Freund Walks Too-Narrow A Path

Michael Freund's most recent op-ed asserts "the annexation of all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria...[for] these areas are ours by Divine right. The Palestinians do not hesitate to invoke their beliefs, so why on earth should we? Just think how refreshing it would be to hear an Israeli leader stand up and declare this most elementary of truths: that the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel because the G-d of Israel said so."

He writes:

...annexation is justified for the simple reason that this land belongs to us, and to nobody else. The act of asserting Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria would mark the closing of an historical circle, reviving our formal dominion over these areas after an interlude of nearly 2,000 years...Who knows - maybe if we finally stand on principle and start affirming our faith, then perhaps we will at last begin to earn the respect and support that we so rightly deserve.

Well, although I would be the last person to ignore the founding principle of Jewish nationalism, that we are a 'community of covenant', as Professor Harel Fisch phrased it, and that covenant being the contractual configuration between the Jewish people and the ideals which define them as a people, a community, a religio-ethnic group.

The relation of Jews to its homeland is different than any other community-nation-people in that it is intrinsically religious, with ritual obligations and commandments as well as a most unique definition of the physicality of the land.

But, and there always is a but, that relationship became an historic one, one that could be proven without necessary recourse to a Divinity. We have archaeological proof, written testimony of non-Jews and other factual proof of a 3000-year old connection with the Land of Israel. Our culture, our literature, our behavior, our customs - all that makes up an anthropological reality of being Jewish - all are rooted and linked and based on our connection to the land of Israel.

That connection was recognized by the world:

Whereas 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

and became international law.

We cannot and should not ignore that aspect of our rights as the true and just sovereign power over the Land of Israel.

We shouldn't be shy of proclaiming our recognized rights by secular institutions.

We should, in fact, drive the point home that in addition to our own conceptualizations and historical truths, the world, too, once agreed and accepted that reality, with or without a divinity.

Our national rights speak to the religious and the atheists.

We have our beliefs and they are in tandem with others' beliefs and we need to prove it to them and put in in their faces.

We have all the rights and all the justification and we need to use all of them.