Part 8 Rebutting Chomsky on Gush Etzion, land and Jerusalem:

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

West Bank is really Samaria in the North and Judea in the South.  Samaria is where Israel had been, attacked in 722 BCE by the Assyrians.  After King Solomon died in 922 BCE, Israel had split into Judea and Samaria.  Judea kept Jerusalem.  

Of paramount need to Israel is security.  Note that from Haifa to Judea-Samaria is 21 miles.
Netanya is 9 miles away.  Tel Aviv is only 11 miles away.  Ashdod, further south, is 22 miles away.  Ashkelon is only 7 miles from Gaza.  Gaza is 21 miles from Judea.  Beersheva is 9 miles from Judah.

Noam Chomsky in Part 7 ended his vitriolic attack on Israel with   "the latest ceasefire being on August 26, 2014 followed at once by Israel's greatest land grab in 30 years, almost 1,000 acres in the Gush Etzion area near what's called greater Jerusalem, about 5 times the size of anything that Jerusalem ever was, taken over by Israel, annexed in violation of Security Council orders."   .Let me get a word in.

FIRST;  We haven't really had a cease fire, now, have we.  Here's a look at the record from Wikipedia:

Month	Missiles launched		Effect of missiles		Retaliation by Israel
	Rockets	Mortars	Killed	Injured	Killed	Injured
July	2,874   rockets	15 mortars	6 killed	34  injured	1,122 Arabs killed	7,800
August	950  rocket	2 mortars	19 killed		540 Arabs killed	1,913
Total	4,005 rockets	31 mortars	8 killed	60 injured	1,663	9,713

Up to today, 1 mortar and 2 rockets have fallen into Israel since the cease fire  which happened in September and October.  November was not mentioned but in December "a rocket from Gaza was fired into Israel, exploding in open territory near the Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries or damage were reported. In response, the following day IDF struck a site belonging to Hamas in southern Gaza near Khan Yunis.  Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon reported that the target was a factory making cement that would be used to build tunnels.  Know this, that the rocket caused the alarm to go off, causing everyone within earshot to run to a bomb shelter.  This pretty much messes up the day.

Update: December 21st: another rocket was shot into Israel from Gaza today. 

Update: December 24th 2 rockets were tested-fired into the sea by Hamas 


Now, to answer Noam's many charges against Israel starting with Gush Etzion getting land. .  

South of Jerusalem in Judah, 4 agricultural villages were started by Jews from 1940 to 1947 in 

land bought and paid for by Jews in the 20s and 30s.  Children in the USA would bring pennies

and dimes to Sunday schools to help buy land They had Care-en-on-neim boxes to put the

money into.  The Arab Legion destroyed the villages before 1948's War of 

Independence.  

Kfar Etzion was the scene of a massacre.  Jews rebuilt the village after the Six Day War and 

added to their Gush Etzion.  The Historic novel, THE SETTLERS by Meyer Levin tells about 

villages like this. from 1880  just off the boat to WWI.  

The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.  As of 2011, Gush Etzion consisted of 22 settlements with a population of 70,000.  Their problem is that it was outside the 1949 armistice lines.  

                                                                    

Gush Etzion-10 minute drive to Jerusalem
Made of 20 communities with 20,000 population, a buffer zone for the capital

Noam continues:  "The US State Department informed the Israeli Embassy that "Israeli activity in Gush Etzion undermines American efforts to  protect Israel at the UN,"  and urged that Israel shouldn't provide ammunition for "those at the UN who would interpret Israel's position as hardening."  Actually, that warning was given 47 years ago, in September 1967, at the time of Israel's first colonization, illegal colonization, of Gush Etzion.  Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg recently reminded us of this.  Little has changed since, in the last 47 years, apart from the scale of crimes which continue, without a break, with constant US support.  "  

Noam considers living in one's own land (from which Israel sees the land) a crime, does he?  International lawyers such as Eugene Rostow, Julius Stone, David Phillips,  Alan Dershowitz and Professor Eugene Kontorovich  say that since Israel won the 1967 aggressive war, they can settle in their land.  Europe and the Palestinians disagree, of course, and now the USA seems to be joining them. 

