The Lubavitcher Rebbe zt"l's view on the Six Day War and 'land for peace' was more than you have probably heard
Shavua tov from Boston, a good week to everyone.
This evening, I found in my email a pdf from Zvi S with three pages of Joseph Telushkin's new book
Rebbe, a biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In the three pages (275-77), Telushkin discusses the Rebbe's views on the Six Day War and 'land for peace.'
I knew - as I am sure many of you did - that the Rebbe opposed 'land for peace.' He did not believe in it. He even opposed the return of the Sinai as part of the peace treaty with Egypt - which I forgot or may not have known.
But what I really didn't know was that in 1967, he felt Israel should have expelled all the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. He felt that during war time, and given the Arabs' continuing threats to annihilate Israel, such an action would have been understandable (and as I have described many times, the Arabs may even have
expected it).
Makes this Litvak misnaged (non-Hassid) want to go out and buy the book.
Labels: Lubavitch, Six Day War, transfer
Foreign Ministry legal opinion: Israel could transfer 'Israeli Arabs' to 'Palestine'
A legal opinion commissioned by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and written by the ministry's legal staff, has concluded that
Israel may legally transfer 'Israeli Arabs' to a state of 'Palestine' without giving those 'Israeli Arabs' the choice to remain Israeli citizens.
The 18-page document itself by Keinan appears to be a fascinating and delicate balancing of interests.
First,
it carefully frames the legal question as one of states exchanging
land and populations in the context of resolving border disputes, not
as targeted solely at population transfer, which could bring criminal
allegations of ethnic cleansing.
Next, on the one hand, Keinan
and his legal team were not likely to tell their boss, Liberman, that
his idea is categorically illegal, and as the opinion says, there could
be very specific circumstances where it might not be categorically
illegal.
On the other hand, they probably did not want to be used as a fig leaf for Liberman’s public campaign in favor of his idea.
So
the big support for Liberman’s idea is the opinion’s statement that
even though most state practice in transferring territory and
populations has offered the transferees a choice of becoming citizens
in the new state versus remaining in the old state by moving “inward,”
this choice has not yet become a binding obligation under international
law.
Meaning, it says Israel could do the transfer potentially without giving the “transferees” a choice to stay.
The
opinion gives as the basis for this claim: the minority of examples
where there was no such right (since the choice was given in most
examples), the absence of any definitive convention requiring choice as
a right in resolving border disputes, rulings of the International
Court of Justice and a recent instance where states rejected making
that right required, instead leaving it only as desired.
...
However, the opinion then adds at least three fundamental
qualifications without which it says any population transfer would be
illegal.
The first two requirements are: there must be just
compensation, as with Gush Katif, and that the transferees would need to
finish the process with either Israeli or Palestinian citizenship, so
they would not emerge stateless.
These requirements are based on
the idea that they should not come out of the border resolution dispute
having lost human or economic rights, and neither are surprising.
But the third condition: that the Palestinians must approve and receive the Israeli Arabs, is a poison pill.
Hmmm. How does this impact on the reverse? Can Israelis living in Judea and Samaria choose to become 'Palestinian' citizens? If they leave, must they be compensated?
And by the way, Gush Katif is a horrific example of 'compensation.'
What could go wrong?
Labels: Israeli Arabs are a fifth column, Judea and Samaria, transfer
What's more expensive: Oslo or paying 'Palestinians' to leave
A week ago, I reported that Moshe Feiglin had proposed
paying each 'Palestinian' family that is willing to leave Judea and Samaria and move abroad $500,000.
I was slightly inaccurate. What Moshe said is that if we paid each 'Palestinian' family $500,000 to leave, it would cost less than the Oslo accords have cost us. Moshe has now set out to
objectively prove that proposition.
Being that I made the first calculations a number of years ago, and in addition, I am a concerned party, I asked my friend, Uri Noi – a meticulous, high-tech professional whose expertise is exact calculation, to examine this subject in depth. Uri enthusiastically researched this proposal and as he said, "At no stage of the preparation of this document did I peek at the results as they were forming. In other words, this document was written and examined thoroughly and impartially.
