At tree-planting ceremony, Jewish Home lawmakers vow to continue the settlement project, not give in to terrorism
ed note–As much as those ‘good Zionists’ on the left will snarl at commentary such as this from Bennett, the fact is that it’s only because Bennett & co discuss openly what left-leaning Zionists prefer be kept out of Gentile earshot.
At the end of the day however, what all people of every pedigree need to understand is that Zionism from its inception–and we don’t mean the ‘Zionism’ born at the 1st Zionist Congress in Basil Switzerland in 1898, but rather the Zionism that got its start thousands of years ago when a penniless nomad named Abraham started hearing voices in his head telling him that all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates belonged to him and his offspring–that everything we see taking place right now vis a vis the intransigence on the part of the Jewish state with regards to Palestinian rights is in perfect conformity with the entire Zionist agenda, and anyone trying to argue that all of this is just a ‘perversion’of Judaism needs to be summarily rejected, ignored, and cast out of any intelligent discussion on this problem.
Times of Israel
Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday said that only when Palestinians accept that they will never have a state in the West Bank will they be able to live side-by-side with Israelis.
Bennett, who leads the settlement-backing Jewish Home party, made the comments at the settlement of Tekoa, south of Jerusalem, where he was joined by fellow party members Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli for a tree-planting ceremony ahead of the Jewish agricultural festival of Tu Bishvat.
“Since the dawn of Zionism there’s been terror, and the answer was always settlement and attack,” Bennett said, according to a report on the Hebrew-language Srugim website. “The terrorists act in the hope of breaking us. Only when they understand that we are flourishing, only when they understand that there is no expectation of a Palestinian state here, will they be comfortable with our existence.”
The Jewish Home party officials’ visit to the settlement came in solidarity after last week’s incident in which resident Michal Froman was stabbed by a 15-year-old Palestinian, Othman Muhammad Sha’alan. The tree was planted outside the local school, near where the attack took place.
Froman, five months’ pregnant, was moderately injured and Sha’alan was shot in the leg and apprehended by security forces.
“The spirit of the Jewish people cannot be broken, and from within the great disaster we will continue to plant and to flourish, and to develop the settlement project in the beloved Land of Israel,” Shaked, the justice minister, said. “The Jewish people wants to live in its country in peace and with a feeling of security.
“Those who wish us harm want bloodshed and to uproot us from our homes; we saw proof of that last Sunday, in the loathsome attack in which Dafna Meir was murdered,” she continued, referring to the killing of Dafna Meir, 39, who was stabbed outside her home in the West Bank settlement of Otniel by 15-year Palestinian Morad Bader Abdullah Adais.
The deadly attack on Meir and the stabbing of Froman just a day later came amid a wave of Palestinian terror attacks in recent months.
At least 29 Israelis and some 150 Palestinians, most of them attackers, have been killed in the violence, which has included Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks in Israel and the West Bank.
