My Op-ed in the Los Angeles Times

My Opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times:

In defense of 'settlements'

Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in Israel.

By Yisrael Medad

June 28, 2009


No one, including a president of the United States of America, can presume to tell me, a Jew, that I cannot live in the area of my national homeland. That's one of the main reasons my wife and I chose in 1981 to move to Shiloh, a so-called settlement less than 30 miles north of Jerusalem.

After Shiloh was founded in 1978, then-President Carter demanded of Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the village of eight families be removed. Carter, from his first meeting with Begin, pressed him to "freeze" the activity of Jews rebuilding a presence in their historic home. As his former information aide, Shmuel Katz, related, Begin said: "You, Mr. President, have in the United States a number of places with names like Bethlehem, Shiloh and Hebron, and you haven't the right to tell prospective residents in those places that they are forbidden to live there. Just like you, I have no such right in my country. Every Jew is entitled to reside wherever he pleases."

We now fast-forward to President Obama, who declared on June 15 in remarks at a news conference with Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, that Jewish communities beyond the Green Line "in past agreements have been categorized as illegal."

I believe the president has been misled. There can be nothing illegal about a Jew living where Judaism was born. To suggest that residency be permitted or prohibited based on race, religion or ethnic background is dangerously close to employing racist terminology.

Suppose someone suggested that Palestinian villages and towns in pre-1967 Israel were to be called "settlements" and that, to achieve a true peace, Arabs should be removed from their homes. Of course, separation or transfer of Arabs is intolerable, but why is it quite acceptable to demand that Jews be ethnically cleansed from the area? Do not Jews belong in Judea and Samaria as much as Palestinians who stayed in the state of Israel?

Some have questioned why Jews should be allowed to resettle areas in which they didn't live in the years preceding the 1967 war, areas that were almost empty of Jews before 1948 as well. But why didn't Jews live in the area at that time? Quite simple: They had been the victims of a three-decades-long ethnic cleansing project that started in 1920, when an Arab attack wiped out a small Jewish farm at Tel Hai in Upper Galilee and was followed by attacks in Jerusalem and, in 1921, in Jaffa and Jerusalem.

In 1929, Hebron's centuries-old Jewish population was expelled as a result of an Arab pogrom that killed almost 70 Jews. Jews that year removed themselves from Gaza, Nablus and Jenin. The return of my family to Shiloh -- and of other Jews to more than 150 other communities over the Green Line since 1967 -- is not solely a throwback to claimed biblical rights. Nor is it solely to assert our right to return to areas that were Jewish-populated in the 20th century until Arab violence drove them away. We have returned under a clear fulfillment of international law. There can be no doubt as to the legality of the act of my residency in Shiloh.

I am a revenant -- one who has returned after a long absence to ancestral lands. The Supreme Council of the League of Nations adopted principles following the 1920 San Remo Conference aimed at bringing about the "reconstitution" of a Jewish National Home. Article 6 of those principles reads: "The administration of Palestine ... shall encourage ... close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands." That "land" was originally delineated to include all of what is today Jordan as well as all the territory west of the Jordan River.

In 1923, Britain created a new political entity, Transjordan, and suspended the right of Jews to live east of the Jordan River. But the region in which I now live was intended to be part of the Jewish National Home. Then, in a historical irony, a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah, fleeing the Wahabis, was afforded the opportunity to establish an Arab kingdom where none had existed previously -- only Jews. As a result, in an area where prophets and priests fashioned the most humanist and moral religion and culture on Earth, Jews are now termed "illegals."

Many people insist that settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. But that convention does not apply to Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza district. Its second clause makes it clear that it deals with the occupation of "the territory of a high contracting party." Judea and Samaria and Gaza, which Israel gained control of in 1967, were not territories of a "high contracting party." Jewish historical rights that the mandate had recognized were not canceled, and no new sovereign ever took over in Judea and Samaria or in Gaza.

