MK Dan Illouz at the Sovereignty Youth Seminar: We are preparing to submit the Sovereignty in the Jordan Valley legislation, a national response to the October 7th massacre. MK Ohad Tal: The sovereignty plan of former US Ambassador Friedman's sovereignty plan will be launched soon.
*MK Ohad Tal (National Religious Party) announced at the Sovereignty Youth seminar the launching of former US Ambassador David Friedman’s plan for Israeli sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria.
At the Sovereignty Youth seminar, MK Dan Illouz, chairman of the Lobby for the Application of Sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, gave an update on the preparations for the submission of the Jordan Valley Sovereignty Bill in the near future.*
In his remarks, MK Ohad Tal addressed the Western tendency, which exists in Israel as well, not to pay attention to the clear statements issued by Islam that aspires and plans to conquer the Land of Israel in its entirety and all of Europe. “We must pay attention to what our enemies want to do, and believe that they indeed want to do it, and prepare accordingly.
Muslim provocations in Europe are met with appeasement and acceptance with European failure to understand the threat, as the Muslims, indeed, intend to conquer Europe, as they say.”
Regarding Israel’s status, MK Tal says that as long as Israel itself is unable to proclaim that it has returned to the land of the Jewish people because it belongs to them, they consider Israel, to a considerable degree justly, as occupiers. “We need to understand who we are, why we are here, and for what we are fighting.”
In this context, Tal said that he was disappointed to hear Netanyahu’s speech in Congress because in it the prime minister declared that Israel had no intention of returning to Gaza. “There is no other situation in the world where the leader of a people at war declares that he does not want the land for which he is fighting,” says Tal, who maintains that the response to an expression of weakness of that kind, must be the call for sovereignty, and the great challenge of this generation is the education of the people to be cognizant of their strength and identity.
He further noted that all the solutions involving concession and withdrawal have not brought peace, but the contrary, and in fact it has been proven that wherever Israel rules there is less terror. Stability and quiet will be beneficial for both Jews and Arabs, and these will result from sovereignty.
As mentioned, MK Tal, related about the preparation for the launch of former Ambassador Friedman's political plan, a plan that “speaks of applying full sovereignty throughout the Land of Israel. The Friedman Plan is simple: in order to bring true peace, the State of Israel must take responsibility for the territory, as it has been proven that wherever Israel is in control, there is peace and quiet. Life in Israel is good for all, including Israeli Arabs.”
According to this plan, the Arabs of Judea and Samaria would be offered three options: war, emigration, or acknowledgement that Israel is a Jewish state.
Friedman will propose the Puerto Rican model as a residency option for the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, which includes municipal voting without parliamentary voting.
MK Dan Illouz, chairman of the Knesset lobby for Applying Sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, addressed the dozens of seminar participants regarding the national necessity of applying sovereignty. “The return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is impossible without Judea and Samaria,” he said, and asserted that this historical argument refutes the false international claims of Israeli occupation at the expense of another people.
In his remarks he spoke of the preparation of a bill for the application of sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, a move he is advancing together with the heads of the Sovereignty Movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar. His hope is to implement it around the anniversary of the October 7 massacre in order to articulate Israel’s response to those seeking to oust it from the Land of Israel.
This response is by means of sovereignty and bolstering and deepening the connection to Israel.
Illouz emphasized that it must be made clear that the application of sovereignty over the Jordan Valley is a first step on the way to applying sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria.
The beginning, he says, will be accomplished in an area where there is national consensus. Sovereignty, he says, will be applied when the international historical opportunity arises, and one must prepare in order not to miss that opportunity.
Another speaker at the seminar was researcher Itamar Marcus, director of “Palestinian Media Watch,” who presented before the youth many documented examples indicating the extremist positions that guide the Palestinian Authority leadership in its attitude toward Jews and Israel.
In his opinion, the October 7 massacre is merely a component of an ideology that leaves no room for Israel's existence.
In his remarks, he cited quotations from senior Fatah officials who relate to the establishment of the State of Israel as an attempt by Europe to rid itself of the Jews, hated by all of humanity.