Kontorovich has a video to listen to on this very subject.  This explains a lot.  Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2x5UvjUs4 .  

Here are some things to know about Israeli Settlements in the Territories that are Legal but Politically contentious.  

1. 1967 to 1977:  76 Jewish communities were built in the Territories on undeveloped land.  Most were built to ensure security, but some Israelis, such as the survivors of the Gush Etzion block, returned to rebuild Jewish communities that Arab forces had captured and destroyed in the 1948 War.  .  

2. After 1977, 74 additional communities were built in the Territories on unallocated government land.
                                                                          

Ariel in Area C

3. By 2005, the 150 communities included about 200,000 Israelis living on less than 2% of Judea-Samaria's land.

4. 80% of the settlers live in communities close to the Green Line, currently consisting of suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

5. The Jews' right to settle the land is a "legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the UN charter....The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there. (Eugene Rostow, former US Under Secretary of State, 1990, an international law lawyer.)  /Israel 101, page 17./

Palestinians have legitimate claims to sovereignty over some of the land.  Many are longtime inhabitants who feel they have been deprived of political rights and self-determination.  Israel doesn't want to interfere with their political rights, but it disputes their territorial claims.  Israel also has strong claims to the land, and therefore, Judea and Samaria should be called  disputed territories. 

The British Mandate held from 1920 to 1948 was the last legal sovereign authority for the Territories.  Jordan and Egypt illegally held them between 1948 to 1967.  They remain unallocated portions of the British Mandate since no government formally replaced the Mandate's jurisdiction.  Its guidelines called for Jews to settle the area and England was to help them, not give it away to Abdullah and allow illegal Arabs to enter while they kept Jews out. (Joan Peters FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL).  

Judea and Samaria were renamed the West Bank by Jordan in 1951 but they were the cradle of Jewish civilization and had a continuous Jewish presence until the 1948 War when Jewish inhabitants were killed and approximately 10,000 were expelled by the Jordanians.  

Arab states had repeatedly launched attacks against Israel from the Territories' strategic locations, and UN Resolution 242 envisioned bilateral negotiations that would give Israel more secure borders and lead to greater regional stability.  In 1988, the PLO officially continued to call for a Palestinian state to replace Israel, not for a separate state that would exist alongside it. 
                                                                           

Judea-Samaria

From Linda Cohn who visited Israel:  "Under the Oslo accords, Judea and Samaria  were divided into Areas A, B and C. Areas A are under Palestinian Authority control. They do not allow any Jews there. If racism is a form of violence, the left is certainly quiet about the racism of Muslims who do not allow Jews to live among them.

It is a crime punishable by death in both Palestinian and Jordanian territories for an Arab to sell land to a Jew.3

Area B is to be mostly for Arabs and Area C is to be all Jewish.  
The report is coming today that Arabs have been illegally squatting in Area C.  

Wikipedia has more: " Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority officially controls a geographically non-contiguous territory comprising approx. 11% of the West Bank (known as Area A) which remains subject to Israeli incursions. Area B (approx. 28%) is subject to both Israeli military and Palestinian civil control. Area C (approx. 61%) is under full Israeli control. Though 164 nations refer to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as “Occupied Palestinian Territory, ” the state of Israel is of the view that only territories captured in war from “an established and recognized sovereign” are considered occupied territories. (Israel captured back land that was not Jordan's land legally but land belonging to Israel. Therefore it is not occupied land.)  If Jordan attacked Washington DC and took it, then it would be occupied land-occupied by Jordan because Washington DC belonged to the USA.  This happened to Israel before 70 CE.  Rome occupied Israel.  After the 2007 split between Fatah and Hamas, the West Bank areas under Palestinian control are an exclusive part of the Palestinian Authority, while the Gaza Strip is ruled by Hamas.