Obama has made his objections to Israeli settlements known. But other U.S. presidents have disagreed. President Reagan's administration issued a declaration that Israeli settlements were not illegal. Support for that position came from Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, who determined that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria did not constitute "occupation." It also came from a leading member of Reagan's administration, the former dean of the Yale Law School and former undersecretary of State, Eugene Rostow, who asserted that "Israel has a stronger claim to the West Bank than any other nation or would-be nation [and] the same legal right to settle the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as it has to settle Haifa or West Jerusalem."

Any suggestions, then, of "freezing" and halting "natural growth" are themselves not only illegal but quite immoral.

Yisrael Medad, an American-born Israeli commentator, has lived in Shiloh since 1981. He is head of information resources at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem and blogs at www.myrightword.blogspot.com.


They had Sarah Leah Whitson,



Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, counter me, here.

She compares Jews living in Judea and Samaria to "thieves" possessing ill-gotten gains. She ignores that Jews have full rights to reside there no less than as do Arabs in Israel.

And Whitson is a robber baron stealing from her readers the historical truth by blinding them to the fact that Israel administers the area because Arab states and organizations had been engaged ever since 1948 first in a terror campaign of the fedayeen and then the PLO's Fatah with the intent of annihilating it and secondly, their attempt at a 'second round' war of aggression they prepared for in May-June 1967.


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My previous op-eds in the LATimes:


'We will pay the price of folly'

Date: Sep 13, 1993
Start Page: B7

Yisrael Medad, a Jewish settler on the West Bank, says that it is the most natural of all rights that Jews live in the land of their forefathers, and decries the Israeli government for supporting Palestinian self-rule.

"Our children walk among the ruins at Tel Shiloh, where young Samuel the prophet spent his time in the Tabernacle. This Rosh Hashanah holiday, we'll visit the Seilun spring, whose name preserves that of Shiloh. Our junior and high school children daily ride the roads for distances of between 11 and 28 miles to attend classes. Their buses have been stoned and at times have been targets of Molotov cocktails aimed at them by their Arab peers. My neighbor, Rachela Druck, was murdered on the eve of the 1991 Madrid conference.

Our enthusiastic foreign minister, Shimon Peres, has placed us in an invidious position. We will pay the price of his folly. Without consulting our country's professional security experts, he has led the government into an agreement that invites our enemies to assume that the Bosnian precedent of ethnic cleansing can be repeated with impunity. More than that, the military, economic and water-supply dangers to a pre-1967 Israel are quite obvious. Israel's citizens are awakening to the intolerable situation they will soon face."

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The loyal opposition won't be silenced

Date: Nov 7, 1995
Start Page: B9

Yisrael Medad says assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was one of the most abrasive of prime ministers and that his murder will be manipulated to ensure that not only the extremist fringes are dealt with harshly, but even the legitimate opposition will be silenced.

"There is growing evidence that a dangerous backlash is developing in Israel's social fabric in the aftermath of the shooting of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In a radio interview, his widow, Leah, said of the killer, "It is enough {that} I know in which school he grew up." His daughter declined to shake the hand of the opposition Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu at the grave site. Israel's state-sponsored television showed angry citizens demanding that all anti-government demonstrations be halted. Posters were displayed blaming opposition politicians for the assassination.

The assassin declared, according to police investigators, that he first attempted to kill Rabin 10 months ago. From remarks attributed to him, it appears that his was an insular ideological position rather than one shaped by what has been termed the "verbal violence" at rallies protesting the Oslo process.

What complicates matters was the undeniable fact that Rabin was perhaps one of the most abrasive of prime ministers. His tongue-lashings were the stuff for a new political dictionary. He insisted that the Likud was "an aide of the Hamas" terror organization. Other ministers adopted similar disparaging declarations. The Labor-led coalition government was able to stay in power by a very thin margin. President Ezer Weizman, noting that the government's majority of one vote was gained because a deputy minister wanted to keep his chauffeured car, pleaded that the Oslo process be slowed down to allow for additional thinking.

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When Only the Land Keeps Its Promises

Date: Jan 17, 1997
Start Page: 9


"The number of American Jews residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is perhaps proportionately higher than in other sections of Israel. This is a factor of the ideological commitment necessary to live there combined with old-fashioned idealism. In my home community of Shiloh, almost 30 miles north of Jerusalem, lying between Ramallah and Nablus, almost 20% of the 170 families have North American origins. Many of us are contemplating our future here in the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to follow through with the Oslo process.

