President Joe Biden has sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In his public comments, Biden broke all international protocols and told Netanyahu how to run Israel's internal affairs.

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Israel has a severely flawed Supreme Court that rules autocratically and reverses whatever Knesset decisions it chooses. Netanyahu's government is trying to democratize the judicial system. But because the Left controls the Israeli and American media, news outlets in both countries have been reporting on the judicial reforms as if they were a fascist power grab.

Biden seems to agree. So, he weighed in, saying he has been Netanyahu's friend for 40 years and friends sometimes need to be straightforward with each other.

"Like many strong supporters of Israel, I'm very concerned. I'm concerned that they get this straight. They cannot continue down this road. I've sort of made that clear," the president said.

Bibi responded, "I have known President Biden for over 40 years, and I appreciate his longstanding commitment to Israel. The alliance between Israel and the United States is unbreakable and always overcomes the occasional disagreements between us."

However, he added, "Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends."

Bibi was being diplomatic. But imagine if Bibi had responded this way:

"Dear Joe, we have known each other for 40 years and I value our friendship. I was rather surprised that you recently interfered with Israel's internal affairs, telling us how to preserve our democracy. We are simply trying to get things balanced after 30 years of judicial tyranny.

"Joe, you just named a woman who cannot define what a woman is to your Supreme Court. In your system, all you had to do was nominate her and have the Senate – controlled by your party – fall into line and confirm her.

"By contrast, in our country right now, the people's elected representatives do not control the judicial selection process. Rather, the justices self-perpetuate and control the Supreme Court as a closed shop. If you had the self-perpetuating system we are trying to fix, then Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett would add or veto new justices to your Court. Your nominee never would have gotten to first base.

"But Joe, I need to say a bit more, because friends sometimes need to be honest with friends for their own good. I'm very concerned, Joe, about what's going on in America. Your country cannot continue down this road. Since you feel comfortable telling us how to run our country, here are a few of my concerns.

"Gaza is run by Hamas on our southwest border. Lebanon and Hezbollah are on our northwest border. Syria is next door. Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority are on our eastern border. So, we control our borders, because we have to. I have been reading about millions of people illegally crossing your southern border. We can advise you on how to prevent that.

"I also understand, Joe, that your schools teach young children about transgenderism, and you even have cross-dressers read books to them. Although our society does not discriminate based on gender, our school curricula differ. Our parents do not feel they have to scream at school board meetings to protect their children. Our schools and textbooks are not imbued with critical race theory and intersectionalism.

"Not that your schools are any of our business, Joe, but our kids come out reading and writing, schooled in math and technology, knowing their history and prepared for great things.

"Our population of nine million is about the size of New York City. Thanks to our educational system, that small population has seen our kids grow up to create or co-create an extraordinary range of high-tech marvels. All without transgender studies.

"Joe, we hear about Saturday nights in Chicago and skyrocketing crime in your inner cities. We certainly have some crime here too, but our cities are quite safe. We have challenges in south Tel Aviv, where a few illegal migrants managed to get in. We took steps to take back those streets, but our Supreme Court stopped us, for now. Even so, we can advise you there too.

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"Of course, we have to deal with occasional Arab Muslim terrorism. But we have safe streets and safe public transportation. Our citizens do not push others off platforms into oncoming trains. We do not have non-terrorists committing mass shootings at schools or shopping malls. It's not as though there are no guns in Israel, Joe. We have plenty of guns. After all, we have Arab Muslim terrorists to deal with. It's just that we do not use our guns on each other.

"Maybe this is because we have better programs for treating the mentally ill. Maybe it's because our society is more traditional, with greater respect for parents and authority.

"Your problem with urban crime is really none of my business, Joe. But since we are such good friends sharing concerns, I'm concerned for your country. I'm concerned that you get this right. You cannot continue on this road.

"I deal with many issues, Joe, like assuring that trains do not derail, our mothers have adequate access to baby formula, we extract all energy resources available to us and our banking system is competently regulated – but I presume you already have these things under control. It's the easy stuff.

"Thanks again for offering your good advice on how Israel should govern itself. I hope I have reciprocated collegially. That's what friends are for.

"Bibi."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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It seems that every free and democratic vote that results in a victory for conservatives marks the "death of democracy." If you Google "death of democracy in America," you get 54,800,000 results. No social media "influencer" can match that. Among the first 10 results is Al Jazeera's prediction of doom: "Unless that simple, yet hard realization is embraced by folks now, America's dark days will only become dimmer."

Meanwhile, a Google search for "death of democracy in Israel" is more reassuring, returning only 29,500,000 results. At the top of the list? Yes, Al Jazeera: "Many left-wing Israelis are concerned that anti-democratic legislation is pushing Israel towards fascism." It's fortunate that Qatar's state-owned mouthpiece is there to carry the torch of civilization. Of course, in Qatar, alcohol consumption is punishable by 40 whippings. Proselytizing? Ten years in prison. No Pride Parades, naturally. And then there is stoning.

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Yes, Israel's democracy differs from the American system. But Israel is not America and that may not be so bad. In fact, not only Israel's but most European democracies differ from the American system. For example, the British monarch is the supreme governor of the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury is designated by the reigning monarch on the advice of the prime minister. Measures passed by the General Synod of the Church of England, the church's legislative body, must be approved by Parliament. Does that entanglement of religion and state, so different from America's strict separation, make England a theocracy?

Like the UK, Israel enjoys a robust Western democratic structure while maintaining a historic bond with the religious identity that underlies its existence. There is a Chief Rabbinate, a Ministry of Religion and other symbols of a Jewish country. However, Israel's core commitment to democracy has never has been challenged, with even Labor Party secularists like David Ben-Gurion honoring the country's unique cultural and religious heritage.

Israel has held five national elections in slightly more than three years, proving that democracy is thriving. Moreover, Israel's elections are conducted differently from those in America. Only a few groups are permitted to vote by mail: Diplomats posted abroad, soldiers stationed away from home, sailors, women in shelters, prisoners and patients confined to hospitals and nursing homes. Election day is only one day, not a month or a fortnight. There is no ballot harvesting and no drop boxes. Voting is by paper ballot and results are tallied manually.

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Netzach Yisrael lo Y'shaker v'lo Yinachem (I Samuel 15:29) – The eternity of the Jewish People cannot be extinguished because Jews are not an individual but a People of Destiny.

Conservatives throughout the world already had given up on Amnesty International, but many on the Left continued harboring a belief that AI is a fair broker with a focus on advocating impartially for justice, refugees' and immigrants' rights, and against capital punishment. Few saw it as anti-Semitic.

y calling Israel "apartheid" for inclining towards a Jewishly ethnic, Judaically religious, and Hebraically phonic society in the Land of the Bible, Amnesty International has laid out is cards. It no longer can pose as a fair broker. That helps Israel. It defamed the only Western democracy in the Middle East, even as Ra'am, an all-Arab Muslim political party, sits in the governing coalition, advocates successfully and vigorously for Arab Muslims' interests in expanding their footprint in the Negev, and even wins for Israel's Arab Muslim population unprecedented millions of shekels in budgetary set-asides. Ra'am even controls the four deciding votes that determine every critical national policy the Knesset decides from economic priorities to confronting COVID-19 to defining the role of the Chief Rabbinate in conversions to Judaism.

This is apartheid? A system of governance that sees Arab Muslims serving as judges on consequential judicial benches as high as the supreme court? Where monthly stipends are sent to Jews to encourage more babies and the same also are sent to Arab Muslims to foster their procreation? Where street displays invariably include Arabic signage? Where Arab Muslim graduate students receive stipends and fellowships to attend graduate programs at Israeli universities and where Arab Muslims also are faculty?

It is perfectly reasonable, amid the comity of nations, that Israel was conceived to harbor a Jewish identity and majority. Countries have national identities, often with racial overlays. No European country has had a black head of government or state. Japan and China are manifestly Japanese-majority and Chinese-majority respectively. Article 2 of France's Constitution sets French as the country's official language. Germany's Administrative Procedure Act §23 establishes German as their official administrative language. French language laws predominate in Quebec. Turkey bans Kurdish as a language of instruction in schools.

The United Kingdom officially declares Christianity its official religion and the Church of England its state church. Sunni Islam is the only permitted religion in Saudi Arabia.

So why pick on Israel?

