Life in Judea-Samaria No Longer Frontier Pioneering

In 1981, when we first moved to Shiloh the heart of Biblical Israel, Judea-Samaria, we were certainly pioneers. And you needed that old-fashioned frontier spirit to survive and enjoy life.  We didn't live in tents, but the prefabricated cement home reached by a dirt path wasn't easy suburban living.

There were just a few dozen other families here in Shiloh. Electricity was provided by a tempermental generator; water was trucked in daily at best. And public transportation didn't reach our neighborhood. Actually, most of the buses only stopped on the main road, a few miles from us. And only after a few months was there a telephone, just one for the entire neighborhood.

It was a twenty minute drive to the nearest communities, and they were also struggling with the essentials of minimalist conditions. Forget about modern life.

During those early years, we were frequently visited by journalists who took for granted that we were just a temporary presence in the area, soon to be removed. Nobody imagined that in forty years Shiloh would be the center of a large bloq of communities, one larger and the rest smaller, stretching west, north and east all the way to the Alon Road and Jordan Valley.

Today's Shiloh is more suburban than rural, and we're not at all isolated. The city of Ariel is just ten minutes  away and has a university, cultural center, government offices and a mall, among other things. Here in Shiloh there are two supermarkets, an enormous hardware/building supply store, clothing store, two clinics, two bus lines, schools and more.

The entire development of Jewish return to our Biblical Homeland, Judea and Samaria, is miraculous and I'd even say Messianic, as in the Jewish prophecies. Only those whose vision is distorted by Leftist ideology can cay that we're marginal or temporary.

It's hard to say when it all changed, but changed it has. In the more veteran towns like Ofra, Shiloh, Efrat, Kiryat Arba, Kedumim and more, there are many families raising second and third generations of children.  Yes, to put it simply, we are here to stay, Baruch Hashem, thank Gd.

Disengagement Part 2, Something Unexpected

Here's Part 2 of my Disengagement series. See Opening Old Wounds, Disengagement, Part 1.

Nitzan, Gush Katif Memorial, The "price" of Disengagement

Last Friday, early during my visit with Menachem Begin Heritage Center employees to the Gush Katif Visitors Center in Nitzan, suddenly something hit me. I hadn't thought of it before at all.

I'll never forget how during the horribly tense times before the forced evacuation of Jewish communities and homes actually happened, I corrected those saying that it was a matter of 8,000 (whatever the exact number) families. I kept saying that we had to stop the precedent of Disengagement to protect Jewish life in Judea, Samaria, the Golan and Jordan Valley, even later on the rest of the State of Israel.

It was just too clear to me that a successful sic destruction would whet the appetite of those who were against Jewish life/communities in all of these places to destroy even more. And in the first flush of Disengagement, during the rule of Ehud Olmert, if I remember correctly, there was an announcement that the new maps had been drawn, and lists of the next communities to go...

Yes, I remember a government official/minister on television, looking drunk with the power of life & death happily announcing that more of the Land of Israel would be judenrein very shortly. And that included Shiloh, which then was considered small, unimportant and isolated.

But here we are over a decade later thriving. Gush Shiloh has grown enormously, as have most other Jewish towns, communities and cities in Judea/Samaria.

Despite the precision/efficiency of the army in dragging people from their homes, packing their possessions and bulldozing the houses, schools and more, the country was ripped apart and in pain by the sight of IDF solders crying and obviously traumatized by their cruel orders.

The government had put more effort into planning the destruction of Gush Katif and the Northern Shomron yishuvim included in Disengagement, than in the "day after." There were prefabricated homes set up for only a small fraction of the families. Others were crowded into small hotel rooms and rented apartments. And don't forget that the Arab terrorists in Gaza reacted to the proclamation of Disengagement, the destruction of Gush Katif by launching rockets at Israel's south. This had been going on from before the actual destruction.

Over time, as the victims of Disengagement, slowly and painfully tried to rebuild their lives, talk of destroying mine and my neighbors got softer and softer. The true price of Disengagement was/is a lot higher than the State of Israel had ever imagined it could be.

Some of the Left still pays lip service to the idea that our communities can be easily destroyed for a "peace sic agreement," but as second and even third generation Jews in Judea/Samaria build homes here reality mocks their plans.

It becomes clearer every day that Disengagement was a cruel, evil mistake. It certainly didn't bring peace, and it may have kept Arik Sharon out of "jail." But Gd then took away his power in a stroke to remind us all Who's really in charge. Davka, the ramifications in terms of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria are something else. Disengagement showed the State of Israel that we aren't chess pieces that can be easily manipulated.

My biggest complaint about the "message" from the Gush Katif Visitors Center is that when they listed communities where people moved to, they leave out the Netzarim group in Ariel and all of the many in various yishuvim of Judea/Samaria. That inaccuracy makes it very clear that the leadership didn't and don't see us all as one group with the same needs, but that would be another blog post, not as upbeat. 

Houses on the Road to Amichai

Amichai!

Yesterday on my way home to Shiloh, I could see the caravillot, temporary homes on their way to Amichai, the new town just southeast of Shiloh.

https://a7.org/media/a7radio/misc/video/18/feb/AMICHAY21-2.mp4

Priority for living there is being given to those who had been thrown out of Amona, which was on a hill right next to Ofra. The residents of Amona had undergone two very traumatic destructions. One was partial, and the most recent totally leveled their peaceful community, making all residents homeless. As compensation, the government decided to build a new community for them, Amichai.

Amichai is southeast of Shiloh, south of Shvut Rachel, near a number of small hilltop farming communities and has been allocated land for growth. It is a beautiful area. It is a short distance from the Alon Road which goes north-south in the Jordan Valley. The children who had lived in Amona and whose parents agreed to move to Amichai have been bussed to the Shiloh elementary schools this year.

We, in Gush Shiloh, the bloc of communities surrounding Shiloh, are very excited about the establishment of the new town, although we are very upset that Amona had been destroyed. Why does it always take death, murder and destruction to galvanize the Israeli government to build new towns and communities?

Why Does it Take Murdered Jews for Government to Act?

For decades I've been asking this question. There has been a long-standing custom, even predating the establishment of the State of Israel, to establish and name communities and even cities after Jews murdered by Arab terrorists. The list of such places is very long, and I'm not going to try to list all of the communities/towns/cities that fit that criteria.

Just in the past few days, the community of Chavat Gilad, which is built on private Jewish land, was given approval, because of the sympathy the Israeli government felt for the residents after one was murdered by an Arab terrorist.

Shvut Rachel, which is just a few minutes' walk east from my house, was established on land allocated to Shiloh by a garin, group of people planning on living as a community together, that had plans to establish a new community east of Shiloh before Rachella Druk, HaYa"D, was murdered, but hadn't actually done it. After Rachella was murdered, they quickly moved caravans to the site which is now Shvut Rachel, and a yishuv was born. I've been wondering ever since about the possibility that if only they had established a new community beforehand, would Rachella be alive today?

Why do we only react to horrible tragedies? In recent decades this has become pretty much the only impetus for Jewish settlement. Forty years ago when Shiloh, Tekoa, Beit El, Efrat, Ariel and many other Jewish communities were established, there was a drive to fill the Biblical landscape with modern Jewish life.

We must return to the ideology of settlement in the Land of Israel because it is ours and our right, privilege and obligation to live here, not as a reaction to murder!

1967 Six Days Victory, Alternative to Destruction

"So Sorry We Won" was the brilliantly prophetic name Ephraim Kishon and Dosh gave to their post 1967 Six Days War political satire. Here we are a half a century later, and even Israelis think there was a viable alternative to the miraculous victory of Biblical proportions which gave the State of Israel our Historic Homeland.

I was about to graduate high school when Egypt's Nasser began his tirades threatening to destroy the State of Israel, wipe it into the sea.

The absence of any significant international reaction to the reimposition of the blockade on the Gulf of Aqaba only emboldened Nasser. In a speech to Arab Trade Unionists on 26 May, he declared his real objective: "The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel." (Jewish Virtual Library)

There was nothing ambiguous about his statement, and there was nothing ambiguous about the fact that the United Nations and every single solitary country in the world just acquiesced or ignored Nasser's threats.

Here we were thirty years after the rise of Hitler and Naziism in Germany, just over twenty years after their defeat, and it looked like Hitler had risen from his grave.  The world, including the United States, had sat idly by when Jews were murdered by the Nazis, and now their successors were standing placidly on the sidelines while Nasser was orchestrating the destruction of the nineteen year old struggling State of Israel.

That was the situation in June, 1967, when without any foreign ally the State of Israel achieved the most miraculous and unprecedented victory in the history of warfare. In six days, not only did we defend the indefensible Auschwitz borders, but we liberated all of the land from the Golan Heights in the north to the Suez Canal on the south and to the Jordan River on the East. This not only gave the State of Israel all of historic, holy and Biblical Jerusalem, it returned the locations of our Biblical National History and finally gave the modern state logical and defendable borders.

You'd think that such a victory would be embraced, celebrated and accepted by all sectors in Israeli society for eternity.

The Jewish People may be academically brilliant with a disproportionately high percentage of discoveries and prizes in science, but when it comes to politics and "self-defense," we tend to get things wrong. In the Bible you can read about how our very first king, King Saul, was more concerned with trying to kill David than obeying Gd's decree that he destroy all of the enemy Amalek. And unfortunately, things haven't changed all that much.

Not only are the European Union and most foreign governments boycotting the big celebrations of the 50 years our 1967 victory and subsequent settlements in the liberated Land, but many Israeli politicians and political parties are boycotting the Judea and Samaria jubilee.

Honestly, I'm not surprised by the fact that non-Jews and other countries don't care about the survival and security of the State of Israel, but I find it truly incomprehensible that there are Israelis who don't understand, or more accurately, refuse to understand that the alternative to that 1967 victory was the destruction of the State of Israel, Gd forbid. Here we are a half century, fifty 50 years later, and they still haven't a clue as to the perilous security situation we'd be in without having full control and sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights.

It's bad enough that Menachem Begin gave Egypt the Sinai. But there is no way the State of Israel could survive with an enemy Arab terror state inside our borders.

Allowing Jews to live in all parts of the Land of Israel we now control is the only way to secure the Land and make even Tel Aviv a safe place for Jews.

"Be strong and courageous!"

Today as I read through the Torah Portions, Nitzavim-Vayelech, in synagogue, I suddenly read:

Deuteronomy Chapter 31 6Be strong and courageous! Neither fear, nor be dismayed of them, for the Lord, your God He is the One Who goes with you. He will neither fail you, nor forsake you."

וחִזְק֣וּ וְאִמְצ֔וּ אַל־תִּֽירְא֥וּ וְאַל־תַּֽעַרְצ֖וּ מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם כִּ֣י | יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֗יךָ ה֚וּא הַֽהֹלֵ֣ךְ עִמָּ֔ךְ לֹ֥א יַרְפְּךָ֖ וְלֹ֥א יַֽעַזְבֶֽךָּ:

That is exactly what comes to my mind every time Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, other politicians, media, academics etc try to tell us that we can't institute the policies that would make the State of Israel stronger and safer. They use it as an excuse for not building the quantity of homes in Judea and Samaria that would lower prices all over.

We're back to the notorious "sin of the spies," which delayed the entrance to the Land of Israel by forty years. Ten out of twelve tribal chiefs insisted that the "giants" who occupied the Promised Land were too strong for the Jewish People. Those ten frightened the people, and only a tiny minority trusted that Gd would help.