All of us voted for Netanyahu in the elections less than a year ago. Undoubtedly, his American style, manners and approach reminded us of certain positive aspects of American politics. We also found in his speeches and promises a resonance of that which lured us to dwell in the landscape of the Bible, Israel's homeland.

Leaving behind, in most cases, fairly comfortable lives and surroundings, we rejected what we perceived as an existence that was as empty of essence as it was futureless. Not only were we "going home" to where the Jewish people were born, where judges, kings and prophets fashioned our culture and religious beliefs, but we also were enlisting ourselves in the service of a pioneering vision, assuring for generations to come that Jews would, once again and forever more, live as Jews in the places that were undeniably Jewish. Not Tel Aviv or Ra'anana or some other yuppie Israeli town but Hebron, where King David first ruled; Tekoa, where Amos tendered sheep, and Shiloh, where the Tabernacle was erected. We were going back to our roots."

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True Security Threat: Withdrawal

Date: May 8, 1998
Start Page: 9


"The Declaration of Principles signed on the White House lawn in September 1993 was presumed to have ushered in a new era in the Israel-Arab conflict. Yasser Arafat and his PLO had promised to fulfill obligations, something they had never done--not with their "Zionist enemy" or even with their Arab compatriots.

Later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself to following through with the guidelines and signed agreements, hundreds of pages long in certain instances, which the previous Labor-led government had bequeathed to the new Likud coalition. The government of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres avoided the issue of Jewish civilian presence in the areas that the Palestinians presumed would eventually be relinquished. Rabin, despite his deriding the approximately 150 Jewish settlements, provided unprecedented security measures for them including bypass roads and increased military personnel and equipment."

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Palestinian Authority Is Too Corrupt to Govern

Date: Aug 10, 1998
Start Page: 5

"Even in Israel, few people doubt that in May 1999, Yasser Arafat, chairman and erstwhile president of the Palestinian Authority, will declare the establishment of the independent and sovereign state of Palestine. A grand if not dress rehearsal was held a decade ago in Algeria when a declaration of independence was read at a session of the Palestine National Council. That charade followed Jordan's King Hussein's announcement absolving himself of responsibility for the area recognized as the West Bank, which incidentally his grandfather annexed, an act devoid of international legality.

Arafat, despite seeming successes, foremost the creation of a beachhead on what he considers Palestinian soil, has made many mistakes over the years. For sure, many countries already acknowledge the existence of Palestine as a state. Embassies and other diplomatic trappings have served the needs of the Palestine Liberation Organization as it evolved from a terrorist organization. But to declare a state of Palestine would be a mistake if only because it would be committing the most grievous injury a leader can cause his people. I believe Palestine must be saved from itself. For if the Palestinian people are to be served and their best interests are to be catered, a separate state of Palestine is the last thing they need."

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The Breaking of the Barak Myth: Who will pay for the 'brilliance' of Israel's most decorated warrior in his handling of the withdrawal from Lebanon?

Date: May 24, 2000
Start Page: 9


"Ehud Barak sat opposite Israel's TV Channel One diplomatic reporter this past Monday night and was asked if he had made a mistake in his early troop redeployment last week of an army outpost in southern Lebanon. Barak, Israel's prime minister and, by his own election propaganda, Israel's most-decorated warrior, smiled and niftily avoided the trap. "I never look back but always to the future," he said. The viewers, left in the vacuum of a politician's self-enhancement, gained an insight into what is perhaps the empty void that now stands at the top of the country's administration.

In his May 15 Knesset speech, Barak sarcastically referred to the knights of the Hasmonean Tunnel and Joseph's Tomb, the bloody incidents of September 1996. Those disturbances were former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's responsibility. But within hours, Barak's own shining armor was bestained as the sounds and pictures of the Palestinian violence were broadcast on television screens. Stunned, Barak assumed an assertive stance but, nevertheless, the shooting continued and, at week's end, one soldier had been shot in the head and an infant was torched by a firebomb in Jericho."