The PA chairman, Abu Mazen, went even further and stated that Hitler killed the Jews because they had caused themselves to be loathed by the entire world. They were to blame for their own extermination. The Palestinian Authority’s senior officials relate to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact and the anti-Semitic expressions in their mouths are many and diverse.
Marcus also cited quotations from religious figures affiliated with the Fatah movement who characterize Jews as creatures that are not human but created in the image of man. These officials view the Jew as a demon appearing in human form and, in fact, according to them, killing the Jew is a contribution to humanity.
Marcus cited the absolute commitment of the PA chairman and his people to terrorists and their glorification, as well as the considerable stipends paid to the accounts of terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons and their families, testament to the high regard of the Fatah leadership for terrorism and its perpetrators. He added to this the special days marked on the PA calendar, days of massacre and terror against Israelis, as well as the incitement to terrorism contained in the school curricula, in camps for young children, in the media, and more. In all these, the value of death for Allah is glorified and presented as an aspiration and a life goal.
Maj. Gen. (Res.) Gershon Hacohen presented the youth with an expansive and profound historical and philosophical tapestry that sees redemption as an unending process fraught with struggles against opposition and requiring that one not be led astray by what one sees, as the true reality is concealed from the eye, he said.
“When Ben-Gurion would hear from experts that something is impossible, he would decide to replace the experts,” he said, mentioning that this approach was ultimately proven correct, just, and above all, successful.
In his remarks, Hacohen cited Ben-Gurion, who wrote that we live in the messianic era, the days of redemption from subjugation to the nations. Moreover, Ben Gurion stated that meanwhile Messiah had not yet arrived because the ingathering of the exiles had not yet been completed, but the messianic era had arrived with the concomitant travails of the Messiah that accompanies them. “Anyone who promises redemption without the travails of the Messiah is a liar and a deceiver.” You must choose between the Kremlin and Jerusalem, between the Golden Calf and the Messiah, Ben-Gurion wrote.
Hacohen emphasized that the Golden Calf means the consideration of profit and loss, he said, and remarked that “they did not establish the community of Nahalal as a business plan.” Moreover, he called to “strive for the objective with the understanding that there will be occasional setbacks, and in these failures there are positive aspects, as there is re-evaluation of false ideas. Redemption is not a one-way process.”
Hacohen sees in Abraham’s faith the faith in man's power to influence reality and to transform evil into good. “This is a view that imposes great responsibility on the person, and is the basis of the pioneering philosophy that seeks man’s place in changing reality.”
In this spirit, G-d addresses Moses with the call: “The L-rd said to Moses: Why are you crying out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel that they will travel” (Exodus 14:15). “That is the essence of pioneering," says Hacohen who cited several challenges and difficulties that can only be confronted and overcome through pioneering. “There are problems in the Galilee. Establish facts on the ground. They say it is illegal and in the meantime nothing changes. With the Labor party, Mapai, they would not consult lawyers.”
In his opinion, those who can generate change are specifically the young pioneers who are not dependent on foreign considerations. At this point, he listed a string of pioneering movements throughout the generations, from the immigration of the pioneers, through the immigration of the Vilna Gaon’s disciples, and later the establishment of the Palmach, the pioneers of the settlement of the Land, and more.
However, the pioneers must be aware that they will naturally be confronted by opposition.
“Nothing is established without decline and disintegration. Every day a reboot is needed with an infusion of energy. Stability is an illusion. Pioneers are needed who dedicate themselves to a lifestyle of struggle,” he said, adding that it is not salaries that motivate pioneers and generate change. “The reward for life as a pioneer is a life of meaning.”
Former Israeli ambassador to Italy, Dr. Dror Eydar, also addressed the seminar participants, emphasizing the biblical phrase “you shall take possession of it” as an expression of the obligation of possessing the land, which is not merely a matter of settling the land or causing it to blossom, which can be accomplished under foreign rule, as well. Possession of the land is sovereignty. “Taking possession of the Land is creating a framework for ownership of the Land, and, as a result, the Land can be bequeathed to future generations. In fact, “you shall take possession of the Land” is the mitzva of establishing a state.”
