Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

(First published today at Israelnationalnews.com)

Is there anything more preposterous than abruptly halting Israel’s war against Hamas in order to allow Muslims to observe Ramadan? Well, rewarding our invaders with an independent state so as to facilitate another massacre leaps to mind as equally absurd, but still. The assumption is that our enemies will use Ramadan as intended, as a month of fasting, charity, prayer, contrition, and reflection. For sure, many pious Muslims do, but it is equally true that Ramadan has frequently been celebrated with an upsurge in violence.

Those with long memories will remember that Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur 1973 – during the month of Ramadan. In many circles, it is still called the “Ramadan War.” Somehow the prayer, contrition, and reflection did not inhibit that sneak attack that ultimately claimed about 2700 Jewish lives. Neither did the fasting; as I recall from the period, apparently Muslim soldiers are exempt from fasting during Ramadan because, presumably, they are engaged in the religious duty of killing the infidels.

Those with short term memories – which excludes many individuals in the Biden White House and State Department – can easily ascertain that our enemies have long used Ramadan in order to murder Jews. In 2016, Hamas gleefully labeled the murderous attack on the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv the “Ramadan Operation” and celebrated the “First Attack of Ramadan.” Other terrorist attacks on Jews soon followed, making that Ramadan a particularly bloody month in Israel. It is not even limited to Jews. In 2016 and 2017, ISIS twice bombed a popular street in Baghdad during Ramadan, killing hundreds of Muslims. During that same 2016 Ramadan, a radical Muslim attacked the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, murdering 49 people. These are not isolated examples. Arabs have historically fought vicious wars against each other during Ramadan.

Several years ago, the Institute for National Security Studies titled a report: “With Ramadan Approaching, the Fear of Escalation,” referring to increased terrorist attacks in Israel before and during Ramadan. Even our current Defense Minister pays too much deference to Ramadan. Thus, for years, we have been routinely warned to be extra cautious during Ramadan because Muslim emotions are very sensitive during that month, they are even more prone to violence, and that nothing should be done to provoke them.

Obviously, to a Jew, such sentiments sound bizarre, because they are bizarre. I do not recall ever becoming so agitated on Rosh Hashana or the Aseret Y’mei Teshuvah or Yom Kippur that I felt the urge to run out and attack innocent Gentiles, or even guilty ones. Nor have I ever heard of that passion afflicting any Jew. For that matter, it is inconceivable to any Jew – or any normal, moral, right-thinking person – to yell “G-d is great” as a prelude to murdering, raping, marauding, beheading, exploding, stabbing, shooting innocent people, for whatever reason. Perhaps good Muslims should use this Ramadan for soul searching and how best to uproot this savage evil from their midst. The problem is that in the parts of the world where this soul searching would be most needed, many Muslims live in fear, petrified that these radicals will turn on them, as has happened across the globe.

Nevertheless, in George W. Bush’s felicitous phrase, it is “the soft bigotry of low expectations” that so-called security experts, politicians, diplomats, and statesmen nod their heads and say, “well, of course, tensions always run high during Ramadan, and as such Jews should keep a low profile, because Muslim violence must be anticipated.” Such a sentiment insults the majority of the world’s Muslims, as well as our intelligence. It is the very definition of surrendering to bullies rather than confronting them and vanquishing them.

As such, it is hard to take seriously Biden’s demands for a “Ramadan” cease fire. It is tantamount to acquiescing to Hamas’ survival and what for it would be a victory in this conflict. Hamas would be getting away with murder. No person who genuinely wants to see the destruction of Hamas and the eradication of the evil that it represents could be pressing today for a cease fire. It is important to note that nothing inherently connects a hostage deal and a cease fire. Israel could agree – foolishly and dangerously, as many believe – to exchange innocent Jewish hostages for murderous, bloodthirsty convicted Arab terrorists, but such need not be accompanied by a cease fire that lasts any longer than the few hours it takes to make the exchange.

