The world powers and their major media have been preoccupied, some would say obsessed, with Israel since its war for independence from Britain and Britain’s Arab-created client states in 1948. We are numbed by the “Jewish land for Arab promises of peace” process from Camp David to Madrid, Oslo, Wye, Camp David II to the Road Map, which demands a freeze on Jewish settlement in the central parts of the Promised Land and the expulsion of Jews from ever greater portions of it. We also are familiar with the initial results of such processing: more terror, ethnic cleansing of Jews and now, Hamas terror states in the Gaza area and in the hills of northern Samaria (the Shomron).
There are, however, many aspects of Israel, often the most beautiful facets of the entire nation, land and people, that few of us ever get to see. Perhaps the world powers and their official organs of “truth” prefer it that way.
The following paragraphs reveal the beautiful and inspiring face of the Israel that exists behind the headlines and diplomatic slogans, the Israel that the world is in such a hurry to blot out, destroying its homes, farms, flocks, livelihoods and burying Jewish lives in that special oblivion intended for those who buck the modern world’s dominant tendencies. It does not need to be. If the Jews of Judea and Samaria are uprooted, Americans, and not only Americans, will be endangered and impoverished.
Americans take note and beware: Israel and the Jews are the canary in the mine. If a league of governments can justify expelling Jews from their ancient homeland, any government can “justify” expelling any person from his home.
Travels
For 18 days beginning May 22, I traveled Israel from Yevul at the Egyptian border to Hispin in the Golan Heights. These travels included large swaths of the hilltop communities in the Shomron and Binyamin regions, the latter being the beautiful ridges and hills northeast of Jerusalem. The first eight days I was with an AFSI (Americans for a Safe Israel) tour, one of the very few groups that regularly visits those places where the cutting edge of the globalists “grand game” intersects with the lives of the people who are its target. The journey’s purpose was largely educational, a fact-finding mission that included visits to many new communities, some of them refugee camps for those Jews expelled in August 2005 from the towns and farms they had built on the dunes in Gush Katif (the Gaza area), deported in the name of “peace.”
And we saw the wall in many places; we heard rockets being fired over it and saw one that had recently landed right next to a greenhouse in Netiv Ha Assara, which, thanks to the expulsion of the Jews from GK (the ancient biblical territory of Gerar, Genesis 25) is now on the frontline with global jihad. Far from the lights, press conferences and suave diplomats, we also saw the people in these camps. Despite what they have been through, and despite the poverty and terror that the deals of politicians subject them and their children to every day, they are not discouraged, but have their eyes set on creating and flourishing in a future of dignified joy, one day at a time.
“Every place we settle we will create a Gush Katif,” said Sara, mother of nine children and formerly from Netzarim. “We will return to Gush Katif; and if not us, our children will return.” Such people cannot be defeated.
The beauty of the land and people
The land is astonishingly beautiful, with a uniquely stark, colorful, eye-arresting mix of hills, ridges, winding valleys and stream beds. And, yes, wherever Jews have settled and worked the land it is green, from the tomato, mango, date palm and orange plantings in the sun-baked Dead Sea valley, to the wheat fields, vineyards, herbs and flowers of the Negev, to the olive, fig and almond orchards of the Golan and Samaria. Perhaps this is what the powers of the world don’t want people to see: that the promises of the Creator are real; that His covenant is real and everlasting.
Notwithstanding the marvel of this “green line,” the people are the most beautiful and instructive feature of the Israel no one sees: gracious, cheerful, “grounded” we would say, living attuned to nature and to nature’s Creator with simple unshakeable faith, honor for history and Scripture, and with inspiring persistence.
We began our travels in the hills of Ephraim, in the University town of Ariel at the southern edge of the Shomron. A lovely hotel, the Eshel haShomron, has a flower-surrounded pool, dry clear air and sits near the tip of a salient enclosed by the “security fence” at the very eastern edge of what the world leaders intend to permit for Jewish settlement. Ascending into the hills, one is astonished at the spaciousness and emptiness of nearly all the Jewish heartland. Fifty-six years after Israeli independence, most of the land is still waiting for its people. There is room for millions, for innumerable flocks and plantings, for a paradise on earth.
