“G-d said to Jacob, ‘I am G-d A-mighty. Be fruitful and increase. A nation and a community of nations will come into existence from you. Kings will be born from your loins. I will grant you the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac. I will also give the land to your decendants who will follow you .” - GENESIS 35:11
“Recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country… ” -LEAGUE OF NATIONS, 1922
The people of Israel were promised the land of Israel some 3,300 years ago. In this land they lived as a free nation for more than 12 centuries. In this land their kings ruled and their prophets proclaimed the moral law. In this land the Bible came into being.
Israel was their homeland, and Judea and Samaria were its heart.
After Rome conquered Judea, the land of Israel passed from one ruler to another. Conquerors came and went. New settlers followed them and vanished. Only the Jews lived continuously in the land of Israel - the one common demographic denominator of the country. Neither Arab nor Turk nor any other ethnic or national community - except the Jews - claimed this country as its home.
During all the years of exile, Jews outside Israel never ceased to assert their right and title to the land of Israel. The holidays they celebrated were those they kept in the land. The language they taught their children was the tongue they spoke in the land. The city they faced when they prayed was Jerusalem.
Yet even after the Romans destroyed the Temple and sought to erase the connection of the Jews to their homeland by changing its name to Palestine, Jews lived here.
When the Byzantines came 300 years later, Jews lived here.
When the Caliphate conquered the land in 637, Jews lived here.
When the Crusaders conquered the land in 1099, Jews lived here.
When the Mamluks conquered the land in 1291, Jews lived here.
When the Turks conquered the land in 1516, Jews lived here.
When the British conquered the land in 1918, Jews lived here.
Jews lived in the same Judea and Samaria where the President of the United States is now seeking to establish a Palestinian State. Israel is being asked to ignore 3,300 years of history because of 19 years - 1948 to 1967 - in which Judea and Samaria were occupied by Jordan.
During those 19 years thousands of Jews who lived here were killed or expelled by Jordan's army. Judea and Samaria were renamed "the West Bank" and annexed by Jordan.
That occupation, that annexation, was never recognized by the United Nations or the United States or any country except England and Pakistan.
Can 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation negate 3,300 years of Jewish history? Can Jews, who are allowed to live anywhere in the world, be denied the right to live in the heartland of their national home?
Mr. President: Should a catastrophe befall America, and your country or any part of it be conquered by enemy forces, would you stop considering it your homeland? Would you relinquish your right to return to its shores? Would you ever consider yourselves as foreigners in it?
Mr. President: Surely you don't expect Israel to allow the ethnic cleansing against her own people, who after millennia of murder and persecution have returned to our ancient homeland, and who stand in the frontlines in the war against terror?
Surely your Administration will not order Israeli governments to order Jews out of Judea and Samaria, the heartland of Joseph and his brothers?
Comments (6)
Please write you ideas on how we can solve the conflict in away that will allow the Jewish communities to grow.
The Jews are entitled to settle in all parts of Judea and Samaria according to the Torah. The concept of illegal building is politically motivated and has no basis as a legal matter since illegal building by Arabs are not only disregarded but are actually funded by USAID. If they were so concerned about observing the letter of the law, they would give equal time to destroying these illegal Arab buildings.
Which leads us back again to the theological debate about who has rightful entitlement to Judea and Samaria and as this post clearly proves, the Jews are the only authentic, divinely chosen people to have the divine mission of caretakers of this very holy soil.
You ask or state "Surely your Administration will not order Israeli governments to order Jews out of Judea and Samaria, the heartland of Joseph and his brothers? Well, I bet BHO DOES ASK THAT OR DEMANDS THAT OF THEM.
We must do everything to in the most democratic manner swing the policy away from destruction of Jewish towns.
The United States Congressional Record
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
National Home for
THE JEWISH PEOPLE JUNE 30, 1922
HOUSE RESOLUTION 360 - UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED
"Palestine of today, the land we now know as Palestine, was peopled by the Jews from the dawn of history until the Roman era. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. They were driven from it by force by the relentless Roman military machine and for centuries prevented from returning. At different periods various alien people succeeded them but the Jewish race had left an indelible impress upon the land.
"Today it is a Jewish country. Every name, every landmark, every monument and every trace of whatever civilization remaining there is still Jewish. And it has ever since remained a hope, a longing, as expressed in their prayers for these nearly 2,000 years. No other people has ever claimed Palestine as their national home. No other people has ever shown an aptitude or indicated a genuine desire to make it their homeland. The land has been ruled by foreigners. Only since the beginning of the modern Zionist effort may it be said that a creative, cultural, and economic force has entered Palestine. The Jewish Nation was forced from its natural home. It did not go because it wanted to.
"A perusal of Jewish history, a reading of Josephus, will convince the most skeptical that the grandest fight that was ever put up against an enemy was put up by the Jew. He never thought of leaving Palestine. But he was driven out. But did he, when driven out, give up his hope of getting back? Jewish history and Jewish literature give the answer to the question. The Jew even has a fast day devoted to the day of destruction of the Jewish homeland.
"Never throughout history did they give up hope of returning there. I am told that 90 per cent of the Jews today are praying for the return of the Jewish people to its own home. The best minds among them believe in the necessity of reestablishing their Jewish land. To my mind there is something prophetic in the fact that during the ages no other nation has taken over Palestine and held it in the sense of a homeland; and there is something providential in the fact that for 1,800 years it has remained in desolation as if waiting for the return of the people."
[Written by Representative Frank Appleby, New Jersey]
Guess we have our answer now "Obama, in his audacity, dreams that 350,000 Jews can be removed from Judea and Samaria, but they are a fact that cannot be changed," he was quoted by Army Radio as saying.