The pressure has only one goal, and it is not to allow all to celebrate Ramadan in peace. It is to deprive Israel of victory and preserve Hamas. That is the opposite of common sense, decency, morality, and stability.

Some will plead that the poor Gazan civilians deserve to observe Ramadan in dignity. One problem is that many Gazan civilians are indistinguishable from members of Hamas because quite often they are members of Hamas. Most Hamas terrorists do not wear uniforms (in gross violation of the much-heralded international law that is designed to only inhibit us) and thus look like civilians. When they are smoked out of their tunnels, caves, and ratholes and killed, they die in their civilian garb, allowing our enemy to claim they are civilians. It is certainly a clever scam that has worked on Biden and others but, more egregiously, on our government, which repeatedly fails to underscore the parity of Hamas terrorists and many of the civilians on whom is constantly bestowed what is called humanitarian aid. It is a mistake for which we are paying a terrible price and must be rectified immediately. The innocent Gazan civilians are not all so innocent. Our hearts need not bleed for them. Their newfound opposition to Hamas has evolved not because they are suddenly horrified by Hamas’ massacre of Jews but because they are horrified by the consequences to them of Hamas’ massacre of Jews.

The Ramadan cease fire request is just another ploy to thwart our war aims, restore the status quo ante, and again leave us vulnerable. A good deal of Muslim soul searching and an abrupt change of behavior and values will be necessary before such proposals are taken seriously.

Indeed, we should show as much concern for Ramadan as our enemies showed for our Simchat Torah this year or, for that matter, our Yom Kippur of 1973. It is a ruse and it should be treated, and dismissed, as such.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Any evaluation of Joe Biden’s meandering musings on current events in Israel and the Middle East must begin with former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ observation about Joe Biden in 2014: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” If even a broken clock is right twice a day, Biden’s consistent record of failure is a stupendous achievement for which he should receive acknowledgment for his longevity, less so his perspicacity. But from that standpoint, his wavering support for Israel, continued flirtation with Iran, and yearning to establish a Palestinian state, only add to his flawless run of diplomatic fiascos.

It is unfair and inaccurate to state that Biden and his minions “support” Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group, but it is fair and accurate to deduce from his recent statements and actions that Biden does not want Hamas to lose. If one of Israel’s war aims is the elimination of Hamas’ terror capability and any political control in Gaza, then clearly Biden is at odds with Israel, and we should recognize that and, politely, disavow his strategy and oppose it vigorously. Biden still perceives Hamas as a player in Middle East geo-politics, and even a partner in negotiations with Israel. He wants a stalemate. If so, he is guilty of “October 6” thinking – a failure to internalize and draw ramifications from Hamas’ genocidal, inhuman, savage attack on Israel and its continued incarceration of innocent Israeli civilians. And in his relentless desire to carve up the land of Israel and create an irredentist Palestinian state, he not only defies the will of the Israeli government and the overwhelming majority of our people. He is also guilty of “4 Iyar 1948” thinking – trying to turn back the clock almost 74 years to the day before Israel became an independent nation.

How can one man be so wrong, so frequently? A full answer is beyond my analysis – it perplexed Bob Gates as well – but there is one fundamental misconception under which Biden and his diplomats operate that Israelis often prefer to ignore and that we must begin to assert without hesitation or equivocation before once again, we win the war and lose the diplomacy.

When I first visited Israel as a child in the late 1960’s, I was warned not to pick up anything from the street. Back then, Arab terrorists would conceal bombs in coins, empty boxes, appliances, backpacks, and the like. In the 1970’s, Arab terrorists graduated to airplane hijackings, then assaults on schools and homes and public buses, and missiles and rockets from Lebanon. In the 1980’s, vehicle stoning and bombing became more popular, not that the previous methods of murdering Jews were abandoned. The 1990’s saw an intensification of the stoning and bombing, then accelerated into suicide bombings of buses and commercial establishments that became a staple of Israeli life in the 2000’s until Operation Defensive Shield.

After the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005, the era began of rockets and missiles on the communities surrounding Gaza, the Negev, and parts of the coastal plain and the heartland, which prompted several brief forays into Gaza that ameliorated the situation but briefly and ineffectively. In the 2010’s, the Arabs popularized shooting at passengers in Jewish vehicles, stabbing random Jews on Israel’s streets, and vehicular ramming of pedestrians standing on street corners. We forget how prevalent that was in the last several years only because of the horrific invasion of Israel on Shemini Atzeret and its aftermath, which has snuffed out more than 1400 Jewish lives to date.

The inexorable conclusion that we tend to overlook is that we reside on this holy land adjacent to many people who wish to murder us in every which way they can conceive and whose lives are dedicated, it seems, to contriving new ways to murder Jews. They will never reconcile themselves to Israel’s existence, something that was discounted by the pointless purveyors of peace processes as well as the Oslo and Gaza Expulsions delusionists.

I cannot say that they all want to destroy us – the Arabs of the land of Israel and the Arab countries surrounding Israel – and certainly not all are working towards our demise. But it seems a reasonable conclusion that few would mourn our disappearance. That is the real problem facing Israeli society, even once the hostilities in Gaza and Lebanon conclude on what we hope is a victorious note. The real problem is that we will still be living with people – young and old, male and female – who dream of planting bombs on the roadside, shooting into Jewish homes and cars, stabbing shoppers, and ramming pedestrians – and getting handsomely rewarded for it by the very entity to which Joe Biden wants to award statehood. This is the real conundrum to which we will have to activate our creative minds in order to solve.

The sad reality is that the Arabs do not want us here. Period. A state will not satisfy their ambitions; it will only stoke their desire to destroy us completely and will be used accordingly, much like Hamas took the billions of dollars in foreign aid from Europe, the US, Qatar, and others, and used it largely to build a massive and diabolical underground terror network.

In the shorter term, because of our hopes and prayers for peace, we have failed to convey to Biden and company the daily hazards we face in living next to people who want to kill us and eliminate our national home. Antony Blinken can solemnly intone that the new Palestinian state will be “demilitarized” but all that means is either he is a fool or that he takes us for fools. After all, the Oslo Accords promised us a “demilitarized” Palestinian Authority, and then during the 2005 Expulsion, we were promised a “demilitarized” Gaza that would not dare to attack us (rockets, missiles, etc.) or it would pay a devastating price. Well, they are paying a devastating price, but so did we, because of our naïveté, gullibility, wishful thinking, and the ascription to our enemies of our own values and dreams.

They do not share those values and dreams. Contrary to Blinken’s pollyannish ramblings, Gazan mothers and fathers are not like us, and not like Americans. We do not incarcerate innocent hostages in our homes, do not allow our living room floors to conceal openings to tunnels, and do not use our cupboards to store bombs, bullets, rockets, and missiles. Gazan mothers and fathers do not want to build homes; they want to take our homes. Gazan parents send their children to schools where they learn to hate Jews, where they learn that murdering a Jew is admirable and a religious and national imperative. They are not like us. They voted for Hamas.

No friend of Israel could sensibly suggest that an independent Palestinian state is good for Israel and will benefit Israel’s security and the well being of our citizens. It will make us more unsafe and give an unimaginable boost to Iran, supporters of terror, and haters of Israel everywhere. It must be opposed regardless of what the US or UN scheme against us.

There is another reason a Palestinian state is perverse. We are a unique country to be sure – we are rated the fourth happiest country in the world, after all, even now! – but we do not have to constantly prove our uniqueness, especially not in irrational and destructive ways. This is the third time in recent history that we have fought and conquered Gaza. How many times must our soldiers die fighting over the same land? How many times must we be invaded from one territory, repel that invasion, conquer the land of the aggressors, and then be told we cannot keep the land from which we were attacked? That is literally an insane proposition and I am unable to find any historical precedent for such lunacy.

