Fateful Triangle

The Road to Armageddon748Jews in the country is morally and politically irrelevant tothe national right of the Jews to settle and possess theLand… The Bible states the Jewish right regardless of non-Jewish presence. Much later, the Rabbinic sages expoundedon the patriarchal promise and articulated the followingprinciple:… Dwelling in the Land is the Jewish priority andit is in no way restricted, let alone nullified, by a non-Jewishmajority population in any given part of the Land. Thisprinciple was later codified by Maimonides in his legal work,thus lending his outstanding halachic [religious legal]authority to this Abrahamic national imperative... [The viewthat rejects the legitimacy of Jewish settlement in Judea andSamaria] is a direct denunciation of Abraham, the first Jew,the Father of the Jewish people [who] set the precedent andmodel for settling there in spite of the fact that “theCanaanite was then in the Land.” The Jewish presence inthe Land has always had to contend with, and at leastpartially overcome, an indigenous non-Jewish element in theLand.As we read in the genocidal texts of the Bible, an implicit reference thathis Israeli readers will understand. He continues:In the democratic age we live in, it is a difficult task toopenly adopt what seems like a non-democratic position.But it is nowhere provided that non-Jews will enjoy fullequal rights as a national community. After all, the Land isthe eternal possession of the Jewish people alone… Thetasks of politics, often involving the use of violence, can attimes only be achieved by sacrificing the purity of the soul.Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky