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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Cont'd Refuting Noam Chomsky's Interview Part II Covering Occupation

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     
Dov Weissglas in 1965, age 19

Can you imagine people finding fault with Israel as their vocation finding  fault with them in leaving Gaza?  Noam Chomsky has done just that.

The idea of Israel getting out of Gaza came from PM Sharon'.   "In his book Sharon: The Life of a Leader, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's son,  Gilad,  wrote that he gave his father the idea of the disengagement. Sharon had originally dubbed his unilateral disengagement plan, the "separation plan" orTokhnit HaHafrada before realizing that, "separation sounded bad, particularly in English, because it evoked apartheid."


Sharon suggested his disengagement plan for the first time on December 18, 2003 at the Fourth Herzliya Conference. In his address to the Conference, Sharon stated that  ″settlements which will be relocated are those which will not be included in the territory of the State of Israel in the framework of any possible future permanent agreement. At the same time, in the framework of the Disengagement Plan, Israel will strengthen its control over those same areas in the Land of Israel which will constitute an inseparable part of the State of Israel in any future agreement"

Noam has attacked Dov Weissglas, friend of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon over the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza after gaining it in 1967's Six Day War. Previously, Egypt controlled Gaza.   Only Noam Chomsky could find fault with this.  It's when Israel left their villages, towns and cities in Gaza and withdrew in the name of PEACE.  They no longer OCCUPIED GAZA.  They left, even the greenhouses that they had built, a business that the Palestinians could walk right in and take over.  Did they?  No, they destroyed them, every one.  According to Noam, Weissglas explained to the Israeli Press  that "the goal of this disengagement-was the freezing of the peace process so as to Prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state." 

Quite the opposite of Chomsky's accusation is the truth.  Actually, Dov Weissglas, lawyer and businessman then 58 years old, linked in the peace process as Sharon's office manager and bureau chief and was negotiating with Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, Secretary of State then, was the public face for Sharon.   The Israeli Left (ah yes, we have them, too "Peace Now")  has criticized him when he evidently was against this disengagement, which many now hold up as a huge mistake.
He said it even stronger:in 2004:  The disengagement strategy with Palestinian government is actually formaldehyde (not freezing).  It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."

What are the properties of formaldehyde?   Preservation and disinfectant.  History of the past 10 years shows that he was right all along about  political process which turns out to be Hamas bent on Israel's destruction.    In the original Hebrew, he meant preserving peace, thinking that they would become peaceful knowing that Jews left and that some political belief would not change this.  As a linguist, Noam should know better!  Instead, he added to the misunderstanding of language by saying that Weissglas was ensuring that diplomacy "has been removed indefinitely from our agenda."   
Gaza before Operation Protective Edge
Ha!  Somebody introduced the new idea of voting which can be covered up without the freedom of having honest watchdogs.  Wasn't that from Obama's influence?   Just like Assad in Syria winning by 88.7%-a landslide!  

Then he throws in historian Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, who are authors of "Lords of the Land-
The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007", referring to Jewish settlers with the innuendo of the territories being occupied, which has become a dirty word.  .    By the way, I do not use the term, "settlers".  This is like calling San Franciscans "pioneers."  It's a political way of calling them newcomers, strangers to the land.  Their homes are not in settlements now but in villages, towns or even cities.  Better to call us "RETURNEES."  After all, Judea and Samaria were the homes of our ancestors.  Occupied?  

The two ladies discuss The Green Line which divides land.  One side they say is The West Bank, another term I don't use.  (Note, term usage tells what side of the line you are on, left or right)  "It is also curious, especially considering the authors’ leftist perspective, that the Palestinians barely feature in their book, other than as passive victims of rapacious (excessive grasping or covetousness)  Zionist settlers and expansionist Israeli governments. "   Most of the Jewish  people living in Judea and Samaria are Jewish historians themselves deeply into our ancient history who realize the importance of this land.  They are good and religious people.  Israel is NOT expansionistic.  They are just trying to hold onto what they have. 
                                                                    
King Abdullah of Transjordan

 Why don't you blame G-d for helping Israel to win the 1967 war that enabled them to legally gain the land the coveting King Abdullah wanted for his own and lost?  Israel didn't start the 1967 war.  But they finished it, didn't they!  

