When Fools Rush In

“They want an Israeli politics without traditional Judaism” [Yoram Hazony]”

Rabbis call on Lapid to resign as prime minister”, [Israel National News 28/09/2022]”

If we want a Jewish state, Lapid is not the answer” by MK Simcha Rothman [Israel National News 28/09/2022

There are homo sapiens who above all believe in themselves. Typically, they are sure of themselves, full of arrogance, irrational, ignore protocol, ignore established procedures or laws and display certainty in their actions.

The actions of the interim prime minister of Israel who conforms to the above gives rise to the very question, “Who’s Against a Two-State Solution?” As far back as July 20, 2010, it was raised by Ephraim Karsh in Jewish Ideas Daily and then repeated in The Tikvah Fund. Apparently, President Barack Obama had used the words, “Two states, living side by side in peace and security” as the solution to the century-long conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the Middle East.

Karsh’s paper commences around April 1920 when the newly formed League of Nations appointed Britain as the mandatory power in Palestine, who were committed via the Balfour Declaration to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.

Because they were repeatedly confronted by violent Arab opposition despite appeasement , on March 1921, they severed the vast and sparsely populated territory east of the Jordan River [Transjordan] from the prospective Jewish national home and made Abdullah, the emir of Mecca, its effective ruler.

This action, which some historians regarded as a betrayal, resulted in 2 British White Papers in 1922 and 1930 respectively, which limited Jewish immigration to Palestine and imposed harsh restrictions on land sales to Jews.

Notwithstanding this major concession, the violence continued, resulting in a great reward to the Arabs on July, 1937 when a British commission of enquiry, headed by Lord Peel, recommended repudiating the terms of the mandate altogether. Instead the infamous two-state “solution” was born, the partitioning of Palestine into an Arab state [85%] and a Jewish state, a miserly 15%. The commission had the nerve to say that “Half a loaf is better than no bread” as if each party received 50%.

But to no avail. Surprisingly, the Zionist leadership gave the plan its half hearted support while Arab governments and the Palestinian Arab leadership [with the sole exception of Abdullah] dismissed it out of hand. Given Churchill’s favorable acknowledgement of Israel’s position makes the Jewish behavior less than comprehensible.

He said, “It is manifestly right that the Jews , who are scattered all over the world should have a national centre and a national home, where some of them may be reunited, and where else but in Palestine, with which for 3,000 years they have been  intimately and profoundly associated?” And no such verbiage about the Arabs or Palestinians!!

Further the same happened in November 1947, when shortly prior to the expiration of the British mandate, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine. However, on this occasion with no acceptance of it by the Arab nations, who rejected it outright, while the Arab violence backfired.

Neither Egypt nor Jordan permitted Palestinian self-determination in the parts of Palestine they had occupied during the 1948 war. Jordan annexed the West Bank in April 1950, while Egypt kept the Gaza Strip under oppressive military rule. Following the conquest of these territories by Israel during the Six Day war, their political future would be determined on the basis of UN Resolution 242.

The PLO was established in 1964 due to the initiative of Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser. During October 1974, the Arab League designated it as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, following which PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat became the 1st non-state leader ever to address the UN General Assembly.

In1993, Israel’s Labor Government signed the “Oslo Accords” providing for Palestinian self-rule in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip for a transitional period not to exceed 5 years. During this period, the parties were committed to negotiate a permanent settlement.

In 1993 Israel signed the “Oslo Accords” providing for Palestinian self-rule in the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, for a transitional period not to exceed 5 years, during which time Israel and the Palestinians would negotiate a permanent settlement.

At the American convened peace summit in Camp David on July, 2000, Ehud Barak offered Arafat a complete end to the Israeli presence, ceding virtually the entire territory of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip including a breathtaking concession with respect to Jerusalem. The response? War, at a level of local violence unmatched in scope and intensity since the attempt to abort the creation of a Jewish state in 1948.

In a televised speech on May 15, 2005, Abbas described the establishment of Israel as an unprecedented historic injustice and vowed his unwavering resolve never to accept it.

Two and a half years later, at a US sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, he rejected Ehud Olmert’s proposal of a Palestinian Arab state in 97% of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip. He also categorically dismissed the request to recognize Israel as a Jewish state alongside the proposed Palestinian state. Instead, he demanded a full implementation of the “right of return.”