As the Jewish Year 5777 is in its final days, and we are reading the very end of the final and fifth book of the Torah, the Chumash. The forty year delay is over, and the Jewish People are about to enter the Land led by Joshua. Moses is soon to die and not enter with his people. He led the Jewish People as they escaped from Pharaoh in Egypt, and he led them through the wilderness helping them prepare for the next stage, entering the Land of Israel.

A new generation is to enter the Holy Land, and they are reminded yet again that Gd will be with us, to help and not forsake us. Here we are thousands of years later. We read the Torah through every single year. And most of the Jewish People still need reminding and reassurance.

Gd willing in the upcoming year, 5778, the Jewish People and the Government of Israel will have the faith in Gd to think of what's best for the Jewish People and State of Israel, and not what "the world" may say or do. When we act assured with full confidence and sovereignty, like we did in those first few hours of the 1967 Six Days War, the world will accept and respect us. They will be in awe of our Gd given power. That is the "light" we must shine on the world.

Shana Tova One and All

Building for Growing Shiloh

Baruch Hashem, bli eyin haraa, my home town Shiloh has been growing. This summer many families with children have moved to Shiloh. And there are many homes under construction. Some are being privately built, while others are a part of a large building project. There are a total of nine first grade classes between the boys and girls schools. And that doesn't count the children going to school in other places for various reasons.

Our school is a regional school. Not only do the children come from the very nearby communities, but we see school buses from the Jordan Valley and the Shomron bringing and taking kids everyday.

Thirty-six 36 years ago, on September 1, 1981, eighteen 18 children, six in the third grade, four in the second grade and eight in the first grade began studying in Shiloh. It's mind-boggling miraculous to see how the school has grown. Second generation, meaning the children of some of those pioneers study in the Shiloh elementary schools today, and some have have even graduated already.

Shiloh is considered one of the most pleasant and convenient places to live. Not only is there work here in Shiloh and closeby, but we're near the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem and the "coastal plain," meaning Petach Tikva, Kfar Saba etc. And of course Ariel and the university there are just a few minutes from Shiloh.

There are two health fund with clinics in Shiloh, plus numerous stores. And we have quite a few buses each day to Jerusalem, Ariel and Maale Levona. There are also all sorts of activities for children, adults and senior citizens. Don't forget that my neighbors include some of the nicest people in the world. Moving to Shiloh was one of the best decisions we could have made, B"H.

Not all houses are made from bricks nowadays.

Finally, Ground Being Broken for Town of Amichai, B"H

Yesterday morning while riding from Shiloh to Kochav Hashachar I could see the empty hill that had been promised to those displaced from Amona and was so sad. What was taking so long? Why is the Netanyahu Government making them suffer further?

And then while returning home we suddenly noticed something new on the landscape. There were tractors working on the hill. Amichai, My People Lives, the new town for Amona and others who want to live here in one of the most beautiful and central parts of the Land of Israel is starting to be built! Unfortunately I couldn't photograph it, but I did see it!

When the Amona "DPs" had been protesting outside of the Prime Minister's Residence I spoke to one of the women who had lost her home. I introduced myself as being from Shiloh and told her that we were looking forward to their new town being in our area.

She said that she was looking forward to starting a new community and had no problem moving from "near Ofra" to "near Shiloh." What was important to her was that they could move and build and not be harassed by the government and Leftist groups.

Gd willing, the first stage of temporary homes will be ready for them by the beginning of the school year, and they will be able to quickly plan and build their permanent housing. And of course, Gd willing many more families will join them.

Bibi's Land Policies Bad For Jews

Even though the Israeli media and "world public opinion" insist on labeling our Prime Minister as "Right," the truth is that his policies are far to the Left of the Israeli political spectrum. I can easily admit that he can give a great speech, which even echoes the basic principles of what's considered Right policies. But the truth is in actions and not words. And when it comes to actions, or policies, there's nothing Right about Prime Minister Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu.