From Nasser on May 26, 1967:  "The Arab people wants to fight.  We have been waiting for the right day when we would be fully prepared..Recently, we have felt strong enough to triumph, with God's help, if we enter into battle with Israel.  On that basis, we have decided to take the actual measures.  Taking this step makes it imperative that we be ready to embark on a total war with Israel.   " Each leader said about the same things, some stronger than others.  

  Judea and Samaria were renamed by Jordan who stole the land illegally which no international lawyer except those speaking up for Israel has ever called them on.  Who has wanted to argue with King Abdullah?  It was 80% of the Jewish Homeland!  Israel gained it back legally from the results of the 1967 war by winning.  I call it the original name of Judea and Samaria, and Samaria was an updated name for Israel, by the way.  

In their book about the Lords, and of course they are knocking the reasons for the disengagement, they say "the ruined territory"---an innuendo that is laughable!  The land was improved upon, not ruined by the Jews.  It has been the Arabs all along who have ruined Palestine-all of it.  Read  Mark Twain's THE INNOCENTS ABROAD.  Throughout the book you will read about the wasteland, the swamps, mosquitoes, weeds he found in 1867 before the return of Russian Jews in the 1st Aliyah.  That's what the Jews had to face and change.  He noted that Palestine was only from 40 to 60 miles wide and that Missouri could be split into 3 Palestines and there would then be enough material left for part of another, possibly a whole one.  And from this Israel got a piece of the pie that is at the smallest width about 6 miles wide; so small that people in a train are told to not put their arm out the window or it would be in Palestine.  
                                                                            
IDF of Israel, 1967 in Jerusalem

"THE IDEA THAT Judea, Samaria and Gaza are under Israel's "occupation" was born on June 6-7, 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces overran and repossessed these territories in the Six-Day War and the National Unity Government headed by Levi Eshkol instantly applied Article 43 of the Hague Regulations to keep the existing laws in force." 1  Israel has since given the reigns over to Abbas of Fatah (formerly the PLO) who has called himself  President of Palestine since January 15, 2005.  Of course we all know that Hamas terrorists won an election and kicked Abbas out of Gaza and into Judea and Samaria.  "THE TERM "OCCUPATION", DEFINED IN ARTICLE 42 of the Hague Regulations, refers to territory that is "actually placed under the authority of the hostile army and the occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised."  Howard Grief's opinion is that  to end the myth of Israeli "occupation", the Israeli government must abolish the military regime adopted in June 1967 for Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and replace the existing military laws and regulations with the law of the State of Israel.  This international lawyer goes on to say that:  "The Jews of Judea and Samaria would, in fact and in law, be well within their constitutional rights to remain living in those territories under the most significant law of the State of Israel, the Law of Return, that enshrines in its provisions the two-thousand-year-old Jewish Right of Return and, assuming Government abandonment, to take the necessary steps to govern themselves in an independent State of Judea and Samaria."  

The discussion of occupation is moot since "After Hamas unexpectedly won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and overtook the Gaza Strip, it forced out all remnants of Palestinian President Abbas’s Fatah party. Since then, Fatah has largely been in charge of the West Bank and Hamas of the Gaza Strip. Fatah remains the Palestinian Authority’s largest political and military power, but its ties to terrorist activities cause strains between Israel and the Palestinians. In fact, the issue of uniting Hamas and Fatah has been up for debate – among Palestinians and externally - since 2007. Each side wants to keep their own land and control but acknowledges that political division within the Palestinian infrastructure is probably untenable. The de facto alliance between Israel and the PA aimed to prevent Hamas from overtaking the West Bank has been US-assisted. The US created the Security U.S. Coordinator’s Office that trains Palestinian security forces and organizes Israel-PA cooperation.  Israel has been out of the picture except to be able to ensure that the Arabs do not have access to weapons to use on Israel.  They kept this part of the deal.