Exploring a new neighborhood of trailers (the Israelis euphemistically call them “caravans”) housing refugees from the Gush Katif expulsion, I was invited for coffee by Ziv and Adi, a young couple with seven children, formerly from Netzarim. Having been uprooted several times before their temporary place at Ariel, their courtesy and good nature were remarkable:
“We want to make a permanent community, to build with teaching and spirit and love. The most terrible pain was not to us but to Israel. We worry about what will come from this kind of break in caring [about people].”
Nine people were living in a space barely suitable for four. Once employed now jobless, yet their hospitality and good nature shone out. They accompanied me on my way.
From Ariel we drove east to Kfar Tapuach (Apple village) and then, turning north on highway 60 sped through the chop shops and stalls of the Arab town of Hawara, noting the Jewish hilltop communities of Lehava and Hill 725 (meters) far above us on the west side of the road. Traveling this stretch, and many others like it, one grasps the need for those Israeli checkpoints the diplomats are always pressing Israel to close. It would be like pulling in your scouts and pickets at a battlefront, for thanks to Camp David, Oslo and the Road Map, Jews live under siege in their own nation. A detailed map of Oslo’s partitioning of central Israel shows the mischief of that “peace accord,” Balkanizing the land into myriad terrorist enclaves, with narrow corridors for Jews to inhabit and pass through – at their own risk. A long-suffering and gritty patience enables the Jews to persist and flourish, but this self-restraint also postpones the inevitable reckoning with an enemy that will not be appeased. Still, the planting and re-settlement of the land continues.
Vivid moments
In the highlands, we ranged from Yizhar and Shalhavet in the west to Itamar, Gidonim, Givat Olam (“eternal hills” – see Jacob’s blessing to his sons, Genesis 49:26), and the outpost hills 830 and 777. Around the vineyards and orchards the earth was covered with thyme, purple phlox, rosemary and pale green grasses. In the breeze, with the vista of rugged hills angling together in innumerable lines, the fragrance, stillness and beauty were startling. Gazelles paused and then bounded across the far edges of the fields.
High in Itamar, despite its Alpine views and sweet people, the reality of being at the frontline of global jihad and great power games was brought home by Mike who trains dogs for community self-defense. “A dog shifts the element of surprise from the terrorist to the community patrol” he explained, then added words Americans should take to heart: “We’re in an impossible situation. You can’t win a war by defense.”
On a nearby hilltop we saw a young man in an orange T-shirt building with his bare hands a stone house that he and his fianc? would dwell in after their marriage. Looking up from yellow wild flowers one sees, miles to the southeast, amazing clumps of red, plum-colored, chalky limestone and basalt crags overlooking the Jordan Valley.
In Yizhar we talked with Ariel who’s adding 2,000 more vines to his existing 4,000, grafting chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon shoots onto the hardy stock that flourish in the local soils. His wife, tall with a long black skirt, checked shirt and two small children frisking around her, smiled and invited us into their “wine cellar” featuring dozens of barrels of the local best. There was an easygoing and serene friendliness that recalled the promise if not the reality of the late 1960s.
Here in the Jewish towns, vineyards, farms and orchards of Samaria are the true beautiful people so much sought since those times: balanced, simple, quietly glad. They know who they are; they know what they are doing and that it’s right. They live free, simply and with faith. They have a lot to offer the world, though they would never say so and probably don’t think about it.
In Bracha, 890 meters above sea level (more than 4,000 feet above the Jordan Valley), I spoke with Eretz, a particularly cheerful young vintner who studied his craft in the coastal city of Netanya. Admiring his skill and energy I asked, “Why don’t you move to France or California where you could live easily and make lots of money? Why work with the threat of terror attacks, expulsion and loss of your livelihood?”