Here in 21st Century Israel the key to judging/measuring Right/Left on the political spectrum is one's policies and attitude to the Land of Israel, statehood and sovereignty.  In a nutshell that means that if someone is in favor of Jews living, building and being sovereign in the Land of Israel, ignoring the 1949 Armistice lines, then he/she is on the Right. If one sees a legal holiness or eternal permanence in those lines and consider them as a border between an "Israel of all its citizens" and a judenrein apartheid Arab state called "Palestine" or "West Bank of Jordan," then he/she is on the Left.

Bibi is a pretty smooth speaker and could have been a hell of a used car salesman, but we've heard his lies a few times too often. Those "like new" cars are lemons with doctored records.

While Bibi keeps on touting the hundreds of Jewish homes he has approved for building, they are the same ones that were approved years ago but never built.  Bibi doesn't play those games with the Arabs. They have a new city called Rawabi, and now even on land that was supposed to be for Jewish only building, Jews can't get permits but Arabs can:

FIVE PALESTINIANS CITIES TO EXPAND INTO AREA C

I'm not being paranoid!

Why are we Jews being held back? Why hasn't the new Amona been brought here?

Bibi has promised that a new community will be built southeast of Shiloh. There will be special "incentives" for the Amona community, and it will also be open for other Jewish families. We are waiting. Words won't help. We want action!

Israeli Sovereignty Trumps Trump

This was first posted on Israeli Blogger.

I am disgusted by the reports that building for Jews in Judea/Samaria will be temporarily  frozen until after United States President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit. As an Israeli I’m disgusted and embarrassed by the report.

Didn’t we just celebrate our 69th Israeli Independence Day?

Are we an independent sovereign state, or not?

If we are an independent sovereign state then we don’t need approval from any foreign ruler, nor do we need to worry about their feelings and opinions.

Yes, it’s that simple!

For the first twenty years after declaring our independence and before that, and previous to that while Nazis murdered millions of Jews and then the British refused the survivors permission to relocate/immigrate to the Holy Land, no country allied with us or defended us Jews. We were on our own!

And the truth is that we’re still on our own when it comes to international diplomacy. But we do have one ally, and that’s Gd Almighty.

• Gd’s help enabled us to defeat the Arabs, who had been assisted by other Arab states and Great Britain in 1948-49.
• Gd’s help enabled us to defeat Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967.
• Gd’s help enabled us to defeat Egypt and Syria in 1973. Our dependence on American advice almost led to our defeat in the Yom Kippur War.

Israel does not owe any country for our existence, our survival. It is only through the grace of Gd that there is a State of Israel. And if we want the respect and support of American President Trump, then we must act like a strong, independent sovereign state, not a weak fawning nebbich.

Expanding The New Shiloh Neighborhood

The newest neighborhood in Shiloh is Rechov Techelet, which can be translated loosely as Sky Blue Street. If I remember correctly, the area was first planned and approved for building pre-Madrid Conference time.

The Israeli Government had approved a massive building project for Shiloh of something like 134 houses, which was to double the population. Half were to be in my neighborhood, including a large extension of it to the north, and the other half was in the middle neighborhood, extending it to the south and east.

My memory on the timing is pretty exact, because half the homes ended up being built in Shvut Rachel which was established in memory of our neighbor, Rachella Druk, who had been murdered when on her way to a demonstration in Tel Aviv, which was to encourage Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir to be strong and resist international pressure at the Madrid Conference. In those days it was considered important to memorialize someone murdered by terrorists by building a community in the person's memory. In order to make sure that Shvut Rachel got a good start, our Town Council requested that half the homes allocated to us be transferred to the new community to the east.

In the past decade or so homes have finally been built in that area, and it's a lovely neighborhood. A new section is under construction called  Karmei Shiloh, and here are some photos I took this week.

I find all of this building in Shiloh very exciting, and it's wonderful to hear that nowadays Shiloh isn't considered "out of the way." Shiloh is considered the Center of the Country, convenient and a wonderful place to live. Thank Gd!

Building in Shiloh, We're Expanding!

This is also posted on Israel Bloggers.

