BAD HOUSES AND GOOD HOMES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

By Schmoel Yitzhak

Jews building homes bothers people.

Those folks include Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and editorial writers onThe New York Times.

In particular it annoys the current American administration when Jews do their construction in Judea and Samaria, otherwise known to the non-Israeli world as the "West Bank."

Ironically, it does not bother the president, his secretary of state nor their Times-propaganda broad sheet that Jews are not allowed to build in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon and just about any Islamic land. Jews cannot even live in peace there.

Jews have been run out of those lands by the hundreds of thousands which explains why the democratic State of Israel exists and, furthermore, why it should not be a problem for families such as the Cohens, Goldbergs or Goldsteins to erect a dwelling in Judea and Samaria. Or any Arab, Christian or Hindu while we're at it.

As a matter of fact Jews are currently being run out of France, Sweden -- try being a safe Jew in Malmo these days -- and other Muslim-infested European countries not to mention metropli like "Londonstan" while anti-semitism runs rampant across the continent. 

That doesn't seem to concern the tall, thin man on Pennsylvania Avenue who's desperately running for re-election nor the Europeans whose demands for a two-state solution as "the key to achieving peace" sounds as enervating as the drone of bagpipes. 

But the issue of where Jews can live concerns thousands who want to put up dwellings in Judea and Samaria which today only is ten percent inhabited and only three percent by Jews. 

Why shouldn't a Jew be allowed to build on land that never was a Palestine state? As Tzipi Hotoveli writes in The Jerusalem Post, "The lands of Judea and Samaria were returned to Jewish people after a defensive war."

As the commission led by former Israel Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy recently concluded, Israel is not occupying the West Bank; Israelis have the right to build homes and live there.

This makes Judea and Samaria distinctly different from all the Arabs lands from which Jews were expelled. It's a haven for whomever wants to live in the mostly un-inhabited territories, both Jew and Arab.

These are good homes from which no arsenal of weapons are hidden. That makes them distinctly different from the bad homes in Gaza and Lebanon from where rockets are hidden and endlessly launched at Israelis. Obama and his cronies must be made aware of this distinction between bad houses that inspire war and good homes where peace-loving families yearn to live.

Needless to say, this doesn't sit well with Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton nor her State Department which piously proclaims, "We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts."

Translated: Jews cannot live on lands where Arabs don't want them to live. Mahmoud Abbas does not want them to live in the West Bank. Hamas does not want Jews to live. Period!

What makes the issue even more hypocritical from the Obama-Clinton side is that when arch-Jew-hater Yassir Arafat was alive, the issue of Jewish building in Judea and Samaria never was an issue in terms of the so-called peace parlays. This controversy is a post-Arafat Abbas concoction supported by the White House.

There are several reasons that building in the territories is necessary beyond the right of Jews to live where they please beyond the fact that there's nothing in international law that would make settlements "illegal."

Stephen Plaut, of Haifa University's Graduate School of Management makes an excellent argument in a recent issue of the Jerusalem Post.

"The settlements," says Plaut, "are not just legal but necessary."

Why are they vital? Because if Jews were removed from Judea and Samaria the West Bank would become a terrorist base.

How many different times must it be pointed out that Israel's exit from Gaza and Lebanon has given the Arabs a staging point for assaults in the past, present and -- as Hezbollah's fast-growing rocket stockpile indicates -- the future as well.

"The West Bank," adds Plaut, "would become a base for mass terrorist aggression and Israel would be prevented from taking serious action against terrorist aggression from this Palestine. There will be either a Hamastan base or significant Jewish population there."

Obama knows full well that Israel already is under siege and the ugly Syrian mess threatens to exacerbate an already lousy situation. When Clinton visits Israel next week, it's incumbent on Benjamin Netanyahu to remain firm in support of the Levy Commission findings.

Bibi must unwaveringly remind Hillary that her boss not very long ago promised Israel that he "had its back." Disputing the right of Jews to live peacefully in Judea and Samaria is not -- repeat NOT -- an example of having your best Middle East ally's back.

Granted, it would take a whole lot of political guts for Obama-Clinton to understand a simple fact of the Middle East that precludes any discussion. It was recently articulated best by tv political analyst Dennis Prager in his video, A Realist Description Of The Conflict In The Middle East.

"One side," says Prager, "wants the other side dead. Broadcast after broadcast on Palestinian tv calls for the killing of Jews. Israel would like to exist; the Palestinians do not accept a Jewish state. Otherwise there would be peace."

Compared to that pivotal point, building peaceful homes in Judea and Samaria should be irrelevant.