“I stay here because of the holiness of the land. I don’t need to go to Italy or America to make a lot of money.” Asked again about the uncertainties he just smiled and said, “We will stay.”
Bracha also overlooks the city of Shechem (mainstream media bury its real name in history by using the Arab “Nablus,” a corruption of the Greco-Roman town, “Neapolis” built over the ruins of the original Hebrew settlement where Joseph and Joshua are buried). Since the Oslo deal, Jews have not been able to live, visit or even pray there. On one of the peaks of Bracha, in and around a 15-by-20-foot concrete shelter covered loosely with camouflage is a squad of paratroops, one of several that keep the city, a major center of terrorist activity, under constant surveillance. The destroyed tomb of Joseph and the ruins of the yeshiva that were there are among many testaments to the fate of holy places when Islam takes authority.
North of Shechem is Mount Ebal, where the Israelites built the first altar when they entered the land (Joshua 8; 24). I had a constant view of the site when I stayed in Elon Moreh (see Genesis 12:7) for the holy day of Shavuot (“Pentecost”). The altar has been excavated, identified and dated by archaeologist Adam Zartal of Haifa University since 1980. His book, “The Birth of a Nation,” discussing the finds is in Hebrew, but a website in English gives abundant and intriguing details. One of the great ironies of our time is that as evidence of the historicity of the Hebrew Scriptures accumulates, the nations increase their efforts to blot out the history and Jewish identity of Israel. It recalls those lines from Orwell’s “1984”: “The past was erased. The erasure was forgotten. The lie became truth.”
One of the main tools by which the powers pursue this dirty job is through ISM (the International Solidarity Movement) and other Euro-funded leftists who infest the hills and incite local Arabs to harass, rob and physically attack Jews, their farms and flocks. Every Jewish settlement we visited, from Elon Moreh and Scali’s farm to Esh Kodesh and Hebron had stories to tell of invasions and incitement by leftists – and of the close ties of the provocateurs with the anti-Jewish Israeli judicial system. The apparent alignment of hostile aliens and the judicial establishment is not unique to America, but part of the fissionable aspects of our times.
Esh Kodesh, a community of about 20 Jews on a verdant hilltop overlooking green valleys and ridges about three miles east of Shiloh (where the tabernacle was set up in the days of the Judges), is a supremely beautiful place of work and dedication. The Jews living there in trailers with a one-room post and beam synagogue are holding the land by shepherding. They, too, are targeted by “Peace Now” and the ISM. If one wants to see the frontline of the war against religion and the past, go to Israel.
Voices of the refugees
One of the major stories of recent years is how thoroughly the official media and silk hats obscured and misrepresented the facts of the Israeli “Disengagement” from Gaza: the deportation of nearly 10,000 Jews, the total destruction of their homes and communities, and their dispersal throughout Israel. There is, of course, no disengagement, neither from the Arabs who continue to live, work, attempt and commit terror attacks in Israel, nor from their rockets shot from the site of ruined Jewish towns. The story here is the unheard voices of these uprooted people and their consistent message: We’re going to stay together as a community. With this affirmation comes commitment to bonds between the generations, to a national identity, memory and mission, qualities with which modern culture is at odds.
“I hope my nation will return to Gush Katif, not for my home but for Hebron, Shechem and all our land. Every generation has its task and we are going to build more,” said a mother of nine children. “I will not give up the task. This generation or the next will come back.”
“We believe that people will come back by example, by our energy and without anger, by faith. We don’t think in terms of the percent of our chances of success but about making a lasting impression through good deeds and active faith. The main reality is that the Jewish people have returned to the land of Israel. We have a long road, but the promise of Scripture is being fulfilled,” says Sarah, who was from Atzmona and now lives in a camp in Yevul. “The goal is to build a holy nation and to live in it. We want a long-term and lasting success. …”
In America, we hear a lot about “community” usually from people of a certain political persuasion. But in Israel, one finds people who give their heart, soul and lives to building and maintaining communities under the most materially and morally difficult circumstances. The camps are like construction sites with exposed and leaky pipes, packed dumpsters, and everywhere wheeled plastic bins packed with belongings. In a kibbutz near what used to be the Jewish town of Alei Sinai, people have remained in a tent city by a highway rather than be scattered.