Certainly, the diplomats and striped pants set make much of the vaunted international legal principle declaring the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war or force,” a feature of UN Security Council Resolution 242. Surely that excludes territory acquired in a defensive war but, more pointedly, this proposition seems to apply only to Israel, and no other country, most of whom were directly created or expanded via “the acquisition of territory by war or force.”

The American example is illustrative. One of the fifty United States is the State of New Mexico, whose name should ring a bell. “New” Mexico, meaning that it was part of Mexico, but was ceded by Mexico to the United States after Mexico lost the Mexican American War in 1848. That is literally “the acquisition of territory by war or force,” with the utterly shameless addendum that New Mexico, in its very name, reflects what we are now told is a violation of international law. Nothing changes by adding the moniker “New.” And by most accounts, the Mexican American War was not even a defensive war but a bellicose invasion of Mexico by a US that wanted to expand its land mass and fulfill its “manifest destiny.” Yet, ironically, the only nation with an explicitly, manifest destiny emanating from the Bible is the nation of Israel dwelling on the land of Israel in the land that G-d gave us (Keepgodsland.com).

Almost every nation on earth was founded by “the acquisition of territory by war.” No nation on earth or in history (except for Israel) has repeatedly been attacked from the same territory, conquered it, and then returned it to the invaders to plant the seeds for the next invasion. The United States still retains troops and maintains army bases in Germany and Japan, eighty years after the end of World War II. It still retains New Mexico (and California) and territory it seized from Canada. Russia still retains land it seized after World War II, not to mention its recent adventures in Ukraine. France, Britain, China – all possess territory it conquered in war. And those are just the five members of the UN Security Council. There has to be a limit even to blatant, brazen hypocrisy; at the very least, we should take these claims less seriously than we do our own interests and rights, and talk the language of faith. Maybe it would help if we just renamed Gaza “New Gaza” and annexed it; call it the American way.

For all of the above, we must mount a forceful, uncompromising diplomatic drive rejecting any discussion of a Palestinian state. The incessant chatter in the United States about the dire need for such an entity, and now, not only rewards the terror of October 7 but also paves the way for even more ruinous terror in the future. It must be resisted at all costs.

We should bear in mind that regarding Joe Biden, it is far from certain that he will still be president in six months, much less a year from now. He is again wrong and misguided on yet another foreign policy issue. But we have returned to the land of our fathers, the land that G-d gave us, forever. The near united opposition in Israel today to creating a new terror entity within Israel reflects the steely determination of an eternal people not to be bamboozled again by the vain promises of temporal politicians but to embrace our destiny with enthusiasm and obvious self-sacrifice. We should base our statecraft on certainties, not on doubts, and plan for a long, prosperous, and redemptive future.

by Chaim Silberstein and Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

(Published at https://www.jns.org/evict-unrwa-from-jerusalem/)

The recent exposure of the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA’s complicity in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre has prompted many countries—including the United States, the United Kingdom and France—to suspend their funding of the organization. This awakening resulted from the overwhelming evidence that UNRWA in Gaza is not only permeated with Hamas members and supporters and has allowed its facilities and vehicles to be used for terror, but that UNRWA itself has become a wing of Hamas. Its permanent defunding and disbandment should follow.

At the same time, we should not neglect UNRWA’s nefarious activities in Jerusalem, which greatly resemble its activities in Gaza. For example, UNRWA subsidizes and controls seven schools in eastern Jerusalem located in Shuafat, Silwan, Wadi-al-Joz, the Old City, the Mount of Olives and Sur Baher. The curriculum at these UNRWA schools is rife with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement. The students, as young as first- and-second graders, are educated to believe in Israel’s illegitimacy as well as the religious imperative of murdering Jews wherever they can be found. A video dating from 2022 recently surfaced that showed students in these schools boasting of their willingness to become suicide bombers. They proclaim that “all Palestine is ours and the Jews are terrorists” and “stabbing Jews brings honor to Palestinians.”

