Shemittah Rediscovered

Bsd

I listened to Naftali Bennet with great disdain. He tried to make the residents of Amona feel better because this will catapult into building 3000 units. BeDamayich Chayii. He made them the sacrificial lamb.

Save the platitudes. First let Benett "evacuate" his home peacefully with no where to go before he volunteers the residents of Amona to be the scapegoat and comforts them.

A. I dont trust the govt not to renege. They lost credibility

B. The silver lining works when its not possible to prevent tragedy and Trauma. Not as option!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <lenmar89@aol.com>
Date: Feb 2, 2017 10:58 AM
Subject:
To:
Cc:

After reading this articleI I almost became sick to my stomach. The Lefties are trying to destroy Israel.

The left have their own agenda. They are using Muslims to end freedom and Democracy and then the Communists will take over install governments that take away all the freedoms that people around the world deserve.

The enclosed article is so outrageous that I cannot understand how any true Jew and Israeli can put up with it.

The only solution, and it would be a bitter one if enacted, but it might be the only way Israel can be preserved.

The government should round up every Jewish leftie and send them to Moscow. That would be the perfect place for them. They would feel right at home with all the restrictions put on them and all the people in Russia, by the dictators who rule the country.

LW

From Israel: Outrage!

February 2, 2017

"Outrage!"

When I posted yesterday, the final outcome on the Amona situation was still pending. I wrote with a note of qualified hope. First, because I am seeing a shift to the right in this country, which suggests the possibility of constructive action down the road.

And then because, foolishly, I had some modicum of hope that the High Court - which was considering a Palestinian Arab petition to be recognized as the owner(s) of all of the land on the mountain on which Amona was situated - would reject that outrageous petition. Then the State would be able to proceed with its promise to relocate the residents on the mountain.
I say "foolishly," but if some measure of reason and fairness had prevailed, my expectation that the Court would have rejected the petition would have been realized.

In the end, the Court did not reject it and Amona was evacuated, with no possibility for the residents to move to another plot of land near where they had been living – which is what they had been promised by the State would happen!

The injustice of this situation boggles the mind. And there are a great many people here in Israel who are furious.

Also deeply pained and sad, because the residents have suffered, and because the evacuation ended with violence. The sight of Jew against Jew in the land of Israel is a horror, and something that should not happen.

I am composing this quickly so that I can get it out. In the coming days and weeks I will provide a great deal more. Now I simply want to provide a quick overview of the problems we are looking at.

Obviously, the solution to this situation – to ensure that there is never another Amona – is application of sovereignty over the land.

But until that happens, we must look at how this happened. There are multiple problems to be addressed:

1) The composition of the High Court is nauseatingly leftist. There must be adjustments in how justices are selected. It's being talked about, but has not yet happened. The Court does not reflect the position of the people of Israel nor of the Knesset.

2) There is no proper adjudication of land disputes. This is a shocking fact, but it is fact. The Arabs come to the Court and say, "look, look, we have this piece of paper that says it's our land." And the Court says, "My goodness, let's move the Jews out then."

I simplify here, but not by a lot.

We need a new court, with justices who are experts in land law and can examine the documents carefully to determine their validity and applicability. (Understand, these are Jordanian document from before 1967, which raises other questions.)

There is reason to be highly dubious about the documents that were presented in this instance.

What is more, it is my understanding that even if the documents were judged to be valid, they didn't apply to every square meter of the land on the mountain, but rather to small sections. It was the Court that made the determination to apply the ruling across the board.

Let me add another shocking fact here: The land registry for Judea and Samaria is not open to Jews. This has to change.

3) Then there is the fact that the Palestinian Arabs were assisted – I would venture to say recruited for the cause – by Yesh Din, an Israeli NGO that is not only pro-Palestinian Arab, it is actually a foreign agent, as are several other similar NGOs. I say this because they receive the majority of their funds from foreign governments, primarily European governments and the EU. They should not be allowed to approach the Court. In the US, they would not be permitted to do so.

This situation must change. We now have a law that requires transparency in funding, but it does not go far enough. Adjustments in the legislation are critically important.

4) There is the over-riding question of who controls this country – the Court or the Knesset. If the Court can overturn legislation passed by the Knesset (which can happen if a foreign-funded NGO brings a challenge to the legislation before the Court), we have a problem. This is being discussed.
The Regulation Law, designed to protect Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, is very likely to pass this coming week. But then, how long will it be in force before the Court throws it out?

When next I write I will discuss in more detail the announcement made in response to the Court ruling:

1) That 3,000 more units would be built in Judea and Samaria, and

2) That a new yishuv – Jewish community – would be built on State land in Judea/Samaria for the relocation of the residents of Amona, who are currently in temporary quarters in nearby Ofra. This represents the first time in many years that there will be a new community, and you can be certain we're going to hear plenty about this. A committee to oversee this is being formed. This would mitigate the situation for those residents to some degree but not sufficiently.

What happens, of course, is that the sort of outrage we have confronted stiffens our backs.

May we have the strength and determination we require.