If Amnesty International's end game is to eradicate the one Jewish country, whose 1948 birth they deem to have been conceived in Original Sin, they have arrived too late. If their goal is to advance a "two-state solution," even that train has left the station. The future of Judea and Samaria is determined irreversibly, even though European diplomats, the Biden administration, and even Israel's partly governing Meretz and Labor parties have not received the memo. With 800,000 Jews now staked and deeply rooted in East Jerusalem and throughout the rest of Judea and Samaria, there will be no "two-state" anything.

Israel barely managed to uproot and resettle 8,600 Jews she evicted from Gush Katif in 2005. A hundred times that many tomorrows? No amount of diplomacy, strategizing, media bullying, or negotiating can dislocate nearly a million Jewish homeowners and long-term lessees and find new homes for them in a country the size of New Jersey, the size Israel would be without Judea and Samaria. Amid Israel's present severe massive housing shortage, she barely can accommodate those hunting for residences.

Perhaps if the apartheid Palestinian Authority would allow Jews to buy homes there?

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America has experienced its versions of Israel's current NSO Pegasus spying scandal. I have been on defense teams in such cases where it was learned amid a criminal trial that the government had obtained important prosecutorial information by means of illegal fact gathering.

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In America, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution spells out the core requirement that evidentiary searches and seizures must be legally authorized in advance by a judge "upon probable cause." The police or other prosecutors ask a judge to approve a warrant. The warrant specifies a location to be searched and the specific object or person sought. Sometimes a judge may authorize wiretapping a telephone. In a different era, even bugging a telephone booth.

It was during just such a phone-booth wiretapping that the United States government, while investigating an Italian crime family, learned that a rabbi who had become famously aligned with one of their principals was in peril, targeted by an opposing Italian family. In other cases, other members of Jewish "underground" organizations who were in the fore of the fight for liberating Soviet Jewry, were bugged at home or in their cars as the FBI sought to prevent or, after the deed, prosecute bombings of Soviet buildings in New York and Washington, D.C.  Many of these incidents ultimately have become part of the law and lore of the 1970s Soviet Jewry movement.

In the Torah, we all know the story of how Eve induced a willing Adam to eat forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The rabbis of the Talmud debate whether that fruit was an etrog (citron), pomegranate, olive, fig, or date. Interestingly, none assumes an apple. That is how the Midrash approaches that narrative. However, American Constitutional jurisprudence proceeds along a different course:

If the government, with all its enormous prosecutorial powers, unlimited professional staffing and endless finances at its disposal, proceeds to obtain evidence illegally without first obtaining a proper search warrant authorized by a judicial magistrate, then not only is that tainted evidence stricken, but also any "fruit of the poisonous tree" is forbidden.

In other words, if perfectly legitimate new evidence next is uncovered – but only thanks to the guidance and hints offered by the tainted evidence that initially was obtained illegally – then that "perfectly legitimate" new evidence also is banned. As an example, if an illegal wiretap picks up a conversation that identifies where stolen loot is stashed away, and the police then obtain a perfectly legitimate warrant to search at that exact location for that exact contraband, then the stolen goods that ultimately are uncovered will be banned as evidence at trial. Yes, if those goods had been found independently from the illegal bugging, fine. But if the goods were uncovered only because of the lead that was obtained illegally, then the new evidence is "fruit of the poisonous tree" – and therefore likewise is deemed poison.

In cases ruined by the most notorious of police and government enforcement violations, even murder convictions are overturned in America when evidence critical to the conviction has been obtained illegally – even when there is no doubt by trial's end that the correct murderer has been convicted. American jurisprudence believes that, evil as it may be to turn a murderer loose, it is much greater an evil to countenance governmental abuse of its vast spying powers. Consequently, only such a severe remedy as a dismissal upon appeal can intimidate renegade prosecutors from repeating such abuses time and again. Only if they know their evidence will be stricken down will they be deterred from turning a free country into a police state over time.

Israel's citizens now are confronted by terrible news that has seen the most advanced of NSO Pegasus spyware allegedly used to investigate apparently innocent citizens. This really is outrageous, and "heads need to roll" at the highest echelons of law enforcement. NSO Pegasus investigatory tools, meant to protect from crime, never should be wielded against innocent civilians unless authorized by magisterial warrant.

If Pegasus spyware was used to gather evidence illegally against key witnesses in the Netanyahu trial, if key evidence was derived as fruit of the poisonous tree, this could have far-reaching implications on whether the trial can move forward. That now must be investigated – and a proper warrant is a good way to begin.

