What have you done for the Land of Israel today?

Israel set a new record this week – though it is hardly one to be proud of.

For the first time in recent memory, the Supreme Court of a liberal Western democracy has given its imprimatur to the mass expulsion of thousands of citizens from their homes by their own government.

By a vote of 10 to 1, Israel’s chief justices ruled against a series of petitions that had been filed against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s proposed retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria. Though the Court did amend certain sections of the Compensation- Evacuation Law passed by the Knesset, it refused to declare the eviction itself to be illegal.

This is a sad day for Israeli democracy, but it is an even sadder day for Zionism, the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

To think that a gathering of Jewish justices in the sovereign Jewish State would approve of the forcible removal of Jews from their homes is simply too shameful and ludicrous to contemplate.

Of course, no one really expected anything less from the Court, which in recent years has become as predictable as it is left-wing in its verdicts.

Nonetheless, we can not help but ask ourselves how it is possible for a government to stray so far from its nation’s values so quickly. How can our elected leadership so brazenly ignore Jewish history and Jewish destiny in their mad dash to plunge the country into yet another disaster of their own making?

More importantly, though, is the question we all must start asking ourselves: what did I do on behalf of the Land of Israel today?

How we choose to answer this query may very well help to determine the future - not only of Gaza, but of Israel itself.

Comments

[Zo]

Attend a protest! Wear an orange T-Shirt, eat a carrot!

Kiss a Policeman!

[JustMeYehudi]

http://www.zoartzeinu.blogspot.com/

www.zoartzeinu.blogspot.com

[ZO]

www DOT zoartzeinu DOT blogspot DOT com

[Natan]

Your slur on the supreme court is unjustified. It produced an entirely coherent decision - that Gaza is not legally part of Israel, but the Israelis who live in it are entitled to improved compensation.

What's the point of submitting an appeal to a court if you will not recognize its decision? It's the A-B-C of democracy, but it seems that anyone who doesn't agree with the settlers is automatically "left-wing".

I would suggest rather that those who have the clearest understanding of both domestic and international law will always appear as "left-wing", since they legally defend the principles of human rights - which the settlers don't seem to apply to Palestinians.

[Dennis Moran]

Not as much as we could have done if our elected representatives, wether Israeli or American, decided to actually represent the will of their constituents instead of representing some antagonistic but politically profitable, or otherwise self-serving, agenda. When adequate representation and even the application of basic brainpower to the larger issues are lacking, then Islam isn't the only enemy, but also self-aggrandizement, lust for power, and money to the point of abstraction - to name just three, which distract big people who could and should be doing a lot, from doing anything. Arutz Sheva's motivation for the rest of us to step into the gap should stand as evidence of what an embarrassment elected officials have become to themselves.

[jackleelynn]

the israeli governement and half of israel are liberal madmen.
Liberalism is a mental illness.
These jewish idiots are setting themselves up for the second holocaust.
it is time for the sane citizens to overthrow their government if they want to survive

[Adina Kutnicki]

The "Jewish" Supreme Court in Israel spends more time contemplating the fate of dispossed olive trees ! and the encroachment of a security fence on Arab land, than on their own citizens. The fact that they refused to visit the communities they were sentencing to destruction speaks volumes about the court being a "runaway" political court as opposed to being a court of the law.

Equally outrageous is their reasoning - on the one hand they have brazenly declared that these areas are not a part of Israel (although tragically they were not annexed, they are still part of Israel according to several international mandates, to say nothing of them being part of biblical and historical Israel!)YET they are paradoxically ruling on their fate.

Things get even more bizarre - while these "justices" ADMIT that they are violating the basic human rights of these citizens, they then try and justify this immoral trampling on national security issues. There are much more compelling reasons to transfer/expel the hostile Arabs who live to kill "their Jews", than to transfer the most productive members of society. What better national security objective does one need than to stop the killing? However, never in a trillion ! years would they contemplate expelling Arabs.

