To: Here & Now Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@verizon.net)
Subject: Here & Now #1248, 12/22/24
WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: 77 U.S. Congresspeople added their voice this week to embargo arms to Israel. Our best response? Affirmatively make the case that the land of Israel is historically, legally, indispensably and equitably ours.
Answering Israel Bashers: The Land of Israel Is Historically, Legally, Indispensably, Equitably Ours
This Week: Seventy-seven U.S. Congresspersons versus Us
The Greater Philadelphia ZOA’s email on Friday asked its recipients to “be sure to share all or part of this newsletter with your email contacts.” Here’s how it begins (bold red original):
Local House Members Attack Israel!
Five members of the House of Representatives from our region signed onto an anti-Israel letter to Sec. of State Blinken and Sec. of Defense Austin that essentially called for the United States to institute a weapons embargo against Israel as Israel tries to stop attacks from the Gaza Strip, Yemen and Iran; the cease fire with Lebanon is flimsy; and Syria is unstable. The anti-Israel group J Street was among the groups to endorse this letter. ZOA condemned the letter and the signatories to it.
Congresswomen Madeleine Dean, D-PA [my Congressperson], and Chrissy Houlahan, D-PA, were among the initiators of the letter…. A total of 77 House members signed the letter. [emphasis added]
This isn’t just “the squad.” Seventy-seven Congressional representatives is a substantial chunk of the Congress.
And it’s not just these Congresspeople. The Pope, the Irish, the International Court, the UN, the EU, the media, the college and street demonstrators, Poland that will lock up Israel’s prime minister if he attends a Holocaust memorial there of all places, are these days all bashing our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel. We American Jews must not be silent.
Answering Back
Philly ZOA concludes its report on these 77 Congresspeople’s letter to Blinken and Austin: “There is little that constituents of these lawmakers and other Americans can do today in response to this letter that will be effective.” It suggests attending these representatives’ townhall meetings to “publicly excoriate them for this act of anti-Jewish bias,” and calling and emailing their offices to register condemnations and objections.
Ok, but how about a more on-the-offense response, not directly to them but to all ganging up on us? Let’s stop calling Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem “disputed.” Legally (San Remo and the Mandate with their Jewish national home), historically (3,000 years physical homeland presence), indispensably (two-millennia maltreatment in Diaspora lands) and equitably (Palestinian Arabs are majority in three-quarters of Mandated Palestine, Jordan), western Palestine, the land of Israel, is ours. Be done saying “West Bank … occupation … Palestinian territories,” etc. And demand others, not least the Jewish homeland-mocking media, stop saying them. Be done with the Jewish homeland-eviscerating “two-state solution.” There are equitable “less than a state” alternatives – e.g., Rabin, David Friedman, Huckabee positions.
Let a Hanukkah Legend and Hanukkah Fact Be Inspiration
Starting this coming Wednesday night, light the Hanukkah candles and say the blessings, and while gazing at the flames, think about what Hanukkah’s all about. In chapter 7 of my book, I recount a widely-known Hanukkah legend and a less-appreciated Hanukkah fact.
It was a cold winter night a long time ago. The exhausted leader of a ragged homeland militia slowly made his tired way back through its rural encampment toward his quarters. He was worried. Historical sources tell us that at most maybe half the population supported his campaign, that most of the rest were indifferent, a sizeable portion openly siding with the ruling empire.
The leader passed by a hut in the door of which a man was lighting candles in a holder holding several. Bemused, the leader paused and asked him what he was doing. The private replied that years before, in his youth, he had brought this menorah with him to America from his persecuted father’s home in eastern Europe, that it was one his Jewish people light every year to commemorate their having against all odds won back homeland religious and political freedom from the mighty ruling empire, successors of Alexander the Great, and that in lighting that same menorah and repeating those same Hebrew blessings this night at Valley Forge, he envisioned this homeland army’s ultimate victory over the mighty British empire. “Soldier,” said General Washington, “carry on.”
Contrary to too-common belief, the Maccabee-led Jewish homeland revolt against Alexander’s Seleucid successors, seeking restoration of religious and political freedom, which only part of Judea’s Jewish population supported, wasn’t merely “a civil war” between Jews. The acid test is whether a people that was not independent when the war began became independent at its end, and like Washington’s Americans, the Maccabees’ homeland Jews passed that test.
The second century BCE was one of those moments in which the continuity of Jewish peoplehood hung in the balance. In still commemorating our people’s courage back in that moment today, resolve in the candlelight to stand by Israelis, as Ben-Gurion put it, in their great struggle, still going on, for fulfillment of the Dream of Generations for Israel’s sovereign redemption.
Regards,
Jerry