Ephraim Karsh asks the question, “But is there in fact a fundamental distinction between Hamas and Fatah when it comes to a two-state solution?” and answers “Neither faction formally accepts Israel’s right to exist; both are formally committed to its eventual destruction.” Professor Ephraim Karsh’s conclusion is a reflection of his deep intellect.

“For the lesson of history remains: so long as things on the Arab side are permitted, or encouraged, to remain as they are, there will be no two-state solution, and therefore no solution at all.”

In Yoram Hazony’s January 1997 masterpiece, “The Zionist Idea And its Enemies”, we do find a solution.

With the signing of the Oslo -PLO agreements in 1993, Israel was suddenly inundated by cultural artifacts intended to flaunt a new openness. But in the wake of the Nov. 4, 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a rightist fanatic from the religious community, all the fantasizing about a fraternal and entertaining cultural war had quickly dissolved. This left the entire Jewish people suddenly finding themselves staring into the immediate future. It was as if the war with Arafat had been replaced by yet another very real war.

“With few exceptions, the Left intelligentsia, both in Israel and abroad, took the assassination as the ultimate proof of everything it had long believed on the subject of those tribalistic, law-breaking , anti-intellectual, violent theocrats – traditional Jews.”

Amir, it was said, was ‘a boy next door – from a stable, religious family’, ‘just your average religious right-wing hard liner; the product of the best religious- Zionist schools in Israel. ‘ He ‘came out of the mainstream religious Right, and carried the same banners, shouted the same slogans, believed the same doctrines as most other Orthodox Jews in Israel’. “By dint of simple arithmetic, ‘if a boy next door’ like Amir was capable of such craven, fratricidal bloodletting, then so was practically any traditional Jew.

Hazony then proceeds with a review of Theodor Herzl’s outlook, as the man opposed to how Leftists perceived him. Many of the intellectual and political figures were advocating separating traditional Judaism from the Jewish state imagining it to be what Herzl sought. However, while Herzl was no preacher of secularism, Jews could still benefit from his ideas on the place of religion in the Jewish state. It was precisely his unique understanding of what constituted real national power that led him to regard the strengthening of Jewish tradition as a proper and essential interest of the state.

Hazony explains further ideas from Herzl’s “The Jewish State” published in February, 1896; his theory that the true core of national strength is the idea of the nation in the minds of the people. He believed, contrary to conventional beliefs, that nations are built from the mental achievements of peoples.

Herzl’s 3rd asset of the mind was the Jewish religion. This he considered to have been indispensable in nurturing the national idea in the past – ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, which he considered would continue to be essential in the future – ‘We recognize our historic identity only by the faith of our fathers.’

The contemporary state of affairs in Israel on the Left is reflected in the past words of Amos Oz. “The dividing wall —passes between those [in Israel] who aspire to Iranian- style theocracy, and the state of Israel – between them and all of us.” And those of Ze’ev Chafets. “To survive, democratic Israel must knock the fundamentalist rabbis off their pedestals and lock up their violent disciples. This means cutting off public funds to schools and youth organizations that indoctrinate children in anti-democratic ideals.” And many others.

Hazony concludes with a quote from a religious -nationalist leader, “We have settled in the heart of the land, but we have not even tried to settle in the hearts of the people.” From this, Hazony recognizes it as precisely the same point that Herzl tried to teach in the brief period he led the Zionist movement.

During 1939, Mojli Amin representing the Arab Defense Committee for Palestine is on file making the following recommendation:

“I hereby propose that all the Arabs of Palestine will leave and be divided up amongst the neighboring Arab Countries. In exchange for this, all the Jews living in Arab countries will leave and come to Palestine.” The latter mostly accepted, but the former declined in response to their leaders.

On January 1951, Israel’s 1st prime minster, David Ben-Gurion, is quoted as telling members of his party, Mapai, “These Arabs should not stay here, just as American Jews should not stay in America–I think everything must be done so that an Arab lives in an Arab state.”

According to the International Times of 09/08/2014, Egypt’s Sisi offered Abbas creation of Palestinian State in Sinai Peninsula as reported by Jack Moore. Sisi allegedly said to Abbas in the meeting:”You are now 80 years old, if you don’t accept this proposal, your successor will.” Elsewhere the report was denied despite it making perfect sense to both Egypt and Israel.

As stated in The Political Chronicle of January, 1997, Golda Meir was strongly opposed to partition. She was in favor of transfer as the Arabs had vast territories in which the Arabs of Palestine could settle.