Herein lies the crux of the problem and the issue that urgently must be addressed - Is Israel going to be a Jewish State, where the concerns of its Jews are paramount, or is it going to be an Israeli State where Jews are on the periphery of justice? Right now things are looking bleaker than at any time since the founding of modern Israel. The people must decide this issue before it is too late.

[Charlie Hall]

"For the first time in recent memory, the Supreme Court of a liberal Western democracy has given its imprimatur to the mass expulsion of thousands of citizens from their homes by their own government."

You can argue as to how "recent" it was, but the United States Supreme Court approved the mass expulsion of thousands of United States citizens from their homes during World War Two. I refer, of course, to the Japanese Americans who not only were expelled, but lost their property and were not compensated for over four decades.

But these were not the only examples. Consider the removal of thousands from the land that became Shenandoah National Park in the 1930s. In the 1950s, the Cross Bronx Expressway alone displaced 1,530 families, mostly Jewish, thus beginning the destruction of the huge Jewish community in the Bronx. The pattern continues both in rural and urban areas, when a governmental agency decides it wants the land, for any reason or no good reason. The United States Supreme Court has consistently ruled in favor of such -- most recently in a case this past year in New London, Connecticut.

So while it may be unfair, it is certainly not unprecedented in democracies.

[Dennis Moran]

I don't think 'Eminent Domain' could be morally applied to Gaza and Samaria. As has been stated, the condemnation of private land for public use remains common, and has an abuse-potential for the politically motivated. The dispossession of those of Japanese ancestry during WW2 was a bit different. The sheer volume of short-wave radio traffic between Japanese-American communities and Japan proper after the outbreak of the war (and this type of radio traffic was expressly forbidden) was one of FDR's motivations for gross internment. The Japanese showed a civil obedience and stoicism that was unparalleled, however, and should have been fairly - even generously - compensated at war's end. Neither was done.

But the Gaza Jews are not being moved for a public-works project, or for anything else which can be demonstrated as productive for themselves or their countrymen. They are being uprooted to only feed someone's fantasy that the world-wide Jihad against the existence of the Jews (and everything else non-Islamic) will be terminated if the Mohammedans are simply given a few building lots here and there. And supposedly-intelligent people say it with a straight face.

[Ralph Haglund]

Did the Supreme Court establish that Gaza belongs to the Arabic race and not the Jewish race in anticipation of future Peace Negotiations and based on what?

AND OF COURSE - how often is the Supreme Court deciding to expel Arabs compared to expellihg Jews? What is the major difference of expelling Arabs to Gaza/Judea/Samaria and expelling Jews the other way?

[d]

In the end, they're decision is an admition that Rabbi Meir Kahane was right i.e. Transfer is the ‘solution’. They have now set a legal precedent to transfer any ‘Israeli’ with ‘compensation’ if the ‘State’ so decides for ‘security’ and/or other needs. It’s unfortunate the option of Israeli Arabs will never be seriously tabled in the Knesset. How would the collective ‘we’ perceive trading the population of Gush Katif for, say Umm El-Fahem, not to say the Supreme Court!

[david]

Plans by the Israeli Government to forcibly remove Jews from their homes in the West Bank and Gaza breach the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989, to both of which Israel is a signatory.

Both Treaties provide that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation.

The High Court was not asked to consider the applicability of these two Treaties to prevent the expulsion of Jews against their will.

Jews living in the West Bank and Gaza are legally entitled to reside in Gaza and the West Bank pursuant to the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter in order to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in those areas.

Choosing to stay will not be palatable to all 8000 Jews affected by the withdrawal of Israel's army and they will have the option of accepting the compensation packages that are being offered by the Israeli Government to those who voluntarily leave.

But one thing is certain – the forced removal of Jews from the West Bank and Gaza is not permitted or authorised under international law and is in breach of international agreements in force since 1920 authorising Jews to live in those areas.