History of E1

The world is up in arms, as it so loves to be. What is it about now?

No, no – not Syria and the violence there. Not Afghanistan; certainly not Iran. They aren’t condemning Turkish television fining the Simpsons for mocking God; or a social club at Harvard University saying Jews need not apply. No, it isn’t about Hungary cataloging Jews as they would cattle and certainly nothing about Iranian warships sailing towards Sudan.

It’s all about a mountain that sits between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem. Even left-wing papers in Israel mistakenly write that Israel is threatening to “bisect” the West Bank and the news is filled with country after country condemning Israel for damaging chances for peace. Chances for peace? We were at war two weeks ago and little has changed. There are currently NO chances for peace on the table. In fact, there is no table.

No, no, no – what we have is a mountain – not a very tall one, smaller even than the ones next to it on three sides.

It is barren, but for a road that snakes its way up to a midpoint where a large police station has been built – barren, but for that building. No one lives there – no one has.

The land was once part of the Ottoman Empire – no village, no homes, no dwellings. Sheep and goats sometimes graze on the lower areas of the hills, but that’s about it. When the Ottoman’s made way for the British, it was under their rule, and still nothing but the camels and the sheep and the goats and, perhaps, an occasional ground hog.

In the 1920s, England cut off 2/3 of the land that was called Palestine and gave it to the Hashemites – and thus Jordan was born. The remaining 1/3 was ruled by the British until 1947, including that land that today we call E1. In 1948, the Arabs chose war over peace, death over life. They attacked and lost – but they got E1 – the barren land between Jerusalem’s eastern border and the west bank of the Jordan River.

And then, in 1967, it was clear that Egypt and Syria were preparing for war – Israel launched a pre-emptive strike and sent a message to the Jordanians. We have no quarrel with you; stay out of the fighting. We will not attack you. The Jordanians sent back their message in two ways – in words or action, the message was the same – we fight with our brothers…and so they did. They attacked – as they had in 1948 and the result was the same – they lost.

This time, E1 came into our hands. State-owned under the Turks; state-owned under the Jordanians, and now state-owned under Israel. Never the home of Palestinians; no villages there, no buildings but for the one we built a few years ago…and the ones we will now build.

The history of E1 is very simple. It is but a mountain that lies between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem. Arabs regularly travel on the highway between Maale Adumim and the Dead Sea – the highway remains. There is no bisecting, no blocking, no break in the passage.

It is a mountain, soon to be green and developed. That is the history of E1, except for one huge point that the world forgets. Before the Jordanians, before the British, before the Ottomans, before the Romans…the land was, as it is today – ours. It was the ancient land of Israel; it is the modern land of Israel.

As for the countries of the world who say Israel threatens the peace – where were you two weeks ago when I ran with my children to our bomb shelter? Why did my son have to leave his wife to protect Israel’s south from a thousand rockets?

It is too late now to tell us of peace – speak to Hamas first. You support a Palestinian state? Clearly you do – but it is Israel that must live with it and so we shall – if we have to. We will build and the world will scream. But we have learned that the world screams easily for that which is so minor and ignores that which really matters. Dozens died today in Syria as they did yesterday and as they will tomorrow – but yes, certainly, let’s discuss a barren hill across from my back yard.

16 Comments

  1. Excellent. Please keep building anyway and not “in response” to Arab stunts. Just build to make Israel stronger. Best wishes from a Scot who sees through the BBC and Arab lies and supports Israel 100%.

  2. Wonderful post, and when I read about the various countries condemning Israel for building houses, I am disgusted and outraged to say the least! So many horrifc things happening all over the world, and people actually complain about little Israel building homes for her citizens. We will be in Jerusalem in four months (counting the days), and hope to see 3000 finished homes by then!!! Happy Hanukah! Jan