These UNRWA schools are spawning the next generation of terrorists under the sponsorship of the international community. UNRWA has reported that it spends more than half of its billion-dollar budget on education. Its schools are generally unlicensed and illegally built on Jerusalem municipal land. Past efforts by the government of Israel to close these schools or end UNRWA’s management of them have failed, even though Israel’s Ministry of Education is legally responsible for supervising them. These efforts have failed mainly due to inertia, lack of will and international pressure.

In addition, UNRWA long ago illegally seized, built on and now occupies Jerusalem land owned by the Jewish National Fund. This area, spanning many acres, is located in Kafr Akeb within the municipal borders of Jerusalem and close to the Kalandia crossing. To take over this territory, UNRWA even uprooted a grove planted decades ago by the JNF. Clearly, this land should be restored to the JNF and UNRWA’s presence removed.

UNRWA maintains extensive office facilities in Jerusalem, including its local headquarters and the UNRWA Microfinance Department on Shlomo Zalman Shragai Street between Ramat Eshkol and Maalot Dafna. It does so even though it does not recognize this area as under Israeli sovereignty. The Microfinance Department purportedly provides credit and financial services to households, entrepreneurs and small-business owners, but its Jerusalem office is  central to UNRWA’s involvement in Judea and Samaria. Its every action is designed to undermine Israeli sovereignty and weaken Israeli security.

UNRWA’s Jerusalem activities are inimical to Israel’s security. UNRWA has interfered in the Israeli legal system, including protests against the lawful eviction of Arab squatters in Jerusalem neighborhoods. The organization maintains a daily log of incidents in which Israeli security forces “reportedly opened fire” on Palestinians, almost never providing the context, background or counterterror nature of these incidents.

UNRWA exists exclusively to perpetuate the refugee status of a fourth and fifth generation of purported descendants of refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. It maintains refugee camps in Jerusalem and makes no effort to resettle its inhabitants in permanent residences. It seeks to thwart any chance of peace by stoking Palestinian grievances through its educational, cultural, legal and political activities.

Put simply, UNRWA is nothing less than a hostile entity operating with impunity in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city. It is waging a cold war against Israel’s existence. It is corrupt, antisemitic, anti-Israel and an ill-concealed cover for Hamas terror.

Action must be taken immediately. UNRWA’s network of schools in eastern Jerusalem should be shuttered by the Israeli government. Management of education in these areas should be transferred to Israel’s Ministry of Education and the curriculum completely revamped. UNRWA’s illegal seizure of land across Jerusalem must be reversed, with the organization evicted and the area restored to the control of the Jewish National Fund.

Indeed, the time has come to banish UNRWA entirely from Jerusalem and the State of Israel as a whole. UNRWA is an anachronism, and a harmful and counterproductive one at that. Actual Arab refugees in the Land of Israel, like refugees around the world, should fall under the purview of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Their descendants should not be considered refugees at all. The goal should be to resettle genuine refugees rather than keep them as useful pawns in the war against Israel. The Jewish state should no longer indulge UNRWA’s absurd attempt to prolong the conflict by producing new “refugees” on an industrial scale.

The presence of UNRWA and other U.N. institutions in Jerusalem constitutes a clear and present danger to Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem and the entire Land of Israel. It threatens the well-being and the very lives of all Israelis. It is an inexcusable encroachment on Israeli land and domestic affairs. It should no longer be tolerated.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

On October 7, Palestinian Arab terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, aided by Gazan “civilians” of all ages, invaded Israel, pillaged, plundered, raped, and marauded, murdered approximately 1200 Jews, wounded thousands, and kidnapped hundreds. Tens of thousands of Israelis remain displaced, exiles in their own country.

The Palestinian Authority has yet to condemn the brutal assault and subsidized it in the form of its pay-for-slay program which continues, with a steadily increasing number of terrorist recipients. The attack was greeted with widespread celebrations among Palestinian Arabs and their supporters across the world.

And Joe Biden wants to reward these people with an independent state, recognized by the United States and the Western world.