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It seems surprising that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's poll numbers remain static. Since mid-June, when he became the first person in twelve years to displace Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's head of government, Bennett certainly has led capably. Analysts reasonably may differ as to whether Bennett's leadership has been charismatic, historic, or just plain workmanlike, but any fair assessment is that he has proven at least adequate to lead the country.

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Hamas has not gotten notably more restless since the last conflagration in May. Nothing dramatic has unfolded with Hezbollah in the north. The Abraham Accords are on track. By all appearances, Bennett's meetings in America with President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken proceeded elegantly, despite – or perhaps because of – the unplanned confluence of timing with Biden's disastrous Afghanistan evacuation. So far, any new American consulate in Jerusalem has been forestalled while the House has passed HR 5323, voting 420-9 on September 23 to allocate one billion dollars replenishing Israel's Iron Dome missile battery system. More recently, on the other side of the international aisle, Bennett's meetings with Russian leader Vladimir Putin went exceptionally smoothly.

Israel's COVID numbers have stabilized, and Bennett has handled the pandemic effectively. The quilt-work, even mish-mosh, Knesset coalition of leftists (Meretz, Labor), rightists (Yamina, New Hope), center-left moderates (Yesh Atid, Blue and White), center-right Russians (Yisrael Beytenu), and even Arabs (Ra'am) has managed somehow to hold steady through its first nearly five months of quibbling and infighting, moderated by the respective parties' common focus on keeping Netanyahu out of power.

Against such a backdrop, one would have expected poll numbers for Yamina and Naftali Bennett to have risen by now if only a bit. He entered as a mystery: Could a yarmulka'd high-tech middling political presence with seven Knesset seats truly govern as prime minister? However, he now has established a level of competence and capability that should have increased his poll numbers at least some measure, even if not to profound heights. Yet, three recent national polls all have confirmed that Yamina remains stuck in a rut all its own.

In a recent poll for Channel 13 News, if elections were held now, Yamina would get six seats, one fewer than it has held since the March 23 election. Three weeks Channel 12 News found that Yamina precisely would maintain its seven seats. By contrast, Direct Polls just found that Yamina actually drops from the 6.21% it garnered on March 23 to 2.9 percent now, imperiling its very presence in the Knesset, where a 3.25%electoral threshold must be attained.

So why have Bennett's and Yamina's numbers remained stagnant? To understand this stasis, one must look back to why so many of Yamina's 273,836 voters cast their ballots as they did.

At least half of Bennett's voters, if not more, never believed he would coalesce with Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz, Merav Michaeli of Labour, and Mansour Abbas of Ra'am in a coalition built on sharing a prime ministership with Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid. Rather, they believed Bennett was firmly committed to a right-wing, religious coalition that would stick with Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, and Religious Zionist Party. They voted for him not to bring a moderate voice to the political right or center but to intensify right-wing pressure on Netanyahu and the Likud to adhere to campaign promises that concern the right. Remember: the very name of the party, "Yamina," means "To the Right."

That was – and remains – Bennett's primary appeal to his portion of the Israeli electorate: not as premiership material but as a gadfly to keep Netanyahu and Likud honest to their Jabotinsky-aligned campaign rhetoric and promises.

When Bennett jumped ship in June after proving unable to help cobble together 61 seats behind Netanyahu, he maintained that he was honoring a core promise he had made to his voters: no fifth election. And that was true. He had promised that, and he fulfilled that. But he also had promised that Yamina would act as the key no-compromise bolster to a right-wing government that would be unable this time to backtrack on core promises to that constituency. He failed to honor that iron-clad pledge. If politics is the art of the possible, his sketch work may have appealed to half his voters, but he has left the other half feeling not merely disappointed but deeply cheated, their votes stolen.

No matter that Bennett may govern competently and even may have won to his camp two or three new seats' worth of votes. In doing so, he permanently has lost the faith of at least as many who had trusted and relied upon him to guarantee a no-compromise right-wing government. That perfidy to those voters will not be forgotten.

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The excuse is given by the "Woke Left" that "We only are against Zionism, not against Jews. It' not antisemitism; it's only anti-Zionism."

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The response to that claim often gets into stratospheres of theory and politics that completely miss the point. It certainly is possible to oppose policies of the State of Israel without being anti-Jewish. Indeed, even strong Zionists often oppose discrete Israeli government decisions like the 2005 Gush Katif evacuation or the resistance to extend sovereignty over the regions of Judea and Samaria where 475,000 Jews now live permanently along with another 325,000 in east Jerusalem.