In his remarks, he cited the Ramban's commentary on this mitzva and his definition of it: "Not to abandon it to the nations or to desolation,” and asked: “How do we implement this? By applying sovereignty.”
In the course of his remarks he reviewed the history of the British Mandate, which was intended to serve as a basis for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people on both sides of the Jordan, but in order to placate the family of King Faisal, they were given the east bank of the Jordan.
“The root of the exile is the loathing of our land of desire. The remedy for Tisha B’av is our adherence to the land,” said Dr. Eydar and emphasized that “this remedy is what distinguishes between our being characterized as foreigners and colonialists and our being the legitimate residents of the land.”
Yuval Bloomberg, author of the book The Oslo Trap, related the extensive research he conducted in preparing for publication of the book, which exposes the path that led to the Oslo Accords and the blow that Israel suffered and continues to suffer since the agreement.
He began his remarks with a historical survey since the 1977 reversal, through internal political events and security events like the first Intifada that led to the fall of the right-wing government and the establishment of the Rabin government, in which there was political subversion that culminated in the Oslo Accords, from which Rabin sought to extricate himself and expressed his fear of it.
Bloomberg recalled the days prior to the agreement, when soldiers could move freely in pairs with personal weapons, without enhanced security, and certainly without danger at the level that exists today.
“That was the reality, but it was not good enough, and the Oslo Accords turned it on its head,” he says, recalling the repeated warnings of the Right against arming Yasser Arafat and his men and against the measures rehabilitating his movement a moment before its impending demise.
Rabin, says Bloomberg, believed that arming the Palestinians would lead to internal Arab battles without Israeli intervention, but those thoughts were dashed and Israel began to lose control. In his remarks, he described the new reality in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip after the agreement to divide it into areas A, B, and C with the aspiration that this was a gradual process whose objective was the establishment of a Palestinian state.
According to Bloomberg, the same mindset according to which there are moderate Palestinians who want peace is found today in the thought processes of today’s senior military officers and the Left. “Our problem is that reality has proven something entirely different, but they never abandoned that dream.”
In his remarks he cited the religious Islamic background of the Palestinian struggle against Israel, which is based on the wars of Mohammed, who, as is well known, violated the treaty with the tribe of Koreish, the treaty of Hudebiyya, and massacred all its people. This treaty became a Muslim symbol that when the Muslim is weak he can sign agreements that will last until he is strong and then he can break them. “This is the essence of Islam and this is the conduct. Denying it does not help.”
Yasser Arafat made clear that this treaty was his model when he signed an agreement with Israel.
Bloomberg finds it difficult to understand the logic of entering into such a complex agreement with one for whom these are the tendencies that drive him. Indeed, the consequences of the agreement are that even brigades cannot enter places where a single soldier could once walk without concern or threat. “How much we would we be willing to pay to return to those days,” he said.
He advises us to pay attention to the direct and unambiguous statements of the Arabs when they speak among themselves. The Oslo Accords were characterized as a Trojan horse intended to introduce the PLO armed forces into the country, and from there they would begin ‘going to work’, i.e. murdering Jews."
During the seminar, the youth participated in lectures, workshops and role-playing sessions led by alumni of the movement, some of whom had come directly from military service to meet the young participants and share their experience in hasbara activity in the field and in the Knesset with MKs and government ministers.
The alumni expanded on the meaning and practical power of youth activity in inculcating the vision of sovereignty in the Israeli public.
The heads of the Sovereignty Movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, summarize another successful seminar with great appreciation for the speakers, but especially to the youths who participated “who came from all over the country with a profound understanding of this generation’s challenge, the challenge of sovereignty, the next stage of Zionism. The ability of the youth to propel forward not only public opinion in the Israeli public, but also in the leadership in the Knesset and the government, has been acknowledged by Knesset members who have met the participants and by ministers and public figures for years. It is refreshing, encouraging, and uplifting to see the next generation of Israeli leadership generating a new reality.”