It Is Now "Now" But Then It Was "Here"

The slogan "Peace Now", while not specifically Jewish as evident in the phrase 'peace in our time', has always perturbed me, as if only the "now" counts. Not the past nor, actually, the future.

And then I came across this and I grasped how non-nationalist, aka Zionist, Jews, performed semantic acrobatics to avoid the true essence of Jewish communal identity:

As a legal party in the independent Polish state, the Bund sharpened its ideological positions. While the party had always been opposed to Zionism (considering it to represent only the interests of bourgeois Jewry), the movement responded to the increased appeal of Zionism after the Balfour Declaration of 1917. At this point Medem strengthened a central component to the ideology of the Bund, doikayt (hereness), and made this concept the trademark of the movement during the interwar period. Supporters of doikayt insisted that the future of the Jewish people would best unfold in the same places in the Diaspora in which it had experienced its past, and where it had developed and created its cultural resources. The party began to portray itself as the guardian of secular Yiddish Jewish culture, fighting against what it perceived to be an irresponsible illusion that would concentrate all Jews into a national homeland in Palestine, and vigorously warding off attempts to cultivate Hebrew culture in Poland at the expense of the original Yiddish culture.

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New York Times An Agent for Peace Now's Obfuscation

Obfuscation, we all should know, is

the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand, usually with confusing and ambiguous language

or making

something less clear and harder to understand, especially intentionally

Here is from the website of Americans for Peace Now

The headline's exact wording:

In West Bank, 99.7% of Public Land Grants by Israel Go to Settlers

 Here's a comment of mine at Twitter:

How much of 100% is Area A & B? Area C under full Israeli administration is only 60% of JS/WB & within that are Arab villages.Well, maybe it is confusing for some.

Another:

Another point to the story:"Israel has marked out hundreds of thousands of acres as public land".No. State land status existed since at least 1858 & 1873 Ottoman laws. Israel just confirms that. And "state" means "government", not State of Israel". A bit confusing for sure.

Added:

How much state land was awarded to Jews 

during 1948-1967?

From Lenny Ben-David. 

 I asked the reporter:

You quote in your story Shawan Jabarin. Is he the same Jabarin who was convicted for PFLP activities some years ago?

And, of course, the Mandate's Article 6 is not included (nor a response from a Yesha Council figure and if they refused, that should have been noted):

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

You've been obfuscated by the New York Times in league with Peace Now.

And an Arab former terrorist.

__________

Elie Pieprz tweets:

No attempt to get response from @odedrevivi or the federal gvt No context of Area A & B under complete PA municipal control 88% of residents are Pal? Really? There are 3.6M Pals in WB?No context of Area A & B under complete PA municipal control88% of residents are Pal? Really? There are 3.6M Pals in WB?

Another.

__________

Received regarding the population stats therein:

the PA always insists on the largest possible figure for the settler population, and OCHA only managed to scrape together a Palestinian population of less than 300,000 for area C by including Palestinian residents of A and B whose municipalities cross over in any part with area C. (Of those, only 67,102 live in municipalities that are entirely in area C, while most live in municipalities whose land is majority areas A/B). The EU estimate of settler population last year was 399,000.
 If you cut the settler population in half, or doubled the Palestinian population of area C, Palestinians would still be in the minority.

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How Many Revenant Residents Are There?

According to B'tselem's current web site entry, the number of Jewish Israelis residing beyond the Green Line, a category they term "settlers", is

an estimated 588,000...This figure is derived from two sources: According to data provided by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), at the end of 2015, 382,916 people were living in the settlements of the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem. According to data provided by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, the population of the Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem numbered 205,220 people at the end of 2014.

However, as they note, the annual population increase of that population is 4.1%.

My calculation is that increase would be around 23,500 people. Two years have passed and so 588,000 + 47,000 (23,500 x 2) = 635,000. Correct? 

Peace Now's figures are 399, 300 in Judea and Samaria at end of 2016. And in "East Jerusalem" (what do they do with Jewish neighborhoods constructed since 1967 in the north and south of the city?) live 208,410 Jews.  That totals to 607,710. We then add 23,500 and that equals 631,210. Correct?

The Yesha Council lists 421,400 Israeli residents in the area as of January 2017, but excluding post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhoods.  An average of B'tselem's figure and Peace Now's figure for Jerusalem would be 206,815 and, added to the above number, would total 628,215. We'll leave the extra population figure off.

An average of those three figures results in 631,475.

So, in another two months, we can expect the number of Jewish Israelis residing in regions of the historic Jewish homeland not as yet under full Israel sovereignty to total, in my estimation, at least 640,000.

Ken yirbu ( & tfoo-tfoo)

____________________

Now I have to figure what percentage the Jewish Israelis are of the total population.  Off my head, in Judea and Samaria, that would be 20% approximately.

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A 'New Settlement'? "New"? Really?

Here's the latest from Peace Now:

A new settlement in Sheikh Jarrah

On July 16, the Jerusalem regional planning committee is intended to discuss several plans for settlements within Palestinian neighbourhoods. Of those, 4 plans will be discussed for the Um Haroun neighbourhood (located within Sheikh Jarrah)...two of the plans include the demolition of homes of 5 Palestinian families.The two plans for 13 housing units in Sheikh Jarrah will be established on properties in which 5 Palestinian families currently reside. These properties are under a legal battle through which settlers seek the evacuation of these Palestinian families. Although the Palestinian families are legally regarded as protected tenants they reside in properties that prior to 1948 were Jewish owned, and the Israeli law enables Israeli citizens to return to properties that were owned by Jews prior to 1948...

The accompanying map:

First, Um Haroun neighborhood?

Or...

Nahalat Shimon (Hebrew: נחלת שמעון‎‎. lit. Simeon's Estate) is a Jewish religious neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Nahalat Shimon was founded in 1891 by Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish Kollels, to house poor Yemenite and Sephardi Jews.

Second, new?

Or... 

The cornerstone of the neighborhood was laid in 1890, near the Tomb of Simeon the Just....The land was purchased in 1890 and the first homes were built soon after, housing 20 impoverished families. In 1947, there were 100 Jewish homes in the neighborhood. In March 1948, the British ordered the residents to evacuate within two hours due to mounting Arab violence.

You don't believe they had to leave due to Arab-initiated violence, in contradiction to a UN resolution of November 29, 1947?

And where is the Nashashibi Quarter?

Three, and you thought UNESCO was bad for Jewish history and national identity?

Think again.  And think about Peace Now.

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Peace Now's Misleading Map

This map is in a campaign promoting a two-state solution sponsored by Peace Now.

Although it is used to display public opinion poll percentages, it nevertheless, totally misrepresents the reality on the ground and is misleading.

Wrong area of what two-states would look like, no topography, straight lines as borders, etc.

Yikes.

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Peace Now, Wrong Again

The American section of Peace Now has a letter * in the NYTimes.

Dealing with Jewish residency location in Judeal and Samara, or, as they term it, "illegal settlements in the West Bank", they claim that they are fixated (my word) on the subjhect because they are

the chief physical obstacle to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a solution that is in the vital interests of both Israel and the United States.

Actually, Arab bullets, knives, axes, bombs, stones, rockets and other assorted objects of death and mayhem are the chief obstacle.

In assisting the Arabs to blur that reality, and to ignore incitement, religious-based hatred, national identity theft and Pallywood fabrications and other non-physical elements of the Arab campaign against Zionism since, say, the murder of Rabbi Avraham Zalman Tzoref in Jerusalem after purchasing property there in 1851, they become themselves obstacles, not only to a secure peace, but they become partly responsible for the deaths and injuries this Arab terror commits.

A Jew living in Judea and Samaria, is not illegal, unless he actually steals private property. There may be cases like that, but 99% of Jewish residency communities are not in that category.  And if there are cases, the courts deal with them. Many are simply unlicensed due to bureacratic irregularities on behalf of regualtions which having nothing to do with the concept of "illegality".

Peace Nowers, don't be wrong, now or ever.

__________

The letter:

To the Editor:

“Israel Legalizes Outposts in the West Bank, Step by Quiet Step” (front page, Aug. 31) highlights a central truth about illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank: Extremist settlers are not rogue actors. Rather, they work hand in glove with the Israeli government in flouting Israel’s own laws in order to build more settlements.

Our organization and our Israeli sister organization, Peace Now, have worked to document and expose this and other settlement-related realities for decades. We do so because settlements are the chief physical obstacle to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a solution that is in the vital interests of both Israel and the United States.

Unfortunately, our own government bears some responsibility for the settlement quagmire. American criticism devoid of consequences can no longer be justified.

It is time for our government to put action behind its words, before settlements and the occupation nullify prospects for a two-state solution.

JAMES B. KLUTZNICK

DEBRA DeLEE

Chicago


Mr. Klutznick is chairman and Ms. DeLee is president and chief executive of Americans for Peace Now.

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Talking About Duma (Dedicated to Lara from Peace Now)

I am quoted in the Jerusalem Post in a story by Eliyahu Kamisher so:

According to Yisrael Medad, a longtime resident of Shiloh, located around six kilometers from Duma, “no one talks about Duma – we are just looking ahead.”

That's it.  That's all.

I spoke to him for at least twenty minutes.  Oh well.

Peace Now's Lara Friedman, based on that, wrote:

Just a year post-triple murder, @ymedad tells JPost: "no one talks about Duma – we are just looking ahead”

Actually, what was quoted was a very small part of our telephone conversation (and Lara, being so sophisticated and knowledgeable could have surmised that).

I spoke to him and told him of our opposition to the violence that has been perpetartedand that the very first people who complained about the so-called "price-tag" policy years ago were members of the Yesha Council including Dani Dayan and myself. We pleaded with law enforcement agencies to rid us of this stain. I told him how we in Shiloh caught a Mevasseret Tzion kid breaking windows of parked Arab cars at Shiloh and complained to the police.

I actually told him that we do discuss Duma and the fact that the trial is dragging on and despite Moshe Yaalon's statement that he knows who did the bombing, the lack of a clear verdict, unfortunately, assists those who believe in conspiracy theories. I also pointed out that the previous week another firebomb was thrown there causing people to ask if either a Jewish terror group is still active or perhaps there is some truth to the claim that it isn't clear what is happening, and had happened earlier, regarding perhaps internal feuding there.

We do "talk about Duma" but we don't let it interfere with our goal of leading our lives as normally as possible, not allowing people like Lara to sabotage Zionist achievement or others to besmirch our enterprise by the acts of the few, if they are indeed guilty (and I hope the court clears that up soon).

_____________

UPDATE

Lara has now tweeted:

@ymedad corrects the record: a year later he DOES talk about Duma murders. Read for yourself.

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Does Peace Now's Lara Want Dead Jews?

Does Peace Now's Lara Friedman Want Dead Jews?

Source

UPDATE

Lara was upset.  But I responded anyway:

The Iron Dome system saves lives.

A new system protects against multiple entries from Hezbollah in addition to Hamas.

America wants the system.

Most of the money goes to American defense industries and their employees.

What's the question mark for?

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When Things Bounce Back At You

Found in an article by Lara Friedman is the Director of Policy & Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now. Hagit Ofran is the Director of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch (Israel):-

Statistics can help track specific aspects of Israel settlement policy, but like any statistics, when cherry-picked they obscure more than they reveal.

I think that is a classic, coming from those who manage to cherry-pick and even misrepresent, twist and obscure data so well themselves.

Here's some more

...a single statistic is being exploited to obscure [a] track record...The totality of the facts tells the real story...checked only intermittently and temporarily, for tactical political purposes.

__________

See now EOZ.


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Jewish Settlements Not Exaggerated

From the Journal of Jewish Studies:

Were there 204 settlements in Galilee at the time of Josephus Flavius?

by Chaim Ben David,

2011, Volume: 62, Issue: 1, 21-36 pp.

Abstract: Josephus Flavius notes that there are 204 cities and villages in Galilee. Is the number of settlements in Galilee that Josephus cites reliable, or does it belong to the series of figures that most scholars believe is exaggerated? To examine this issue, the article will first define the boundaries of Galilee at the time of Josephus and deal with the secondary question of whether this also included Gaulanitis. Then three different methods will be used to determine the veracity of this statement, counting (1) the number of settlements from the Ottoman period, (2) the number of settlements in the Late Roman period according to rabbinic literature, and (3) the number of settlements at the time of Josephus according to archaeological surveys. The evidence suggests that Josephus’ number of 204 settlements is probably not far from the actual number of settlements that existed in Galilee and Gaulanitis prior to the first Jewish revolt.

Was there a Peace Now Settlement Watch Team then, too?

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Peace Now's Slapping Israel Around

From this report:

In a reply to a Supreme Court petition by the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, the government said it had taken steps in recent weeks to authorize retroactively four West Bank outposts built without official permission.
"The intention to legalize outposts as new settlements is no less than a slap in the face of Secretary Kerry's new process and is blatant reassurance to settler interests," Peace Now said in a statement.

...Last week, Peace Now and Israeli media reports said Netanyahu has been quietly curbing some settlement activity by freezing tenders for new housing projects, in an apparent effort to help the U.S. drive to renew peace talks.

a) the Oslo Accords do not deny Israel the privilege of continuing the construction of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.  Indeed, "settlements" are not a cause of the conflict.

b) if the court is satisfied legalities are in order, Peace Now is judicially wrong.

and note this headline:

 Israel to 'legalise' wildcat settler outposts: NGO

the outposts are not strictly "illegal" but rather unauthorized as a result of bureaucratic and political considerations, in the main.

c) if a "slap in the face" is problematic, Peace Now has been slapping Israel around for three decades, ever weakening its public diplomacy.

d) even if a "Palestinian state" be established, Heavens forbid, the idea that Jews cannot live there and build homes there is morally abhorrent - I'd call it apartheid - and illegal.

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Yisrael Medad is Right... But ...

I am in the New York Review of Books:-

Palestine: What the Mandate Said
March 7, 2013
Yisrael Medad, reply by Avishai Margalit

In response to:

Palestine: How Bad, & Good, Was British Rule? from the February 7, 2013 issue     
                                             

To the Editors:

Avishai Margalit errs in his book review essay [“Palestine: How Bad, & Good, Was British Rule?,” NYR, February 7]. He writes that the League of Nations Mandate over Palestine conferred on Britain was to prepare the country “to be a ‘national home for the Jews,’ without ‘impairing the civil and religious rights of the indigenous Arab people.’”

That is quite wrong as the Mandate decision does not include the phrase “indigenous Arab people.” The phrase that actually appears is: “nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Arabs, as such, are not mentioned. Political rights were the prerogative of the Jewish people. Residency rights, religious rights, personal liberty rights were to be assured. But nothing more than that and certainly no state which was to be established in the territory of Transjordan, partitioned from the original Mandate area in 1922.

Yisrael Medad
Shiloh, Israel

Avishai Margalit replies:

Yisrael Medad is right about the wording of the League of Nations’ Mandate document. But since the “indigenous Arab people” (my expression) and “non-Jewish communities in Palestine” (the Mandate document expression) are coextensive, apart from 1 percent of others, it is a difference that makes no difference.

If wording counts, it is more important to remark that the Mandate document doesn’t mention “political rights” for the Jewish people in Palestine. The only reference to “political rights” is the rights of “Jews in any other country.” The expression “national home” lacks any juridical meaning, unlike, say, home rule. The Mandate document deliberately left vague what the rights of the Jews in Palestine are. It is Medad who gives prerogative political rights to the Jews in Palestine rather than the wording of the Mandate.

The interpretation Medad gives to the Mandate expression “civil rights” as confined to residency rights and personal liberty rights is again of his making. There is no reason to believe that “civil rights” in the Mandate document meant to preclude the rights of the non-Jews to citizenship in any future state in Palestine.

Since Margalit avoids my reference to Transjordan, one can already suspect something is wrong.  The British established that non-state to solve any specific Arab political demands, demands they pushed in violent acts of terror, murder and incendiarism.  "Palestine", the area west of the Jordan River, was reserved exclusively for the Jews - but, again, and again, under pressure from Arab terror, the Jewish National Home continued to be whittled away, again and again.

And it is so generous of Margalit to excuse his own grievous academic error by claiming it doesn't make a difference.  That Margalit was a founder of Peace Now (and see this criticism) doesn't necessarily reflect on his academic competence.

In truth, there were serious Christian claims. But more important, I did not write that that Arabs, or any other non-Jew, could not possess Israeli citizenship.  That is a left-wing tactic: impugning an opinion your opponent really didn't state.


This is the letter I sent in now:

In Avishai Margalit's reply to me, admitting his error, he impugns to me an opinion I did not express nor, to make clear, do I hold, when he writes "There is no reason to believe that “civil rights” in the Mandate document meant to preclude the rights of the non-Jews to citizenship in any future state in Palestine", ("Palestine: What the Mandate Said", March 7, 2013).

My point was that that "future state in Palestine", at least west of the Jordan River, was to be a Jewish one.  An Arab state in historic Palestine was not at all contemplated.  However, due to Arab terror in Jerusalem in April 1920, when Jews were killed, and other violent agitation, Winston Churchill, as Minister of Colonies, decided during March 1921 to truncate the original Jewish National Home area.  He created an Arab emirate in Transjordan and prohibited Jews from either owning land or settling there, a policy the League of Nations agreed to but only as a form of postponement (Article 25 of the 1922 Mandate decision).  That policy surely discriminated against and precluded the rights of Jews who were indigenous to the country living in Hebron, Gaza, Nablus (Shchem) and Jerusalem for centuries.  The future ruling family of what eventually became the Kingdom of Jordan, incidentally, originated in Saudi Arabia.

_____________

Let me clarify:

No Arab state was contemplated in "Palestine" because not only did no one think there was a specific Arab Palestinian nationality that required a state - and in fact, there wasn't and so no legal or historical right that could be demanded were to be considered - but there were to be created several other Arabs states, i.e., Syria/Lebanon, Iraq and, as it developed, Jordan, in addition to the existing Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc., in which Arab nationalism was to be nurtured but not at the expense of legitimate Jewish nationalism.

Using the phrase "Jewish National Home" in junction with "historical connection" trumped any non-Jewish claims to that same land.

And that is where Margalit fails - fails as a Jew, as a Zionist, as an academic.

____________________

UPDATE

After discussing this issue briefly with Howard Grief, let me add:

Margalit's claim regarding communities, that "non-Jewish communities" and "indigenous Arabs" are "coextensive" is wrong.  The term "communities" meant religious groups not nationalities.  And Palestine was to be for the Zionists, that is, Jewish nationalism.

Anyone who reviews the minutes of the San Remo Conference of April 1920, found here, will learn that as the excerpts that follow show, the Jews were to have political rights in terms of establishing what was eventually to be a state and that that right overrode all others on that level and that rights were to be granted to the other non-Jewish communities as regards their traditional religious status, i.e., their quasi-diplomatic status, their land and property for the churches, missions, orphanages, etc., as well as their rights to educate and engage in non-Islamic endeavors and others.

The excerpts:

LORD CURZON thought that M. Berthelot was possibly not fully acquainted with the history of the question. In November 1917 Mr. Balfour had made a declaration on behalf of the Zionists. The terms of this declaration had been communicated by M. Sokolov, in February 1918 to M. Pichon, who, at that time, was head of the French Foreign Office...He thought it was impossible for the Supreme Council to determine, that day, exactly what form the future administration of Palestine would take. All they could do was to repeat the declaration which had been made in November 1917. That declaration contemplated, first, the creation of national home for the Jews, whose privileges and rights were to be safeguarded under a military Power. Secondly, it was of the highest importance to safeguard the rights of minorities; first, the rights of the Arabs, and then of the Christian communities...
...SIGNOR NITTI expressed the view that it...appeared to him that in principle the Powers were generally in agreement as to the desirability of instituting a national home for the Jews. The discussion had disclosed the fact that there was a divergence of opinion between the British and French delegations as to exactly what rights were to be reserved for the non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The subject, moreover, raised the whole question of the position of Roman Catholics in the East, which he did not think required a very elaborate solution. It was agreed that Palestine was to be under British control, and on behalf of the Italian delegation he begged leave to submit the following addition to the British text of the mandates:--
'Tout privilège, et toute prérogative vis-à-vis des communautés religieuses prendra fin. La Puissance mandataire s'engage à nommer dans le plus bref délai une commission special pour étudier toute question et toute réclamation concernant les différentes communautés religieuses et en établir le règlement. Il sera tenu compte dans la composition de cette commission des intérêts religieux en jeu. Le président de la commission sera nommé par le Conseil de la Société des Nations.'
He was quite sure that all the members of the Supreme Council present shared the full confidence that he himself felt in the British Government in regard to the safeguarding of the rights and privileges of non-Jewish communities. He himself would like to see the president of the commission, which was proposed by the Italian delegation, to be appointed by the League of
Nations, in order to ensure complete impartiality.
M. MILLERAND said that, as regards Palestine, there were really three questions.  The first was that there should be a national home for the Jews. Upon that they were all agreed. The second point was the safeguarding of the rights of non-Jewish communities. That again, he thought, offered no insuperable difficulties. The third was the question of existing traditional rights of non-Jewish bodies, and on that he would like to offer certain observations...He understood that in undertaking a mandate for Palestine Great Britain undertook, first, to establish a national home for the Jews in that country, and also not to neglect the traditional rights of the habitants generally.
SIGNOR NITTI said that they were all agreed on the question of establishing a Jewish home there.
SIGNOR NITTI said...that the United States Ambassador at Rome was in the ante-chamber, and had asked to be admitted to the meeting...He understood that if he attended it would be as an observer only, and not as a representative participant in their deliberations.
MR. LLOYD GEORGE suggested that the United States Ambassador should be admitted to the Council Chamber and that the president of the Supreme Council should ask him exactly what his instructions were...
SIGNOR NITTI said that...The question now occupying the attention of the Supreme Council was the subject of mandates, and their present pre-occupation in the future of Palestine and the Zionists...

Moreover, the final decision of April 25 also makes clear Margalit's error/misrepresentation since it again emphasizes communities as relating to religious entities and that Jewish National Home was a pre-step to a "state":-

It was agreed –
(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the process-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.
(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:
The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States...The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made...in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
La Puissance mandataire s’engage a nommer dans le plus bref delai une Commission speciale pour etudier toute question et toute reclamation concernant les differentes communautes religieuses et en etablir le reglement. Il sera tenu compte dans la composition de cette Commission des interets religieux en jeu. Le President de la Commission sera nomme par le Conseil de la Societe des Nations. [The Mandatory undertakes to appoint in the shortest time a special commission to study any subject and any queries concerning the different religious communities and regulations. The composition of this Commission will reflect the religious interests at stake. The President of the Commission will be appointed by the Council of the League of Nations.]

_________________________

Howard Fried has now graciously conveyed to me the contents of a letter he sent recently which contains much relevant information:-

In regard to your question asking when and where Lord Balfour said the following about the Arabs, “Why are you complaining … etc.”...It appears that the aforementioned statement to the Arabs was made, not by Lord Balfour, but by Lord Robert Cecil who worked closely with Balfour as Assistant Foreign Secretary...

Lord Cecil made two memorable statements...The first was at a large public rally in London at the Opera House that took place on December 2, 1917 in celebration of the publication of the Balfour Declaration. At this rally he stated:

Our wish is that Arabian countries shall be for the Arabs, Armenia for the Armenians and Judea for the Jews … and let real Turkey be for the Turks. 

It is interesting to note that Cecil referred to Judea, the Jewish country of yore that flourished in the period of the Second Temple, rather than by its Roman-Greek name of Palestine...“Judea for the Jews” clearly meant no recognition of Arab national rights to Palestine just as Jews would have no national rights to “Arabian countries” or to Armenia. Please note also that Lord Cecil did not say “Palestine for the Palestinians” since no such nation was known or ever existed either then or now. Most of the Arabs of the land, whether it was called Palestine, the Holy Land, Judea or Israel, then identified themselves as Syrian Arabs...

...Coming to the main point of your query, it was Lord Cecil who wrote in a foreword to a book authored by J. de V. Loder that the Arabs have no cause for complaint on the Palestine question (Loder, The Truth About Mesopotamia, Palestine and Syria, published by George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London (1923), p. 7). Here are his exact words (p. 217 of my book):

Only on one matter would I make some reserve – I am not sure that on the Palestine question I would take his (Loder’s) view. The Zionist policy seems to me of vital importance to the world. A nation without a country of its own is an anomaly, and anomalies bring trouble. Nor has the Arab State any ground of complaint. The recognition of a Jewish national home was part of the terms on which the Arab State was brought into existence, subject, of course, to the rights of individual Arabs being fully protected.

...Lord Balfour...did make a statement, as you have surmised, to the effect that the Arabs had no right to complain that Palestine would be made a home for the Jewish People. At a public demonstration held by the English Zionist Federation on July 12, 1920 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, to celebrate the conferment of the Mandate for Palestine upon Great Britain and the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration into the Treaty of Peace with Turkey, he justly noted:

… the Great powers … most especially Great Britain, has freed them, the Arab race, from the tyranny of their brutal conqueror… I hope they will remember it is we who have established the independent Arab sovereignty of the Hedjaz. I hope they will remember that it is we who desire in Mesopotamia … a self-governing, autonomous Arab State, and I hope that, remembering all that, they will not grudge that small notch – for it is no more geographically, whatever it may be historically – that small notch in what are now Arab [populated] territories being given to the people who for all these hundreds of years have been separated from it – but surely have a title to develop on their own lines in the land of their forefathers, which ought to appeal to the sympathy of the Arab people as it, I am convinced appeals to the great mass of my own Christian fellow-countrymen…

...None but those who are blinded by [religious or racial bigotry] would deny for one instant that the case of the Jews is absolutely exceptional and must be treated by exceptional methods…We may look forward with a happy gaze to a future in which Palestine will indeed, and in the fullest measure and degree of success, be made a home for the Jewish People (emphasis added).

This well-grounded quotation of Balfour appears in an anthology called Speeches on Zionism, edited by Israel Cohen, published by Arrowsmith, London, 1928; pp. 24ff.

...This is unlike the accusatory British attitude of today, especially recent Governments, both Conservative and Labour, who have erased from their memory any remembrance or knowledge of the rights inhering in the Jewish People which the Lloyd George Government, on behalf of Great Britain together with the other
Principal Allied Powers, recognised under the international law documents comprising the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine. Balfour saw the Allied decision as a way of making amends for the Roman destruction of Judea eighteen centuries earlier as well as being a recognition of the historical connection of the Jewish People with Palestine to the exclusion of Arab pretentions.

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Is Peace Now Happy Now?

Peace Now is on the warpath over expenditures to Judea and Samaria.

They must be so happy over this expense:

The Knesset's Finance Committee approved funds amounting to NIS 11 million ($2.76 million) for various Israeli operations in the West Bank. In a Monday budget meeting held shortly after the vote on the new economic measures, the committee approved NIS 8.3 million ($2 million) for settlement relocations in the West Bank, out of which NIS 2.7 million ($680,000) were appropriated for "settlement infrastructure."

Or are they Peeve Now?

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On the Economic "Burden' Or Not of Yesha

From a Yesha Council Factsheet on the Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria - (via Google translation with some help from me):

The question of the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria has been the Israeli discourse theme for decades, and recently raised.  Again and again claims regarding the economic costs of settlement in Yesha are media highlighted by its opponents  .In our view, settlement in Eretz Israel seen only through economic eyes places 120 years of Zionism in a ridiculous light. It was not "economically correct" to establish the State of Israel or the settlements in the Negev and the Galilee. Furthermore, examination of these claims reveals facts that are not just demagogic, but simply unfounded. There really is no special investment.  In the last decade the State of Israel does not invest in Judea and Samaria excessive investments relative to other parts of the country and unfortunately there is a decline in investments in state infrastructure projects and residential communities in Judea and Samaria.

According to data published in Calcalist [a daily business paper] on 30/07/2012, by 2009 government budgets for Judea fell by more than 50% despite the rapid growth of population in Yesha which stands at 5% per year (more than 2-fold average increase in the State of Israel). Most of the increase is in our young - young couples and children, so every year a growing number of kids that come up gardens and grades. This requires the state to expand educational and welfare institutions according to criteria used by each state. Despite this many classrooms in Yesha are still in temporary buildings and mobile caravans.  A large part (sometimes over 50%) of the budget is passed to authorities in Judea and Samaria for education in general to be used for transportation in bulletproof vehicles. The State requires the authorities to use these shuttles for students following the Oslo Agreement and in light of terrorism exacerbated since 2000. We should have those funds?

...Is evacuation of the settlements the move that would save the Israeli economy? Planned cost of the evacuation of Gush Katif was about $ 6 billion, but so far the disengagement budget stands at over 13 billion NIS from the state. Calculating these relative costs for removal of "only" 150,000 residents who are not residents of the blocs in Yesha, will reach the minimum expenditure amount of $ 250 billion - an amount identical to the state budget (security, health, education, economics and more) for a year. Expulsion from their homes is the very opposite moral and just course, but also economic terms such a move would bring enormous national expenditure, and consequently weaken the density and pressure on the cities in the country's center [Gedera-Hadera] together with a sharp rise in house prices. This is certainly not right and not social.  How did we come to the Left's moves?...

...Even the leftist policies in recent decades was not cheap at all. Some were failed attempts for peace. How much did the Oslo Accords cost us and the subsequent terrorism? What about the costs of Operations Defensive Shield and Operation Cast Lead? What about defense budgets and protection from Beersheba in the south to Ashdod and Gedera? Some budget was invested in purchasing weapons, injured persons' compensation for the loss of work days and damaged industries? Calculating the economic significance of these errors is almost an impossible task. Settlement in Judea and Samaria is a fact and the residents there are full partners in the burden of life in Israel and therefore entitled to full rights as for all citizens in education, medicine, culture and more. A healthy political culture can sustain sharp dialogue but at the same time, superficial and cynical use of economic data in order to attack the Jewish communities across the Green Line is misleading the public and damaging public discourse.

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Proportionate Peace Now

From a recent Peace Now advert:

It claims only 4% of Israel's population is "settler" and that "Israel is returning to proper proportions".

Let's check that.

According to Yakov Faitelson, there are 360,000 Jewish residents in Judea and Samaria.  That represents 4.6% of Israel's general population or 6.1% of the Jewish population.  According to how the Arabs and the rest of the world see things, that is that Jerusalem's new neighborhoods are also "occupied territory", then the number of Jews is 560,000 (at least, since at the end of 2010 I counted at least 200,000).  That brings the number of Jewish residents beyond the Green Line to 7% of the Israel's general population and 9.4% of the Jewish population.  In the pastt 12 years, the median growth rate of J & S's Jewish population has been 5.5% annually versus 1/7% of the Israel's Jewish population.