  3. Hi Paula,
    I started reading your blog about a year ago, as I was interested in understanding the Jewish people and their side and their thoughts in the unending saga of the Israelis and the Palestinians. I am closer in culture then to the Arabs. I am a Christian and live in Canada. Although I share your care for your family and your love for your country, I cannot understand your hatred and condemnation of anything which is not Jewish. Palestinians, Americans and Germans, etc.
    I like to tell you a true story. I have heard much of WW2 as well as I was born in the Netherlands and my parents were suffering during the occupation of the Nazis. My grandfather fought during the war in the ‘underground army’. They hid people, including Jews, from the Nazis in their home at a risk of being killed themselves if discovered. They also raided food storage places and stole ration cards to feed the people that were in hiding. They were also smuggling in weapons that were dropped from planes by the British and they had outside contact via ‘illegal’ radios. They lived under occupation and did whatever they could to stop the enemy. While all this was going on they were ordered to give room and board to one or two Nazi soldiers. They quickly needed to find another place for the Jewish man to hide, a man that had become like a family member to them. It was all very difficult. The Nazi soldier moved in and my grandparents did not hate him, instead they inquired about his family and heard how worried he was about his wife and young children. This soldier (like most) did not want to be out there and fighting. Yet, he could not change the war himself. My grandfather and the soldier have shed tears together about the tragedies of this world. My grandfather survived the war, but his son, my uncle, did not. He with some others, and the whole family where they had been hiding, were killed by the Nazis the day before Holland was liberated by the Allies. Yes, they were grieving but they did not hate. They kept in contact with the German soldier, who also suffered loss of family members and possessions. This whole war was caused by some terrible fanatics. The Lord Jesus taught when he was on earth (in your beautiful country) to forgive and to love our enemies and that all people are the same. All believers in Christ are spiritual children of Abraham, no matter where they live. I hope and pray, Paula, that you and many others may come to know that too. We don’t live anymore in the time of the Judges when the Promised Land was given to the People of Israel, that was fulfilled when the Lord Jesus was born. I know that the Jews don’t believe that He was the Messiah, but if you compare the books of the Old Testament with the New Testament, if becomes so clear. That was the faith of my grandfather and if that faith lives in your hearts then at a check point for example (even though they cannot change the situation) an Israeli soldier can empathize with the Palestinian who cannot cross to visit his ailing relative and the Palestinian can feel for the soldier who would much prefer to be at home. We hope that this spirit of love may start to grow in your country. Wishing you all the best and blessings.

  4. Kim

    The war of the local Arab Muslims, aided by many of the dhimmified ‘Arab’ Christians, against the Jews and against the Jewish state of Israel, is Jihad. Jihad never stops; jihad is hard-wired into Islam.

    All Muslims are taught to hate Jews, qua Jews (and to hate Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, everyone on earth who isn’t Muslim).

    Read Quran 48: 29 and Quran 9: 29. Muslims are to keep on doing jihad until the whole world is ruled by Muslims, and everyone who has not been killed, or who has not given in and become Muslim, is a dhimmi.

    To understand what a dhimmi is, read Mark Durie, “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom”. Dhimmitude is severe psychological, economic, spiritual and physical Abuse: sacralised by the sharia of Islam, institutionalised.

    A dhimmi is subject to a condition of humiliation, degradation and permanent physical peril. At any moment, the tenuous ‘protection’ he buys by paying exorbitant jizya ‘protection money/ ransom money/ compensation’ to his Muslim rulers, may evaporate, and he and his may be killed out of hand.

    Throughout the lands controlled by Islam, Jews and Christians and other people lived as dhimmis, and it was like living in the Predator Pits. And dhimmis are conditioned, like abused children or spouses, to be *grateful* to their abusers, to be subservient to them, to serve them and flatter them and cringe before them, and never never never to name the Abuse what it is…EVIL. Palestinian Arab Christians who carry water for the jihad against the Jews, and tell the world what their Muslim masters tell them – or what they think will please their Muslim masters (this in the hope of being eaten last; ever heard of the slogan, ‘First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people’) are doing what dhimmis are supposed to do; they are serving the Muslims, doing what will benefit Muslims.

    Jews stopped being dhimmis and created the Jewish state of Israel…on Jewish ancestral land, from which Jews had never entirely been removed. Muslims are furiously resentful of this, and determined to force the Jews back into their ‘proper’ place as cowering, vulnerable dhimmis. (Half the population of Israel comprises Jews who – or whose ancestors – lived the living hell of dhimmitude in Muslim lands. Jews of Israel are the dhimmis who got away – escaped slaves, so to speak. The Muslim slave-owner, the Ummah, wants to catch those escaped slaves, those uppity Jews, and flog them to death for having had the temerity to defy the allah-ordained order of things. Want to know what life was like for dhimmi Jews (and Christians?) and what it would be like again, if the Muslims got what they want (destruction of Israel, killing or driving out of most of the Jews, reduction of the survivors to dhimmi status? : read Bat Yeor, ‘The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam’. And the long essay that opens Andrew Bostom’s “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism”. And Martin Gilbert’s “In Ishmael’s House”.

