# 220 – The Settlements

December 17, 2012

(My Dad, the actor Eric Pohlmann, was in the original “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines – and almost 200 other movies, etc. Look it up! There, that got your attention!).

I recently passed on a great article by someone who is ‘fed up’ with World apathy, naïvety or just blatant anti-Semitisim towards Israel.

Some have paid me the compliment that they thought I wrote it. I wish I had, for I agreed with most of what that writer stated.

I am fed up with the World’s attitude towards the Settlements.

Yes, it was an act of defiance to make the announcement about the permission to build 3,000 more homes in area E-1 next to Jerusalem. And the timing was questionable.

But the international reaction was pathetically predictable.

I know: we’re all fed up with the subject. But let me make a couple of points; state a couple of reminders:

• They say construction of the homes will cut the West Bank off from its (planned) capital in E. Jerusalem – NOT the case if there is peace. In Israel, a large majority of Palestinians (Israeli Arabs) live in the Galilee, cutting Haifa and the North off from Israel’s capital (Jerusalem, in case you have forgotten). There is no Peace and prosperity rule.

• The extremist settlers you see on the TV are perhaps 25% of those living in West Bank. As part of a democracy (that slowly-dying entity, one of the best examples of which is….Israel), the potential problems arising from these people is minimal.

• Now I am being naïve….why does a country have to be ‘Juden-frei’? Free of Jews. (Like Hitler’s dream, or like such countries today as Jordan, Saudi and Kuwait). I think I know why it’s unacceptable to Israel’s neighbours to have Jewish residents/citizens. So how come so much of the World is blind to this? The Palestinians/Arabs in Israel are not a problem.

• Reminder: When Jordan and Egypt occupied (NOT in parenthesis..they occupied) West Bank and Gaza between 1948 and 1967, did they give the land to the Palestinians?

• Reminder: The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) was formed in 1964 – 3 years before Israel’s occupation.

• Stop worrying about Jews in Palestinians state. Or, should I say, take a step back and ask yourselves why you continuously demand that Jews must get out of the West Bank. None of you live in an area which throws out all residents just because they belong to a certain group.

Yes, there are some of the settlers who scream it is their land! (There’s that minority on a democracy theme again). Stop concentrating on them. They’re just a political football.

• Reminder: Israel publicly showed every intention of negotiating to give back all territories gained in the war. There came the infamous ‘3 No’s’ from the Arab League meeting in Khartoum, including no to negotiations. (Hey, you start a war, repeatedly, then lose it, then refuse to negotiate, you’re just ‘asking for it’).

Hey, you out there! – quit criticising Israel until you know the facts for yourself. Let’s just simply go back to the 1947 democratic decision by the UN to establish states for both the Arabs and Jews in Palestine. One side accepted it; the other did not, and that side has persistently continued not to accept it till today.

And the stupid World, especially including the ever-less democratic UN, has taken the Palestinians’ side, despite the very obvious.

I almost give up.

Stephen