During "the season" we moved to Shiloh in the summer of 1981, Shiloh doubled in population from over thirty families to sixty plus. And the yishuv (town) also got much, much larger, because Arik Sharon who had then been Minister of Construction had decided on insisted on making a whole new neighborhood on a large hill a kilometer, as the crow flies, to the northeast of Tel Shiloh. The first homes, which were trucked in were right near the Biblical Shiloh. And permanent homes were being built just above them. But when Sharon visited Shiloh just before that Passover, he, very correctly judged that larger hill to be much more suitable for housing and living. The forty prefabricated cement homes he had sent by truck are still being lived in, though most are almost unrecognizable after having been expanded by the owners.

Our house was built on a building plot Sharon had prepared, which didn't get a house. We preferred building from scratch.

There are now close to four hundred families living in Shiloh. Not only are there one-family homes, but there are also terraced apartment buildings overlooking totally amazing views. And we've even reached the point where people buy a house and then knock it down in order to build something much larger and nicer.

Recently, I was informed that the Shiloh will soon be doubling in size. There are that many houses being constructed or already approved for construction. The Shiloh Bloc, unlike many other communities in Judea/Samaria has a lot of State Land which can be used for housing, schools etc. And, yes, a new school campus and girls high school are also being worked on. It's to be located just above the Shiloh-Shvut Rachel Junction.

And our regional council, Mateh Binyamin, has announced that finally a proper access road to the Alon Road is getting approval. Right now we have a paved "one-lane" road, which isn't the most pleasant to drive on. But even this below standard road makes Shiloh a very convenient place to be. We're just minutes from the Jordan Valley.

Shiloh is very central. We can drive to Petach Tikvah and Kfar Saba as quickly as to Jerusalem, though you do need to change buses in Ariel if using public transportation. Also the Number Six Highway and Rosh Ha'ayin Train Station aren't far. Of course the Ariel University is barely ten minutes away from Shiloh. Lots of kids now move back home after the army and National Service to study nearby.

Shiloh is now in its fortieth year, and we've come a long way, thank Gd!



You'll see me towards the beginning and the end of the video.

Will There be Real Changes in American Policy Towards Israel?

The big question here in Israel and among many American Jews is whether or not the Trump administration will change American policy towards Israel. One great improvement, which isn't actual policy, is attitude.

Obama couldn't hide his genuine antipathy towards Israel and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Even when Obama would read pro-Israel speeches and say the "right words" it was clear that his heart wasn't in it. He absolutely glowed when with Arabs, especially  Mahmoud Abbas. And don't forget that he had vowed to help establish a "Palestinian state" during his term in office. It was the failure to do so that spurred his vicious anti-Israel move in the United Nations and Kerry's awful parting speech while "lame duck."

Contrary to what the New York Times and international media would like people to believe, not all American Jews support J-Street and oppose Jewish life/communities/building in Judea Samaria. Davka, the most committed Jews, the Torah observant ones who have the higher birthrates, totally oppose the extreme Left J-Street and support full Jewish Life and Sovereignty in all of the Land of Israel. On the whole, they are totally embarrassed by American policy. They are proud and happy to have David Friedman as American Ambassador and look forward to the United States' moving its Embassy to Jerusalem.

Pence: 'Trump seriously considering embassy move'

These strongly Jewish American Jews also support building, including news communities, in Judea, Samaria, the Golan and Jordan Valley. And they mourn the destruction of Amona, Gush Katif, etc.

In all honesty, I wouldn't dare predict what Trump will do vis a vis Israel.  At present, he is under so much pressure and opposition to everything he does, good and bad.

Whatever happens, it won't really affect the State of Israel, because our fate and future are in our hands, not those of foreign leaders. Therefore the very best thing the State of Israel can do is to declare complete Israeli Sovereignty over all of the Land we hold. It doesn't matter what anyone says. The stronger and more confident we act the more respect and support we will get from the world, and the more support Gd will give us which is most important. That's the true lesson of Passover, which is in only two weeks.

Remember that the Sea only split when Nachshon stepped in.