Thursday, June 18, 2009

One Man's Opinion

When a group of people is forbidden to live where they want to, we call that apartheid -- unless the people are Jews, and the place they want to live is Judea and Samaria. Then the people are called "settlers" and their homeland is renamed "the West Bank," erasing their historic and Biblical connection to it.

The reality is that generations of Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria throughout the past 3,000 years, even after Rome's destruction of ancient Jerusalem. Their communities endured waves of massacres, but dedicated children of Israel kept returning and rebuilding -- often at risk to their lives. The last big massacre was in 1929, when Arabs murdered all the Jewish families in the Judean town of Hebron.

Now President Barack Obama calls to forbid all Jewish expansion in Judea and Samaria, even from natural growth (the birth of new babies, the building of a school for Jewish children already living there).

This is unjust. This is discriminatory. And this is not the way to peace.

Alexis Worlock

Salt Lake City

No comments: