YASSER ARAFART
MICHAEL MOORE
GARRISON KEILLOR
Posted on 11/10/2019 8:15:36 PM PST by karpov
ARIEL, West Bank—When the Jewish settlers who founded this town scouted the land in 1978, they chose a rocky outcrop where Palestinian villagers warned nothing would grow. It was called the Mountain of Death.
“They thought we were crazy,” said Dorith Nachman, 70 years old, recalling the reaction when she, her husband and other Jewish Israelis erected tents on the hillside.
Ariel’s founders used to administer a psychological questionnaire to incoming families to ensure they could tough it out. It wasn’t just the natural environment that was harsh. By establishing Jewish communities on land Palestinians claim as their own, the settlers opened Israel to both domestic and international criticism.
Things have gotten a whole lot easier for Jews living in many of the 132 settlements built on territory Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. A highway now connects Tel Aviv to Ariel, without the military checkpoints dotting much of the West Bank. Real-estate agents pitch it as a Tel Aviv bedroom community for young families. There are parks, malls, a university with 15,000 students and rows of townhouses and apartment blocs priced as much as 30% lower than in Tel Aviv, some 30 miles away.
Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, one of the most emotional issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have gone mainstream among Israelis. Places once viewed with skepticism, if not downright hostility, by other Israelis are now home to 450,000 Israelis, up from 116,300 in 1993. They account for 15% of the total population of the West Bank, which also includes an estimated 2.6 million Palestinians, and 5% of the Israeli population. An August poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 48% of Israelis support a plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Source is Wall Street Journal, not New York Times, sorry.
And Yassar Arafat was a handsome fella.
“Things have gotten a whole lot easier for Jews living in many of the 132 settlements built on territory Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. A highway now connects Tel Aviv to Ariel, without the military checkpoints dotting much of the West Bank. Real-estate agents pitch it as a Tel Aviv bedroom community for young families. There are parks, malls, a university with 15,000 students and rows of townhouses and apartment blocs priced as much as 30% lower than in Tel Aviv, some 30 miles away.”
Amazing how such good fortune just rains down on Jews, like manna from heaven, meanwhile Palestinians are always stuck with bad luck. There is no social justice in this world!
It only shows that nearly every place can be made habitable if a people choose to do so.
It’s almost like God blesses those who bless Israel and curses those who curse Israel.
YASSER ARAFART
MICHAEL MOORE
GARRISON KEILLOR
Some of us think that G-d had a hand in it as well.
The article is good, though I wish it described life in areas when and where the Arabs are not perceived as a threat. A visit to Hadassah Hospital will show not only Arab patients alongside Jews, but also Arab doctors (including specialists such as cardiologists), nurses, administrative staff, food service, and maintenance. Many pharmacists, even in Jewish areas of Israel, are Arabs. Nobody among Israelis thinks that a two-state solution is a good idea, or even viable, any more.
I don’t question that God had a hand in it, but my point is that the blessings of God are available to anybody willing to abide by his rules.
The article didn’t mention the many Arab students who study at Ariel University. Here is a year-old article that highlights their presence:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/250801
Significantly, the article was published by a “right-wing Israeli” website. Someone on the outside might expect a right-wing Israeli website to be anti-Arab, and would be surprised to see how much we right wing Israelis advocate for peaceful coexistence. We also realize that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and that particularly at the political-leadership level there are plenty of Arab leaders who would be happy to have us dead.
Apparently God also blessed Europe, America, Canada, Australia, Japan, and today China, Taiwan, South Korea. Maybe western culture and values have something to do with good luck.
Re: “settlements are still seen by many as an obstacle to peace”
When I look closely at the full page photograph that opens this article, about 80% of the people (students?) appear to have brown or dark brown skin.
How do the residents - Arab and Israeli - distinguish the good guys from the bad guys?
Because nobody, Jews or Arabs, wants to live under the control of Arab militants.
It will be an agonizing 15-20 minutes...
Apparently land grows stuff fine if you don’t water it with electrolytes
Or as the phrase goes, “The Lord helps those who help themselves”
I asked one of the Egyptian Army guards there who spoke English where the pictures were from. He said "Here" and pointed out the windows to barren sand, trash, and clutter. I asked him what happened and he said "The Jews left."
I was lucky enough to pass the applicant process and flew at my own expense from Europe to Wash DC to interview for the Foreign Service, and three months later was a member of the 15,000 diplomatic corps. My first assignment was AmEmb Tel Aviv and I took my family over much dissuasion by senior mentors. My wife had already spent 9 years overseas with me.
I took part in a German funded UN project to put radio repeaters throughout Gaza and the West Bank. I’ve been all other Israel.
I was given a trip to Bethlehem on 22 December 2005. There three vans of people, there were twelve of us considered tourists, and eighteen “security/infantrymen” with us as oversight. As we went from the Church to the Cave and then to a lunch — Pali’s with AK47s and rocket launchers were on the rooftops and jumping across buildings rooftops shadowing our “Christian Visitors”. Our security acted just as I had been trained in the 82d Abn Div to cover and move, they keep nearly have of our security keep close to the buildings ready to fire if fired upon; of course they were not going to shoot at us, but the Pali’s did show that they were the law and that the people there live in the grip of organized terrorists with weapons. There can be no peace when the law enforcement and political rulers do so by gun point.
Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, one of the most emotional issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, have gone mainstream among Israelis. Places once viewed with skepticism, if not downright hostility, by other Israelis are now home to 450,000 Israelis, up from 116,300 in 1993. They account for 15% of the total population of the West Bank...
The "West Bank" is a recent (1948) invention -- the racist Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ethnically cleansed (through murder and expulsion) the Jews of eastern Jerusalem (there is not and never has been a polity called "East Jerusalem), Judea and Samaria.
Wrong. Ben Franklin said tthat. God’s grace is there because that’s who he is.Israel only comes alive when his children live there. It was dead under the Arabs and Palistinians.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.