August 14, 2014 Haaretz newspaper, an extreme leftist one, wrote about  "David Perl, head of the Gush Etzion local council, said the “declaration of some 4,000 dunams  ( less than 1,000 acres) as state land paves the way for the establishment of Gvaot, a new city in Gush Etzion. I want to congratulate the prime minister and the government of Israel on their promotion of the initiative, and the defense minister and head of the civil administration on getting the decision approved.”  The appropriated land belongs to five Palestinian villages in the Bethlehem area: Jaba, Surif, Wadi Fukin, Husan and Nahalin.  It was the IDF who was expanding STATE LAND.  

"On 31 August 2014, Israel declared 988 acres of land surrounding Gva'ot as part of state land in West Bank.   Gva'ot had yet to be recognized by the Israeli government, due to the lack of defined boundaries, this land appropriation is the first required step to officially recognizing Gva'ot..

As of August 2014, there were 10 families living in Gva'ot.  The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law, although the Israeli government disputes this." The international community is against Israel in all matters as it is. The situation is about like 1939 in Germany.  This is most depressing to people like me, but it is not a surprise anymore; it's expected.   

 I refer to Professor Kontorovich's read on this international law.  

The land-owning situation today is very complicated; covering Ottoman Empire laws which are still on the books besides a myriad of other laws.  Most American lawyers can't comprehend them at all.  So to make this simple, there are 3 kinds of land in Israel;  government land, Jewish National Fund land, and private lands.

The system of landholding can be traced back to a 1901 meeting of the 5th Zionist Congress when they created private charitable organization called the JNF that was to buy land for the resettlement of Jews in their ancient homeland, and we as children saw the little boxes that held our change.  By 1948, the JNF had bought 936,000 dunums of land (231,290 acres) .  Another 800,000 dunums (197,684 acres) had been bought by other Jewish organizations or people.  This only amounted to about 8.6% of the total land of what would later be Israel.  The rest of about 70% were public lands vested in the British Mandatory authorities.  All land bought by the JNF remained in their hands; never sold to Jews or Arabs, but were leased on a long-term basis for kibbutzim and other forms of Jewish settlement.  

When Israel won the war of 1967, they regained land Jordan had taken from the promised Jewish Homeland, and they took it illegally.  This regained land, earmarked Jewish Homeland, still wore its tags.  It became Israeli state land under that jurisdiction.

80.4% of land is owned by the government.
13.1% is privately owned by the JNF.
 6.5% is evenly divided between private Arab and Jewish owners.  
The Israel Land Act administers 93. 5% of the land in Israel. It is unavailable for private ownership.  Such land is not sold to anyone but is leased out by the ILA.  So it is true that Israeli law prevents the sale of state-owned land to Israeli Arabs or to Jewish citizens of Israel.  

The USA has a similar situation.  Here in Oregon I live in a home that I own but not the land.  I have to pay rent every month on it.  The same goes for all the other 150 homes here.  However, in this case the land is privately owned and the rent goes up every year but not the value of the homes.  

In Safed from 1981 to 1985  I lived in a government owned building.  I paid very little rent but got very little in return, so we were even.  Arabs and Jews lived in the building.  Our water pipes broke in the building and we were at the basement level of a 13 story apartment building and suddenly a river of water came under our front door.  I screamed and an Israeli and an Arab lady came to my rescue with brooms and we all swept it out somehow while laughing.  Luckily the Israeli spoke  Arabic as well, but not English, so we had a good time not understanding each other.  Such was living in northern Israel.  We women could get along.   

Noam, Israel isn't committing any crime.  They simply have very complicated land laws, many left over from the Ottoman Empire they still have to deal with.  Israel is in a different position than the USA was in their development.  Israel was established as a state for Jews.  It has an Arab minority who have citizenship, 1.7 million of them.  They also have citizenship rights, the same as all the Jews, but land is another matter.  The Jewish Agency purchases land on behalf of the Jewish people and then leases it out to its Jewish citizens.  Arabs can keep land they have privately owned before the State of Israel was created.  there's a small amount of private property that can be traded and Arabs can buy that as well as Jews, but most land is held in trust for the Jewish people.  So you might think this is a discriminatory practice, but its the only way Israel can be kept in the the manner for which it was created. Jews are in the same boat in that they can't buy the land either.   You don't like it?  Go live in an Arab country.  There are at least 48 Muslim majority countries or more, but we only have this one teeny Jewish country.  

