In Their Final Hours, Obama and Kerry Resurrect The Jewish Question
And Israel's enemies know it.
12.29.2016
57
"Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both, and it won't ever really be at peace."
Those are not the words of a Hamas or Fatah spokesperson, but rather our so-called Secretary of State – a craven sycophant who disgraces the office he holds.
The falsehoods propagated during John Kerry’s 70 minute-long terror-enabling screed are legion and I won’t take the time to debunk each of them here. I will, however, briefly outline a few salient facts about the Jewish State conveniently twisted to suit our current administration's revisionist history.
Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people
From the Land of Canaan to the Kingdoms of David and Solomon; from the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples on the Temple Mount to the Maccabees revolt in the first century B.C.; from the fall of Masada in 73 A.D. to the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in the first century A.D., the land of Israel has always been the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Despite various invasions by disparate and now defunct empires throughout history, Jews have been the single constant in that land – and for thousands of years before Muhammad came along on his winged horse.
Israel’s historical context cannot be understated. It is, after all, why the Jewish State was established where it is, and not for instance, in Sudan.
It is why Arab Muslims work tirelessly to excavate Jewish artifacts from underneath the al Aqsa mosque and elsewhere in Jerusalem, attempting to purge any and all historical Jewish connection to the eternal capital of Israel.
Even if one were to play devil’s advocate and disregard ancient history, Israel in its modern incarnation is perhaps the most legally-binding nation on the planet – perhaps because its re-establishment was crafted not by military generals, but rather by lawyers.
Legal scholar and expert on Israel’s founding Alan Dershowitz – a man who, despite his brilliance, naively believed Obama’s vow to “always have Israel’s back” – has written extensively about Israel’s legal foundation, noting that from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 to the League of Nations Resolution in 1922 to the UN Partition in 1947 to its lawful establishment as a Nation State in 1948 – no other country’s “birth certificate” is more legitimate than Israel’s.
Yet it is the only nation consistently delegitimized.
The "Palestinian refugee crisis"
Another false narrative peddled by those bent on ushering in Israel’s destruction (which apparently includes our outgoing Secretary of State), concerns the so-called “Palestinian refugee crisis.”
In 1948, no sooner was the ink on Israel’s lawful establishment dry that the major Arab armies – Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, as well as local Palestinian Arab factions – waged an illegal war on the fledgling Jewish State.
Leading up to the War of Independence, a transfer of populations took place. Roughly 700,000 Arabs (now referred to as "Palestinians") fled the region. Some of the most affluent left in order to preserve their wealth while the majority were encouraged to leave by Arab leaders who told them they could return home once the Jewish State was destroyed in war.
Palestinian nationalist Arif al-Areif explained this in a historical account of the 1948 war:
“The Arabs thought they would win in less than the twinkling of an eye and that it would take no more than a day or two from the time the Arab armies crossed the border until all the colonies were conquered and the enemy would throw down his arms and cast himself on their mercy.”
Big miscalculation on their part.
What is conveniently never mentioned, however, is that Jewish leaders urged Arab residents to remain in their homes and become citizens of Israel. The Assembly of Palestine Jewry issued the following appeal on October 2, 1947:
“We will do everything in our power to maintain peace, and establish a cooperation gainful to both [Jews and Arabs]. It is now, here and now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry and the destined Jewish State and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals.”
The key takeaways? None of the major Arab nations – not Transjordan, not Syria, not Egypt, not Lebanon – took in their nomadic Arab brethren. More pointedly, there would be no Palestinian "refugees" at all had they simply accepted to live side by side with the Jewish people back in 1948. But they refused, like they always do, and then complained about the fallout.
Another historical fact conveniently relegated to the dustbin of history is that the only genuine refugee population in the region at that time was Jewish.
In 1948 the Jewish population of the Middle East and North Africa totaled roughly one million, but generations of Islamic anti-Semitism combined with Nazi collaboration in the years prior culminated in a revitalized sense of Islamic supremacy. Soon, 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews (referred to as Mizrahi or Sephardic) were expelled from the countries they’d called home for centuries, in some cases, millennia.
They are the real and forgotten refugees of the Middle East. They are the ones no one ever speaks about. They have never received a dime of reparations, and they have never been recognized by any international human rights bodies.