    That’s what’s going on, Kim. There will be no peace, so long as the Arabs in and around Israel remain Muslim, and indeed so long as Muslims everywhere remain…Muslim, and taught to hate and wage Jihad.

    It is Islam that teaches a hatred like you would not believe; a hatred of Jews that predates the creation of Israel by over a millennium, a hatred that led to periodic mass murders, forced conversions (in Yemen, Afghanistan, Persia, North Africa, Muslim-ruled Spain), burnings, lootings, and a constant barrage of daily abuse and bullying. And Islam won’t give up that hate; the hate and the aggression that it drives are hard-wired into the core texts of Islam.

    I am with Israel; for what the Muslims intend, were they to achieve it, would be nothing less than a second Shoah.

  5. I have a question for Amy. You said “Although I share your care for your family and your love for your country, I cannot understand your hatred and condemnation of anything which is not Jewish. Palestinians, Americans and Germans, etc.” — can you please explain that quote? I’m an American Christian who’s been reading Paula for several years and I cannot figure out how you think Paula hates or condemns Americans, Germans, Palestinians, etc.

    Sure, I see posts where she criticizes the actions of some of these social/ethic groups — Americans, for example, for electing Obama who has done nothing to aid Israel during his administration — but hatred and condemnation? REALLY? What blog are you reading?

  6. One more point for Amy: Please look at Israel and what it has done for humanity. You’ll see a country and culture which has taken refugees from all over the world. A country responsible for major technological and medical advances. You’ll also see a culture which prides itself on providing humanitarian aid in every major disaster — including Japans’ earthquake/tsunami and the earthquake in Haiti.

    Now look at the Palestinian/Muslim Arab cultural counterpart. Hamas, Iran, et al demand the total destruction of not only Israel, but all Jews worldwide. They are, in political respects, not exactly a good neighbor.

    As far as I can see (and this is a generalization, I realize) Muslims haven’t given the world much in the past 300 years other than oil production and war. They *did* back Hitler in WW II.

    This is not to say that all Arabs are evil killers wanting to slit the throats of all Jews. Just like the German soldier in your story, I’m sure there are decent human beings caught in the middle of a religious/political war. Paula doesn’t lose sight of that fact. In fact, she repeats it fairly often. What she does condemn is a culture which teaches hatred. murder and genocide to their children. A society which hides behind the innocents in the midst of war. A culture which worships death over life. And who can blame her for that?

  7. What a beautiful post Kim, Mrs Stern, whether the mountain looks empty or not is irrelevant under international law that land does not belong to Israel. If I see a wallet on a table and no owner holding it, does that justify me stealing it? Israel said in the Oslo agreement that they would cease the building of illegal settlements to give peace a chance, why have they refused to do this? Because they do not want peace, they want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their own land. Have you read Israeli historian Illan Pappes book on this matter, from all his reasearch all from ISraeli sources he wrote that the zionist founding fathers from Herzl et al onwards, their aim was to wipe the Palestinians off the map and take al of their land. It is nonsense to say all muslims want to kill Jews, Jews lived in harmony with the muslims for centuries, why else did they leave under the protection of the muslims from Andalucia in the late 1400’s, because they feared the anti semitism of the european christian armies who were heading towards them. That is why there were thriving Jewish communities all across N Africa, until.. the zionist state of Israel was founded, Israel was born on the terrorism of the Irgun and has continued in that vain, they have just been very clever about hiding it from the world. If you want to see the hate that Israelis teach their children look at Maureen Meehans article on hatred and racism in Israli textbooks, look at Itamar Rose’s documentary on you tube of ‘Israeli kids at the army museum’, they are taught from birth to hate arabs and to look forward to killing them when they are older, look at these sources for yourselves. If you really want peace in that region then look objectively at the people whose land you continue to take and at the women and children that the IDF dehumanize, humiliate and even kill daily, you are all children of Avraham and children of God and whatever your faith you will be asked one day ‘what did you do’? Make peace, a just peace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp67KehlVGU http://www.robat.scl.net/content/NAD/issues/pl_textbooks/wtextbook.php

  8. This is a really disappointing post. It really doesn’t present any argument on why Israel should be building in E1, but rather it rehashes the standard litany of complaints against the world.

    Saying that Hamas, or the PA, or the Arabs or whoever are not interested in peace does not justify Israel taking steps that would subvert any chance of peace. The fact that peace is not presently achievable — or even achievable in the foreseeable future — is not an argument for taking steps to render a future peace impracticable.

