USA: JERUSALEM IS A SETTLEMENT

David Hornik - Nov 20, 2009
FrontPage Magazine

Asked by Fox News in China what he thought of Israel's plans to build 900 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in southeastern Jerusalem, President Obama responded:

"The situation in the Middle East is very difficult, and I've said repeatedly and I'll say again, Israel's security is a vital national interest to the United States, and we will make sure they are secure. I think that additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel's security. I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors. I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous."

To most Israeli ears the statement is discordant. The avowal of commitment to Israel's security doesn't jibe with describing building in Gilo as "dangerously embittering" the Palestinians. Gilo, now a neighborhood of 40,000, was annexed by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 war as part of the reunification of Jerusalem. Gilo is a fact; ordinary Israelis live in it, and calling them settlers would be laughable.

Not that Obama was breaking new ground in calling a Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood a settlement. Less than two years ago then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of another such neighborhood, Har Homa, that "Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning" and that the United States "doesn't make a distinction" between settlement activity in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Har Homa, however, only goes back to the 1990s and is a good deal smaller than Gilo. "Gilo" and "settlement" sounds even more jarring.

Nor was Obama, of course, alone in his statement; he was leading the international charge. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokeswoman said "such actions [as building in Gilo] undermine efforts for peace and cast doubt on the viability of the two-state solution." The British Foreign Office said that "Expanding settlements on occupied land in east Jerusalem makes [a] deal much harder. So this decision on Gilo is wrong and we oppose it." French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, in Israel for talks, also condemned the building plans.

And back in Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration was "dismayed" and that both parties should avoid actions that could "preempt, or appear to preempt, negotiations."

Just as the official international reaction was unanimous in opposing the building, the internal Israeli reaction was unanimous in supporting it-and included leading figures from both the government and the opposition.

An aide to Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote in a message to reporters that "Construction in Gilo has taken place regularly for dozens of years and there is nothing new about the current planning and construction." Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin of Netanyahu's Likud Party said that "new demands of the type that the Americans are airing now, pushes us toward a red line that we cannot allow ourselves to cross, and is not legitimate. The right to build in all of unified Jerusalem is not questioned in Israel…." Tzipi Livni, opposition leader and head of the left-of-center Kadima Party, told Kouchner that "Gilo is part of the Israeli consensus…."

Nir Barkat, mayor of Jerusalem, was the least restrained, stating:

"Israeli law does not discriminate between Jews and Arabs and between east and west [Jerusalem]. The demand to specifically halt construction for Jews is not legal in the U.S. or in any other enlightened country in the world.

"I cannot imagine the American administration demanding a halt to construction in the U.S. based upon race, religion or sex, and the attempt to demand this of Jerusalem constitutes a double standard and is unacceptable. The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to enable construction in all parts of the city to both Arabs and Jews, with one law for all."

Why did Obama and the world's criticism evoke such strong, across-the-board indignation in Israel?

For one thing, it strikes at the core Jewish value of Jerusalem. From 1948 to 1967, when the city was divided, Israelis in West Jerusalem lived with sniper fire from Jordanian East Jerusalem. Jordan not only reneged on international undertakings to permit Israeli access to Jerusalem's Holy Basin, but desecrated and destroyed the synagogues there. Nevertheless, Israel implored Jordan not to enter the 1967 war-in vain. With united Jerusalem now in Israeli hands for forty-two years, only Israelis well to the Left are willing to countenance a redivision of the city into Arab and Jewish areas. Even under such an arrangement, neighborhoods like Gilo (and Har Homa) would remain intact and continue to grow. They are not up for discussion.

Such criticism also implies that no Israeli concessions can ever suffice. Netanyahu, a lifelong Likud figure commonly tagged as a "hawk" and "hardliner" abroad, has gone so far as to announce his preparedness for a Palestinian state (twenty years ago still a far-Left position in Israel) and for a freeze in construction throughout the West Bank. After Netanyahu had supposedly clarified with Obama that stopping construction in Jerusalem was farther than he or any Israeli prime minister could go, the president's reference to Gilo as an "additional settlement" where building "embitters the Palestinians" sounds to Israelis-whether or not it is intended as such-like contempt for their willingness to compromise and a message that not even their most basic rights are safe.

In a better world, the Israeli reaction would lead the administration to ask: is pushing Jews out of Jerusalem really an American interest, and is it consistent with American values? For how long do the Palestinians-who have flatly rejected every peace offer since 1937 and have refused even to negotiate with Israel since Obama has been in office-deserve such consideration? Is the pressure by the larger Muslim world to downgrade the Jewish connection to Jerusalem something the United States should submit to?
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Posted: 21 Nov 2009 05:12 PM PST
The same media which can't be bothered to notice that there is a proxy war going on between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen, with Saudi jets bombing civilian targets. Who have paid no attention whatsoever to a week of violence between Algerians and Egyptians that included stonings and death threats, are up in arms over the building of 900 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem.

The Obama Administration and the media are naturally not upset by the Jerusalem municipality's decision to build 500 housing units for Arabs in Jerusalem. No they're upset by a private Jewish housing project built on privately owned land. And that double standard aptly conveys their premise that a Jewish house in Jerusalem is a "settlement", while an Arab house in Jerusalem is just a house. A Jewish home violates the "status quo" and is "unhelpful for peace", while an Arab home is just a home. There is of course a name for that sort of policy, it's one that Jimmy Carter who is still continuing his tour on behalf of Hamas knows quite well, Apartheid.