This is not only morally repugnant; it is also diplomatic folly, which, if it ever succeeds, would pose a mortal danger to Israel’s existence. Biden has said some nice things and done some important things for Israel since the invasion, for which we should be thankful; he has also said some nasty things and done some incredibly harmful things to Israel, for which we should be wary of his continued support.

An independent Palestinian state is a moral obscenity for several reasons. It literally rewards terror – past, present, and future. Biden and his minions, much like they are doing with Ukraine, are hoping that Israel can defend itself but not prevail in this conflict.

The obsession with Gazan refugees (while concurrently indifferent to the condition of Jewish refugees) has, with irrational Israeli acquiescence, resulted in the unremitting resupply of Hamas’ fuel, food, and other provisions, instead of the evacuation of Gazans from the war zone which is a right afforded all other refugees enmeshed in a conflict. It is designed to make Israel’s military effort much more difficult, essentially an endorsement of the Gazans’ employment as human shields and hampers any possibility of rescuing the hostages. Israel has foolishly consented to this.

Even worse, by insisting since the invasion that Israel cannot remain in Gaza, hold any territory, reduce Gaza’s land size, or displace its population, Biden has created a win-win scenario for Palestinian Arab terrorists. When they attack, they get to murder and plunder as they see fit. They can achieve their goals of sowing fear and terror, murder and mayhem, among Israeli civilians. And when they are repulsed, they lose nothing. They can be crushed, vanquished, and their territory conquered, but then Israel is expected to return the land to the aggressor.

Heads, we lose; tails, they win. With those odds, further attacks are not only inevitable; they are logical. There is then no downside to terrorist acts against Jews.

Obviously, Hamas in Gaza functioned as an independent state. It had defined borders and exercised sovereignty over the territory and its population. And they used this autonomy to build an unimaginably diabolical terror apparatus. Perhaps Biden’s priority in his planned state will be the reconstruction of Hamas’ tunnels, which have been seriously damaged during Israel’s retaliation. Seriously. Win-win for terror.

Why, then, would otherwise intelligent people (all right, they are not all intelligent) proffer – at this point, in the middle of a war – the creation of a Palestinian state?

It is because that is the only tool in their diplomatic toolbox. They have nothing else. In the 1970’s-1990’s, it was assumed that a second Palestinian state (in addition to Jordan) posed an existential threat to Israel. By the 2000’s, this threat was being belittled by elements in the Israeli establishment, mainly those who brought upon us the Oslo catastrophe. If anything, though, the threat has escalated since then, as weaponry has become more deadly and tactics more advanced.

Nevertheless, this remains the only tool in their toolbox. It is perceived as the panacea for everything that ails the Middle East, even though that has been repeatedly disproven. It matters not that most Israelis are against it and most Palestinian Arabs are against it. The international fantasy of the Palestinian state utterly disregards the harm that will be inflicted upon us. We are the guinea pigs of the two-state illusion. And if, G-d forbid, it is somehow foisted upon us, and we are again invaded and brutalized? Well, then, the world will try again, and again. Because they have nothing else.

Whether we are at war or the region is relatively quiet, the diplomats feel the time is ripe for a Palestinian state. When terror strikes and when terror is thwarted, a Palestinian state is the answer. It doesn’t matter – up or down, left or right, day or night, right or wrong – a Palestinian state solves everything, or at least, it is worth it that we die trying to accommodate our enemy. That is the very definition of an empty toolbox.

The most recent threat leaked from the US is the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at war’s end, whether or not we agree. Certainly, that is not the act of a friend or an ally, but so be it. We should recall that “recognition” comes and goes and is not always beneficial to the recipient.

-The US recognized South Vietnam, even went to war and lost more than 55,000 soldiers defending it, but such recognition mattered little in the end. South Vietnam no longer exists.

-The US recognized Taiwan as China – until it did not, leaving it in diplomatic limbo for the last half century with a tepid commitment to its defense (no one seriously entertains the possibility that the US under any Democratic leader would intervene militarily if China invaded Taiwan, or least they should not entertain that).

– The US commitment to Afghanistan was sturdy, at great cost in blood and treasure, until it completely dissipated, seemingly in an instant, a hasty and deadly withdrawal that resembled America’s retreat from Saigon in 1975.

Such recognition – an overtly hostile act towards Israel that should be interpreted as such – is not insignificant but it is also not the end of the world and could have little effect on the ground (aside from nefarious UN involvement that could include sanctions). It will further color the United States’ reputation in much of the world as an unreliable ally. And these types of trial balloons are often floated to try to win concessions in other areas – cease fire, returning Gazans to their homes, more aid, etc.

More ominous is Biden’s unilateral decision to sanction four “extremist settlers.” In his haste to punish some Jew for something to curry favor with Arab voters in America, Biden neglected certain phases in any prosecution – investigation, indictment, arraignment, trial, and verdict. Instead, he jumped straight to the sentencing phase, trampling every notion of justice in a free society.

The four Jews have not been charged with anything in Israel; it seems likely that some anti-Israel leftist group singled them out. The farce is as unnecessary as it is bogus – so-called settler violence, never murderous, against Arab is down in the past year, even as Arab violence against settlers is up. And if the metric for sanctions is, as the Executive Order put it, “actions… that threaten the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank,”

Biden should consider sanctioning himself. His desire to establish a Palestinian state will not bring peace, will undermine security, and will destabilize Judea and Samaria.

In any event, we too have played an unfortunate role leading to this dramatic moment and anticipated confrontation. Repeated Israeli governments have failed to provide any strategic vision, instead couching Israeli policy in the amorphous objective of “providing security.” That surely is a worthy goal per se, but it is insufficient as a strategy. It also engenders the claims of our interlocutors that account for (from their perspective) Israel’s security needs, such as a demilitarized state.

Of course, those with an empty toolbox will not recall that the Palestinian Authority was supposed to be demilitarized, as was Gaza after the reckless retreat, and that didn’t turn out well for us.

But we persist, voting time after time for some guy presented to us as “Mr. Security” and never quite succeeding. If our toolbox only contains “security, security,” that too is a losing argument. Too many people across the globe think we are occupying someone else’s land in order to provide security for ourselves. It is time to change the narrative.

Why are we in Judea and Samaria? Why should we not – for the third time! – surrender Gaza to an enemy who attacked us? Why are we in the land of Israel altogether? It is not because of security. It is not because we have “historical ties,” as the cliché goes. It is because this is the land that G-d bequeathed to our forefathers and to their faithful descendants. It is because this land is the foundation on which the Torah is to be fully realized and implemented. It is because we have lived in this land in an unbroken chain since the time of Joshua – a land given to us as the holy land and G-d’s chosen land. That is why we are here.

Faithfulness to the Torah is the key to our continued residence. It provides our spiritual worthiness. “Security” is the mundane manner by which we fortify the divine plan in real time in this world. It is a secondary consideration.

Those with an empty toolbox trumpet our need for security as justification for a diplomatic impasse and opposition to a Palestinian state. But our toolbox – call it our Aron Hakodesh, if you will – needs only the Torah, the basis for our rights in this land. The one tool in the toolbox crowd construes that as extreme. They have nothing else, and they would not grieve that much if their machination was our ruination. They do not want us to win – and they will do everything they can to turn our military victory into a diplomatic defeat, as has frequently happened in the past. And we have allowed that to happen because we have lacked, and failed to articulate, a comprehensive vision of what we want and who we are.

We would be in a better position – spiritually, militarily, and even diplomatically – if we embraced the reality that we are here because this is G-d’s land and He in His wisdom and kindness gave it to us so that we, as a nation, should be able to propagate His word to the world. The world will never adopt that approach if we don’t. And when we do (see keepgodsland.com), we will base our statecraft not on ephemeral political considerations but on eternal values, as befitting an eternal people.