  9. great post!
    maybe ill even buy one of those new places….or is this another part of israel that the world would like to see judenrein?

  10. Sabha, above, ignored what I said about dhimmitude and the scholarly sources I cited.

    Sabha pretends that dhimmitude was just peachy. It was not.

    I can’t find strong enough words to describe how awful the dhimma system looks, when you read about all the petty bullying (such as Muslims pushing dhimmis ‘to the narrowest part of the road’ when they meet them in the street) and gross cruelties – that it carefully prescribed and permitted; and that Muslim writers gloated over – like a Sufi Muslim called Sirhindi, who writing in Muslim-occupied India said that the dhimmis ‘must always remain terrified and trembling’, and another Muslim writer, a Moroccan Muslim jurist, who in his commentary on Surah 9: 29 of the Koran, said that the purpose of the dhimmi system is to “kill the soul” of the non-Muslim. The dhimmi was dehumanised and crushed: like a milch cow, punching bag, chew toy, sex toy, scapegoat, and human sacrifice victim for the Muslims who dominated and domineered over him. More: there was a Moroccan Muslim writer who told his fellow Muslims that ‘Love of the Prophet (Muhammad) **requires hatred of Jews**’. So much for the wonderfulness of being a Jewish dhimmi in Muslim-occupied North Africa!!

    The dhimma was, to repeat, a system of institutionalised spiritual, psychological, physical and economic Abuse, to the nth degree. Mark Durie explains that very fully, from historical and Islamic sources that discuss what it was and what its aims were, in his book ‘The Third Choice’.

    And as for Jewish communities in Spain: Sabha pretends that there were not Muslim mass murders of Jews in Muslim-occupied Iberia. Oh yes there were. There were mass murders – and forced conversions to Islam – in Muslim North Africa, too. Oh there were. David Littman’s ‘Exile in the Maghreb’ tells us what life was like for the dhimmi Jews of North Africa. It was HELL.
    The rest of Sabha’s post is simply turnspeak and projection.

  11. Anonymous
    I find there is little point in engaging in a debate with paid Israeli hasbarists, it is your job to troll the internet trying to distract attention from Israel’s barrage of ongoing crimes. Mark Durie is not a world renowned academic he is also a propagandist whose works are not found on the syllabuses of any reputable universities, he is too blinded by his inescapable islamophobic to produce any historically objective and therefore accurate works of history. Any Islamic,Jewish or Christian scholar throughout history can say anything they want it doesn’t mean they are correct or following the religion properly, shall we say that the Christians who believed that it was their christian duty to enslave black people in the Americas were correct? If you wish to cherry pick things from Islam, shall we talk about the teaching in the Talmud, i.e. that which most Zionists (note not most Jews) follow? That you may deceive any gentile but not another Jew, that Goyim (i.e. non Jews) are the slaves of the Jews and they must work to serve and finance all Jewry, that Jews can extract usury (interest) from non Jews but not from Jews, that Jews must make war against all non jews in order to control them, that it is ok for a Jewish man to rape a 4 yr old girl as long as she is not Jewish, shall I continue……… , the Talmudic sources are highly discriminatory against all non Jews, this is something which has been hidden very well from the world but anybody conversant with the actual history of Israel can see that this thinking that Zionist Jews are superior to everyone else has dictated all areas of Israeli policy. I can send you the links of well respected historians who can give you objective historical accounts relating to the history of Judaism, Islam and Christianity throughout the world, if indeed you are interested in truths, if however you just wish to distract from Israeli war crimes with ill conceived propaganda , then continue as you are. Israel must be responsible and see that their inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people, whose land they continue to steal must end, that is the only way for peace in the region and indeed in the world, they must do so before it is too late. Shalom, Peace, Salam.

  12. Sabha

    I am not paid to write here; I do so out of rational love for the House and people of Israel. But perhaps YOU are paid to peddle Mohammedan nonsense and lies? *I* receive no pay whatsoever for speaking truth.

    As for Islamophobia? Nonsense. I despise Islam because I have spent ten years finding out about what it teaches, and about what Muslims do and have done. And there are a lot of other people like me. We despise and oppose Islam as our parents despised and opposed Nazism and Stalinism and Maoism; because we have looked at what it teaches and what its adherents do, and we find it to be thoroughly antihuman, destructive, and, to be blunt, evil.

    And although you may sneer, Dr Mark Durie’s academic qualifications and linguistic expertise are rock-solid. He is a graduate of the Australian National University and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and has held a visiting appointment at the University of Leiden. These are not trivialities.

