Israel, Be Proactive Instead of Reactive

I read the JPost article this morning in which Likud MK Danny Danon proposes that Israel immediately annex Judea and Samaria.

The campaign begins on Facebook (of course).

Danon said, “The campaign will call for the Israeli government to respond to the Palestinians’unilateral step by taking a Zionist unilateral action of annexing the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria,” Danon said.

Jpost reported that "Support for such a move is growing as the Palestinians’ September 20 initiative comes closer. More than half the Likud faction has endorsed the idea, including ministers Gilad Erdan, Yisrael Katz, Moshe Kahlon, and Yuli Edelstein."

Only last month, I attended an Israeli Initiative - Sovereignty for Judea and Samaria Conference in Hebron, the first capital of a united Jewish people under King David. (http://voices-magazine.blogspot.com/2011/08/israeli-initiative-for-judea-and.html)

The program, sponsored by Women in Green, featured Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely, whose first comment was, "Don't say 'annex.' We annex something that doesn't belong to us." Judea and Samaria have belonged to the Jewish people since they were promised to our Patriarch Abraham, since they were conquered by command of G-d through Moses' successor Joshua.

The term is to extend sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.

But the campaign, wonderful as it is, is not the point of this blog.

The campaign is terrific. It should have been launched 44 years ago.

For 44 years, our government has been so frightened. "Oy, let's not make waves in Judea and Samaria, because the nations of the world will condemn us." They condemn us anything. And because we are afraid to say, "This is ours," the world says, "This is not yours."

"Let's not build too much (hopefully not at all) in Judea and Samaria, because we don't want to get Peace Now up in arms." They're always up in arms. And while we're not building, the Arabs are building more and more each day. We're afraid to create facts on the ground. Well, facts on the ground is the Arabs' middle name, plus their first and their last.

So, while the Israeli government has been shivering in our Judean and Samarian boots and even preventing the thriving Zionistic towns of Judea and Samaria from growing and expanding, the Arabs who have moved next to our towns (for work and the side benefits of successful Jewish settlement), have grown unchecked.

Forty-four years ago, the government should have said, "Our Biblical homeland has been returned to us. We are finally a complete nation (or almost - we just need Jews from around the world to come home, and then we need to expand into our G-d given territory of today's Jordan).

Okay, we didn't do it 44 years ago. So, 30 years ago, we should have stood up and said, "Eretz Yisrael is the State of Israel."

All right, no tears over the past. Twenty years ago, our leaders should have said, "All of Israel from the Lebanon and the Bashan to the lands of Reuben, Gad and half of Menashe, down to the Negev are one."

That didn't happen.

And so now, like every other moment in modern Jewish history, the government of Israel is reacting after an Arab event.

The Arabs have been working for years on putting into place a mechanism that will become their nation - creating an economy (okay, it's based on the dole, but it's got its system in place), creating a health care system, creating an educational and recreational system (okay, it uses terrorists and shahids as role models, but it's got a system).

The Arabs have been walking steadily forward, steadily onward and the Israeli government and its officials have just been saying, "Nach, it's not going to happen. Vorry nisht."

And then suddenly when they realized, hm, this seems like maybe it is going to happen, the government began working trying to talk nations into rejecting the Palestinian Authority's bid for Statehood in September 2011. Why should they reject Palestine? I can hear them now, "O Let's okay, Palestine and we've got another monkey off our backs. Yesh!!" (Okay, not Yesh, but whatever their equivalent to Yesh is.)

So, Danon and friends think that Facebook is going to launch an adoption of Greater Israel (not the Greatest, because Jewish Gaza is gone right now) by September? I don't really think they do. But I think they just don't want to sit back and tell their grandchildren that they did nothing when the State of Israel was threatened with dismemberment, G-d forbid.

O' Israel, if only you believed that Hashem was with you, you would do all those things that would insure a peaceful, secure, prosperous future.

O' Mr. Prime Minister, Knesset Members, leaders of Israel, if only you understood that G-d wants to help you and stand with you, then you would be proactive for the benefit of the nation of Israel. You would include Judea and Samaria in Israel's official sovereignty. You would build the entire nation from north to south, east to west. You would build schools and yeshivot and mikvaot and playgrounds and homes, homes, homes. You would encourage business and entrepreneurship and help every person make a decent wage. You would allow new technologies to thrive and change the country's future for the better. You would side with the people against monopolies and price gougers, and you would do what was right in the eyes of G-d.