Tuesday, September 20, 2005 17:22 IST
JNW HEADLINE NEWSBetrayal at the UN
By Stan GoodenoughSeptember 16th, 2005
In an internationally broadcast event Thursday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took the podium at the United Nations, spelled his nation’s right of absolute ownership to the Land of Israel, then told the whole world that he was ready to forever relinquish parts of the ancient Jewish patrimony for the creation of a Palestinian state.
He would do this, he said, despite the fact that it was painful and as difficult as “parting the Red Sea.”
Beginning his widely anticipated speech to the notoriously anti-Israel global body, the aging Israeli boldly declared that he had come to New York from Jerusalem “the capital of the Jewish people for over 3,000 years, and the undivided and eternal capital of the State of Israel.”
His people’s history, and thus their claim to the Land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem, stretched back more than three millennia to God’s calling out of “our forefather Abraham,” the giving of the Torah (Law of God) at Mount Sinai, and the wanderings of the children of Israel until Moses led them to “the promised land, the land of Israel.”
Israel was more “precious” to the Jewish people “than anything.”
“Every inch of land, every hill and valley, every stream and rock, is saturated with Jewish history, replete with memories,” Sharon said.
Jews had maintained a continuous presence in the land through the millennia. Those who were exiled kept alive in their hearts and three times a day in their prayers the memory of their land and the belief that one day the Jewish people would return to it.
The Land of Israel was a written testimony; “the identity and right of the Jewish people.”
The Israeli leader described these facts as “the essence of my Jewish consciousness, and of my belief in the eternal and unimpeachable right of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel.”
Despite the enduring reality of these historical and biblical truths, however, Sharon said he was motivated and guided by “the right path for the future of Israel” when he chose to “relinquish…part of our forefathers’ legacy” and accept that the Palestinian Arabs were “also entitled to freedom and to a national sovereign existence in a state of their own” on Israel’s ancient land.
The Israeli leader appeared to believe that his democratic election to a four year term as Israel’s Prime Minister gave him the right to abandon land given to the founding fathers of his nation, and held in sacred trust in the hearts of millions of persecuted Jews for thousands of years.
Although not a religious man, Sharon made two selective references to the God of Israel during his speech. It was God Who had called out Abraham, and it was God Who foresaw the future destiny of all peoples.
The fact that this same God had given the Land of Israel exclusively and in perpetuity to Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob, and had commanded that the land never be sold, was not mentioned.
Sharon also appeared to have made irrelevant forever the memorable words of Israel’s first and most famous leader – Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who told the Zionist Congress in Basel in 1937 that no Jew had or would ever have the right to yield the rights of the Jewish People in Israel:
"No Jew has the right to yield the rights of the Jewish People in Israel. No Jew has the authority to do so. No Jewish body has the authority to do so. Not even the entire Jewish People alive today has the right to yield any part of Israel. It is the right of the Jewish People over the generations, a right that under no conditions can be cancelled. Even if Jews during a specific period proclaim they are relinquishing this right, they have neither the power nor the authority to deny it to future generations. No concession of this type is binding or obligates the Jewish People.
“Our right to the country - the entire country - exists as an eternal right, and we shall not yield this historic right until its full and complete redemption is realized.”