Eldad and Medad

This is the time of the year when we read in the Torah about Eldad and Medad. In Israel we read the Torah Portion of the Week, Beha'alotcha, last week, and in the rest of the Jewish World it will be read this coming Shabbat. As many of you know, the name my husband and I chose when we changed our name over thirty years ago is Medad.

We knew the great Jewish patriot, the late Professor/Dr. Yisrael Eldad, who was a remarkable man. Among his varied accomplishments was a commentary on the Torah, Hegyonot Hamikra. His son is the world reknown plastic surgeon, MK Dr. Arie Eldad, MD. Yes, he's a Member of Knesset, attempting to save the entire nation, not only his severely burnt patients.

I certainly can't compare myself to the accomplished Eldad family, so here's a recent article by MK Arie Eldad:

This land is our land

Hebron and Beit El, not Tel Aviv, inspired int’l community to support Jewish rights in Israel
Arieh Eldad

If a Martian were to come down to Earth and have the bad luck to land in the Middle East, there is little doubt he would look around at the Jews and Arabs fighting over the Land of Israel and suggest they share it. Martians don’t know about history and don't care about the future. They probably just want to go home, and so the solutions they propose are divorced from past and future alike.

But for someone who has lived here his whole life, for someone whose fathers and forefathers were born here and who hopes that his descendants will be, too, we know that disengaging from the past and the future also means disengaging from reality.

We cannot discuss solutions to the Jewish – Arab conflict in the Land of Israel without recognizing the past and answering basic questions about rights over this sliver of land. We must understand the forces and aspirations driving the nationalist movements fighting over it in order to scratch out a solution that could one day, possibly, be implemented.

Divine rights

The source of the Jewish people's right to this land is God's promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, repeated to Moses and from Moses to Joshua. Joshua subsequently conquered the land, and all Jewish leaders since – judges, kings, rebels, true and false messiahs, rabbis and Torah scholars, Zionist and spiritual leaders – have guided the Jewish people for thousands of years in light of this promise.

Even "non religious" leaders such as Zionism visionary Theodor Herzl understood that this was the faith of Israel, and that this spirit inspired millions of Jews, for thousands of years, in Israel and abroad, to cling to their homeland, to dream about it and to pray thrice daily to return to it. It is what drove people to make every attempt to get to Israel, despite the hardships.

Power of history

The power of faith became the power of history. Faith becomes fact when driven by the actions of millions of people. This is how many people have come to claim the Jewish people's "historic right" to the Land of Israel, despite the fact that they do not believe in God or are unwilling to rely on His promises.

More than that: Aren't Israeli Jews who reject their divine or historic right to be here – aren't they really thieves, imperialists, colonialists? Haven't they stolen land that doesn't belong to them?

The Jewish people and its history, as well as its history of monotheism, are well described in the Torah.

This book also forms the basis for Christianity and Islam. Its words are what drove the League of Nations to charge Great Britain with a mandate over the Land of Israel, in order to create a national home for the Jewish people.

It wasn't the 20th century creation called Tel Aviv that inspired the world to recognize the Jewish rights to the entire Land of Israel, including both banks of the Jordan River. Rather, it was Jerusalem and Hebron and Bethlehem and Beit El.

No Palestinian nation

At that time, no one, including the Arabs, claimed a national right to this land. There was never an independent Arab country in Israel. Arabs viewed themselves as part of the wider Arab nation, part of an empire based in Iraq, Syria, Turkey or Egypt. They never revolted against their Arab rulers, because they never considered themselves a separate nation deserving of independence.

Here in Palestine, the Arab population never created any of the distinguishing marks of a nation: not political independence or a national language or a unique culture or religion.

Concessions for peace

Many of us say today: We believe that Jews have rights to the entire Land of Israel, but "reality" forces us to make concessions. They believe that foregoing our rights to live in Hebron and Beit El and Nablus will bring peace. They apparently can't see that they are pulling the rug out from any claim of rights over this land – moral, historical or legal.

In addition, their proposals only push peace further away. Throughout the long years of Muslim imperial occupation, no territorial compromise has ever advanced the cause of peace. A woman who would propose chopping a living baby in half is in effect testifying that she is not the baby's mother.

There is no nation on Earth that would volunteer to forego its rights to half its homeland, unless they came to that country from the Diaspora but never managed to get the Diaspora mentality out of their hearts. These people have failed to internalize a sense that the Jewish people living in Israel is a natural state of affairs, and to relate to this country the way a Frenchman relates to France or an Italian relates to Italy.

Rightful rulers or 'occupiers'?

Rights cannot be divided. In the national struggle over the Land of Israel, the more willing we have been to compromise over the land of Israel –under a guise of seeking peace - while at the same time defending ourselves against external Arab enemies and Arab terror from within – the more we have become "occupiers" in they eyes of the world.

A nation that does not feel itself to be the rightful owner of this land will eventually be kicked out of it like a cruel occupier. Only if we renew our belief that we are completely entitled to the Land of Israel, if we openly declare any Arab sovereignty in the Land of Israel as a foreign occupation that must be fought and expelled – only then can we expect to have peace.

As long as the Arabs sense that the Jews are slowly losing their belief that justice lies with them, they will continue to try to destroy the State of Israel and to evict us from this land.

Therefore, debate on this matter mustn't be anchored in some "existential" present, nor in a past that would make everything here seem absurd. Rather, it must be based on the future. A large part of the Jewish people were murdered in exile, and many more are rapidly disappearing. Only in Israel can the Jewish people become stronger. In the name of the future of our people, we must renew our knowledge of our rights to be here. We must know that we are right.

This land is ours.
Arieh Eldad is a Knesset Member for the National Union-National Religious Party
(06.13.06, 12:02)