Israeli Left, Levi Report and Trying to Make Facts Fit Ideology

Yesterday I was babysitting for my younger grandchildren.  The almost two year old was very proudly and confidently doing a floor puzzle.  The material of the puzzle is rather flexible, so she was able to get the wrong pieces to fit in wherever she wished. 

She still doesn't know that to put a puzzle together you need to do more than squeeze the pieces to fit.  You have to look at the picture and make sure it all makes sense.

As I watched her, I kept thinking of the Israeli Left.  They are extremely mehadrin (fanatically loyal) to their ideology, as if it's a religion.  They do to facts what my toddler granddaughter was doing to that puzzle.  This may be cute and a sign of great intelligence in a girl of her age, but it can be a tragic mistake when it comes to supposedly military, judicial and political experts and those who are responsible for major policy decisions.

The Israeli establishment, government, judicial, media etc are trying to ignore the fact that the Levi Committee's conclusions are diametrically opposed to the prevailing Leftist ideology that rules Israel. Arlene Kushner's recent article explains this dilemma very clearly.

In January, Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed a committee to consider the status of "questionable settlements" (see more on this below) in Judea and Samaria. Headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Judge Edmund Levy, it included Alan Baker, former Israeli Ambassador to Canada and former legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and Judge Tchia Shapira, former Deputy President of the Tel Aviv District Court.
The Committee released its report on July 8. Most significantly, it concluded that from the perspective of international law, Israel has the legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria, and, further that the laws of ‘occupation’ do not apply to the unique historic and legal circumstances surrounding Israel’s decades-long presence in Judea and Samaria.

For a little background, even pre-State of Israel, the ruling Labor Zionists believed that if they played their cards right, there could be peace with  the Arabs.  One of the most upsetting things I learned (or was confirmed) when I read and reviewed the late Benzion Netanyahu's book "The Founding Fathers of Zionism," was how anti-State Chaim Weizman, the first President, actually was.  He seemed to have had preferred that the Jewish State be part of Great Britain.  It's outrageous that he was made president. 

Rav Elchanan Bin-Nun, Chief Rabbi of Shiloh has said many times that the greatest miracle in 1948 was that the Labor Zionists declared independence.  There was a strong chance that they wouldn't. 

So, here we are almost sixty-five years later and forty-five years since our miraculous victory in the 1967 Six Days War, and we're still being ruled by followers of Chaim Weizman.  It's much too easy for them to accept the lie that we have no legal standing, no legal rights in the Land we liberated in the Six Days War.  The Levi Committee's Report goes against their ideology and they can't accept it.  And unfortunately Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hasn't the guts to overrule them and be a true leader.