Another reason to move to Israel
Scanning through the news today, I came across an article in Reuters Africa that talks about how Jewish settler numbers living in “occupied Palestinia land” grew in 2007 by nearly 4 percent. Normally I would brush this off as just another typical anti-semitic propaganda tool meant to harm Israel and the Jewish people. However, sometimes reading these “articles” particularly gets my goat and just makes me want to scream.
There are, of course, the usual lies and misinformation such as how land that was won in a defensive war that was meant to wipe Israel off the face of the earth can be considered occupied, how the Jews are referred to as “settlers” with all its negative connotations and implications, how this natural growth is the obstacle to peace as opposed to the vicious attacks on innocents by these very Palestinians, etc. The list of inaccuracies goes on and on.
However, sometimes the thing that really gets to me when reading such rubbish is the lack of respect that many of us Jews have for the land of Israel. A common argument for negotiations with the Arabs when talking land for peace is the phrase “we don’t need, or want, those areas anyway” and therefore, let them have it. The problem with this (among other things) is that the Arabs do not suffer the same lack of respect. They DO need and want all those areas and are not willing to compromise. It has often been compared to the story of King Solomon and the two women who came before him to solve the problem of the baby who both women claimed to bore. Solomon suggested cutting the baby in half as a “compromise” to the situation. One woman agreed and the other said she’d rather give up the baby then to follow through with this solution. As is commonly known, this told Solomon that the woman who refused the solution was truly the mother as no true mother would let her child be split in two.
The same applies here. If we, as Jews, are willing to slice up the land because it is not important enough to us and the Arabs are saying we want it all and that is the only possibility, what does that tell the rest of the world? It tells them that the Arabs consider this land their baby and we do not. They consider it more important than we do. These attitudes must be changed if we are to stop seeing vicious articles such as these written in the press. We must state strongly and proudly that this land is ours and we are not willing to part with any of it. We must show the Arabs and the world at large that we consider Israel our baby and cannot fathom living anywhere else. Only when everyone else sees so many Jews moving to Israel to make it our permanent home and the rest standing up without wavering in their support of justice and the Jewish right to the land will articles such as these eventually become a thing of the past and our pride as a nation will shine through.
Let’s continue to make the rest of the nations see that this “occupied land” is a land that will remain Jewish as has been promised to us by the Almighty until the end of time.
Ari
Tags: Africa, move to Israel, occupied, Palestinian, Reuters, West Bank