Carter & Phoenix Rabbis Clarification (and a response to a Reverend)

I had blogged about this meeting and the "prayer", but now comes the clarification:-

To the Editor:

The executive committee of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Phoenix met with Jimmy Carter for more than an hour, not to “discuss” his book, as you report he said, but to speak on behalf of the greater Phoenix Jewish community and share with him the very serious concerns we have regarding his book.

Mr. Carter referred to our praying together. In essence, it was a closing invocation for peace in the world but was not intended and should not be construed as representing any agreement or conciliation by us with Mr. Carter’s position.

In fact, the opposite is true.

His use of the word “colonization” to describe Israel’s policies in the West Bank, without any consideration for the security concerns of the Israeli government, shows his bias on the issue.

(Rabbi) Darren Kleinberg
Phoenix, Dec. 14, 2006

In another letter there, the Rev. Ralph Lord Roy of Southington, Conn., asks two questions:

How does the continuing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank contribute to peace? Why do so many Americans have a blind spot when it comes to compassion for the suffering Palestinians?...Why can’t we be pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian at the same time?

Well, Reverend, let's be devilish and ask the question this way:

Would the contraction of Arab settlements in Israel contribute to peace (and security)?

I know this is an unfair question to ask. It probably will upset you terribly. But the fact of the matter is that it must be asked because it goes right to the root of the Arab-Israel or Jewish-Muslim conflict. It leads to the real question that you and other supporters of the "Palestinians" must ask of them which is:

Have any of the Arabs, any Arab, genuinely come to terms with the existence of Israel

a) as the Jewish state;

b) as a sovereign state;

c) as a state anywhere in any area the Jews consider their national homeland.

Okay, now I know this may come as a shock to you, being a pacifist and grace-seeking Christian as I presume you are, but ever since Jews initiated the political process of reestablishing their state (the one that all the Prophets in the Bible assured all mankind was the object of the design and desire of the Divinity), no Arab has come to that basic realization.

We Jews have consistently in the past 100 years or so, in addition to reestablishing communities all over the Holy Land - what we refer to, dear Reverend, as the "Land of Israel", what Jesus knew of as Judea, Samaria and Gaza ["Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”" - Acts.8.26 and "And they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles" - Act 8:1], what we know as YESHA, have been comrpomising our territory, the territory promised us by the highest forum of international law at the time, the Supreme Council of the League of Nations which, in 1922, granted us the right to "close settlement" on the land.

Really Reverend.

And the Arabs responded consistently with violence, killing espeically the undefended: women, children, old men, religious recluses. They burnt fields, destroyed crops, cut down trees. And I am talking about the 1920s and 1930s. And when they were promised an Arab state in truncated Mandate Palestine, whittled down, the rejected that and went to war, a war they have never stopped pursuing. A war that now has brought us, 13 years after a peace treaty process at Oslo was begun, the grandmother of all suicide bombers,

But one last comment before you say to yourself 'well, he never answered the question'.

"Expanding settlements" (Jewish communities, towns, villages, to you) is the most natural thing to do. And it will surely bring peace because peace must be between peoples. If I can't live at Shiloh among Arabs, why should Arabs live asmong Jews in Haifa? Should we dissolve Arab villages in the Negev and Galillee? Should we create two Arab states out of the Mandate (don't forget Reverend, Jordan was also part of the original area set aside for the Jewish national home) and just one small Jewish one?

These communities will obstruct the establishment of an independent Palestine which has but one raison d'etre: the eradicate Israel.

So, the Yesha committees, Reverend, are the best way to reach peace. A true Peace.