For decades, until then-Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu helped steer Israel towards free-market capitalism, many liberal Zionists opposed Israel's socialist economy. Others on the socialist side, who love Israel as deeply, oppose the economic shift towards encouraging outside venture capital and moving away from the kibbutz. It certainly is acceptable to love one's family, one's country, one's people – and still to criticize them. In America likewise, we find advocates on all sides who stand by their country but criticize the mismanagement of immigration at the southern border or during the Afghanistan evacuation.

What makes "anti-Zionism" different is that it does not aim at policy difference nor even at animus against political personalities but at delegitimizing a core component of the Judaic paradigm: the Jewish connection with the land.

Zionism, simply put, in its simplest and most basic essence, is the belief that a Jew has a special connection with the Land of Israel. The mountain in Jerusalem where the Temple of King Solomon was built – and then was rebuilt upon the return of the Babylonian Exiles – is known alternatively as Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount), Har HaMoriah (Mount Moriah), and Har Tzion (Mount Zion). Not unlike tens of millions of Bible-loving Christian Zionists, the decided majority of Jews throughout history have harbored a unique emotional connection to the Land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.

Italian-Americans get that. That is why so many commercials to visit Rome and Florence and Milan tout Perillo Tours of Italy, not Lipshitz-Goldstein Tours. It is the reason that many Irish Americans try to visit the "Old Sod." For Jews everywhere in the world, Israel is like a "Pesach Seder" or a "Thanksgiving Day" country: You may not love everyone at the dinner table, but you would have it no other way because they all are family.

To define oneself as "anti-Zionist" is the same as self-identifying as "anti-Kosher Food." Certainly, a person is welcome to eat all the ham, pork, and bacon she likes. No one expects others to be kosher nor even to prefer soaked-and-salted meat. But to be "anti-kosher"? What would that be all about? All because you are not kosher, why be "anti" someone else living a more traditionally authentic Jewish life?

Ultimately, that is what "anti-Zionism" is. Instead of visiting or residing in Israel, one is welcome to prefer a vacation in Saudi Arabia – and please don't forget to bring home some sand for the kids. No one has to like people who write from right to left, who have emergency medical vehicles with red Stars of David instead of red crescents or red crosses painted on the ambulances. But to be "anti-Zionist?" That's like being anti-kosher. Anti-matzo. Anti-Hava Nagila. Because, at the bottom, Zionism actually is a core part of the very definition of a Jew.

That is why "anti-Zionism" always is pure antisemitism. No one reasonably denies the Italian love for Venice, the French love for Paris, the British love for London, or the Spanish love for Barcelona. Even amid the COVID pandemic, expatriates' hearts and minds remain fixed on lands of heritage. To deny only Jews that simple human yearning shared by all others is to manifest something much deeper than a mere disagreement over where ice cream should be sold or fictional works should be translated. It is to be an antisemite.

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There was quite a brouhaha last week when US Vice President Kamala Harris appeared at George Mason University, speaking to students about political events. During a subsequent Q&A, a college student majoring in political science, who described herself as part-Iranian, part-Yemeni, defamed Israel by alleging Jewish "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians from the land.

These extremist vilifications of Israel are part of a regular mantra repeated on the political Left, especially at liberal American university campuses.

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To the surprise and deep disappointment of Israel supporters, however, Harris opted for an accommodating and genteel rhetorical parry: "Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth should not be suppressed."

That vanilla response set off a social media storm, as Jewish voices raced in to articulate their dismay that Harris had missed the opportunity afforded by her political prominence to correct a vile lie. In the aftermath of the controversy, Harris' office came out with assurances that the vice president remains firm in her support for Israel.

Those of us who have followed Harris' political career in California, as I have from my vantage point as a Los Angeles and Orange County resident of more than thirty years, were far less surprised or concerned than others by her remarks. That kind of non-commital pablum simply is Kamala Harris's classic style of public commentary.

Repeatedly, she has stumbled badly on the widest imaginable range of issues because she either fails to prepare for her audiences or does not enjoy a range of depth on matters of public import to respond firmly and with conviction when surprised.