“I’m very happy for every day I spent in Gush Katif,” remarks an elderly woman whose life has been reduced to rubble. Another adds, “Even though you could say that everything was destroyed, we believe that our active faith will persist. It’s a law of physics and of spirituality, too.” And looking to the challenge of starting life from scratch in difficult terrain she adds, “It’s a great blessing to turn a place of desolation into a place of life,” a comment which could underscore the entire story of the Jewish return to Zion since the massive exiles by the Romans began long ago.
In words that reflect the depersonalization these people suffered, Tova, originally from Netzer Hazzani and now living in Hispin on the Golan Heights, said, “Thank you to everyone in the United States who cares about us, to know us, what happened to us and to know that we are people.” Na’ama from Katif, now living in Amatzia, adds, “We want to stay together, all the people of Gush Katif. We want to be a community that gives as much as it gets.”
Lasting impressions of Israel today
It is a place filled with bird song, with birds darting, swooping, calling and singing everywhere, from the hills of Elon Moreh to the Temple Mount plaza packed with thousands of Jews praying on a Friday evening, the air filled with fragrance from innumerable bunches of mint.
It is a country of immense vitality stemming from people, not from government that is even more clumsily and maliciously obstructive than in America – a country of enormous growth, flourishing and spirit.
Israel is a nation under siege, a frontline community. High up in the north Judean hills, on Mt. Azazel 10 miles east of the Mount of Olives and the Temple Mount, I heard and watched a live-fire exercise south of Jericho and through binoculars saw tanks maneuvering behind the first ridge west of the Dead Sea. Around Shechem one hears exchanges of fire every night. On the southwest coast, in Ashkelon, artillery booms for public consumption, sporadic and lame responses to ongoing terrorist rocket attacks. In a hotel there I saw several uniformed members of an EU security team and their jeeps, festooned with the circle of stars, in the parking lot. The infiltration of Israel by official and unofficial enemies is as omnipresent as U.N. jeeps in Jerusalem.
The wall is everywhere, and the government and JNF collude in selling Jewish land to Arabs west as well as east of the wall. But Jewish building continues throughout “east” Jerusalem, as well as in the hills and camps.
Israel is a place where ancient history, the Bible and the promise of the Creator is being verified and affirmed every day, and the people most at risk affirm and live it.
The vastness and the singular beauty of the center of the nation, the steep hills, ridges and valleys of Judea and Samaria, the glorious view from Elon Moreh above the Tirzah valley down to Shiloh and beyond, the expanse of the Hebron hills seen from a one-room trailer-caf? in Gush Etzion whose smoothies are out of this world …
The amount of self-help, hospitality and neighborliness; the persistence and grit of the Jewish people in their land are qualities to inspire restoration of what is best in America. Behind the headlines, the children of Israel in their land still are a light to the nations.
Community, diversity, joy – we talk a lot about diversity in America but there is no blend of diversity and joy like that seen Yom Yerushalayim, the day celebrating the liberation and re-unification of Jerusalem in 1967. Jews from every corner of the world, of every color, accent and feature, sidewalk to sidewalk dancing with spirit and solidarity south down Jaffa Street past Zion Square toward the Temple Mount Plaza, rejoicing. This people cannot be defeated.
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Eugene Narrett is professor and director of the BA in Multidisciplinary Studies at Cambridge College in Massachusetts. He has written extensively on American politics and culture and on Israel and the Middle East. His books include “Gathered Against Jerusalem” (Writers Club Press), “Israel Awakened” (AuthorHouse) and “Israel and the Endtimes.”
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