To watch these debates between two sides that speak a foreign language to each other. The Peace Now camp links their success to the apparatus of the legal and legislative tools of the nation state. The rule of law and all the resources that a democracy offers to dissent within the system. And they have been remarkably successful. And part of that reason is funding. The legal system also appears to have a marked liberal democratic bias. The settlers, the colonists are really the last of the Jewish pioneers. Their torment is living with the identity of Zionism within the context of religious observance, essentially their relation to the Torah, often diametrically opposed to the unpredictablity and seeming incoherence of state policy. Surprisingly, the language of the Judea and Samarians as they call themselves, is more poetic and lyrical than the peacenik camp; effectively the argument of left and right, our desire for categories and labels does not apply to the Torah whereas the activists are engaging in legalese, logic, appeals to universal humanist values and mathematical division of land akin to regulating international disputes through a notarial office with a back-room of land surveyors and bean counters.
Read More:http://destination-yisrael.biblesearchers.com/destination-yisrael/2011/09/migron-the-symbol-of-israeli-zionism-and-jewish-patriotism.html ---Migron spokesman Itai Chamo argued that the issue of Migron is not so clear-cut. The settlement outpost was early laid out in 64 land lots. Fifty seven of these lots were abandoned property. There others were purchased from Palestinian owners. There were only four lots with questionable claims of Palestinian ownership. According to Chamo, of the three homes in dispute, two are located on property that were purchased and have legal title to the land, and the third property was located on abandoned land. In 2009 the case against the four lots in the outpost settlement was filed a case regarding the status of the land before a Tel Aviv court. ---
Theistic arguments that god is in everything besides land. Spiritually, land in the context of waiting for the redemption, the messiah is a means of security, invoking the Torah as land serving only to protect the people, but the State itself not intrinsic to redemption. It remains to be seen how this will unfold. But to date, logic, reason and universal values behind land for peace have been an abject failure. Egyptian bunkers in Sinai, weapons traffic to Gaza, Missiles in the south of Israel have shown that socialism limp hand is no match for the strong arm of the Lord in protecting his people. The peace activists win all the P.R. battles. Hands down. But the settlers, bricks, mortar, shovel in hand and the saga of expulsion from Gush Katif, the violence in Amona, are probably correct in their assumptions. The rabbi’s used to defend the army in the expulsions, “they are only doing their job,” was the refrain, but the German “raus!” and Eichmann’s “I was only following orders” is starting ring a note of dissonance.
Read More:http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=265433 ---That then-Opposition head Tzipi Livni (recently defeated in her party primary), like Oppenheimer, also is against rebuilding Migron, since she says it is immoral to move families to a new location only to evacuate them in a future peace deal with the Palestinians, confirms this very sad truth. On the surface it might seem that Livni is the ultimate humanitarian whose only concern minimizing the trauma suffered by these loyal Israeli citizens. But if that were the case, she would have been an adamant opponent of the near-sighted 2005 Gaza expulsion, in which some families who had arrived in Gaza after being kicked out of Yamit, were also forced to move a second time around.---Image of Gush Katif Expulsion.
( see link at end)…The government recently decided to back the High Court of Justice ruling to evacuate the community of Migron by August 1, 2012. Per an agreement facilitated between Minister Bennie Begin and the residents of Migron, the community will be re-located just 2 km. away from its current site. The Court’s rationale for tearing down a Jewish community over the so-called Green Line only to rebuild it almost literally just down the road is that the land on which Migron stands is, according to a 2006 petition filed by Peace Now, privately owned Arab land.
The ruling ignores the fact that Migron was established with government support to the tune of NIS 4.3 million, provided by the Housing Ministry a decade ago. The ruling also ignores that according to Migron residents, they have yet to see reliable evidence in court that Arabs own the land.
Gidon Rosenfeld, who lives with his family in Migron, says “the area was abandoned State Land and therefore it should be permissible for the residents to remain in their homes.” Read More:http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=265433
ADDENDUM:
Not averse to including himself in the blame game he once told an outraged Jewish gathering that Jewish financiers like him contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism as they gave grist to the mill of the old canard that Jews rule the world by proxy.
His biographer Michael Kaufmann says in his book “The Messianic Millionaire” that the Jewish identity of George Soros does not express itself “in a sense of tribal loyalty that would have led him to support Israel”. Read More:http://www.alshindagah.com/Shindagah75/whos_afraid_of_george_soros.htm
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It has emerged, thanks to investigative reporting in the Washington Times, that J Street had received substantial support from financier George Soros. Soros is widely regarded as intensely opposed to Israeli government policies and is a known supporter of many of the organizations opposed to Israel’s government. The Times article cited Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s director, in a New York Post op-ed before the J Street controversy broke:
“In the Middle East, for example, [Soros] Open Society Institute exclusively supports advocacy groups that campaign internationally to undermine the elected governments of Israel — organizations such as Adalah, Peace Now, Breaking the Silence, Gisha and Yesh Din.” (Adalah is opposed to Israel’s very existence, incidentally).
According to the Washington Post, which has largely avoided the issue, the source of the Washington Times’ information was J Street’s tax records:
“The liberal group’s Web site suggested that J Street had received no funding from George Soros, the wealthy philanthropist who serves as a bete noire for many conservatives. It also said that donors were “primarily individual Jewish Americans” and that it “accepts no funding from foreign governments or from foreign organizations.”
“But confidential tax records mistakenly made public by the Internal Revenue Service seemed to undermine those characterizations – causing a major public relations problem for the fledgling group, which has enjoyed regular access to the White House and senior Obama administration officials.” Read More:http://cifwatch.com/tag/george-soros/
…It is, apparently, technically correct that Soros was not one of the founders. However, once the organization was founded, the tax records revealed that J Street received massive funding from the Soros family and associates – a small matter that Ben-Ami neglected to point out, under cover of the technicality that Soros was not one of the initial funders of the organization:
“Tax forms obtained by The Washington Times reveal that Mr. Soros and his two children, Jonathan and Andrea Soros, contributed a total $245,000 to J Street from one Manhattan address in New York during the fiscal year from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.” ( ibid.)
“Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street’s executive director, said in an interview that the $245,000 was part of a $750,000 gift from the Soros family to his organization made over three years. Mr. Ben Ami also said that in this same period he had raised $11 million for J Street and its political action committee.” ( ibid.)
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