The Jerusalem Post website today carries an "exclusive" interview with two settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The whole piece is an interesting insight into this particular mentality – note, for example, Yuval’s observation that the "Galilee needs to be taken care of – it’s full of Arabs". But there is one particular section worth highlighting:
But in general – and this is my personal position – our attitude toward the Arabs is that I don’t have any antagonism toward any Muhammad or Mustafa here; I don’t have personal problems with them. It’s a national issue here. We want to be in those specific places. It has to be clear that Eretz Yisrael in general and Jerusalem in particular belong to the Jewish people, and they have to understand that…The important point is that they have to admit who the landlord is here. I don’t mean regarding financial issues, like to whom you pay rent or that, but whom does this place belong to?
Read that back again – "I don’t have any personal problems with them…The important point is that they have to admit who the landlord is here."
This reminded me of something I’d written two years ago. Here’s the relevant section:
In a recent piece in The Los Angeles Times, the mayor of the Gush Etzion bloc, Shaul Goldstein, looks down at the land owned by a Palestinian family from Bethlehem and assures the reporter: “‘If the state wants to give it to me, for my settlement, they will give it to me. All the land belongs to Israel. We can build wherever we want’”. Interestingly, while Goldstein rejects the idea of an illegal Israeli occupation — since the land is Israel — he also tolerates the limited presence of Palestinian “neighbors,” and “says they must be accommodated in what he calls the land of Israel.”
This same kind of rejectionism and denial of Palestine’s right to exist is not the exclusive preserve of the settlers; it is echoed at the heart of the Israeli political establishment. Speaking to the UN in September 2005, Ariel Sharon made similar remarks to those of Goldstein:
“The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel does not mean disregarding the rights of others in the land. The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them, and have no aspirations to rule over them. They are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own.”
Thus, “according to Sharon … the Jewish people have a ‘right … to the Land of Israel;’ in other words, theirs is the right of ownership and possession — in practice and in principle. All others, or more exactly, the Palestinians, have ‘rights in the land’… [They] do not, it appears, have any right to the land of Palestine itself.”
In case even Sharon’s views are dismissed as those of an unrepentant right-winger, there is also the example of current Defense Minister Ehud Barak, ex-Prime Minister of a Labor-led government and apparent “hawkish dove.” In 1999, a year before the second intifada and well before construction commenced on the separation wall, Barak spoke at length about his vision for the OPT:
“‘Only physical separation from the Palestinians will give us both personal and national security, but in no way will we withdraw to the 1967 border,’ he explained. ‘Bet El and Ofra will be ours forever … There is no meaning to our identity and to all that we are here without the connection to Shilo and to Tekoa, to Bet El and to Efrat …’”
Moreover, his opposition to outposts was not “because we do not have such a right.” In fact, Israelis “have a complete right to settle there. We didn’t steal anything from anyone. We have deep ties with these places.” Interestingly, in February of the same year, Barak specified some of Israel’s “red lines:” “Alfe Menache, the Etzion Bloc, Ariel, Nirit, the corridor, the Jordan Valley settlements, and many more places are part of the State of Israel, now and in the permanent agreement.”
Thus the self-defined "pioneers" in Sheikh Jarrah and the leaders in the Knesset have something fundamental in common – the "rejectionist consensus."
RE: …the “Galilee needs to be taken care of – it’s full of Arabs”…
SEE: Bachmann: ‘If We Reject Israel, Then There Is A Curse That Comes Into Play’ | TPMDC, 02/09/10
(EXCERPT) Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has declared that America has a serious obligation to support Israel — and if not, God will curse the United States, and it will be the end of this country. The Minnesota Independent* reports that Bachmann told the Republican Jewish Coalition, at an event last week in Los Angeles…
TPM – link to tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com
* Minnesota Independent – link to minnesotaindependent.com
Can’t say Ihave a problem with it. Seems like a nice peaceable reasonable position. We can all get along as long as the racial or ethnic minorities know who the landlord is.
If one has a free ticket back to one’s homeland (wherever that might be) one really is a guest in the country and one really should do one’s best not p!ss off the majority.
As Herzl said to the Jews in galus and would also say to the Arabs were he alive right now: assimilate or go home.
Thats what I like about Israel, so many good, peaceable, common sense ideas for us American gentiles, like how to treat America’s religious, ethnic and racial minorities.
“Nations shall then go by your Light and kings by your radiant illumination.” Isaiah 60:2-3.
It seems you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere on your way to DodChristianSoldiers.com. Better backtrack and see where you veered off course. Don’t be afraid to ask for directions. I can tell you exactly where you can go.
This has been the essence of Zionism from the very beginning, and the reason why it was opposed by indigenous Palestinians of all faiths. This is the element in Zionist ideology that undermines the official narrative of innocent (Zionist) immigration and racist (Arab) resistance to it, of a (Zionist) desire to live in peace and harmony, met by (Arab) intolerance and hatred.
Nor is it merely a question of identifying the “landlord” (a term from landlord-tenant law, a regime of formal equality between parties). The more correct duality (as seen by some Israelis, certainly) is colonist-native, Israelis being the “colonists” and Palestinians (like Native Americans or native South Africans) being the “natives”.
A story by way of illustration: Once when my late wife, a Palestinian-American then 50, was required to stand with other students in a very long queue to “register” at a conservatory of music in Boston — a queue whose members generally felt badly mistreated by the extreme slowness of the registrar’s clerks — she heard another student in the queue, a young Israeli by his voice, complain that the registrar was treating the students “worse than natives.” She understood his attitude but her student anger and fellow-feeling was immediately transformed into Palestinian national rage and hurt.
If today’s Israelis (this was 1980) experience their world as colonists v. natives on the American (or South African) model, it explains — but doesn’t excuse — their dreadful behavior toward the Palestinians. Many victims of the Holocaust allowed their concern for law or ethics to be superseded by their perceived “rights” as victims and thus many Israelis do not hold themselves responsible for considering that after WWII and the creation of the UN and its Charter — which Israel promised to honor — and the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the old winner-takes-the-spoils rule no longer prevails, either ethically or legally. Israel as occupier has certain rights, but not those of a sovereign, to the territories it occupied, and being “landlord” is not part of the deal for them, whatever they may think.
And we should recall that, post-Holocaust, many Jews felt justified to resort to terrorism against the British in Mandatory Palestine and later against the Palestinians; and now complain of terrorism when some Palestinians turn to it.
The greater terrorism, however, far and away because it affects the entire world, is the massive destruction of international law by the US which has given Israel permission (and in Iraq and Afghanistan later gave itself permission) to say, paraphrasing Louis XIV, “la loi, c’est moi”, leading to many horrors today, recalling Louis XV’s “apres moi le deluge.”