Land of Israel Loyalists Arrested for Planning New Towns

Hillel Fendel, IsraelNationalNews, 26/09/07 14 Tishrei 5768. Plans are well underway to build five new outpost communities in Judea and Samaria - though police have arrested three of the alleged planners. "We remain loyal to Eretz Yisrael. We are renewing the Zionist-Jewish pioneering spirit, and remain firm in insisting that Eretz Yisrael is ours!"

Over two dozen special-unit and regular policemen burst into the homes of three Land of Israel activists this morning (Wednesday) in Hashmonaim, near Kiryat Sefer and Modiin. The three Jews - two 40-year-olds and one 20-year-old - were arrested on suspicion of planning the construction of a new settlement in Judea and Samaria (Yesha).

The police also confiscated items such as orange hats (orange being the color of the Land of Israel movement), bumper stickers and T-shirts promoting settlement in Yesha. The most common slogan: "Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) - We Continue With Our Heads Held High."

Datia Yitzchaki, formerly of Gush Katif and now of Gush Etzion, denounced the arrests as "the worst form of silencing dissent," and called on Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann to investigate the incident. She said the arrests would "only encourage the activities of everyone who cares about the future of the country."

Five New Towns in the Works
The day before, the Land of Israel Loyalists held a press conference in Jerusalem at which they announced their plans to establish five new communities in Judea and Samaria this Sunday, the third day of Chol HaMoed (the Intermediate Days) of the Sukkot holiday. Presenting the plans were long-time Yesha pioneers Rabbi Moshe Levinger of Hevron and Daniella Weiss of Kedumim, representatives of the families who plan to settle the five hills, and others.

The five towns slated to be built, if the government does not interfere, are:
* Shvut Ami in western Shomron, near Kedumim
* Harhivi [Expand, based on Isaiah 54: "Expand the place of thy tent... for thou shalt break forth both right and left...] in eastern Shomron, near Elon Moreh
* Nofei Hashmonaim in Binyamin, near Kiryat Sefer and Modiin
* Eitam, near Efrat in Gush Etzion
* Maalot Halhoul, in Judea near Hevron

For more information on the planned kick-off points for the five new towns, click here.

Some 20 rabbis of Gust Etzion are signed on a proclamation in favor of the five-pronged ascent to the new sites on Sunday. The rabbis say that just as in this holiday season, we go from "strength to strength" - from Rosh HaShanah to Yomi Kippur to Sukkot -

"we must also go from strength to strength regarding the commandment of settling the Land of Israel - a commandment that is equal to all the others in the Torah. We must go from one strength, namely, the communities and towns that have already been built in the Land, to the next strength - i.e., the hilltops whose construction and development are being held up for various strange reasons. These reasons stem primarily from the weakness of our [government] leadership, and also from a failure to see the reality religiously, politically and demographically."

The rabbis specifically mention the point of struggle in their own area:

"The Eitam Hill is Efrat's largest land reserve. The delays in building it retard Efrat's development and prevent the formation of a bridge connecting all parts of Gush Etzion. Our vacillation, and the delays in construction, cause the Arabs [and Peace Now - ed.] to constantly petition the Supreme Court [against us].

"Our response is: 'Some by Supreme Court petitions, and some by terrorist attacks, but we - in the Name of the L-rd our G-d will call!" [based on Psalms 20,8] - the G-d Who has commanded us to come and inherit the land that He promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants after them..."

Similarly, the leaders of the drive to make Eitam Jewish released a flyer stating the following:

"The hill belongs to Efrat, but is being stolen from us, de facto, by the political [partition] fence. Eitam connects eastern and western Gush Etzion. Handing it over to the Arab enemy will endanger all of Gush Etzion and Jerusalem. It is crucial to come and take an active part in settling the hill. As the Prime Minister and the enemy concoct their dangerous plans, we come with other plans:

• They want to destroy - we come to build.
• They want to expel - we come to expand.
• The government wants to give away the Land of Israel - we remain loyal to Eretz Yisrael.
• They are denying our Jewish and Zionist principles, and have embraced a philosophy of appeasement and capitulation to the enemy - we are renewing the Zionist-Jewish pioneering spirit, and remain firm in insisting that Eretz Yisrael is ours!"

We have been warned!

Elyakim Haetzni, Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), 05/09/07. There was another summer like this one preceding Yom Kippur in ’73, but this time the surprise attack is being readied from within, and the calamity will be diplomatic. I’m referring to the ritual sacrifice that the Bush administration is preparing for us this November that goes by the name of a “peace conference.”