Now, consider that the kibbutz population is 140,000 which represents 1.8% of Israel's general population or 2.4% of Israel's Jewish population.  If we include Peace Now's support from the non-kibbutz population, their Knesset representation is exactly their percentage in the country, 2.5% barely.

That is what Peace Now needs to absorb - that they are a fairly negligible minority which, according to their own logic, should be ignored and should have no influence on Israel's policies.

Last year in January, the Knesset's research unit published a demographic report which found that Arnon Sofer and Sergio Della Pergola claim that at the end of 2010 the Jewish population of Israel without Judea and Samaria was 75.4% and without J & S, Israel's Jewish population is 53%.  The Arab population of J & S is 3.8 million according to their work, without Jerusalem,whereas the AEI Zimmerman, Ettinger, at al. study places it as 2.85 million, one million Arabs less.


If PN wants to be really pessimistic, well, there's this:

In another 50 years, Israel’s total population will be 23%-40% ultra-Orthodox, according to a forecast by the Central Bureau of Statistics commissioned by the Finance Ministry's budget division.

And here's Yoram Ettinger's summary as for YESHA:

...the Jewish majority west of the Jordan River has been robust and long-term since the 1960s – 66% without Gaza and 57% including Gaza – compared with a 33% minority in 1947 and an 8% minority in 1900. Arab population growth rate has declined steadily in Judea & Samaria due to diminished fertility rate and (primarily) due to high net-emigration (well over 10,000 annually since 1950 and escalating recently).  The annual number of Jewish births has increased by 56% since 1995, while the annual number of Arab births has stabilized during the same period. Within the “Green Line,” the decline in Arab fertility rate is due to a most successful integration into Israel’s infrastructures of employment, education, medicine, finance, politics, sports, arts, etc.!  For the first time since 1948, there is a convergence between Jewish and Arab fertility rates in Jerusalem, while Arabs trend downward and Jews upward.

If you are worried, though, here's something demographic, from 2007, p. 51:

According to the data of the Israeli Ministry of Interior for the years 1993–2003, over this period 150,737 Arabs from Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip and Jordan obtained permanent resident status in the State of Israel as part of a process of “family unification” with citizens of Israel, and were added to the yearly growth of the Arab population86. This status provides them with full civil rights, aside from the right to vote in elections for the Knesset and the right to carry an Israeli passport.

and on p. 53

the Arab citizens of the State of Israel are likely to number 1,949,433 people by 2025. This result is not far from the forecast of the Israeli Bureau of Statistics in 2004, according to which Arab Israelis may number 2,122,100 people in 2025. According to these two alternative forecasts, the number of Arab Israeli citizens may reach 2,281,312 by 2050. 

Incidentally, read this.

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UPDATE

Now this appeared:

"Only .00004% of Israel's population is represented by Peace Now so why does the media present them as the largest party in the Knesset?  Israel returns to proper proportions!"

Great.


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Peace Now Goes Extreme

From the APN site:

Settlers Flex Muscle on Ulpana

By Ori Nir     Extremist West Bank settlers and their sympathizers are vowing to violently resist Israeli government attempts to remove five illegally built houses at the West Bank settlement of Beit El, near Ramallah.

Today, settlers at Beit El violently attacked Israeli Defense Ministry contractors who came to survey the site, shortly after the Rabbi of Beit-El called for "self-sacrifice" in resisting government law-enforcement actions.

Ynet reports:

Settlers hurled stones at Defense Ministry sub-contractors who visited the Beit El's Ulpana neighborhood as part of preparations for an evacuation scheduled to be carried out by July 1. The contractors left the scene. There were no injuries.

Earlier on Wednesday, Beit El's rabbi Zalman Melamed called for counter measures as talks between the settlers and the government reached a deadlock. "We call on the public, Knesset members and Land of Israel faithfuls to join a determined struggle with devotion and willingness to make sacrifices."

Tongue-in-cheek, if our leftists tolerate Arab-thrown stones as legitimate non-violent protest action, well, what's the big deal.  But, of course, that would be the easy way out.  I do not support and campaign against any violent protest but urge adoption of n on-violent direct action (sit-ins, blocking roads, etc.).

The violence, actually, is a threat from another direction.  Here:

Harel Cohen, the spokesman for MK Yaakov Katz and resident of the Ulpana neighborhood said, "There are no talks and the government has nothing to offer us. Obviously if 3,000 men in uniform, who we all know are quite violent, show up a massive clash could erupt."

After all, that's what happened at Amona.  As the Hebrew idiom has it, "we've been to this movie already". And our left loves the term extremists.  And Israel been itself extreme in dealing with extremists.

And getting back to Peace Now, where is the source for this:

vowing to violently resist ?

Maybe it is Peace Now that is getting extreme?

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Ofran's Reverse Irrationality

Peace Now's Hagit Ofran of its Settlement Watch Project is now arguing backwards:

The right wing, in order to justify continuation of Israeli control over the West Bank and of the expansion of settlements, is trying to claim that 1967 and 1948 are essentially equivalent: if 1948 was justified, then 1967 must also be accepted. Or, most simply: Once Zionism is what we call support for Israel as a homeland of the Jewish people, then Israeli occupation of the West Bank is merely a logical extension of the Zionist doctrine.