A week later, Uri presented the results of his research in a 12 page document. You can read the Hebrew version here. The following is a quote from his conclusion:
Cost to Israel of the Oslo Accords:
1. Money transfers to the Palestinian Authority: 86 billion NIS (since Oslo- M.F.) and an additional 4.53 billion NIS annually.
2. General Security Service: 2.85 NIS and an additional 1.5 billion NIS annually.
3. Border Police in Judea and Samaria: 13 billion NIS and an additional 0.7 billion NIS annually.
4. IDF in Judea and Samaria: 57 billion NIS and an additional 3 billion annually.
5. Security guards everywhere: 68 billion NIS and an additional 3.57 billion annually.
6. Bypass roads: 20 billion NIS and an additional 1 billion annually.
7. Separation Wall: 4.7 billion NIS, one time expense.
8. Murder victims: 3.5 billion NIS in loss of productivity.
9: Defensive Shield Operation: 14 billion NIS, one time expense.
10. Loss of revenue from tourism: 129 billion NIS and an additional 1 billion annually.
11. Decrease in price of land for housing. Zero in the meantime.
In all, the Oslo Accords cost the Israeli public 423 billion NIS for Judea and Samaria alone. In addition, they continue to cost the tax payers 15.3 billion NIS annually, with no end in sight.
The 423 billion that we have already paid is one and one half times more then the 284 billion NIS that Feiglin proposes.
Simply put, when people ask when Feiglin will be right, the answer is that the scenario that he outlined is already here.
Since the Oslo Accords were signed, instead of spending $500,000 on every Arab family that could be convinced to emigrate, we have spent $750,000. This sum is constantly increasing. It is a shame that we didn't listen to Feiglin earlier. He made this proposal years ago, and this week he simply repeated it."
If so, we remain with a question: Why is forced Evacuation/Compensation for Jews considered reasonable, while voluntary Evacuation/Compensation for Arabs is considered unrealistic?
This is where we touch upon the real price that we have paid for the Oslo Accords: An entire generation has come of age after Oslo and the recognition of the Arab claim to the Land of Israel – young people approximately 35 and under. These Israelis have grown up believing that the "salt of the earth" is the Arab, while the Jew is living here on borrowed time. An entire generation has grown up thinking it is a guest in its own land and that it has to pay and constantly bribe the "true sons" in order to justify its continued presence here.
Read the whole thing.
Shabbat Shalom everyone.
Labels: Moshe Feiglin, Palestinian emigration, transfer
Feiglin goes Kahane: Pay the 'Palestinians' to leave
While the Prime Minister continues to futilely attack the Jewish Home party, further down on the Likud list, Moshe Feiglin (officially no longer Netanyahu's 'rival') has the right idea. Feiglin says we should take the money we are spending on the 'two-state solution' and use it to
pay the 'Palestinians' to leave Judea and Samaria. That's right out of Rabbi Meir Kahane's HY"D book. And you won't believe how much we can afford to pay: $500,000 per family (Hat Tip:
Sunlight).
Despite the Likud campaign's instruction not to give interviews, Moshe Feiglin, continued to make controversial statements during a conference call in Jerusalem on Tuesday.
Women in Green, held a conference today attended by several Likud officials. Among the discussions were talks of ways to impose operational Israeli sovereignty beyond the Green Line.
Feiglin, who earlier on Tuesday was arrested by police after trying to pray on the Temple Mount, proposed paying Palestinians to leave the Palestinian controlled West Bank.
"The State of Israel is paying 10 percent of its Gross Domestic Product every year for the two-state solution and the Oslo Accords. Israel is paying for separation fences, iron domes and a guard at each coffee shop. Soon we will have to place iron domes at each school in Tel Aviv.