©2017 Arlene from Israel | arlene@arlenefromisrael.info

Editor's Note: Wednesday February 01, 2017

Corrections & Clarifications: The following article published in the Feburay 01, 2017 Democracy Under Attack Newsletter incorrectly identified the source as NPR, author Jessica Taylor. The correct source is FIXTHISNATION.COM with the FTN Staff as the author.&n bsp;

Trump's Immigration Ban Based on Obama Law

FTN Staff

fixthisnation.com, February 01, 2017

From the way New Yorkers behaved over the weekend at JFK Airport, you would think that President Donald Trump had rounded up 3 million American Muslims into a collection of brutal concentration camps. This was pretty much how the media portrayed it.

But despite an admittedly rocky start to Trump's executive order barring immigration from several terrorism havens, the truth is that this order was largely based on legislation already signed by…President Barack Obama.

Much like Obama never gets the reputation of Deporter-in-Chief outside Hispanic activist circles, the media is not mentioning that he signed a law in 2015 restricting immigration from the very same countries included in Trump's Friday order. Over objections from the ACLU, President Obama signed the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act.

The U.S. Visa Waiver Program allows people from nearly 40 countries around the world to enter the United States without a visa as long as the visit is scheduled for less than 90 days. In the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, President Obama signed legislation that eliminated that special privilege for anyone who had visited Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Sudan for the past five years. Two months later, the Obama administration added three more countries to the list: Libya, Yemen, and Somalia. Add them all up and what do you get? The very same countries on Trump's immigration ban. - Oh, but he just picked countries where he didn't have any business ties, don't you know?

Obama supporters will point out ...

Read more

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Leading Canadian Paper: "Settlements" are Legal

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FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT MORTON A. KLEIN 212-481-1500
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NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 2, 2017

By Jason Reiskind

Canada's current position on Israeli "settlements" is that they are illegal because they violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, specifically Paragraph 6 which states: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." The time has come for Canada to change our position to align with Canadian basic values and, equally important, with international law.

Our own Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins with "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize… the rule of law." A key element of the rule is equality before and under the law. To comply, it follows that Canada must apply Article 49 equally to all states. But historically we have not. For example, we accepted the massive Soviet settlement of Russian citizens into the Baltic territories after the Second World War and even discouraged those states from removing the settlers when they renewed their independence in the 1990s. As other examples, Canada has accepted Turkey's settlement of Turkish farmers into Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, and we've been conspicuously silent on the vast Chinese settlement of occupied Tibet.

The UN Charter, Article 1, states that a key UN purpose shall be "To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights … of peoples…." In other words, Article 49 must be applied uniformly. Recently, the eminent legal scholar Prof. Eugene Kontorovich elaborated in detail how blatantly inconsistent was the application of Article 49 by numerous states. He also concluded that state practice allows populations to move into occupied areas.

Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967 provided that a post-1967 peace settlement would give Israel enlarged, "… secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force." This wording was used specifically as an agreed framework to deter further attempts at Israel's destruction.

For Canada to be faithful to the principle of the rule of law, we must revisit our long-standing position on the Israeli "settlements."

At the very least, we can no longer state that Article 49 applies to Jews living in and moving to the ancient Hebrew city of Hebron, the ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem or the Jewish population blocs around Jerusalem.

Jews lived in Hebron for thousands of years. It was sacred to them because of their faith-based belief that the founders of Judaism are buried there. In 1929, a genocide occurred. The entire Jewish population was attacked and either killed or scattered. For Canada now to take the position that Jews cannot live in Hebron is to legitimize the 1929 genocide, a position that is contrary to fundamental international law.

Likewise, Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem, latterly in its Jewish Quarter, over much of two millennia. Jordan, on conquering the walled city in 1948 shortly after Israel declared its independence, killed or displaced every single Jew. For Canada now to prohibit Jewish resettlement is to support a grave form of racial discrimination, prohibited by international law.

In 1948 and 1967, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and other Arab States organized a campaign to destroy Israel. On May 27, 1967, Egyptian President Nasser publicly issued the following threat: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."

Israel successfully defended itself. To discourage another try, defeated aggressor states are traditionally punished by a transfer of territory. Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967 provided that a post-1967 peace settlement would give Israel enlarged, "… secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force." This wording was used specifically as an agreed framework to deter further attempts at Israel's destruction. For Canada to take a position in 2017 denying housing of Jews in population blocs around Jerusalem as part of the envisaged defensible borders plan would reward aggression, which is contrary to international law.

Some rules of customary international law are so fundamental they can never be overridden, not by states, nor by courts, nor by institutions. These rules are termed "jus cogens." They include prohibitions against genocide, racial discrimination and aggression. These fundamental elements of international law do not permit any country or institution (not even the UN Security Council) to interpret Article 49 in the maladroit manner set out above. The Nuremberg trials confirmed that "following Nazi orders and laws" was not a defence because such statutes were contrary to the natural and generally accepted fundamental rules against murder, extermination and deportation.

Canadian policy must be very considered in its definitions of "Israeli settlements," "occupied territory" and "Palestinian territory," both in general and specifically in relation to the recent Security Council Resolution 2334, which labeled the settlements "illegal," if at the same time Canada does not apply the label to similar practices elsewhere. Canada can and should set an example for other democracies to follow.

This article was published by the National Post and may be found here.

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