Paradoxically, by invoking Zionism in support of the settlements and the occupation, the right wing is joining the biggest opponents of Israel, who argue that if, as they believe, Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people in the territories is illegitimate, then, by logical extension, so is the entire Zionist enterprise.

That is a neat trick.

I have argued for over three decades with all of Hagit predecessors that

(a) indeed, 1967 was an extension and continuation of the 1948 war;

(b) it was so, since the Arabs, who began their terror campaign in 1920, rejected Zionism and the establishment of a Jewish state, had launched a war in 1948, actually on the morrow of the UN Partition recommendation adoption, and had never stopped all throughout the 1950s and 1960s;

(c) by doing so, the Arabs had displayed implaccable hatred that had simply intensified and led to the 1967 conflict triggered by Fatah/PLO terror;

(d) the only conclusion was that anything post-1967 could not be blamed for the hostilities and violence that ocurred pre-1967 and that  includes "settlements", "outposts", "occupation", "illegal construction", "East Jerusalem neighborhoods", et al.;

(e) and now, Ofran seeks to reverse all that in an irrationality that astounds.  If, as she writes

the right wing is joining the biggest opponents of Israel, who argue that if, as they believe, Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people in the territories is illegitimate, then, by logical extension, so is the entire Zionist enterprise.

by logic, the opposite is true, which is the position I outlined above.

If the Arab opposition was a principled one, one that began in 1920 in a political sense, and if the Arab behavior was consistently negative and violent and was not at all dependent on what Jews did but ipso facto an attempt to prevent any Zionist achievement, then no only is the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria justified by historic and legal right, but the Arab demand for a state is irrelevant to any solution to the conflict.

Their "Palestinianism" is illegitimate.  And by their attempt at inventivity, not only of manufacturing their own "history" but of denying the identity of Jews as possessing full national characteristics, the Arabs lose any legitimacy they may have - and shouldn't have - and Ofran loses her own credibility.

Backwards thinking really doesn't behoove her.  And it makes no sense.

Can't Ofran grasp that?

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Peace Now's Lara Was in Doha to Our Shame - and Her's

David Gerstman has sent out a post, "Lara in wonderland", on the participation of Americans for Peace Now's Lara Friedman which I repos in part:

On February 26 and 27, there was an International Conference on Jerusalem in Doha Qatar. It featured participants from all over the Middle East.  Among those speaking was Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority and Israel's supposed peace partner.

...Between 1948 and 1967, Jerusalem was a neglected backwater of the Arab world. There were essentially no Muslim pilgrims going there. And while thousands of Christians would indeed visit Jerusalem every Easter, that number increased dramatically after Israel regained possession of the holy city.

Abbas is pushing lies and incitement, and his speech is filled with hypocrisy about things like freedom of worship when he would ban (or, at best, severely restrict) Jews from ever visiting their holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and elsewhere if given half a chance.

This speech reveals the ugly face of Mahmoud Abbas and how he is not interested in peace or co-existence at all, let alone the truth.

...The denial of a historical Jewish connection to the land of Israel, is a blatant violation of the terms of Oslo Accords. Unlike the building of apartments in Jerusalem, no creative interpretation is necessary to reach this conclusion. Yet there's been precious little comment about this obstacle to peace declared by the "moderate" leader of the Palestinians.

One American who was at the conference, was Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now. Though she denies that she went as a representative of her organization, she is identified as being with APN on the list of participants. Her presence at this anti-Israel hatefest discredits her and her organization.

It was however an eyeopening experience for Dr. Friedman, as she wrote after the first day of the conference...:

If representatives of the organization that sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish equities in Jerusalem, they should know that they discredit their own professed interest in peace. Their framing of the future of Jerusalem as a zero-sum game only makes it more likely that Israel will continue asserting its current power over East Jerusalem to hinder the vision of two states living in peace with a Jerusalem as a shared capital.

All throughout the day, it was unfortunately the same story. Participants talked about Jerusalem as if Jewish history did not exist or was a fraud — as if all Jewish claims in the city were just a tactic to dispossess Palestinians...
It is my hope that the rest of the conference will deal more honestly and more constructively with the reality...I regret that the conference so far has not taken the issues related to Jerusalem more seriously, and I am proud that I am here representing a truly pro-peace — and thus be definition pro-Israel — perspective. Much of the discourse here thus far has been personally objectionable and even painful to me, but I believe my presence here is important for the cause of peace.

What Lara Friedman heard at the International Conference on Jerusalem is nothing new. The commitment of the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority to peace is dubious, as evidenced by statements they continue to make eighteen years after Oslo. If Friedman cared to know about them, she would. But her career as a "Zionist" is marked by holding Israel mostly (if not completely) to blame for the failure of peace despite the many concessions even the most "right-wing" governments of Israel have made.

Will this serve as a wake up call to Friedman? It hardly seems likely. Her response to the hatred and denial she heard was disappointment not outrage. No doubt she will return to the United States and continue finding fault first with Israel.

What will Americans for Peace Now do? Will it disassociate itself from Friedman? Or will it continue functioning without apologizing for the actions of its officer?

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