I never cease to be amazed by the chutzpah of Israeli Prime Ministers. Their policies indicate, in effect, that they own the Land of Israel and can dispose of parts it – why not all of it? – to Israel’s sworn enemies. Of course, they count on the pliancy of cabinet ministers. Likewise they rely on the pusillanimity of Israel’s religious parties which are more fearful of Washington than of God. Still, the arrogance of these Prime Ministers appalls me.

Netanyahu displays his own chutzpah

The latest Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, humbly apologizes: he must adhere to the Oslovian agreements of his predecessors. No one is deceived: he, too, genuflects to Washington. And now he wants to hasten the “final status” of Israel’s heartland, as if he were God almighty!

And then there are his apologists. They are not appalled by his chutzpah. He is simply a victim of circumstances. He is doing the best he can do under the circumstances. Which are: his divided Jewish people, a subversive Opposition, and a Saudi-influenced State Department. Some admit he is not the stuff of which heroes are made, but there is “NO ALTERNATIVE.” End of story.

I am awed and oppressed by what is happening to the only homeland of the Jewish people. Suffer me to say a few words, however inadequate, about this Holy Land and its providential People.

How the Jews remained a nation after the Diaspora

The Jewish people, dear reader, are the only people in world-history that remained a Nation even though they were expelled from their homeland and deprived of statehood. For 2,000 years the Jewish People lived scattered throughout the earth. Yet they never surrendered their title to Eretz Yisrael, and never ceased to hearken to these words of the Torah:

If thy outcasts be at the far ends of the heavens, from there will the Lord your God gather thee, and from there will He fetch thee; and the Lord thy God will bring thee back to the Land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shall possess it. (Deut. 30:4-5).

This Land of Israel is like no other. Despite its remarkable fertility, this land remained desolate and neglected during the past two millennia no matter which foreign nation occupied or controlled this country. It were as if the land were silently waiting, waiting to be redeemed by its only rightful and worthy owners. And lo and behold, only when the Jews returned in significant numbers to this dejected land did the land burst forth in joyful abundance.

No Gentile provincial capitals

Also Providential: none of the foreign nations – thirteen in number – that occupied or controlled the Land of Israel ever established a state or even a provincial capital in this Chosen Land of the Chosen People. Had any done so, the Jews would never have been able to return to Eretz Yisrael and re-establish therein an independent Jewish republic. Here we are given to understand why Arab tribes — nomads – have dwelled in the Land of Israel without ever establishing within its confines a distinctive culture of their own.

Israel belongs to the Jews!

Let all mankind know, therefore, that the Land of Israel, including its heartland Judea and Samaria, belongs eternally to the Jewish People. No transient Government, no transient Knesset, has any right, legal or moral, to barter away any part of this Holy Land to foreign entities and thus preclude future generations of Jews, wherever they may be in the Diaspora, from exercising their inalienable right to dwell in their God-given land.

The agreements of Israeli Prime Ministers surrendering Jewish land to foreign entities will not endure; will never supersede the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: “For God is not a man, that He should lie; nor the son of man, that he should change His mind. Should He promise and not fulfill it, or speak and not do it?” (Num. 23:19).

Know well that the agreements Israeli Prime Ministers made with the so-called Palestinians are without any foundation and will eventually collapse like a house of cards. They cannot stand the test of candid analysis.

But let me refer the reader to Isaiah 28:14-18, where the Prophet describes certain scorners of the Torah as the “ballad-mongers” of Jerusalem. Surely these “ballad-mongers” are glib politicians or phrase-mongers. They have made a “covenant with death” (brit et mavit, which the Targum translates as a covenant with terrorists!). They try to conceal the true nature of this covenant with fine sounding words like “peace” and “security.” But the Prophet exposes what is hidden in the souls of these politicians: “We have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood have we hid ourselves.” Hence the Prophet warns that the duplicity of these “ballad-mongers” of Jerusalem will not prevent disasters. Moreover, he prophesies: “Your covenant with death shall be annulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand …”