Building Israel in Judea and Samaria is the Best Response to Continued Palestinian Terrorism
Earlier this week, Israel announced that around 400 hectares of land in the Gush Etzion area of Judea and Samaria, a.k.a the West Bank, would be nationalized (see: Israel recognizes 4,000 dunam in Gush Etzion as state land). Predictably, members of the international community protested, because unfortunately, the international consensus is that Jews should not live in their ancestral homeland. Today, word also got out in the press that Israel plans to build just under three hundred new homes in the community of Elkana, located in the northwest of the so-called West Bank (see: Israel issues tenders for 283 homes in West Bank settlement). I am actually very happy with these announcements because I believe that continuing to build Israel’s presence in its Biblical homeland is a proper, Zionist response to the Palestinians’ continuing terrorism.
Palestinians Shoot, Israel Builds
The bias against Israel’s growing communities in Judea and Samaria is clearly outlined in the second article cited above. Indeed, the article calls Israel’s decision to nationalize land in Gush Etzion the country’s “biggest land grab on Palestinian territory in three decades”. Personally, the use of the term “land grab” really upsets me, as does the article’s defining Biblical Jewish land as “Palestinian territory”. Just once, I would love to see one major press outlet or world leader mention the land grab that the Arabs made centuries ago when they marched out of their native Arabian peninsula to conquer nearly the entire Middle East and northern Africa. But believe me, I’m not holding my breath for this. If Israel is grabbing land, it is simply grabbing it back from Arab conquerors. Jews have every right to live in their ancestral homeland. They have every right to establish communities there and rebuild the Jewish presence in the land that has been gone for centuries. Furthermore, it is only fitting that Israel nationalize the territory in Gush Etzion as it was on this very land that three innocent Jewish teenagers were kidnapped and subsequently murdered in cold blood by Hamas terrorists. Let this reclamation of Jewish land be a lesson to these terrorists and let the people of Israel say to them: Every time you shoot at us, injure us, or kill us, we will respond by continuing to build up our communities in the land of our ancestors.
Forget World Opinion!
Shortly after Israel announced its nationalization of land in Gush Etzion, one of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition partners, Yair Lapid, who now serves as Minister of Finance, protested the decision, implying that it made Israel look bad in the eyes of world, especially in regards to the country’s relations with the U.S. (see: Lapid: West Bank land seizure harms Israel). My response to such concerns is simply to forget about what the rest of the world thinks. History has shown that whatever Israel does, it is condemned. The most recent example of this is, of course, the latest conflict in the Gaza Strip, where Israel took great strides to prevent the deaths of Palestinian civilians, even as terrorists shot rockets at Israel from civilian structures, including private homes, schools and hospitals. But regardless of Israel’s efforts to protect Palestinian civilians, the country was still condemned time and time again by the international community, the world press and countless anti-Israel and antisemitic protestors. Let’s face it; people just hate Israel and hate Jews, and nothing Israel does or doesn’t do will change that.