With this budget we can give every Palestinian family in West Bank, $500,000 to encourage migration to a place with a better future. Western nations are declining due to low birth rates, so they will surely be accepted into the West. The question is whether the world will want Sudanese migrants, who cannot build or Palestinians who know how to build.
Surveys conducted in Gaza and the West Bank show that 80 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza and 65 percent of the Palestinians in the West Bank want to emigrate. Here we have the perfect solution," Feiglin said.
Yes, yes, yes. Let's send them all to Europe!
And if the Likud wants to gain some of those votes back from Jewish Home, it's not Feiglin they have to keep quiet: It's Netanyahu and his gang of Leftists.
By the way, if you want to see more about Rabbi Kahane's original proposals, go
here.
Labels: Moshe Feiglin, Rabbi Meir Kahane, transfer
53% of Israeli Jews want Arabs encouraged to leave
This ought to make the Leftists happy. In a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, 53% of Israeli Jews favored
encouraging Arabs to leave the country.
The Israel Democracy Institute released the results of its Israeli Democracy Ranking and poll on Tuesday, revealing that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis say the government should encourage Arabs to emigrate from Israel, and only 51% believe Jews and Arabs should have equal rights.
The poll showed that the more religious respondents were, the less they believed Arabs should have equal rights, with 33.5% of secular Jews opposing rights for Arabs, as opposed to 51% of traditional Jews, 65% of religious Jews, and 72% of haredim. In addition, 86% of Jewish Israelis believe that important decisions should be made by a Jewish majority.
The institute's findings were presented to President Shimon Peres, Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, Minister of Justice Yaakov Neeman and High Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch.
Nearly half (46%) of Jewish Israelis polled said that they would not want to live near Arabs, and 39% would be opposed to living near foreign workers or people with mental illness. One-fourth would not want to live near a homosexual couple, and 23% opposed having haredi neighbors.
Arabs had different preferences, with 70% opposing living near gays, 67% against haredi neighbors and 65% against former settlers. About half (46%) would not want to be neighbors with foreign workers.
I'm not phased by this kind of stuff. 'Encouraging to leave' means paying to leave - not forcibly expelling. And unfortunately, it's completely rational: When is the last time you recall someone in this country who was not an Arab strapping on explosives and blowing himself up?
No, we're not a perfect society. Given the circumstances under which we live, can you blame us? How many native Europeans would like to pay their Muslim populations to leave? I'd bet the percentages are close to what they are here.
UPDATE 10:47 PMHere are some more interesting
results from that survey.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman must be pleased: Fully 54 percent of Israelis say the right to vote should be conditioned on a pledge of allegiance to Israel as a democratic, Jewish and Zionist state, according to the Israel Democracy Institute's annual Democracy Index survey.
Among Jewish Israelis, the rate rises to 62 percent.
...
Fully 62 percent of Jewish Israelis said that until the Israel-Palestinian conflict ends, the views of Israeli Arabs should not be taken into account on foreign affairs and defense issues. Prof. Tamar Hermann of IDI said she found this result "horrific. That's ostracism of a kind no democracy can accept. These are citizens - not foreigners."
Plus, 33 percent of Jews said that in the event of war or any other severe crisis, Israel should treat its Arab citizens the way America treated its Japanese citizens during World War II - by putting them in internment camps. "They are perceived as a fifth column," Hermann said.
She said the findings show that from a democratic perspective, the most problematic rift in the country is the Jewish-Arab divide.
"Today, people say things they would once have been embarrassed to say," she added.
Some 55 percent of Jews said it is legitimate for the government to allocate more funding to Jewish towns than to Arab ones, while 70 percent opposed appointing more Arabs to senior civil service positions and 67 percent opposed having In addition, 67 percent opposed allowing first-degree relatives of Israeli Arabs to immigrate for the sake of family unification.
If the Arabs spend enough time proclaiming that they are 'Palestinians' rather than Israelis, should anyone be surprised at this result?
Labels: Israel is a Jewish state, transfer
