Jews must stop being afraid to live in their own land

Choni Davidowitz, Johannesburg

This headline appeared in your issue last week, and with all due respect to these (and, I’m sure many more) “knowledgeable” peace experts, I strongly submit that they have the issue of occupation “back to front”.

While everyone agrees that the 50-year occupation since the Six Day War must end, there is just one change that needs to be made. Instead of Jews occupying Arab land, there must be an immediate end to Arabs occupying Jewish land. No more must Jews fear to live in the biblical heartland of Eretz Yisrael.

The time has come for Jews to stop being afraid to live in their own land and this can only be done by ending the occupation… the occupation of Arabs on Jewish land!

Our Father in Heaven restored His gift of all of Israel 50 years ago. The city of Jerusalem was united. All lands west of the Jordan – which contains 93 per cent of the places mentioned in the Bible – were liberated. Syria was defeated and the Golan was returned.

What Israel needed to do at that exact moment was to establish full Israeli law over every inch of those holy lands. Instead, we let the Arabs grow and prosper and occupy more and more land each year.

The Arab occupying force gained strength, became more violent and were “thorns in our sides and pins in our eyes”. The time has come for all this to end.

I ask our “Group of 20” and others, why they consider it morally acceptable for hundreds of thousands of Jews (in the “settlements of Judea and Samaria”) to be offered financial inducements to stop occupying Arab land, and evacuate their homes, schools, and businesses, and hand the land over to Arabs, yet they consider it morally reprehensible to offer financial inducements to Arabs in Judea and Samaria to evacuate their homes, and stop occupying Jewish land.

As we celebrate 50 years since the Six Day War, with all the wonderful things that came with it, the time has come to correct one major mistake: We do indeed need to end the occupation of all Jewish land by Arabs.

As for making peace with the Ishmaelites: This is strictly forbidden by our Torah. “Be most careful not to make a treaty with the people who live in the land where you are coming, since they can be a fatal trap for you (Ex 34: 12-12).