Upon being confronted with an unscripted challenge or a controversial question, Harris often reverts to one of two fallback retorts. She either says "Yes, I think we should have that conversation," or she employs the new mantra of the woke: "I think you should continue sharing your truth." As a result, failing to offer something more substantive, she repeatedly gets herself into major political trouble. Rest assured that this ballet will continue and become even more prevalent now that she has been thrust into a more public spotlight as vice president.

As one example, she shifted her public pronouncements and views on healthcare policy during the 2020 Democrat presidential primaries, suddenly moving to advocate "Medicare for All" because all her opponents were moving that way. Soon, Jake Tapper, a highly regarded CNN interviewer, was asking her whether she effectively was calling for an end to private health insurance in America. To which she replied: "Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on." A political firestorm rapidly ensued because American blue-collar union workers, a core constituency of the Democrats, have traded away years of salary increases and other valuable employee benefits just so that they can enjoy private health insurance.

When viewed in the light of her prior public embarrassments, Harris' most recent stumble when that student slandered Israel is easily recognized not as a substantive position shift towards moral equivocation but as a flawed debating technique that continually fails her.

She was not prepared, amid the collegiality of a relatively intimate setting of campus banter, for a blistering lie to be spoken against Israel.

That is Kamala Harris, whom most Americans really do not know as well as we Californians do. Expect more of the same on any number of topics over the next three years. It is a conversation she repeatedly must have because that is her Truth.

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There is good reason that the Arab world and the anti-Israel Left insist on using the mendacious and geographically inaccurate term "West Bank" when they refer to the regions of Judea and Samaria. Think about it.

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Imagine a human-rights movement built around a slogan of: Ban Arabs from Arabia! Such a slogan and movement would raise many questions, including but not limited to: Well, where else would Arabs have a right to be if not in Arabia? Who would have a greater claim to Arabia than Arabs?

Although freedom-loving Americans have endless reasons to squirm when contemplating Saudi Arabia, as do freedom-hating Americans, we all tend to agree that Arabs who want to live there have an assumed right to be there. Arabia for Arabs.

India for Indians. Russia for Russians. Mongolia for Mongolians – some outer, some inner. Austria for Austrians. Guatemala for Guatemalans. Cuba for Cubans. Sounds right.

Somewhere along the litany it would make sense to say: Yehuda for Yehudim – i.e., Judea for Jews. Even antisemites would find it hard to build slogans around: "Ban Jews from Judea! Jews Never Lived in Judea!" The Jews (Yehudim in Hebrew) of the tribe of Judah (Yehudah) gave the land of Yehudah (Judea) its name: Judea, as transliterated in the King James Version.

It always has been preposterous to call Judea and Samaria the "West Bank." Think of the most famous locations in the Bible: Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Beth El, Jericho, Shiloh, Shechem (Nablus), Galilee, Tekoa – all the places where the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, the kings and prophets walked and lived. Jesus and the Apostles, too. Their lives all centered in Judea and in Samaria. Those terms are all over the Bible, with more than 100 mentions just of "Samaria" in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible) and in the Christian Gospels.

In those days there was no Tel Aviv, no Herzliyah, no Haifa, no Netanya. Sure, the Zionists occupied those lands, too. But it was in the cities of Judea and Samaria that the seeds of Western civilization were planted and took root.

Visit virtually any of the 140 Jewish communities where 800,000 Jews now reside along Judea and Samaria, and you will not see any river bank. It is not like Jersey City, New Jersey, which is on the West Bank of the Hudson River. No one re-names Jersey City "the West Bank." Why not? Too much history there? Too many Biblical memories of Moses and Aaron buying shoes at Journal Square or using the PATH trains at the Grove Street station?

The Arab world and their Woke allies have no problem calling everywhere else in the Middle East by Biblical names: Beersheba, Galilee, Jordan River, Gaza, Damascus, Lebanon, Tyre, Sidon (Sidon), and of course Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. Even Americans comfortably employ those Biblical names for so many cities: Hebron (Maryland), the Jericho Turnpike (NY), Bethel (Indiana), the Battle of Shiloh (Tennessee), Manassas (Menashe) (Virginia). For a Hebron West Bank, there even is Hebron Savings Bank. Want even more of a "west bank"? There is Bank of the West.  Also Community West Bank.

Too west – or you just can't make up your mind? Well, then how about East West Bank?