    I tell you bluntly,you Jew-hating, lying Mohammedan: *I. will. not. submit*. I do not intend to become a cringing dhimmi for you to boss around. Everything I said about the dhimma and about Muslim cruelty toward non-Muslims on three continents, is true. You can quote apologists and whitewashers all you like; but it won’t work. The testimony of escaped dhimmis – such as the Jews from Yemen, and Copts from Egypt – is damning.

    I have read *all* of your Quran; it is one of the worst, most violent, most hateful and most truly evil books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. I know all about your evil Mohammed, whom Moshe ben Maimon called The Mad. I know what kind of bizarre things are taught in the Hadith and the Sira. (And stop with the boring invocation of the usual antisemitic nonsense about the Talmud).

    As for slavery: don’t try to guilt trip westerners about slavery. 1200 years of Mohammedan enslavement of black Africans – and of Indians – and of white Europeans – is NOTHING for you to be proud of. The West ended slavery two hundred years ago; whereas just this last year there have been Muslims calling openly for slavery to be reinstated and practised…by Muslims. With non-Muslims as the slaves. There are still Muslims secretly *practising* slavery. There are people from the Sudan who were enslaved by Muslims, and have escaped to tell the tale.

  13. Anonymous, you are full of hatred and prejudice the same hatred and prejudice which allows you to justify the killing of innocent people whose land you steal and whom you terrorize, there is little point conversing with people blinded by hatred. When you say don’t guilt trip Westerners about slavery, of course you are making a racist assumption that I am not Western and that I am as you said a ‘Mohamedan’, I am actually Western and I believe that people should be ‘guilt tripped’ about evil practises which they may wittingly or unwittingly have contributed to, I know that that is a concept utterly alien to a Zionist, but if you are responsible for contributing to slavery or ethnic cleansing for example then you should indeed feel guilty and work to change that instead of fabricating lies and justifications for evil you have perpetuated. Good luck to you and may you be guided by God and love.

  14. Sabha

    IF you are indeed a westerner (but I don’t necessarily assume you are, I have encountered too many Mohammedans in masks – and I know enough to be going on with, about kitman, taqiyya, tawriyya, and that Hadith that reads “War is deceit” – I assure you that I only assumed you were a Muslim – a Mohammedan – because the tone and content and style of your postings were identical to the tone and content of many postings I have encountered before that were made by self-declared Mohammedans in many an internet forum: the turnspeak, the projection, the tu quoque, and outright nonsense and lies, and the shrieks of ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘hate!’ and ‘lies!’

    So far as I can see, you accuse me of ‘hate’ for the most part merely because I have stated in plain language a few home truths about Islam, about the Jihad and the dhimma. These things are not nice and there is no nice way to talk about them, no way to pretty up ugly.

    Further, there is nothing reprehensible about hating – despising and rejecting, and actively denouncing and resisting – an evil belief-system, an evil ideology. Nazism was evil. Islam seems to me – as an ideology, a system of thought and program for human conduct – to be even worse than Nazism. Was Churchill hateful because he denounced Hitler, the Nazis, and Mein Kampf (which, by the way, he saw as strongly resembling the Quran in style and content – he called it ‘the new Koran of faith and war’)?

    If you *are* indeed not a Muslim then go read the Quran. Read Surah 48: 29 and all of Surah 9, which is one of the later surahs, trumping earlier, seemingly more peaceful passages. Read especially 9: 29.

    And get it through your head that that surah, if you are a non-Muslim, is aimed at YOU. At YOU, ME, EVERY NON-MUSLIM on earth. We are supposed to convert to Islam – or become a despised, degraded dhimmi, buying our lives by an annual ritual of extreme humiliation and payment of ‘protection’ money, or…fight to the death against Muslims determined to expunge us from the earth.
    Joseph Schacht, who spent years looking at the source texts of Islam and the authoritative historic interpretations of same, wrote in his book ‘An Introduction to Islamic Law’, that ‘the basis of the Islamic attitude toward unbelievers is the law of war: they must be converted, or subjugated, or killed’.

    You – IF you are not a Muslim- may choose to ignore that. You may like to pretend that he was an ignorant Islamophobe (he was not; he was a scholar who called it as he saw it). And if so, you are a fool.

    But if you are lying, and are actually a Mohammedan in a mask throwing sand, here is all I have to say to you:

    1/ Lan Astaslem. 2/ I am a Gharqad Tree.

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