What justifies the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel?
The Balfour Declaration?
The Mandate of the League of Nations (or San Remo Conference) that affirmed Balfour?
The Holocaust?
The United Nations Resolution of November 1947?
Historical rights? Natural rights? Human rights?
The Arabs say “No” to all of the above, and any good international lawyer or political scientist could make a case for them—which is not to say the Arabs have a better claim than the Jews.
So let us add “God” or God’s Covenant with the Patriarchs to justify the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel. Obviously, the Arabs reject this claim in the name of Allah.
This being the case, or since no claim to the Land of Israel is self-evident—like the whole is greater than any of its parts—it comes down to a question of power.
Yes, I know there is a legal axiom that possession is nine-tenths of the law. Thus, when Israel regained possession of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai, Israel’s government might have said to Israel’s enemies: “Tough, fellows, you lost. Better luck next time. End of Story.”
For once you engage in peace talk with the Arab, you have lost the war.
So let’s downplay the legalisms, the histories, and the pieties. If Israel can’t muster the will and the power to enforce its claim to the Land of Israel, it will lose this land. But to strengthen its will and magnify as well as exert its power, Israel will need very different kinds of leaders and very different kinds of institutions.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is not going to happen until Israel raises up a leader whose fear of God is greater than his fear of Washington, or whose love and awed-admiration of his people’s heritage is greater than his concern about Israel’s reputation as a democracy. Period.