Judea and Samaria – Yehuda and Shomron – should be called by their real names and not by the ersatz Woke term that seeks to divest 800,000 Jews now living there of their heritage and of their land. When a newborn child is due to arrive, think of the hours, the contemplating, even the inter-family wrangling and negotiating, that often precede naming the newcomer. Names have great power and meanings. That is why Israel's enemies call that region "The West Bank."

And why we should call it Judea and Samaria.

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In 1964, Ahmad el-Shukairy convened a conference at which he created a terror movement called the "Palestine Liberation Organization." The PLO undertook to perpetrate terror acts against civilians to "liberate Palestine from the Israelis." At the time Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), and Egypt occupied Gaza. Yet, none of the PLO's terror campaign was aimed at driving Jordan or Egypt out of those illegally occupied lands. Rather, to liberate the newly fabricated "Palestine," all PLO terror aimed instead at driving the Jews out of Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ra'anana, and other cities, towns, and villages in pre-1967 Israel and "into the [Mediterranean] sea."

It always has been Arab Muslim Orthodoxy that "Palestine" actually is the entire country of Israel, not merely Judea and Samaria. Just contemplate the emblems of the "Palestine" terror groups, including the PLO, Fatah,  Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

That is their "Occupied Palestine Territory" – not the "West Bank" nor Gaza but all of Israel. It is as clear as day — on their flags and banners. It is their logo.  There is no need to gain fluency in Arabic to grasp what is on their minds and in their attack plans.

To the degree they claim they want "back" their "Palestine territory" from which they claim they were "expelled," anti-Zionists' demands would not be resolved by telling Arabs who claim their families once lived in Akko (Acre) or Yafo (Jaffa) that, in satisfaction of their aspirations, they now may have Jenin in Samaria or Beit Hanoun in Gaza. People claiming Akko or Yafo lineage do not want Gaza. It's like a real estate agent telling a Chicago-based Midwestern American Jew seeking to relocate to the Brooklyn, NY of his childhood:  "I know you have a cultural longing for Brooklyn, the sights of Flatbush, old Ebbets Field where the baseball Dodgers played, Boro Park and Crown Heights, and Irv's Knishery of Canarsie. Unfortunately, I cannot offer you that, but here is something that is basically identical: I have a listing in Chubbuck, Idaho and another in Waterloo, Iowa. Believe me, you won't know the difference."

Of course, the difference is palpable. Likewise, with supposed "millions of Palestinians" demanding a "right of return," Gaza and the "West Bank" never will address the demands for "Occupied Palestinian territory."

In the end, when Israel's enemies speak of the "Occupied Palestinian Territory," they are not thinking "Gaza and Judea-Samaria." Rather, their slogan is "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free." This map shows what lies between that Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea: the entirety of the country of Israel.

How else to understand why so many "Palestinians" living in Gaza ruled by Hamas and in the "West Bank" Palestine Authority ruled by Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) live in "Palestinian refugee camps"? If those Arab Muslims truly are a "Palestinian" nation, and if "Palestine" and the "Occupied Palestinian Territories" truly are the regions of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria – then why and how can those Arabs who have been living there for decades call themselves "refugees" and demand – and receive – billions in international handouts from the United Nations, the European Union, and even the United States through agencies like the UNRWA as though living displaced from their own land?

Who heard of "refugees" residing in their own land? Rafah Refugee Camp has 125,000 residents in Gaza. Khan Yunis Refugee Camp has another 87,816 there. Nuseirat Refugee Camp has another 80,000 there. Balata Refugee Camp has 27,000 in the "West Bank." Shu'fat Refugee Camp has 24,000 there. Askar Refugee Camp has 18,500 there. In all, the Gaza Strip has eight official refugee camps and 1,221,110 registered refugees. The "West Bank" has 19 official and four unofficial refugee camps, and 741,409 registered refugees. That makes two million "Palestinian refugees" in "Palestinian refugee camps" all living under "Palestinian" sovereignty in supposed "Palestine," with Hamas sovereign in Gaza and Abbas's Fatah reigning in the "West Bank" Palestine Authority.

For those who speak of a "Two-State Solution," as though Israel's enemies will be prepared to live alongside her in peace someday if only Israel withdraws from Judea and Samaria, it is important occasionally to glance back at Arab terror logos. If "one picture is worth a thousand words," six pictures of Palestinian terror logo banners are worth 6,000 Hamas rockets and missiles aimed at Jewish civilian population centers and Israel's survival.

