Settlers
It is time to dismantle the settlement and return the land to its owners. The occupation has gone on for too long. Although the first settlers had friendly encounters with the indigenous people, it was not long before they forced then out of their homeland. And, to keep the settlers safe from attack, a wall was built around the settlement.
Observant readers, those paying attention, not religiously observant, will have noticed that I said settlement not settlements. I am, of course, speaking of Manahatta island, “purchased” in 1626 from the naïve Lenape who didn’t believe that land could belong to anyone and happily took money from the foolish newcomers. It did not take long for Manahatta to become Manhattan. The settler’s wall, first seen on maps in the 1660s, became Wall Street. In today’s New York City there is almost no sign that the Lenape were once there. They have been wiped from both the land and history.
And yet, the descendants of these occupiers, these land thieves, have the temerity to tell us Israelis what we should and should not do with our own land, land given to us in antiquity. Hardly a day goes by without a story of the terrible treatment of the displaced “Palestinians”. They seem to have forgotten that the Jewish inhabitants of the Palestine region, before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, were known as Jewish Palestinians.
In the United Kingdom, once again Jews are pushed aside. The Guardian newspaper has been forced to retract its story that Rishi Sunak was the first minority ethnic British prime minister. It was, of course Benjamin Disraeli. Although he converted to Christianity, he identified as a Jew by ethnic heritage. When faced with antisemitic heckling in the House of Commons, he famously stated ….
“Yes, I am a Jew — and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.”
Well, as they say, That Settles That!