The authors Zertal and Eldar say, according to Noam, that Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services and people with neither a present nor a future.  This bald lie doesn't begin to tell the story of Jewish people forced by their government who is trying to create a reason for peace with the Palestinians to pick up and leave their homes and businesses.  It was a huge undertaking. Then, they knew their goose was cooked when it was reported back that the Palestinian Arabs completely destroyed all the greenhouses left for their use.  Scorched earth?  No way, but they did dig up their cemetery so that their loved ones would go with them, as Jacob's body was handled by his descendants.  Services?  What?  Electric and water that they thought childishly were free?  They want land; well, that means supplying their own services.  Did they think that they could kick out the Jews and that they would still maintain services for them?  Dream on.  As for their present and future, that is up to them now.  They voted in Hamas.  They had tons of help in this area from Israel.  My book of "facts about israel" put out by 1973's division of Information, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, lists all the services and programs that were going on for them by Israel.  You know the old adage, you can't eat your cake and have it, too.  This is what happens from not being peaceful neighbors and instead spending all your time trying to kill them.  They act like the children who killed their parents and then cried to the judge that they were orphans now.  

Israel's peace initiative of leaving Gaza is criticized by saying that the settlement were destroyed in an ungenerous move  by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and to kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might.  So this is how our critics see the pain of these families in leaving.  I can only shake my head and grab an aspirin at this point.  Do I have to defend Israel more, point by point in this?  If one does not understand by now with careful reading, there is no hope for the reader. Noam calls the writers "the most respected Israeli source."  I feel he over-exaggerates.   I've never heard of Zertal and Eldar.  Neither has my good friend, the eminent Professor and historian, Victor Sharpe, a prolific writer himself.  

"As of 1973, the status of the administered areas had not changed since June 1967.  Pending a peace settlement in which the borders between Israel and its neighbors will be decided, it is that of territories occupied during a war.  Israel has not annexed any part of the areas.  East Jerusalem was reunified in June 1967 with West Jerusalem.  


Fatah-Hamas Unity Government: usually both are on the outs with each other
  2014: Fatah and Hamas sign a reconcilliation agreement (they have fought continually with each other over power) in April and form a unity government, on June 2 Abbas swears in the new government. Nothing has been signed with Israel.  Is East Jerusalem now considered by the Arabs as being part of this government?  How would you like to have part of Washington DC belonging to  North Korea?

Resource:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Weissglass
http://rt.com/news/163696-assad-win-president-syria/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/books/review/LeBor-t.html?_r=0
http://www.think-israel.org/grief.occupation.html 1
http://www.think-israel.org/grief.consequencesabandonningjudeasamaria.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/Fatah.html

1 comment:

  1. Anyone who writes for Haaretz is automatically a leftist who harms his own nation – Israel. That, alas, is a given. Eldar is just one such miscreant; a relatively unknown columnist for Haaretz. That is why many people give that awful newspaper an Arabic name- Al Haaretz.

    Blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism and the failed peace process is irrational. Unable to accept terrorism, Zertal and Eldar transform the ideological and theological onslaught against Jews and a nominally Jewish state into a simpleminded dispute over land: land-for-peace and the two-state-solution.

    The authors did little original research, instead relying on select left-wing newspaper articles, secondary sources, and tendentious reports. A book written on the premises of such material predictably blames Israel for almost everything.

    The authors argue that settlements are the primary cause of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, have undermined the rule of law, have subverted the democratic decision-making process in Israel, and "have brought Israeli democracy to the brink of an abyss."

    This, of course, is arrant nonsense for the Muslim Arab enemies of the Jewish state consider every town, city and village within the 1967 armistice lines also as “settlements.”

    For the Arabs who fraudulently call themselves Palestinians, the conflict is not about where Jews live but the very existence of a Jewish state. Israel's reconstitution as a nation in its ancient and ancestral biblical homeland is unique in history. But this alone drives Jew haters and self-hating Jews crazy. Chomsky is just one such scoundrel.

    Jewish villages and neighborhoods are not settlements any more than the Arab communities are settlements – even though the vast majority of such Arab settlements are automatically and incorrectly called villages, but can trace their origin back only to the early 20th century during the period of the vast and illegal influx of Arabs from neighboring stagnant lands during the British Mandate occupation.

    Calling Jewish villages, “settlements” is a deliberate and pejorative slur, falsely implying that they are a colonial presence in another people’s land: a towering insult to the reborn Jewish presence in its homeland and heartland.

    If Chomsky praises this screed by Zertal and Eldar, then we should automatically consign it and everything else Chomsky praises into the dustbin of history where it belongs.

    Best wishes,
    Victor Sharpe

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