with the expulsion of the inept United Nauseating Nations’s peace keeping force in the Sinai.
When the dust settled on the 6th day, Israel now sat on territories which had repeatedly been used to launch terror and attacks against it from.
Aggressor nations whose admitted goal is the obliteration of their innocent neighbor and extermination of its people routinely lose territory afterwards. That’s happened throughout history, and in non-existential wars. Israel faces a much worse scenario, as Simchat Torah October 7, 2023 and Yom Kippur October 1973, etc., testify to.
Everyone knew in ‘49 that those Auschwitz lines were not meant to be permanent borders.
Hence, after much international debate, the usually hostile UN’s own Security Council passed UNSC Resolution 242 which called for a reasonable territorial compromise in lands where the Jewish People, despite unfortunate periods of forced exile by assorted imperial powers over 4 millennia of Jewish history, would be able to finally return to ancestral lands where their Patriarch Abraham purchased a burial plot for most of their Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron—the same town where the Prophet Samuel anointed David King of Israel 900 years later…
See information regarding UNSC Resolution 242, etc. here:
Where David was born in Bethlehem of Judah/Judaea (NOT the “OCCUPIED WEST BANK”) a little before, and another important Judaean/Jew—NOT Arab nor non-existent “Palestinian”—was also born a thousand years later, Yehoshua/Jesus of Nazareth.
By the way, do the Gospels say Jesus was born in Bethlehem of the West Bank or Bethlehem of Judaea?
David purchased land from Jebusite Canaanites on the site where Abraham offered Isaac up for sacrifice to G_d in a test of faith on Mount Moriah (aka. Mt. Zion) for the future Temple his son, King Solomon, would build.
Centuries later, in Modi’in, the Hasmoni family of warriors, known as “the hammers” (Maccabees), fought pagan Greeks and Syrians for the freedom of Israel/Judaea, and several centuries later the Jews—NOT Arabs, and, again, certainly not non-exclusive Fakestinians—fought the conqueror of much of known world for the freedom and independence of Iudaea/Judaea….at least four major well documented revolts, the last allied with Persian armies in the early 7th century C.E., just prior to the onslaught of jihadi Arab hordes pouring into the land as the latest imperial, colonizing, settling conqueror until they were conquered themselves several centuries later.
Arabs have no such ancient, continuous, ancestral ties to this land.
Here’s ancient Persian corroborating evidence, as just a bit more supportive information:
Foreign, Arab settlers arrived in successive waves via other conquered Arab territories in the region—most from the mid-19th century onwards, especially from Egypt and Syria, as the Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission, official government documents and correspondence from the Colonial Secretary’s office, East Bank Representative Sir Alec Kirkbride, and other material reveals.
Numerous travelers, before and during the 19th century, including America’s Mark Twain, wrote of the overall desolation and depopulation of the land.
So, Free Press, let’s get the facts straight.
While there have been some rare exceptions of Jews in Judaea and Samaria overdosing on repeated Arab attacks and threats, which your author overlooks, and responding in kind as a result, despite 242’s minimal legal territorial compromise, again, the overwhelming instances of violence have undoubtedly been due to the prevalent supremacist, rejectionist Arab mindset which holds that the entire region of MENA—not only Judaea and Samaria, but all the ancestral homelands of hundreds of millions of other non-Arab peoples as well—had become solely “purely Arab patrimony,” forever part of an ever expanding Dar ul-Islam, due to the 7th century C.E. massive jihadi invasions of genocidal Arab hordes who conquered and stole other indigenous peoples’s homelands as they invaded from an increasingly desiccating Arabian Peninsula, literally in quest of others’s greener pastures.
Gur couldn’t care less, and evidently neither do The Free Press editors.
It was the Arabs themselves who were the foreign, colonizing, settling invaders—NOT their Judaean, Zoroastrian Persian, North African “Amazigh” Berber, black African, Kurd, Lebanese Christian, Assyrian, Hindu Indian, Buddhist, or numerous other victims.
I thought The Free Press editors knew better than to simply jump on the anti-Zionist bandwagon, like most of the mainstream media and academia do.
I was mistaken.
Please read about UNSC Resolution 242 and such below, including your “Settler” statements…
“Settlers”
https://share.google/cgtICkL5vOpiqPNBU
“Settlements and Samoa”
https://share.google/5ByqX9pVYXc7cphgb
And to close, the following is a must read, including its crucial internal links:
So the Arabs want all of Israel for themselves. They are greedy beyond belief, but due to their religious philosophy, they feel they must have it all even if it’s to their disadvantage. They are unable to learn, it seems. With all this greed and dissatisfaction with the Jews, they are forgetting that there are other players who are just waiting for their chance, just like in 1948.
Don’t forget that the Vatican also wants a select part of Jerusalem and the EU would love nothing less. However, they are all waiting for Israel to hand their choice plots over to them, even if those plots are also favored by the Israelis themselves. The open question is why have they waited all this time? They could have demanded their shares from the Jordanians from 1948 to 1967. Just think; the Israelis would have had to conquer those selected lands from the Vatican and the EU! Even now, part of Jerusalem is still under the control of the Wakf and they would probably be pleased to pass it on to anyone but Israel if they had the choice.
There are still plenty of things to consider in the next phase of life in the MENA. As we just heard, Egypt and Turkey are both rattling their sabers hoping that a weakened Israel, financially and militarily depleted, would be easy prey. The so called Palestinians and the Iranians would love to join in too and are wondering what’s taking so long to get started. Also, don’t forget Jolani and all the others.
The most important part is to remain awake and aware. Am Israel Chai!!