RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2020/08/the-jews-right-to-s

Is it possible to justify the existence of a Jewish state? So asked the late Ruth Gavison back in 2003, and her answer resounds as strongly now as it did then.

This essay by the renowned Israeli legal theorist Ruth Gavison was originally published in the Israeli journal Azure in 2003. We are republishing it August 18, 2020 in the wake of her death on August 15.

I.

Is it possible to justify the existence of a Jewish state? This question, raised with increased frequency in recent years, is not just a theoretical one. Israel will endure as a Jewish state only if it can be defended, in both the physical and the moral sense. Of course, states may survive in the short term through sheer habit or the application of brute force, even when their legitimacy has been severely undermined. In the long run, however, only a state whose existence is justified by its citizens can hope to endure. The ability to provide a clear rationale for a Jewish state is, therefore, of vital importance to Israel’s long-term survival.1

Over the many years in which I have participated in debates about Israel’s constitutional foundations and the rights of its citizens, I did not generally feel this question to be particularly urgent. Indeed, I believed that there was no more need to demonstrate the legitimacy of a Jewish state than there was for any other nation state, and I did not take claims to the contrary very seriously. Those who denied the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state were, in my eyes, little different from the radical ideologues who dismiss all national movements as inherently immoral, or who insist that Judaism is solely a religion with no right to national self-expression; their claims seemed marginal and unworthy of systematic refutation.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/netanyahus-bold-move/

he Israeli right is wrong to see the prime minister’s deal with the UAE as a capitulation to foreign pressure. He is creating optimal conditions for the Jewish state’s road ahead.

Anyone wondering what had become of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible July 1 target date to begin the process of extending sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria received an answer last Thursday.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement on Aug. 13 that Washington had brokered a peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates—and accompanying reports that the deal precluded “annexation of the West Bank”—put the question to rest.

Once it emerged that Netanyahu had been busy for the past few weeks negotiating the terms of the treaty with Trump and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, his sudden silence on sovereignty became clear. Ironically, the weekly protests outside of the Israeli premier’s official residence on Balfour Street in Jerusalem included the chanting of slogans and waving of banners decrying his “annexation” plans.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/285388

The Arabs have finally learned the secret: say nice words to the Jews and they will fall over themselves to give away their own heritage.

There would be nothing more wondrous than true peace by an Arab state with Israel. What you will read below, however, is why my growing suspicion and fear about this peace with an Arab state was immediately confirmed when I realized that this “breakthrough” was not anything to be congratulated, but rather to be criticized.

Jared Kushner may have wrought the means by which an eventual Palestinian terror state will be carved out of the heart of Judea and Samaria. This is a catastrophic and blatant denial of Jewish sovereignty within its Biblical and ancestral heartland.

Note that Mohammed bin Zayed uses the word, “annexation” and describes the ancestral Jewish heartland as “Palestinian territories.” A native people, the Jews, do not annex what is their own historical, Biblical and spiritual land. Nor is this Palestinian territory, for there has never existed a Palestinian state and there has never been a separate Palestinian Arab people throughout all of history.

All of Judea and Samaria is the ancestral and Biblical Jewish heartland, and restoration of Jewish villages and towns in the historical, spiritual heartland is not “annexation” but liberation and redemption.