Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Thursday 15 November 2018

David Singer: Will President Trump Say "West Bank" or "Judea and Samaria"?

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump – having rejected a barrage of criticism since describing himself as a “nationalist” – faces a further torrent of invective should he choose to say “Judea and Samaria” rather than “West Bank” in his soon to-be-released peace proposals.

Arab propaganda has used “West Bank” since 1949 to obliterate any Jewish connection to one of the two remaining pieces of land under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine where sovereignty still remains undetermined between Jews and Arabs. Even worse, the United Nations and the US State Department have continued using this deceptive and misleading terminology since 1967.

The media and countless political commentators have sought to relegate the historical-geographical term “Judea and Samaria” to some ancient biblical anachronism that fell into disuse centuries ago – yet that term appears in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica and the UN 1947 Partition Plan resolution.

Incontrovertible Jewish claims to this hotly-disputed territory – about the size of Delaware – were eloquently summarised in the Forward on 12 July 1991:
'As for “Judea” and “Samaria”, they are indeed ancient names, but the notion that they had become “archaic” prior to 1967 is totally false for both English and Hebrew. Indeed, unlike their Moslem counterparts, not only Jewish, but Christian geographers too, from Roman times onward, always considered the mountainous regions north and south of Jerusalem to be discrete entities, since this is how the Old and New Testaments speak of them because of the separate Judean and Israelite kingdoms that existed there. As late as many 18th-, 19th- and early 20th-century atlases, it is possible to find accurate maps of Palestine with the major Arab towns and villages appearing beside the words “Judea” and “Samaria” in large print.
The Hebrew terms, yehuda and shomron have had a slightly more complex history – rather, shomron has had, since yehuda, “Judah” which was originally the name of the tribe that occupied the southern hill country of the Land of Israel, has been in uninterrupted use as a geographical term since the Book of Deuteronomy. We find it and it alone in the Mishnah and the Talmud; in the account of the famous 12th-century Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela; in Kaftor u-Ferach, a 16th-century halakhic geography of Palestine composed by the Italian Rabbi Ishtori Haparhi; in all the 19t- and 20th-century literature of Zionist settlement in Palestine; and in thousands of other Hebrew sources from every period of Jewish history as well.
The case of “shomron”, “Samaria”, is somewhat different. The oldest Hebrew name for the mountains north of Jerusalem is not shomron but efrayim, after the tribe whose territory it was. Shomron was originally a site in Efrayim that, in the reign of King Omri, became the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel, which eventually began to bear its name. Thus, in the Hebrew Bible we find shomron, efrayim, and yisra’el used interchangeably, while in rabbinic literature they are joined by a fourth term: eretz ha-kutim, “the Land of the Cuthites” – a reference to the Samaritans, a population originally transferred from the Babylonian region of Kutu to take the place of the “ten lost” tribes of Israel deported by the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E.
Subsequently, all four of these terms were used by Jewish sources, although the last two dropped out in the Middle Ages; it was not however, until the conquest of the area in 1967 that “Shomron” was finally recognized instead of “Efrayim”.'
President Trump should use “Judea and Samaria” to end 70 years of fraudulent Arab propaganda – aided and abetted by the United Nations, the US State Department and the President’s oft designated “fake news’’.


(Author’s note: The cartoon – commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog)

1 comment:

  1. If you want the truth about Israel
    and the Middle East, then do not waste
    your time with the FAKE NEWS
    of The New York Times and the
    Israel-bashing mainstream-news-media.

    Instead, visit these web sites:

    www.jns.org

    www.algemeiner.com

    www.memri.org

    www.aish.com

    www.DanielPipes.org

    www.camera.org

    www.UKMediaWatch.org

    ============================

    “…roughly half of Palestinians say it
    [suicide bombing] is at least sometimes justified…”

    SOURCE: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State,
    and the Global Jihadist Movement:
    What Everyone Needs to Know
    (chapter 3, page 56)
    by Daniel Byman, Oxford University Press, year 2015,
    ISBN: 019021726X (paperback) ISBN: 9780190217266
    (paperback) ISBN: 0190217251 ISBN: 9780190217259

    ============================

    “Pornographic files are commonly found on
    the computers captured when terrorists
    are arrested or killed—including the
    computers captured when terrorists
    are arrested or killed—including
    computers found in the Bin Laden compound.

    Nor are animals safe:

    a sniper rifle sight using thermal imagery
    captured two Taliban fighters satisfying
    themselves with a donkey.”

    SOURCE: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State,
    and the Global Jihadist Movement:
    What Everyone Needs to Know
    (chapter 3, page 68)
    by Daniel Byman, Oxford University Press, year 2015,
    ISBN: 019021726X (paperback) ISBN: 9780190217266
    (paperback) ISBN: 0190217251 ISBN: 9780190217259

    ============================

    “The United States has poured billions of dollars
    into Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts…

    Much of the money went to buy conventional
    military equipment for the constant struggle
    with India, and thus did little to help
    Pakistan to fight Al Qaeda or other jihadists.

    Corrupt officials siphoned off much of the aid,

    and the money did not significantly improve
    Pakistan’s ability to fight terrorism.”

    SOURCE: Al Qaeda, the Islamic State,
    and the Global Jihadist Movement:
    What Everyone Needs to Know
    (chapter 6, page 132)
    by Daniel Byman, Oxford University Press, year 2015,
    ISBN: 019021726X (paperback) ISBN: 9780190217266
    (paperback) ISBN: 0190217251 ISBN: 9780190217259

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