Annexation = The Assassination of Israel’s Democracy

As the first day of July approaches, the people of Israel, the Palestinian and Muslim world, President Donald Trump and some 150 nations are holding their breath. It is the day Binyamin Netanyahu has unilaterally set for the annexation of territory in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and possibly as well in the Jordan Valley. Territory that has been illegally occupied by settler zealots in the name of Zionism.

I was born a Zionist into a Zionist family. I am a citizen of Israel. But I do not wish to ever be called a racist, a thief for stealing land that belongs to others by treaty and by international law.

Our prime minister, a known racist who cares little for the 20% of our Arab Christian, Muslim, Druze or Circassian minority population, is willing to spit in the face of the hundreds of political and religious authorities on all sides of the globe who denounce his planned annexation for the main purpose of cementing his legacy as the messianic savior of the world’s only Jewish state.

If, God forbid, his dreamed legacy is brought to fruition it will mark the assassination of Israel’s democracy. Why is Netanyahu so afraid to bring the idea of annexation to a vote? Because he knows full well that a majority of our citizens would oppose his criminal plan.

A violation of international law is a very severe crime. And Bibi’s foul plan is 100% in violation. Israel will need to shudder when the matter is brought to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. And in that court, we will be found guilty. We have no friends in that court and the leaders of every civilized nation on all continents will unanimously condemn us. Will sanctions follow?

The bloodshed which will ultimately follow from an annexation of land intended for a future Palestinian state will be worse than our previous wars. It will be fought on our own land in our own cities and villages. Our streets will be red with the blood of the slain, Jews and Arabs alike.

Our past prime minister, Yitzchak Rabin, was tragically assassinated in a public park in Tel-Aviv by a young Jewish zealot who disagreed with Rabin’s peace plans. Heaven protect us from another political assassination.

Our democracy is being assassinated. Hopefully none of our political leaders will feel a death blow.

If President Donald Trump, sitting in his Oval Office, agrees with Netanyahu’s annexation plan, the bloodshed will be also upon his hands. And with all the hand-washing that we do to be sanitized from the deadly virus, no amount of hand-washing can rinse the blood from the hands of the annexation plotters.

The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Maazen) proclaims to the world that he and his people want peace with us. But it is not a peace built upon discussions face to face with us. It is rather a peace proposal dictated to us whose two major conditions for peace can absolutely never be accepted by us.

Sharing a capital city, Jerusalem (Al Quds) is out of the question. And the return of tens of thousands of refugees from the 1948 war is a Palestinian dream and for Israelis a nightmare that can never, never, never be realized. It is time, 72 years too late, for the Arab dreamers to cleave to a hopeless dream.

It is time for the sake of a new and younger well-educated generation to meet face to face with the enemy and to find some possibilities for mutual recognition and agreement…something that both sides can live with. Until now, since 1948, it has been only something that both sides have died with.

Netanyahu curses the Arab Knesset members of the Joint List. His despicable son Yair curses anyone, Jew or Arab alike, who disagree with his daddy. He is under the false and sick opinion that daddy Bibi is the savior of Israel, a messiah to save us according to the prophet Eliyahu.

In our history from Jesus, to Shabbtai Zvi, to the Frankists and in recent years to the followers of the beloved Rebbe of Lubavitch , we have endured the pains and sorrows brought to us by false messiahs.

The closest Jew to messianic admiration was probably Theodor Herzl, reviled by ultra-Orthodox Jews.

It was his dream which heralded the beginnings of our future restored homeland. Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel was transformed into Medinat Yisrael, the Jewish State of Israel.

Our borders are not the same borders of biblical times. Over centuries, thousands of years of non-Jewish habitation, much of the land was wasted away and turned into the sands of the desert.

In our two thousand year exile, forced by the Roman empire, our towns, cities and villages became inhabited by wandering Arab tribes. They settled in where once we lived and herded their sheep and cattle on grazing areas once the places where wheat, barley and olives grew, planted by the Jews.

In 1862 groups of Jews began the return to Zion. They plowed the soil and planted and turned the desert into a blossoming paradise. Often Arab marauders would steal the fruits of the Jewish soil.

Battles which raged often turned into pogroms and the massacre of thousands of Jews. But when our nation became settled by her returning children from the great exodus of two thousand years, our homeland was finally declared and recognized by the majority of the world’s populations as the legal homeland of the Jewish people, as stated in the British Balfour Declaration of 1917 and unanimously ratified by the League of Nations at the 1922 San Remo conference.

In the most recent of days, prime minister Netanyahu is determined to turn our world upside down. He must be stopped before irreparable damage destroys our hope for peace forever.

We must stand firm and strong and let our over-zealous legacy dreamer know that any annexation will definitely be the assassination of whatever democracy we have left.

V’im lo achshav, aimatai ? And if we do not do it now…. When?

Hashem yaazor lanu v’yatzil otanu mi yadayim lo nekiyot. May God help us and save us from unclean hands.

Yechi ha democratzia shelanu ! Long live our democracy !