Settlements in the "Land of Benjamin"
"Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; In the morning he devours the prey, And in the evening he divides the spoil."
Genesis 49:27

The role of the sacrificial lamb will be filled by Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, hundreds of Jewish communities, and hundreds of thousands of Jews that will become refugees in their own land ­ all this on the backdrop of national, societal, and diplomatic collapse. The kindling and the fire for the sacrifice will be brought by Shimon Peres and his perpetual partner in crime, Terje Larsen. Serving them are Haim Ramon, Ehud Olmert, and Abu Mazen. Spurring them on are two evil and ambitious women who, like the most destructive tornadoes, are called by cute nicknames: Tzippi and Condi. On the tombstone the gravediggers will engrave the words “The Diplomatic Horizon” (for the Palestinians) and/or “Principles for the Final Status Agreement” and/or “Framework Agreement for the Establishment of a Palestinian State.” The conference will deal with “core issues”, that is to say it will uproot the core and the heart of our hold on our land: Jerusalem, borders, refugees, destruction of the settlements.

Discussions on these matters are being held continually and urgently to the end of bringing the sacrificial lamb to Washington on time, already bound and readied for slaughter. There are those who are working to ensure that the sacrificial feast will be well attended -- from Morocco in the West to the Gulf States in the East. Israel’s enemies have waited 40 years for this moment when Israel will be forced to regurgitate all that she swallowed during the Six Day War. Their eyes will finally merit to see the ceremony of subjugation whereby the Jews will return to the Arabs their lost honor and resume their proper places. To our enemies’ good fortune, manning the helm of Israel’s ship of state is a man supremely appropriate to the task of self-administering this coup de grace to the Jews -- a man dogged by failures and accusations of corruption, whose personal attributes embody all that is weak, rotten, spoilt, and foundering among the Jews in their land at this hour . . .

At this “peace” conference, the enemies of Israel from the East and from the West will dictate the decree that Olmert and his friends are writing now in absolute secret together with the Americans and the Arabs while the Israeli public, including the national camp and the settlers, twiddle their thumbs. It’s comforting to tell ourselves soothing tales such as how Olmert is weak and Abu Mazen is even weaker, and that both of them lack the standing and support among their people to undertake such far-reaching diplomatic initiatives. There are no lack of such rationalizing yarns. Whoever calms themselves in this way doesn't understand the nature and quality of the liquidation ceremony that’s being prepared for us.

This ceremony doesn't require any strength, in fact it doesn't require anything at all except for a declaratory statement, ink on paper, the most feeble exhalation of breath, an effort that even a dying man could make without difficulty. However, a declaration like this is enough to bring about, in the words of Shimon Peres, “the concluding chapter of the conflict with the Palestinians,” and, in actual truth, the concluding chapter of Israel’s independence. After this, Israel will be a state in name only. In reality Israel will become a protectorate of the United Nations, whose foreign policy and security are given into the hands of the Quartet, and whose security, that is to say our lives, are entrusted to international forces in the North, center, and South of the country.

At the sacrificial peace conference in Washington, Israel will likely obligate itself to establish a Palestinian state on its ancestral inheritance. The capitol of the new state will be Jerusalem, and not even one Jew will be allowed to live within its boundaries.

It doesn't matter that the conference will not determine on which street in Jerusalem and over which hill or through which valley the border will pass. It is of no significance that the conference won't decide how many Arab “refugees” we'll be forced to swallow. What will be determined, irrevocably and eternally, this coming year or next year at the latest, is Palestinian sovereignty as a diplomatic, international, fact ­ with finality. The rest truly isn't important. So too when they signed the Oslo Accords with only the “Declaration of Principles.” In its wake, as thunder follows lightning, we were hit by the “interim agreement” with all its details that demanded actualization: areas A, B, and C, the Palestinian “police”, inserting a terror state infrastructure from Tunis into our borders, and all the rest of the insane arrangements that buried 1,500 Jews in their land and prepared the state for its final act of self-immolation in the guise of a Palestinian state that will turn life in this land into a living hell -- an irrevocable living hell.

It’s not important that the governmental apparatuses of the Palestinian state will be weak or even non-existent. It doesn't matter whether a prime minister or the head of some terrorist faction will rule. It’s not important if this state has no economy and will live on the handouts that Israel, the Europeans, and the Americans pay to the gangsters as protection money for a modicum of quiet. The world contains a number of such non-functional states. Somalia, for example, is ruled by gangs of tribal thieves and thugs, but that doesn't in the least detract from Somalian sovereignty and from the land remaining the land of Somalia according to international law.

Herzl had a vision of a Jewish state arising with international legal recognition. Now this vision has been turned on its head, and a foreign entity is achieving international recognition as sovereign over the Land of Israel. And who is promoting this travesty? The Jews themselves.

What is the irredeemable, eternal meaning of Palestinian sovereignty? When Israel liberated Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in the Six Day War, she didn’t conquer land that belonged to any sovereign power. Neither Jordan in Judea and Samaria nor Egypt in Gaza had any sovereign rights in those territories. Both had invaded those territories in 1948 in order to frustrate the League of Nations decision of November 29, 1947 recognizing Israel. Egypt never claimed sovereignty over Gaza and established military rule there from the beginning. Jordan, in contravention of international law, attempted to establish sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, but renounced this aspiration on its own initiative in 1988.

Only because of this vacuum in sovereignty was Israel authorized to utilize state lands to settle Jews in Yesha or to settle the lands in any way. Had there been a legal sovereign before Israel’s takeover of those territories, the Hague Convention would have forbidden Israel from making fundamental changes to the status quo, including the utilization of state lands. International law views the conquering military administration as custodian over the occupied territories until they are returned to the original sovereign in a future peace agreement. Until then, the conquered lands are held in trust by the occupying power. In the same way, the conqueror is forbidden from excavating antiquities located in occupied territories. They too are held in trust for the conquered power that will eventually regain sovereignty. Therefore, coins from the Great Revolt or the Bar Kochba Revolt, bearing images of the Holy Temple and other Jewish symbols, will belong to the Palestinians the moment they became sovereign over Judea and Samaria; Israel will be obligated to give up all the Jewish antiquities that she’s excavated since ’67. All this we will bring upon ourselves the moment a Jewish hand signs an agreement granting Palestinian sovereignty over the Land of Israel.

For the Palestinians to win eternal sovereignty over our homeland, it doesn’t matter that Abu Mazen today happens to be weak, or if the day after signing an agreement he resumes his alliance with Hamas, or that he resigns, or is assassinated. From the moment that Palestine is declared a state, what is done can never be undone. The Palestinians, of course, will instigate terror and wars. The IDF might conquer Shechem over and over again, but will always be forced to leave and return the land to the Palestinian sovereign. This is because the land has become Palestinian land according to international law from the moment that Palestinian sovereignty is officially recognized. Just so was Berlin conquered and destroyed and divided, but in the end returned to Germany as its capitol. Just so the Nazis came and went, but Germany remained.

I've already described how this scenario is viewed under international law. The giants in the field, professors Stone, Rostow, and Schwabel, have proven how the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine, granted by the League of Nations to Britain over the Land of Israel, are in force in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza until this day. According to the Mandate, the area of the Land of Israel is allocated under international law as the national homeland of the Jewish nation ‘in recognition of the historic right of the Jewish people to reestablish their national home in Palestine’ (including, of course, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza). Why are the provisions of the Mandate in force to this day despite the fact that the League of Nations has passed from the world and been replaced by the United Nations, and despite the fact that England is no longer here? The professors have explained that although a part of the lands of the Mandate have become the internationally recognized State of Israel and although another part of the lands of the Mandate east of the Jordan River have become the internationally recognized State of Jordan, a third part of the Mandate lands, that include Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, were left without a recognized sovereign. As long as international law doesn’t officially recognize any other sovereignty, they'll continue to be governed by the provisions of the Mandate, which states, inter alia, that state lands are to be used for intensive Jewish settlement, to encourage aliyah, and names the Jewish Agency as a tool to serve those ends.

When will these Mandate provisions cease to apply? When another sovereign will be declared over Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jerusalem. In the first stage, Israel abdicated her right to declare her sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and left those lands undefined and ownerless. Now she is moving to the next stage, the stage of the historic terminus of Jewish rights over the Land of Israel, the stage of voluntary relinquishment of sovereignty and of transferring her rights to an alien power. In all the years of our exile and persecution, there was not found among the Jewish people any authority willing to sever the people from its beloved land. We had to return and persevere here for 120 years, undergoing difficult and bitter trials, in order to establish a state authorized under international law to give the Land of Israel a decree of divorce in the name of the Jewish People, now and forever.