Yet the papers are full of screaming Palestinians and others over the land given to Gush Etzion.  The Palestinians are saying it's  a crime, so that's what Noam is parroting back.  Yet the Palestinians have been bombing southern Israel without any mercy which is also a crime, isn't it? Who's complaining about that?  Where's our Noam Chomsky to speak up for us?   Palestinians are trying to kill the civilians.  Israel is just using their own land as well as waiting for a peace agreement.   Yes, it must be aggravating, but I've been advocating such a thing for years, but I would have given a warning, first.  It would go like this: For every rocket, mortar or missile you shoot at Israel, Israel will take a certain amount of dunams.  Misbehave, and you lose the chance to live on certain land.  You can tell I'm an old elementary school teacher.  Looks to me like you owe Israel even more dunams.  

Israel is not only a Jewish state but a very legal one.  You know, many Jews are either doctors or lawyers, and Judaism is a religion with 613 laws besides the well known 10 Commandments.  So Israel prides itself on being very ethical and moralistic.  If someone feels they have the title for the land, they can take their claim to the Supreme Court of Israel.  The judges will decide.  We were most proud of Solomon, the wise, who was a judge.  I hope what we have today can live up to his standards.

4/5th of the land is state-owned.  Arabs have equal access to state- owned land.  About 1/2 the land they cultivate is leased land.  Residential land often favors Arabs than Israelis.  New Jewish communities near Beersheva were going for $24,000 for a lease on a 1/4 an acre while Bedouin families in nearby Rahat only had to pay $150 for the same amount of land.  

A Jewish policeman from Beersheva, Eleizer Avitan, applied to the Israel Land Ass. to lease land in a Bedouin community under the same highly subsidized terms for Bedouins and they refused to lease him land, so he sued.  The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Israel Land Ass because what might be viewed as discrimination against a Jew was justified as affirmative action for the Bedouin citizens.  

Don't feel bad.  We lived in government housing and paid $8 per month, being new immigrants and only receiving $300 per month teaching.  We had to put in everything; it came with 4 walls and that's about all, but it was within our pocketbook.  My mother would have plotzed, but I felt like a pioneer.  This was in 1981.  
Explanation:  Money in Israel is in shekels.  I have been giving the equivalent amount in dollars for understanding.

Jewish National Fund lands' purpose was to buy land for settlement of Jews.  It is not leased on a long term basis to non-Jews.  There are formal restrictions on the lease of land to Arabs.  It is privately owned land and cannot be used in any way that would violate the 1960 agreement that placed it under government administration.  However, in practice they are doing it. They've leased land in Wadi Shallala near Kibbutz Re'em to Bedouins for use as pasture.  19 Arabs have also leased JNF-owned land for housing.  It's complicated.

On the other hand, the PA will not let any Arab sell land to a Jew today under penalty of death.

From June 1967 to December 1972 Israel established 6 settlements in Judea and Samaria for 4,200 Jews which includes Nahal military villages.   3 types are found in administered areas. (1)  Nahal villages are established by the IDF combining military training with farm work.  Members become farmers. (2) Civilian villages in areas which Israel hopes may be assigned to its jurisdiction by peace treaties.  These positions are not conditions etched in stone, and that in peace talks, everything will be negotiable.  This is rough on the Jewish villagers, though.  (3) Communities established in areas where the political future is not covered by Israel's positions.  The assumption was that, even should the area in question revert to Arab sovereignty under a treaty of peace, Jewish communities should be allowed to continue to live in it, just as Arab communities live in Israel.    
                                                                   

Givat Hamatos, a Jerusalem Neighborhood

Noam goes on saying: "Israel is taking over what they call Jerusalem, as I mentioned, a huge area, maybe 5 times the area of historic Jerusalem, Greater Jerusalem, big area in the West Bank, includes many Arab villages being dispossessed, destroyed, bringing settler in.  All of this is doubly illegal.  All the settlements are illegal, as determined by the Security Council, advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. 

My comment is that:

The UN Charter does not grant the General Assembly or the International Court of Justice the authority to assign or affect ‘ownership’ of the Territories.