In response to the Nof Zion construction, Obama warned that, "additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security".But Nof Zion is not about security, as much as it is about an overcrowded Jewish population in Jerusalem looking for someplace to live. When the Arabs seized half of Jerusalem in Israel's War of Independence, they forcibly expelled the Jewish population of Jerusalem in a brutal act of ethnic cleansing that goes ignored by the same leftists who focus on elderly Arab men waving keychains in the air. Homes belonging to Jewish families were replaced by Arab families, who in turn were not expelled when Israel liberated and reunited both halves of Jerusalem in 1967.

While countries such as England recognized Jordan's annexation of East Jerusalem, they have failed to recognize Israel's reunification of the city. This has led to the ongoing absurdity in which children born in Jerusalem are treated as stateless by the US government and the US embassy remains in Tel Aviv, while the US Consulate in East Jerusalem does its best to pretend that it's in the capital of Palestine, completely refusing to recognize Israel's existence.

Were security the issue, Gilo which faces the Arab towns of Beit Jala and Al Khader, and has been shot at repeatedly from them, would be a poor choice to live in. But Jerusalem is bulging at the seams. The price of housing has shot up, and while US Ambassador Richard H. Jones may have told Jewish residents of Jerusalem that "Sometimes people do have to move to a different location. They cannot always stay close to their families", the reality is that living next to their families is exactly what people want to do. Regardless of what the State Department thinks about the matter.

1800 years ago the Romans expelled the Jewish population of Jerusalem and renamed it Aelia Capitolina, a pagan city, and renamed Israel, Syria Palaestina. Today Obama and the State Department seem determined to do the very same thing. By calling a Jerusalem neighborhood, a "settlement", Obama is actively attacking the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem. If Jewish Jerusalem is a settlement, then effectively every other part of Israel where Jews live is a settlement too.

When even even liberal US news outlets such as CNN have described Gilo as a Jewish neighborhood, in contrast to radical left wing British outlets such as the BBC and Reuters, who branded it as a "settlement", Obama's shift is a deliberate one. Helpful as always, UN Secretary General Ki Ban Moonbat stepped in to denounce Gilo as a "settlement built on Palestinian land that undermines efforts for peace”. Considering that Gilo already holds a population of 50,000, the land was privately owned and the Jewish presence there goes back to the Book of Joshua, but the facts are no obstacle to the lies.

In Time Magazine, the increasingly unhinged Joe Klein claimed that Gilo "would be the capital of Palestine", with presumably a Hadrianiac or Jordanian style ethnic cleansing solution for the 50,000 Jews who live there right now. Not that I imagine that would stop him in the least, so long as he had someone else to do the dirty work for him.

But finally what is the basis for calling the Gilo neighborhood a "settlement"? The land on which Gilo was built was bought and owned by its Jewish residents. That land was occupied and seized by Jordan in 1948, until Israel liberated the territory in 1967. To call Gilo a "settlement", recognizes the Jordanian invasion and seizure of the land as legitimate, while treating the Jewish presence there as illegitimate.

And that is the real basis behind all this madness. The reason why a Jewish home in Jerusalem or anywhere in Israel is a settlement. To speak of "settlements" is to claim that the Jewish presence in Israel is illegitimate. And while some Israeli leftists may fondly imagine that settlers are religious Jews who live in caravans, as the case of Gilo once again demonstrates, all of Israel is a settlement.

And that is why as far as the world's diplomats are concerned, an Arab terrorist has more right to open fire on a Jewish family driving down the road, than the Israeli army has to shoot that same terrorist. And by giving in to US pressure to negotiate directly with the PLO, by signing the Oslo accords and by repeatedly agreeing to talk peace with Arafat and Abbas, the door was opened to greater and greater delegitimization of Israel.

Israel's global diplomatic position is far worse than it was 17 years ago. Israel's strategic position is far worse than it was 17 years ago. The most rabid bigotry and the ugliest incitement has become the norm, the sort of language you would once hear in Ridyah or Damascus has now become cocktail party chatter in London, Paris and Washington D.C. All of Israel's concessions have combined to put a gun to Jerusalem, and then to the rest of the land for a great going out of business, everything must go sale.

The case of Gilo is one more wake up call that not only our terrorist "peace partners", but even the so-called honest brokers of the world community do not believe that Jews have the right to live anywhere in Israel. Their backing of a Palestinian state has nothing to do with peace, as the fact that peace has failed to emerge over 17 years has not in any way dampened their ardor and enthusiasm for the project. Nor is it about a Two State Solution bringing regional stability. Even the dimmest paper pushers in the State Department and Foreign Ministry know that even were a Palestinian state to be created, the result would be more regional instability, not less. Only a One State Solution can succeed, and that solution is an Arab state and no Israel. The "Peace Process" and the "Two State Solution" are an incremental approach to bringing about that final solution.

The men and women who toiled and worked the land, who turned swamps and desert into farmland and cities, understood that if there was no room for Jews in Israel, there was no room for Jews

anywhere. Palestinian Islamic terrorism in turn is driven by the national and religious imperative to destroy the only non-Muslim country in the Middle East. And while America and Europe decry Israel's capital as a Jewish settlement, Muslim settlements are springing up in their own capitals. While the cocktail party chatter is that serving up Israel on a platter to the beast will keep them safe, the violence is already in their streets. The same violence that Israel was built as a refuge against. And if Israel falls, they will be the next item on the menu.