Judea, Samaria and what those 107 Democrats got wrong - by Stephen M. Flatow

The letter claims that the new US policy could “lead to a more entrenched conflict.” More entrenched than a 100-year-long Palestinian Arab war against Jews and the existence of a Jewish state?

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
27 November '19..

The letter from 107 Democratic members of Congress declaring that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and much of Jerusalem, are illegal is wrong on so many levels that I wonder if even most of the signatories themselves understand the implications of what they signed.

Members of Congress are busy men and women. I get that. They don’t have time to carefully read every request that comes across their desks. They can’t familiarize themselves with every nuance of the issue under consideration. They often must rely on their senior staff to provide guidance. If that’s what happened here, then they received very poor guidance indeed.

Most of the letter consists of predictable slogans and irrelevancies. For example, it warns against “settlement expansion into the occupied West Bank,” which is irrelevant because the new U.S. policy refers to existing Jewish communities and has nothing to do with whether or not they “expand.”

The letter also claims that the new U.S. policy could “lead to a more entrenched conflict.” More entrenched than a 100-year-long Palestinian Arab war against Jews and the existence of a Jewish state? More entrenched than the Palestinian Authority’s refusal even to negotiate with Israel? More entrenched than an entire generation of Palestinian Arab youth being raised—in the aftermath of the Oslo accords—on hatred of Jews and glorification of terrorism?

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Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terrorism,” now available on Kindle.