Q&A: Is There an Occupation
Is There an Occupation
Question
https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/r1f4nhqki
Rabbi Michi, hello. I'm sharing an article I read today on Ynet. It got me thinking. In your opinion, are the arguments there correct? If so, does that mean the right position is that they should be allowed to have a state, and that the main difficulty stems from lack of trust and fear that this would empower extremist forces?
Answer
What's new here? Did you not know there is an occupation? That's a simple fact. The blame for it lies solely with the Palestinians, and they are eating what they cooked. There are leftists who present a false picture and ignore the fact that the checkpoints are not due to our evil but because of fear of their terror attacks. If there had been no terror attacks, there would be no checkpoints. If they had not started a war in order to throw us into the sea, but had accepted the UN partition decision, there would have been peace here. But they and the leftists want to try to throw us into the sea, and when they failed, they started whining about occupation. Time and again you can see that there is a serious intelligence problem among leftists.
Should they be allowed to have a state? Absolutely not. They don't "deserve" it. But I think that if there were a partner, it would be worthwhile for us to do it even though they don't deserve it, in order to calm things down and live in peace. But what can you do—at the moment there is no partner.
The claim that they are interfering in our electoral system is a joke. In that sense, it is correct. Not only because their fate is in our hands, but because there is no principled problem with interference. Countries don't like it anywhere in the world, but they do it everywhere in the world.
Discussion on Answer
Of course. I didn't mean intelligence in its full sense. Something is messed up with them in this area. Even the arguments they try to raise are really stupid, and that's even when we're talking about people who are definitely intelligent in other areas. There are many reasons for this, but this isn't the place.
There is a claim that the partition plan allotted the Jews more territory than their percentage of the population in the country. All this came after massive immigration in the decades preceding the establishment of the state, whose purpose to a large extent was to maximize the amount of territory the Jewish state would receive. In this context one can ask about the justification for using violence to prevent a creeping takeover of collective land (since the lands were legally purchased from their private owners). On the other hand, one should remember that Jews lived here in the land in the past and were dispossessed of it mainly because of the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Regarding that, the question arises how far back one goes in trying to create justice; perhaps there is something like established possession here (although the Jews certainly never gave up hope).
Maybe it's not an intelligence problem—after all, there are leftists who have PhDs in mathematics and physics. Could it be that this is about a complication in Jewish-Israeli identity? As if the moment you talk to them even a little bit (just a little, not much) about Zionism and/or Judaism, it triggers a gag reflex? And in that case, the whole Palestinian issue is a cover version of the psychological problem?