 But the Jerusalem settlements are doubly illegal because they're also in violation of explicit Security Council orders going back to 1968, with the US actually voting for them at that time, barring any change in the status of Jerusalem.  But it continues.  That's Greater Jerusalem."

                                                                                 

Jerusalem, Capital of Israel: From King David's Day to Today, a city where religion is paramount.  Here one can see the mosque-Dome of the Rock, churches and we know synagogues are there, too.  Pictured is the Western Wall.  

Noam is complaining that Jerusalem, the City of David, Israel's capital, is growing.  Noam, cities of importance have this happen.  Portland, Oregon has grown also from what it used to be when I was a girl.  Let's look at the famous Jerusalem.

For 19 years between 1948 and 1967, Jerusalem was in Jordan's hands illegally and was divided in two;  between Israel and Jordan who held the eastern section.  Barbed wire and concrete walls separated the 2 parts of the city and the Jordanians forbade movement of people from one part of the city to another.  After the Six-Day War of 1967, Jerusalem was reunified .

Jerusalem today is a thriving city of coexistence between Jews and Arabs, between members of the 3 great faiths, between the religious and secular ways of life.  It has the highest rate of natural increase in Israel--222.7 per thousand.  Employment was full in 1973, but the city was still burdened by social and economic problems.  12% of the families had 7 or more children.  39% of the population were of school age.  There was a serious housing shortage.    Everyone wanted to live in Jerusalem.  To improve conditions, a large building program was being carried out in all parts of the city,  Arab and Jewish.  This creates problems of how to preserve the traditional character of the city while developing it at an accelerated pace.  The Municipality is exerting itself in an attempt to plan the future of the city so that a correct balance between ancient and modern shall be maintained.  

300,000 people lived in Jerusalem in 1973. By 2011 it had 801,000 with 64% of the people being Jewish.   It was the capital of the Jewish nation between 1000 BCE to 586 BCE, and again between 516 BCE to 70 CE.  It has known many foreign rulers, but only for the Jews has it been the capital of the nation living in this land.  Jews have the longest unbroken historical association with Jerusalem, dating from 3,000 years ago when King David made it his capital.  Only to Jews has Jerusalem always been the focus of national and religious aspirations.  
                                                                             

The Knesset Menorah, Jerusalem

It is the seat of the President of the State, the Knesset, the Government, the Supreme Court, the Chief Rabbinate, the Hebrew University and the Israel Museum.  The holiest shrine of the Jews in Jerusalem is the Western (Wailing) Wall, dating from the time of the 2nd Temple.  Christians and Muslims also have holy places here with each administered by the religious bodies to which they belong.  

Remember, Noam, ETERNITY MEANS JERUSALEM.(Talmud; Berakhot, 58)
THERE IS NO BEAUTY LIKE THE BEAUTY OF JERUSALEM.(Avot Derabbi Nathan, Talmudic commentary) 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub2x5UvjUs4  Professosr Eugene  Kontorovich-West Bank 

Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2014

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gush_Etzion

http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2009/08/west-bank-facts-differ-from-media-obama.html  3

http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2014/06/netanyahus-next-move-to-protect-

israel.html  my own article; excellent.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank_Areas_in_the_Oslo_II_Accord

Israel 101 by Stand With Us-

http://www.meforum.org/370/can-arabs-buy-land-in-israel

http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2014/08/jews-living-in-judea-samaria-and-other.html 

Timeline  Jews in Israel after 70 CE

Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot

http://www.gush-etzion.org.il/history.asp
http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2013/03/samaria-past-and-present-for-jews.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-pans-israeli-west-bank-land-appropriation/
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/11/true-facts-about-creating-palestine-is.html
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2012/12/legally-are-new-apartments-fatal-blows.html **international law
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/replyonlineedition/chapter-9.html
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/01/international-law-professor-eugene.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank
http://israel-nadene.blogspot.com/2014/08/jews-living-in-judea-samaria-and-other.html TIMELINE
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/IDF-expands-state-land-in-West-Bank-by-4000-dunams-373032
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gva%27ot

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