JRV1285

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  America’s allies are pressing for “the two-state solution” this month at the UN.  To my consternation, many of us grassroots U.S. Jews favor “Two-States,” which by me would be Jewishly and militarily fatal. I hope to present on a new website “for my book,” two contrary views, soliciting your evaluation and comments, on “Two-States,” by me and a fellow grassroots friend.  In anticipation thereof, I appeal to you this week – beyond arguments based on history, geography and treaty niceties – that you look at “the two-state solution” not just as an objective Judge but as a partisan Jew.

I want to make the case to you, fellow grassroots American Jew, that the threat facing our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel this month at the UN is unprecedentedly existential.  I believe the world-howled for “two-state solution,” creating a sovereign Arab state within western Palestine, the land of Israel, would irreversibly rip from Israel historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria heartland, rendering it Jewishly meaningless and militarily indefensible.

I recognize that my Doomsday assessment, held widely in Israel, is not that of many, perhaps even most, American Jews, whom I regard as desperately needed defenders against “Two-States.”  But I recognize too that there are forceful arguments favoring it.  For me to convince you, one grassrootsnik to another, you need to weigh both, and the pro-Two-States side not from me but from a believer in it or in its inevitability that our homeland can live with.  

So I hope very soon to place before you on a new website two grassroots-level views, mine and that of a deeply-differing friend of mine on this issue.  We’ll discuss historical facts, international treaty legalities, Palestine geography and the like. And we’ll solicit your comments. 

But this week, by your leave, I’ll make a pitch to you on a different plane.  I would have you evaluate our respective arguments not just as a Judge but a Jew. Our adversaries don’t look at effect of “Two-States” on Israel purely objectively.  If my friend whom I’ve prevailed upon to present you the grassroots pro-Two-States view feels it appropriate to respond in advance of our website posts on this peoplehood plane, #1285a by him coming up.

I was eight years old on May 14, 1948, when Ben-Gurion, standing beneath Herzl’s portrait, called on “the Jews of the World” to stand by just-declared Israel in the ensuing great struggle for fulfillment of the Dream of Generations for its sovereign redemption, and I was considerably older before I understood he’d been speaking to me.

But I was of age and I experienced in full measure those fearful days of late May 1967 when Egypt kicked out the UN, blockaded Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat, along with Syria and Jordan marshaled huge armies on Israel’s narrow frontiers, and with their many millions of citizens’ howling approval and with ever-growing promises of military aid from other Arab nations, loudly promised Israel’s imminent destruction. If you weren’t at least teenage then, yes, we Diaspora Jews really feared a second Holocaust in the offing.  And then in just six days Israel lashed out and achieved a military victory of astounding proportions.  I beg you to believe, if you weren’t of age then, how proud, secure and confident we felt of our Diaspora as well as homeland Jewish peoplehood then, and how straight were our backs.

What this looming “Two-State Solution” – “two states along the 1967 [i.e., 1949] lines with mutually-agreed swaps” – would do is undo, reverse the Six Day War.  And gung-ho for this are not just America’s key allies – Britain, France, Canada and others – but the U.S. Democratic Party as well. 

*** Jewish Press, 6/6/23, quoting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken quoting President Biden that week at AIPAC [!]:

“As Blinken put it: ‘As the President said on his recent trip to Israel and the West Bank last summer, a two-state solution – based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps – remains the best way to achieve our goal of Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace, with equal measures of security, freedom, justice, opportunity, and dignity.’” 

*** Then there’s Democrats in Congress.  JNS headlined 1/20/24, Jewish Dems Slam Netanyahu Over Apparent Rejection of ‘Palestinian State.’  “‘We strongly disagree with the Prime Minister,’ 15 [Jewish Democratic] members of Congress said in a brief statement.  ‘A two-state solution’ is the path forward.” And then there’s this: World Israel News headline, 1/25/24, 49 of 51 Senate Democrats Sign Bill For Palestinian State.

*** This was alas nothing new.  A 5/18/20 Times of Israel article quoted former U.S, Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro:  

“Support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps remains a consensus policy within the Democratic Party ….”

*** And however you feel about President Trump, in this context at least you can be thankful he won.  Sooner a Kamala would have gone through the eye of a needeleh than she’d have stood with Israel against “Two-States” this month at the UN.  Bloomberg News, 7/26/24, Harris: Two-State Solution Is Only Path Forward:

“Vice President Kamala Harris [just after as VP [!] boycotting Bibi’s speech to Congress] said she pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a cease-fire and warned him about the civilian death toll in Gaza during a meeting.  After the meeting, Harris told reporters that the only path forward is a two-state solution.”  [emphasis added]

By me, Charles Krauthammer spoke the truth when he said today’s American Jews are living in “a miraculous age,” that of the rebirth of our Jewish people’s homeland sovereignty after 1800 years, and that that, not the Holocaust, is the seminal Jewish history event of our time. 

If you doubt this, I’d have you read three gripping books.  

The first is Steven Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate, not a history of the Six Day War, but an “in the cockpit, inside the tank, under the helmet” first-person-told account of selected officer and enlisted soldier participants.  It’s a most moving epic of courage in battle, but what I’d have you take away from it is what, in Israelis’ own words, is what that liberation, not “occupation,” of the heart of the land of Israel meant to them.

The second book, Secrets of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, is the general readers’ version of archeological architect Leen Ritmeyer’s Sherlock Holmes-worthy combination of observation and reasoning convincingly showing that much of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount – mostly Herodian, but some Hasmonean and even a bit First Temple – still stands; that where the First Temple’s 500 cubit-square Mount had lain can still be shown, as can where the First and Second Temple buildings had stood; and even where in their Holy of Holies, Mt. Moriah’s summit, the Foundation Stone, es-Sakra, The Rock, preserved and enshrined today in the Muslims’ Dome of the Rock, can still be seen today the slot carved three millennia ago by King Solomon as the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.  If that doesn’t resonate within you as a Jew, well I tried.

And there’s more.  Older even than Jerusalem’s Old City is the City of David, just a bit down the hill.  Read Doron Spielman’s new book, When the Stones Speak: The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David, What Israel’s Enemies Don’t Want You To Know. I titled my review of Doron’s book “Indiana Jones, Eat Your Heart Out.”  Doron was there when Eilat Mazar unearthed in the City of David King David’s palace, and others the biblical Pool of Siloam at one end of the City of David and the Pilgrimage Road connecting the Pool to the Temple Mount at the other. 

So, in the name of the long-defunct “1967” [i.e. 1949 ceasefire] lines, never among the Holy Land’s holy sites, Jews should meekly turn over to Palestinian Arabs who’ve never ruled Palestine ever, along with Judea-Samaria, historic Jerusalem, three times in the past three thousand years a native state capital, all three of them – Judah, Judaea and Israel – Jewish, with a renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 1800’s Ottoman Turkish rule?  I don’t think so, and neither should you.

Regards,

Jerry