Soccer Dad

Terror now

Joe Settler reveals a Dirty Little Secret. The secret is that the main mover behind lawsuits geared to voiding land sales to Jews is not any Arab organization, but Peace Now.

Joe Settler notes that the reason that these sales are kept under wraps is because the Palestinian Authority has passed a Nuremberg type law declaring that land sales to non-Palestinians is "high treason" that has a consequence of the death penalty(usually by an extrajudicial killing.) Col. Tawfiq Tirawi has been implicated in these killings. But those eagle eyed observers at Human Rights Watch take Tirawi's denial at face value.

(A more recent entry by Joe Settler points to a column by Caroline Glick that states:

And here we arrive at the main issue. In 1949, after conquering Judea and Samaria, the Jordanian regime seized all Jewish owned lands and placed them under the control of the Jordanian Custodian for Enemy Property. Jews were by law prohibited from entering the areas. In 1967, after Israel took control of Judea and Samaria, the government transferred control over the seized Jewish lands to the Custodian for Absentee Lands in the Civil Administration.

The question arises, why did the government not simply allow the Jewish land owners to reassert their rights over their lands? Israel's refusal to enable Jewish landowners in Judea and Samaria to exercise their rights over their private property constitutes an Israeli adoption of the anti-Semitic Jordanian legal regime which denied all Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria.

)

Peace Now, then, is allied with Tawfiq Tirawi by using the courts to "out" the Palestinian sellers of land to Jews.

But just so you can appreciate where Peace Now stands, I suggest that you go to their website. One of the features of that site is "Settlements in Focus." The latest "settlement" to warrant their attention is Gush Etzion.

The profile starts off well enough giving the history of the Gush Etzion:

In January 1927, a group of ultra-orthodox Jews from Jerusalem, accompanied by a few Yemenites who had immigrated to Palestine for religious reasons, moved to an area south of Jerusalem. The small community was called "Migdal Eder," named for a site mentioned in the bible (Genesis 35:21). This early community did not flourish, mainly due to economic hardships and escalating tension with neighboring Arab communities. In 1929 Arab riots broke out and the community was destroyed. The inhabitants of Migdal Eder were saved by the villagers of the neighboring Palestinian village of Beit Umar but were not able to return to the land they left behind.

In the early 1930s the land which had been the site of Migdal Eder was purchased by Shmuel Yosef Holtzman in order to establish a Jewish community in the area between Bethlehem and Hebron. Holtzman named the community "Kfar Etzion" (from his own name, Holtzman – in German "holtz" means "wood", which translates to "etz" in Hebrew). This second attempt to establish a Jewish foothold in this area was once again derailed before any significant Jewish presence was achieved, this time in the course of the 1936 Arab uprising, which led the inhabitants of Kfar Etzion to abandon the area. Most of what Holtzman and his partners had constructed was subsequently demolished by the Arabs living in the area.

Jews again attempted to settle the area between 1943-1947, resulting in the establishment of four Jewish communities (Kfar Etzion, Ein Tzurim, Masu'ot Ytzhak, and Revadim). All four were destroyed in the course of the 1948 war, and the entire area came under Jordanian rule. From 1948-1967, the loss of the four Jewish communities of Gush Etzion was one of the most painful traumas in the Israeli collective memory.

Did I write "well enough?" Well yes, it acknowledges that the land for the Etzion Bloc was purchased by Jews.

However to describe the destruction of the communities of Gush Etzion as "one of the most painful traumas in the Israeli collective memory" is risible. It was a war crime plain and simple. To condescendingly describe it as "painful" without describing what actually happened is to condone the atrocity.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so upset with this if it weren't for the way the rest of the profile goes. One would assume that an organization devoted to peace and justice would argue that land that belonged to Jews and was repurchased by Jews after they were thrown out (sounds familiar? should remain Jewish (Israeli) land. But you would be wrong. Here's how the profile concludes:

How do these settlements impact the civilian/economic life of the Palestinians?

In its comprehensive study of the impact of West Bank settlements, "Land Grab," the Israeli Human Rights group B'tselem notes (with regard to the Gush Etzion bloc):

"In terms of the ramifications of the bloc of settlements on the Palestinian population, this bloc also includes several of the main phenomena identified in other areas, from the blockage of urban development to the restriction of freedom of movement. The area of jurisdiction of the settlement of Efrata extends in a diagonal to the northeast over an area of approximately 6,500 dunam. The tip of this area touches the southern border of area A in the vicinity of Bethlehem (Al-Khader and Ad-Duheisha refugee camp – total 16,000 [as of 2002]), continuing along almost this entire border and completely restricting urban development in this direction. The town of Nahalin (5,500 [2002 data]) has effectively become a Palestinian enclave surrounded by settlements preventing any possibility for urban development. As in the case of the settlements in the Western Hills, the settlements in this bloc also create an obstacle separating the villages and towns of the Bethlehem area from the city of Hebron and its environs. As in the case of the settlements in the Mountain Strip, some of the settlements in this area also lie along Road No. 60, creating a bloc that controls a broad stretch of the road. As a result, the IDF extensively restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians along the road, as it does in the areas of the settlements in the Mountain Strip."

In addition, as noted earlier, the completion of the Israeli security barrier along its currently approved route will make a major section of Route 60 difficult or impossible for Palestinians to access, further isolating the major Palestinian population centers of Hebron and Bethlehem from each other and the villages of the area, as well as from Jerusalem.

In other words Peace Now is not interested in the history and how the land was stolen from Jews (at least twice.) Peace Now is interested in perpetuating the Palestinian grievance toward Israel. Peace Now rather than promoting peace is encouraging terror.

The riots of the 30's occurred, not because of a Jewish state, but because a Jewish presence in what was then called Palestine was intolerable. That is what Peace Now tolerates. The acquisition of land by force is perfectly acceptable to them, unless it was initially acquired by Jews legally and the force merely restored the the land.

Technorati Tags: Peace Now, Israel.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 22, 2006 5:59 AM