Love of the Land: Suspend your Zionism

Suspend your Zionism

Yisrael Medad
Opinion/JPost
08 December 09


I won't keep you in suspension, nor in suspense. I will be very clear: While I can comprehend Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's concern for what he considers more primary national interests than keeping his electoral platform promises to those who voted for him regarding the continuation of the Jewish return to the national homeland, his recent decisions are quite incomprehensible. To think that even the opposition leader, Kadima chairwoman MK Tzipi Livni, can justifiably criticize him from a right-wing perspective says much about Netanyahu's policies.


A settler looks on as Palestinian construction workers build a synagogue in Kedumim, in the northern West Bank last week.
Photo: AP
On the Likud Web site, which oddly appears as netanyahu.org.il, as if a personal plaything, one can read the aims of the Likud which include: advocating the integrity of the Jewish homeland, bringing together the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, cultivating love of the country, safeguarding the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel as an eternal, inalienable right while working diligently to settle and develop all parts of the land of Israel, and extending national sovereignty to them. All admirable missions, well-steeped in the tradition of the nationalist camp of Zionism.

And yet, on November 25, Netanyahu told his security cabinet that international circumstances dictate that for the promotion of Israel's broad national interests, a moratorium on construction across the Green Line will be adopted over the next 10 months. And its purpose? To convey the message that the government wants to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians.

That's it? His Bar-Ilan speech was insufficient? His running off to meet US President Barack Obama at the UN wasn't enough? His subsequent White House late-night powwow didn't make things understandable?

IN THE fashion of literary criticism, let's deconstruct Netanyahu's words. Obviously, "international circumstances" mean that Obama can't mobilize Europe and Russia and is going independent - with Iran, with North Korea Korea and other hot spots.

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The writer, who resides in Shiloh, serves as a spokesperson for the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities, was director of Israel's Media Watch and was a political aide to Members of Knesset, 1981-1994. He is also secretary of the To the Temple Mount advocacy group. He blogs at www.myrightword.blogspot.com

Love of the Land: Suspend your Zionism