Intensifying the heartbreak is the fact that Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are the only remaining territories on the entire earth (excepting the South Pole) which remain ownerless ­ as if an invisible hand guarded the ancient Jewish home for the Jewish people. And now that people’s representative is pushing away this hand in an act of historic betrayal that will resound throughout the generations. Now the more we ground and strengthen our claim that we’re the real and legal owners of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jerusalem, the more we’ll ground and strengthen the newly acquired right of the Palestinians to those lands. After all, who is most authorized to gift and grant ownership over land if not the rightful owner? He and only he can legally effectuate the transfer!

When this despicable act will be final, all else will flow from it. Whether the Israeli army drags the Jews out by their hair from their homes on land that has become “Palestine,” or whether it will be left to the Palestinian murderers in uniform to do the job by themselves, from the moment land comes under Palestinian sovereignty, that will be the end of all Jewish life there.

One can almost hear the destroyers talking, from Ramon to Livni and from Olmert to Peres: Soon the Palestinians will come and sweep away everything with a giant broom, the legal and established cities together with the “illegal” outposts and hilltops. Nothing will remain of the hated settlement enterprise, and together with its disappearance will come the collapse of those that bore it, the religious and national camps that endanger leftist rule. Our rulers are an elite that sprouted from what used to be called “the rule of the proletariat”, in whose name they meant to appropriate the state in perpetuity. While the Socialist rationalizations have passed from the world and the elites represent no one but themselves, the socialist heirs still intend to rule in perpetuity.

I don't bother to ask, “Where is Netanyahu?” or “Where is the Likud and its Knesset members?” at this fateful hour. Neither am I asking where Lieberman is or what Rav Ovadia and his party are doing. I'm asking the settlers whose lands will be the first the Palestinian bulldozer overturns: “Where are you?!” “Going up to Homesh”? The return to Homesh isn't taking place in a void. Homesh is not suspended in thin air. This enterprise only makes sense and has purpose as part of a struggle for our continued existence in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jerusalem that is now in immediate danger of destruction.

We need to gather all the Jews ­ all those who remain Jews ­ while there’s still time and embark on a struggle to the bitter end in order to prevent at any price taking the one step from which there’s no return, the one additional step that will pull the ground from under us and fling us into the abyss of Palestinian sovereignty.

Remember, we've been warned!

Elyakim HaEtzni

Attorney Elyakim HaEtzni was among Hebron's first settlers and is a prolific publicist for Eretz Yisrael causes. Contact him at ehaetzni@netvision.net.

The Rules Governing the Struggle For Eretz Yisrael

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Yeshivat Ateret Cohanin. In the course of the suffering accompanying the divine process of our redemption, we are once more encountering this terrible conflict between brothers involving the uprooting of Jewish settlements. We are not exempt from clarifying it in the light of Torah, which illuminates the proper path for both the individual and the nation, both in healthy situations as well as in morbid ones. There are three parties involved here: the government, civilians and soldiers.

Ateret Cohanim has embarked on a Pre-Military Educational Academy to provide a specialized Torah background to select Israeli youth who intend to pursue careers as army officers
in elite combat units

1. The Government
When it comes to long and short-term urban planning, it is certainly the government which must make decisions, but as far as the ideological question of whether a particular location belongs to the Jewish People or to another nation, that question transcends governments, for the answer to that question was provided by the Master-of-the-Universe, by the Torah, by Jewish tradition, by history. Even the government was commanded regarding Eretz Yisrael: “We were commanded not to abandon it to any other nation, or to desolation” (Ramban, Addendum 4 to Rambam’s “Sefer HaMitzvot”). This command transcends the government. Quite the contrary, the government draws its strength and authority from it. Uprooting a Jewish community is a terrible crime with no parallel throughout Jewish or world history. All the more so that establishing a foreign state in the very midst of our own country is a national crime which surpasses all the bounds of reason and ethics.
Likewise, the illustrious rabbis who head the “Rabbinic Union for the People and Land of Israel” recently issued a proclamation absolutely rejecting the establishment of a foreign state within Judea and Samaria, or otherwise abandoning part of Eretz Yisrael to foreigners.
Let us hope that our government will speedily free itself of the present agreement, returning to the path of truth and valor.

