Israel Hayom..
03 July '20..
Link; https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/because-it-is-our-right/
A now-forgotten media debate that took place over 30 years ago is still relevant today. A group of highly decorated generals, retired career military, argued authoritatively that the settlements were of no value from a security and defense standpoint. The next day, Devar, the daily mouthpiece of the Histadrut Labor Federation, published a response from Cpl. (res.) Naomi Sapir. Sapir, better known as Naomi Shemer, threw cold water on the generals' opinion, as well as calm on the outraged settlers.
"Kibbutz Kinneret [Shemer's birthplace] has no security value, only Zionist value," the poet wrote.
"When Benzion Israeli went up there with two friends one pale morning, he didn't do so for reasons of security, only for Zionist reasons. It's lucky that no retired general was running after him with a security yardstick. The general would certainly kick all three out of there, and it's doubtful we'd have an IDF at all, or retired generals who issue security 'declarations,'" she wrote.
The fundamental principle in which Shemer believed, which is so lacking in the current discourse about sovereignty, was that "the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people … regardless of conditions or temporary ownership of territory, regardless of the essence of a passing rule or a question such as how many Jews are living in the Land of Israel at any given moment," as she wrote in Ma'ariv in December 1975.
That, if you will, is the unwritten constitution of the State of Israel, the one that begins with "Go from your country … to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1) and continues on to "the hope that is 2,000 years old" and the genetic code of "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem." Even the League of Nations recognized that genome 100 years ago as "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and "the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country" and the Jewish right to "settle in any place in the west of Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea."
The fuss over sovereignty now lacks these foundations. We are tossed around morning and night by floods of information about the economic and security damage that will be visited upon us when sovereignty is applied. We are busy with simulations and assessments in attempts to gauge the responses of Europe, the Arabs, the Palestinians, and Hamas, but we are ignoring one thing: our right.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, are focused on rights – their own. They aren't afraid to kiss the furrows of "their land," to lie endlessly about their past here, falsify history, and wave keys to the homes where their forefathers lived. Our language, however, has become poor and diluted. Security is important but doesn't come before everything else. We cannot stake a claim for international legitimacy to Hebron and the Jordan Valley or even Beersheba without the Bible, the patriarchs and matriarchs, and the Temple Mount and the City of David; without Rachel's Tomb on the road to Efrata, and Eli and Shilo and the field of the patriarchs in Hebron and the angels who go up and down a ladder in Jacob's dream in Beit El.
Students of the Vilna Gaon who arrived in the Land of Israel at the start of the 19th century, and the Jews of Yemen who came to Kfar Hashiloach at the end of that same century, didn't come because it was secure but despite the fact that they were less secure here. The pioneers who founded Petah Tikva, "a small Jewish community surrounded by Arab communities to the east, north, and south," as Moshe Smilansky described the moshavot in their early days, weren't asking about Petah Tikva's contribution to military security. Even David Ben-Gurion didn't address the question when he insisted on holding onto far-flung settlements in the Jerusalem hills and in the Negev and the western Galilee.
The existence of Yehiam and Gush Etzion even went against narrow security thinking, and still, Zionism battled for them, using broader criteria that included values of patriotism and Zionism and legacy and the spirit of the people and the question of borders, because national security goes beyond strictly military consideration. Security is a tool designed to serve Jewish existence, of which all types of settlements are a glorious expression.
Future sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, like areas of the country that are already under Israeli sovereignty, is part of our national security in its broadest sense, because the question isn't only how we defend our existence, but also why we exist. In Gush Katif, the Trumpeldorian view that "wherever a Jewish plow digs its farthest furrow is where our border lies" supposedly collapsed. In Judea and Samaria, where half a million Jews now live, that principle was resurrected. The line of settlements shapes the borderline. Sovereignty there is designed to hold off another nightmare of destruction and expulsion.
The administration of US President George W. Bush first recognized the "settlement blocs." The Trump administration went beyond the blocs. Ofra and Elon Moreh, just like Manara and Avivim and Kiryat Shmona, cannot stop tanks or missiles, but they sketch the borders of Israel.
A map of settlements from the first "Labor" government under the late Yitzhak Rabin included 34 Jewish communities, including Ariel, Kedumim, and Karnei Shomron. They and the ones that came later were founded for the sake of what Yigal Allon once called "the transfer of ownership of vital points in various parts of the country from foreigners to the Jewish people…"
Even before this country became a haven for refugees from pogroms and the Holocaust, it was a destination. We might be here today because of might, but even before that, because we have a right to be. That right has given us the courage and legitimacy to declare sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and now it will give us legitimacy to apply sovereignty to parts of the ancient homeland. "Every Jew has the right to make aliyah," the Law of Return states, and it's no coincidence that it uses the language "to the land" – meaning, the Land of Israel, not only the "state." The law talks about aliyah, whereas we are talking about sovereignty, but it's the same right.
A little over 50 years ago the first settlers arrived in Kiryat Arba and Ofra and Hebron and put down roots. They built homes there, planted fields and vineyards, and built schools and yeshivas and had children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren for whom these ancient vistas were the landscapes of their childhood. They fought terrorism, sacrificed their lives, and dug graves. They did all this because of the Jewish right and genetic code that, we hope, will give the government enough strength to stop hesitating and build another story onto the Zionist enterprise and officially add parts of Judea and Samaria to it.
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