Suddenly, it has become less pleasant for us to talk about the Land of Israel. Suddenly, we feel uncomfortable being the "oddballs" again from Naomi Shemer's song, who heard in their beds at night "the loud sound of a big bell ringing: The Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel." The discourse around the American obsession to establish here, in the heart of the country, a Palestinian state focuses entirely on security, on Hamastan B, on the danger of rockets, on the Palestinian Authority turning on Israel, on the evil and wickedness lurking five minutes from Kfar Saba and seven minutes from Netanya; on the existential dangers that such a state would bring upon us.
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Much nonsense has been spewed over the question of whether, when, and under what conditions this would be possible despite everything. The subtext of all this is, simply put: If we become convinced that we could live here in peace and that conditions could be created that will give us guaranteed security, a Palestinian state in the West Bank would then become an acceptable thing; we will agree to it.
Not a word about the Land of Israel, about our connection to the regions of the country that are the homeland, the cradle of Jewish history and identity. Not a word about the Bible, about our mandate over the Land of Israel, or about heritage and historical justice. We even refrain from mentioning the half million Jews currently living in the West Bank. There is no longer an "Israeli option." The discourse of rights seems to have been erased and our language has become poor and limited, hesitant and apologetic: Only the language of security has prevailed in our discourse.
It may be that now, after the massacre perpetrated by the new Nazis in Gaza, it is easier to make our case to the world if we focus on security matters. Perhaps speaking about rights would be a bit too sentimental, disconnected, archaic, and outdated – but man does not live by security alone in the Land of Israel. That is not our whole story here. We can live in security in other places around the world.
Our basic story here, which precedes security, is a different one: Even before this country became a refuge for the refugees of pogroms, hatred, and the Holocaust, it was a land of destiny. We may be here today by virtue of power, but even before that – by virtue of the power of rights. Security is vital beyond anything, but it is only a tool to realize the right to live precisely here, and the "precisely here" is not limited only to the obvious, to the native place. It is far broader and deeper than the native bond that exists anywhere else in the world. It goes far beyond "I was born here, my children were born here."
Nearly five decades ago, much as today, a group of famous generals, retired army men, categorically argued that the settlements in Judea and Samaria have no security value at all. The following day, the Histadrut Labor Federation's mouthpiece, "Davar", published the response of Cpl. (Ret.) Naomi Sapir, military ID number 250567. Sapir, better known as Naomi Shemer, put the generals in their place:
"Kvutzat Kinneret (Shemer's birthplace) has no security value, only Zionist value," the poet noted. "When young Ben-Zion Israeli arrived there with his two comrades one morning on the second day of Cheshvan a long time ago, he did not do so for security reasons, only Zionist reasons. Luckily, there was no former general and his security indoctrination to come after them. He would surely have expelled all three, and then we might never have an IDF at all or former generals who could write such letters." Hadera, Ein Harod, Tel Adashim, and Karkur have no security value, only Zionist value," Cpl. Shemer emphasized, "and the same could be said on Alon Moreh, Ariel, and Kfar Etzion."
"The fundamental principle" in which Shemer believed, and which is now so conspicuously absent from the discourse on the Palestinian state, is that the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel. "An abstract principle," as she defined it, "but always true, regardless of conditions or temporary control of territories, regardless of the nature of the transient government, or how many Jews live at any given moment in the Land of Israel "(Shemer to "Maariv", December 1975).
And this, if you will, is the unwritten covenant between the State of Israel and the Land of Israel, the one that began with "Go forth from your land...to the land that I will show you", through the "If I forget thee O Jerusalem" and up to "Hatikvah", the 2000-year-old hope. Even the League of Nations recognized this Jewish genetic link to the land some 100 years ago; the "historical connection of the Jewish people to Palestine," their "right to recreate their national home in that country" and the Jewish right "to settle at any point in Western Palestine, between the Jordan and the sea."
All the uproar about the Palestinian state now lacks this foundation. We have been inundated with debates about the pros and cons of such an entity, and there are lengthy reports of the peace with Saudi Arabia being just around the corner if only we would agree to such a state, but we have refrained from discussing one thing: Our roots and rights here.
The Palestinians, on the other hand, deal only with their rights. They are not ashamed to kiss "the clumps of their soil", to endlessly lie about their past here, to rewrite and falsify history, to hate us and kill us, and in the face of these.
Security is important, but it is not the be-all and end-all. One cannot base an internationally legitimate claim on Hebron, or even on the Gaza border communities and Sderot and Manara and Avivim, and not even Beersheba without the forefathers and foremothers and the Temple Mount and the City of David; without Rachel's Tomb on the way to Efrat, and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the angels ascending and descending on Jacob's Ladder in Beit El's dream.
The disciples of the Vilna Gaon who immigrated to the Land of Israel in the early 19th century, and the Yemenite Jews who came to the Kfar Hashiloah at the end of that century, did not come here because it was safe here, but despite the fact that it was less safe here. The pioneers who established Petach Tikva – "a small Jewish settlement amidst large Arab villages, eastward and northward and southward," as Moshe Smilansky described it in its early days – did not deal with Petach Tikva's contribution to military security. David Ben-Gurion, too, did not deal with this when he insisted on continuing to hold remote settlements in the Jerusalem hills, the Negev, and the western Galilee.
National security relies not only on security-military components. Security is a tool intended to serve Jewish existence, of which settlement throughout the Land of Israel is one of the most distinct expressions. But today, the discourse of rights has been put into cold storage, and we deal only with the quasi-technical question of how to defend our existence. We don't ask, "What is it that we are fighting over to exist precisely here?"
To return to dealing with this and to once against start a discourse of rights, there is a need for national and Zionist awareness; there is a need for a commitment that stems from destiny and rights, and not only from being native to the land and not only because we need security. After all, our personal-national past does not span only over the days of our lives; the deeper foundation, the layer of roots, is super-relevant to the discussion on the Palestinian state. We have no reason to be ashamed of it. Quite the contrary.
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