2. Civilians
Every Jew has to struggle to nullify these terrible decrees. The whole nation must rise as one man with one heart and struggle against this dysfunctional government that is leading us down the path of destruction.
Obviously, as with any other mitzvah, this must not be performed by means of a sin. Before the founding of the State, our master Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook established red lines as far as political struggles between us: no violence, no insults, no hatred (“Et Achai Anochi Mevakesh”; LeNetivot Yisrael, Part I). Likewise, in the struggles over the completeness of the Land, Rav Tzvi Yehuda never instructed us to use violence, to insult or to hate anyone. Therefore, please do not insult policemen or soldiers, let alone their officers. When a soldier takes hold of your hand, don’t use physical force to resist. Don’t hold on to boulders. You might get hurt, or the soldier might get hurt. And don’t play freeze-tag with the soldiers either.
The evacuation of a Jewish settlement is a terrible desecration of G-d’s name. Don’t make it worse before the television cameras of Israel and the whole world, which will show Jewish soldiers dragging Jews out of a Jewish settlement.
If you force a soldier to drag you, don’t yell, “Why are you hurting me?” Don’t hurt his heart! When the Jewish Community of Hebron was just starting out, some of our group danced with an Israeli flag at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and soldiers ordered them to stop. When they didn’t listen, the soldiers grabbed at the flag, some pulling in one direction and others pulling in the other, until the flag got ripped. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook responded, “What you did was more treif than pig. You put our friends the soldiers in an unpleasant situation in order to advance the cause.”
We see for ourselves that many soldiers feel horrible at being asked to evacuate outposts. Many themselves live in settlements and outposts. One must also be very careful of provocateurs who let their mouths spill out hatred and incitement to evil, but then report to the police what they saw around them.
Don’t send children. It is hard for them to digest simultaneously a love of the Land and the People of Israel, with a love of the army.
Remember this: Our master Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook stood at the head of the war over Judea and Samaria and loudly proclaimed, “Over Judea and Samaria there will be a war!” “Over our dead bodies!” Yet he never, never instructed anyone to use force against a soldier, a policeman, or even to insult them.
Whoever has learned Halachah knows the major principle:
“We do not learn practical law either from abstact study alone, or from hearing isolated cases alone. Rather, we must learn it from a combination of abstract study with its practical applications. Once someone has asked questions and received such practical guidance, he can go and act accordingly” (Bava Batra 136b).
The utterance that “there will be a war over Judea and Samaria” is in the realm of “abstract study.” It may be profound and holy and sublime and powerful, but it is not practical Halachah. Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah rejected anything that would create a rift amongst the people, and he said, “I do not want a civil war.”
The halachic conclusion of the illustrious heads of the “Rabbinic Union for the People and Land of Israel” was as follows:
“To behave with great caution; to avoid all physical or verbal violence against our soldier brethren… and let it be said to the credit of the public that all of them but rare exceptions are following the guidance of our rabbis.”
3. Soldiers
Soldiers as well, as part of the Jewish People, must struggle devotedly to keep our land intact, all the more so if a soldier is a high-ranking officer with an influence on the workings of the army and the government. Yet even he mustn’t fulfill a mitzvah by means of a sin. To cause the disintegration of the army is a grave sin. Our army works on the basis of unity – one for all and all for one. If the army disintegrates, it is no army, and that places the nation in danger. The army is not rightist or leftist, middle-of-the-road or any other category. Otherwise, the nation would be in danger. The country and the Jewish State would be in danger.
The army is where the aggregate soul of the Jewish People is being renewed in all its glory. Driving a knife into that is the opposite of the whole process of our rebirth.
Remember this! Our great master, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook stood at the head of all the ranks of settlers in Judea and Samaria, yet no soldier ever heard from him the words, “Refuse orders.”
The soldier does not become partner in a sin, emissary to perform a sin or collaborator in a sin. The government’s sin was already performed and is now nothing but water under the bridge. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook wrote numerous flyers against abandoning parts of Eretz Yisrael, yet he never wrote: “Refuse orders!”
“Many are the thoughts in a man’s heart, yet it is G-d’s counsel that will endure” (Proverbs 19:21).
They keep presenting the same program, each time by a different name. We overcame 242, Gunnar Jarring, 338, Kissinger, the Geneva Pact, the Autonomy Agreement, the Reagan Program, the Shultz Initiative, the London Accord, Madrid, the Bi-Lateral Talks, James Baker, Oslo I, the Mitchell Report, Oslo II, the Sharm a-Sheikh Pact, the Camp David Summit, the Taba Talks, Clinton, George Tennet, General Zinni and the Saudi Plan.
We will overcome the Roadmap (and the "Disengagement Plan") as well.