Palestinians are an invented people
Those who champion the Palestinian cause operate on a number of flawed premises but none more egregious than the notion that Palestinians are indigenous, and therefore have legitimate claim, to the land of Israel.
Until 1967 the term “Palestinian” never even entered the lexicon; rather, inhabitants of the region were simply referred to as Arabs. Such a generic term, however, was hardly good for PR.
Under the tutelage of Russian propagandists, Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat invented the narrative of a distinct Palestinian people who, in their so-called “struggle for self-determination,” sought liberation from their Israeli oppressors.
During a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein confirmed this:
"The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."
Arafat himself echoed the same sentiments numerous times:
"Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."
Arafat became a skilled propagandist and heeded the advice of Ho Chi Minh’s chief strategist, General Giap, who instructed that the key to annihilating Israel lay in turning “your terror war into a struggle for human rights.”
“Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand.”
Araft understood that the world loves an underdog. Of course, the world loved Jews once too, but only when they were being led from cattle cars into gas chambers.
The settlement ruse and myth of 1967 borders
In reality and what Israel-haters desperately claw at to refute, is that since 1948 Israel has always wanted to live in peace and has made every concession in order to do so.
How soon we forget that during the Camp David Summit in 2000, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to nearly every demand made by the Palestinians, but as we know, Arafat refused the deal.
When it comes to settlements, in 2005 Ariel Sharon led Israel's good faith gesture to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, uprooting thousands of Jewish families. Israel gave it all away and what did the Palestinians do? They destroyed every piece of infrastructure Israel left in place right down to the greenhouses and turned Gaza into a Hamas ammunitions dump from which terrorists now launch rockets into Israel.
Still, Israel never ceased trying. In 2008 then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians more than 94% – almost all – of Judea and Samaria. And for the record in 2009 “hard-liner” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implemented a 10-month long settlement freeze in yet another futile attempt to restart the peace talks.
Here is what the world needs to understand: 94%, 97%, 100% of Israel will never be enough for the Palestinians as long as a single Jew is left alive on that land.
Settlements in Judea and Samaria, meanwhile, are all that prevent the West Bank from being turned into another Gaza and are what stand in between Israel’s major population centers and terrorists bent on their annihilation.
Those who live in many of these settlement communities do so at great personal risk, as we are made painfully aware anytime a Jewish child is stabbed to death in his or her bed by a Palestinian “freedom fighter.” In many ways, these Jewish families are among Israel’s first lines of defense, and they deserve our support.
The West Bank, meanwhile, was legally captured by Israel from Jordan during the Six-Day War and the so-called 1967 border is in fact the 1949 Armistice Line drawn between Israel and neighboring Arab countries following the War of Independence. The line was never intended to be a border, and it was certainly never intended to be permanent, particularly as it would relegate Israel to an indefensible territory 9-miles wide.
Such borders, in military terms, lack “minimum defensive depth” – meaning there is not sufficient space for military forces to redeploy following an attack.
"Never again"
The world once made a promise that "never again" would it allow the Jewish people to be slaughtered wholesale. How quickly the world forgets.
You will never hear anyone who takes that solemn vow or history seriously call on Israel to "return to 1967 borders" or refer to the creation of the Jewish State using the Palestinian propagandist term "nakba" – which, by the way, means "catastrophe."
The Obama administration initiated the most significant betrayal of an American ally in history and its lasting impact cannot be understated.
Emboldened, the BDS movement and its anti-Semitic factions will continue – perhaps more successfully -- in their crusade to ostracize and economically strangle Israel at the diplomatic and institutional levels.
Today, Jews around the world -- in their neighborhoods, schools, and houses of worship – have a new target painted on their backs as bad actors will assuredly take our Secretary of State's words as justification to do ill.
Today, Palestinian terrorists rejoice in the streets because an American president legitimized them. They were rewarded for weaning their children on Jew-hatred and genocidal bloodlust. For years to come, Kerry’s sound-bites will be lionized on every Islamic publication, and propagandized on every Hamas television program. And as a result, more innocent blood will be spilled.
When it came to Donald Trump, the Left was, all of a sudden, so concerned about anti-Semitism. But we all know those who decry "Nazism" and then condemn the only nation on earth re-established as a haven for Jews escaping persecution are most likely anti-Semites themselves.
And so it goes, that in their final hours, Barack Obama and John Kerry resurrected the Jewish Question. Israel knows it. Her enemies know it. And now, you do too.
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