Love of the Land: Israel Can And Must Act In Her Own Best Interests.

Israel Can And Must Act In Her Own Best Interests.

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero – “Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.” Horace.

Ted Belman
Israpundit
12 September 09

As I read Ettinger’s excellent piece, I was reminded of other historical facts having to do with limiting Jewish settlement, emigration or immigration. Even before the British Mandate, Britain was actively limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. Stalin also prevented Jewish emigration. The Mandate didn’t change much. Britain continued to limit immigration and so so did Russia/USSR right up to its downfall. Remember the “Let my people go” campaign in the seventies.

Haj Amin el Husseini, the grand Mufti of Jerusalem and confidant of Hitler, led a full scale Arab revolt against the Jews between 1936 and 1939 causing much Jewish bloodshed. In response the Peel Commission was set up and recommended limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. Just what the Arabs wanted. In fact, the Peel Commission even recommended the abolition of the Mandate and recommended two states. Ben Gurion fought hard to maintain Jewish immigration and even supported partition while most of the Zionist movement did not. To his chagrin, friends of Zionism in England including Churchill, Lloyd George persuaded the British Parliament to vote against partition.

In 1938, Ben Gurion commented on Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” and said “They handed Czechoslovakia over. Why shouldn’t they do the same with us?”

Shortly thereafter Ben Gurion made his case to Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, who suggested, that the Arab and Muslim world could rise up and threaten the British Empire and therefore to prevent this, Britain had to make sure that the Jews in Palestine remained a minority. In other words Britain was against the creation of a Jewish state.

During the war, the world conspired to prevent Jews from escaping Europe to Palestine. Britain, even after the war, actively attempted to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. Remember the DP Camps in Cypress and Exodus.

It was due to Jewish resistance after the war that the British turned the matter over to the UN which ultimately voted for the partition that the British Parliament had turned down.. Ben Gurion preferred half a loaf to no loaf and so declared the State of Israel.

The Law of Return was quickly passed welcoming all “Jews” to come to Israel. All you needed to be eligible was one Jewish grandparent.

After the Six Day War in ‘67 the World attempted to prevent Jewish settlement of Judea and Samaria even though Jews had the legal right to do so stemming from the British Mandate. Neither Res 242 nor the Oslo Accords made mention of restricting such settlement, so the international community tried to brand the settlements as illegal pursuant to the Geneva Convention. Many legal scholars beg to differ with this and argue convincingly that the Convention doesn’t make settlements illegal.

Prior to the Roadmap, in response to atrocities the Arabs committed with their suicide bombers, Senator Mitchell rewarded them by recommending a settlement freeze just like the Peel Commission did. This freeze was incorporated into the Roadmap which came into existence in 2003.

Another refrain that developed particularly after the Roadmap, was that no one, meaning Israel, should do anything, meaning settle the land, to prejudge the outcome. Of course the Arabs could do anything they wanted to prejudge the outcome and the US cooperated with them. A case in point is opening her Consulate in Jerusalem to serve the Arabs while at the same time refusing to open her Embassy in Jerusalem to serve the Israelis. The US also supports illegal Arab construction and condemns Jewish construction, legal or otherwise.

The demand in the Roadmap that Palestine be “viable” and “contiguous” also prejudges the outcome as does the demand that Jerusalem be divided.

And now Obama is demanding a settlement freeze. Fortunately he doesn’t have the support in the US or in Israel to bring it about.

As Ettinger points out, Israel can and must resist the pressure and act in her own best interests.

Love of the Land: Israel Can And Must Act In Her Own Best Interests.

Love of the Land: The Zionism of Orde Wingate: A Complex Origin

The Zionism of Orde Wingate: A Complex Origin

by Aaron Eitan Meyer
Covenant
August 2009

Abstract: Orde Charles Wingate was a passionate Christian Zionist, whose innovative military genius would find root in Israeli military doctrine--an effect that lasts to this day. However, the origins of his Zionism are often simplified, or overlooked entirely. This article will seek to examine the complex factors that led this man, whose personal history should have inclined him to be pro-Arab, to become one of modern Judaism’s greatest friends.

Introduction

While it may seem strange to suppose that the year 1936 was in any way beneficial to the Jewish people, considering the state of affairs in Nazi Germany, and the dawning of the Arab Revolt in the British Mandate of Palestine, that year did also bring with it the beginning of a relationship that continues to benefit the Jewish people to this day. It was the year when Orde Charles Wingate—Scottish eccentric, military genius, visionary and one of the most passionate Zionists of his day—was assigned to a British Army Intelligence post in the British Mandate of Palestine, a move that would eventually make Wingate a hero of the Yishuv. And yet, while his assistance to the Zionist cause is well-known and appreciated in Israel, the origins of his commitment to the Jewish State are by no means clear, even to his biographers. Critics are apt to dismiss his Zionism with off-handed references to his Old Testament-heavy Christian upbringing or his affinity for the underdog as ‘the’ reason, but his real motivations are far more complicated. This essay sketches out the complexities that brought about Wingate’s Zionism, while attempting to refrain from the amateur psychoanalysis that plagues too many biographies of the man.

Before delving into the psyche of the man, it is worth mentioning the effect he continues to have in Israel. Traveling through Komemiyut in Jerusalem, at the intersection of Jabotinsky and David Marcus, one will see Kikar Orde (known also as Kikar Wingate). There are Wingate Streets in Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv and Herzliya as well. In the Carmel Mountains, just south of Haifa, there is the Yemin Orde Wingate Youth Village, which serves hundreds of disadvantaged, at-risk and immigrant children from around the world. Israel’s national sports and health education institute in Netanya is fittingly named Machon Wingate, the Wingate Institute.

One might be wondering why so much was named after this man. In his book on the history of the Israeli army, Ze’ev Schiff called Wingate “the single most important influence on the military thinking of the Haganah.”[1] While a complete analysis of that influence would constitute an article of its own, Samuel M. Katz put it succinctly. “Wingate had a profound impact on the molding of Israeli military doctrine. Defense, when fighting a numerically superior enemy, meant offense, and offense meant fighting deep inside enemy territory where the opposition was most vulnerable.”[2] To this day, that concept remains the core of Israeli military strategy. And with that admittedly abbreviated digest, the focus may turn to the man himself.

Wingate’s Background Prior to 1936

Beginning with Christopher Sykes’ authorized biography of Wingate,[3] entire chapters have been devoted to Wingate’s life prior to his years in the Mandate and later distinguished service in restoring Haile Selassie to the throne of Ethiopia and Chindit operations in Burma. While that degree of detail is not possible here, a brief sketch is essential to framing the question of his eventual adherence to Zionism.

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Love of the Land: The Zionism of Orde Wingate: A Complex Origin