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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-09-27
© 2011 Peter Belmont
Recommending that Israel annex the West Bank, an MK explained that “Judea and Samaria are a part of the land of Israel”. See also MondoWeiss.
Well, yes.
But the religiously defined “Land of Israel” (“Eretz Yisroel”) is not and needn’t be the same as legally controlled and internationally-recognized territory of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel.
Consider.
The (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel claims to be the state of the “Jewish People”—an imaginary construct generally taken to intend to comprehend all persons of Jewish faith or, more likely, of such sufficiently Jewish background and ancestry as to qualify them—under the laws and customs and regulations of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel for automatic immigration and citizenship rights of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel.
But also consider: most Jews prefer not to live in the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel. So the potential “Jewish” citizenship (as defined by laws, customs, and regulations of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel) far exceeds the actual “Jewish” citizenship of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel.
OK.
So why should not the potential annexed territory of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel far exceed the actual annexed and internationally-recognized territory of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel?
Isn’t half-a-loaf possible for land when it is possible for people? And if half-a-loaf, why not a quarter-of-a-loaf, a tenth-of-a-loaf?
If the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel persists in the mad path it is now following, guided by openly murderous zealot-settlers—killing Palestinians and destroying their ancient olive groves and stealing their land and water and now, we hear, proposing to “annex” the whole of the West Bank (i.e., declare formal ownership of the West Bank and extend thereto the laws of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel—well, then, I expect USA’s Jews to begin abandoning the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel by carloads, leaving AIPAC and the Council of Presidents of large Jewish hoo-haws as an empty, though still profoundly wealthy and oligarchically-inclined, shell, a shell doubtless still claiming falsely to represent American Jewry.
At that point—and it cannot come soon enough to suit me!—even such craven politicians as President Obama may be “empowered” (as the phrase is) to assert ordinary humane values and declare openly against the slavery long imposed upon it by AIPAC.
A bit hard to view this—the decline and fall of AIPAC and, thus, of the (Modern and Experimental) State of Israel—as in the interest of that state or of its zealot-settlers, but profoundly in the interest of Americans, who will see its government finally pull free—floated upon a great tidal wave of moral repugnance to Israel’s unrestrained ugliness and irrelevance and repugnance to the values of all Americans including, and at long last openly seen to include, American Jewry.
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