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The Israeli Left has had an obsessive compulsion to cry out constantly about the sanctity of Israeli Democracy. Ironically, no institution has done more to shame, tarnish, and cheapen Israeli democracy than Israel's Left, including the latest deceit that has unfolded with formalizing the Naftali Bennett government. His Yamina party that literally campaigned as "right-wing oriented" (the word's very definition) now has coalesced with an amalgam of left parties: (i) Yair Lapid's moderately left Yesh Atid, (ii) Merav Michaeli's even more left-wing socialist Labor, (iii) Nitzan Horowitz's even more extreme-left Meretz, and (iv) Mansour Abbas's anti-Zionist Ra'am that is has been described as pro-Islamist.

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The democratic system of Israel all-too-often proves to be a terribly disenfranchising democracy. Not that America's democracy is all that better. And maybe that is the point: If people of all stripes and countries are dishonest and deceitful — because they are human beings — then a government of the Deceitful, by the Deceitful, and for the Deceitful is to be expected everywhere.

Perhaps Israel's most difficult manifestation of Deceit Democracy came in 1992 when voters' predilections for a right-wing government were subverted by the quirks of that year's election rules and the foolish hubris of too many right-wing political figures who splintered each other into electoral oblivion. Likud, the right-wing Moledet and Tzomet parties, and three religious parties aggregated for 59 seats, and some didn't pass the minimum electoral threshold of 1.5%.

This resulted in Labor and Yitzhak Rabin winning, and they pushed through the disastrous Oslo Accords that gave Yasser Arafat a polity of his own. Rabin secured support for the accords using two right-wing novice Knesset members to vote with the left. One, Alex Goldfarb, notoriously was secured with various perks, and the other, Gonen Segev, later would be remembered also as a criminal.

Thus did Israeli democracy unfold to give Yasser Arafat control of television, radio, and print media with which to direct the education of future generations of Arab children in Judea and Samaria; an armed police force, and a polity that now sits in the United Nations and initiates ICC investigations into Israel.

The people of Israel did not vote for that, just as they did not vote for Gush Katif to be evacuated and 8,600 Jews to be displaced, along with all they had built in Gaza – homes, gardens, industry, agriculture, synagogues, yeshivot – when Ariel Sharon on the Likud ticket leveraged his landslide election over Labor's Ehud Barak in that way.

Now, once again, voters of Israel – particularly those who voted for Yamina – brace for the same outcome. They were presented with a smorgasbord of right-wing parties: the Likud, the two main Haredi parties, and the "Religious Zionism" party that amalgamated theologically Centrist Orthodox and political right-wing Jews. Yet they gave Yamina seven seats because they wanted a Likud-like government but more dependably right-wing than what they believed Netanyahu and Likud would assure. Many Yamina voters feared that Likud's and Netanyahu's most forthright campaign promises would not be honored after the election. In the past, he had guaranteed to annex whole sections of Judea and Samaria, such as Area C, but he not only failed to fulfill that promise but even presided over unprecedented illegal Arab building there. He had promised at least to annex the Jordan Valley but ultimately did not. Other promises likewise were not actualized.

The 273,836 Israelis who voted for Yamina predominantly wanted to hold Likud's toes to the fire by attaching a right-wing pressure point that would prevent Likud from reneging on core right-wing promises. Whereas Gideon Sa'ar and Avigdor Liberman made clear that their parties never would sit with Netanyahu, Bennett always made clear that he would sit under Netanyahu. That motivated Yamina voters to give Bennett enough seats to enter post-election negotiations in a position of strength to demand the Defense Ministry, where he previously had proved excellent and tough.

That is what makes Bennett's deal with Yair Lapid so pernicious. Bennett was elected with his team to coalesce with others to form a grand religious-right government that would fix the courts, secure the south, and refocus on issues like the Judaic character of Area C.  He was not elected to create a government that would give cabinet ministries to a socialist Labor party of seven seats, a similarly sized Liberman party, a radically extreme-left Meretz of six seats, and an Islamist party of four seats. Bennett made an explicit promise to Israel's voters: under no circumstances would he ever sign a deal to form a government with Yair Lapid, not even to alternate as prime minister with him. And yet he just did.

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