J Street Is Trying to Reverse Trump’s New Policy to View Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria as Legal: You Can Fight Back against J Street

Nov 20, 2019 by Susan Rosenbluth

By Susan L Rosenbluth, TheJewishVoiceAndOpinion.com

Most American pro-Israel organizations and leaders were thrilled with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement that the US no longer considers Jewish communities in Israel’s heartland of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank” of the Jordan River) to be illegal.

J Street, an organization begun and funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, which poses as a pro-Israel organization but invariably takes positions either condemning the Jewish state or promoting policies which would spell its doom, responded negatively, as expected. J Street is now asking its supporters to swamp their Congressmen and Senators with calls demanding that they sign onto a letter, penned by Rep Andy Levin (D-MI), which would demand that Mr. Pompeo reverse the new policy in favor of the old one which has failed dismally for more than 40 years.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Please, call your Congressmen and women and Senators and ask them to support the new policy as articulated by Secretary Pompeo.

This is important because J Street is convinced the Trump administration’s decision can be rescinded “by this administration or the next.”

A List

To press their point, J Street’s leaders have compiled a list of statements from Democrats either running for the Presidency or sitting in Congress. All of them promote the failed two-state solution that they seem to believe can be imposed on Israel and her citizens, despite the ongoing acts of terrorism supported, endorsed, and paid for by the Palestinian-Arab leadership. The Democrats are trusting these Palestinian-Arab leaders to sign peace agreements with Israel and stick to them while Israel is condemned to struggle behind impossible-to-defend borders.

The old policy was first adopted in 1978 by then-President Jimmy Carter, whose distaste for Israel was an open secret. He called the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria “illegitimate.” His successor, President Ronald Reagan, said he disagreed with that decision, but he did not reverse it. Finally, just before leaving office, lame duck President Barack Hussein Obama formalized Carter’s policy, allowing the UN Security Council to condemn the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as illegal.

As J Street gleefully shows, today’s Democrats by and large concur with that sentiment. According to the Democrats, those Jewish communities are not disputed (which Israel and her supporters concede is the truth) and not just “obstacles to peace” (which any observer knows is ridiculous—the Palestinians want not only Judea and Samaria, but all the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the right of thousands of Palestinians who fled in 1948 and 1967 and their descendants to flood back into Israel proper). The Democrats say the communities are illegal.

What They Think

Go to https://jstreet.org/opposition-to-the-trump-administrations-reversal-of-us-policy-on-settlements/?akid=134930.11618._S3GRx&rd=1&t=13#.XdVPQFdKguV.

There, you’ll see that former Vice-President Joe Biden insists this new policy is nothing more than “Trump’s personal politics.” At least, Mr. Biden agrees “It’s not about peace or security [or] being pro-Israel.”

Pete Buttigieg calls it “the latest in a pattern of destructive decisions that harm our [presumably America’s] national interests.”

Forget the Facts

Bernie Sanders doesn’t care that, according to George Mason University Constitutional and International Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich, the new US policy is accurate on the parameters set forth in the legal opinion adopted by President Carter. That opinion, said Prof Kontorovich, concluded that the state of occupation and with it questions about the settlements would end when peace treaties were signed with Jordan.

“That happened in 1994. The State Department failed to update policy to reflect changes on the ground,” he said.

Prof Kontorovich stressed that Mr. Pompeo was correct on the merits of the issue as well. The 1978 decision, he said, “depended on the view that Israel is an occupying power. That view was wrong at the time, because one cannot occupy territory to which one has a sovereign claim.”

In the face of this argument, Mr. Sanders, who has said that, should he win the Presidency, Israel would lose US funding (and Hamas would gain it) if the Jewish State did not kowtow to left-wing US demands, stated, “Israeli settlements in occupied territory are illegal.”

Sen, Elizabeth Warren vowed that, as President, she would reverse Mr. Trump’s new policy.

This Is about Something Other Than Law

Numerous Democrats in Congress lambasted Mr. Trump for the policy shift.

In so doing, they inadvertently prove a point made by Prof Kontorovich that “even if there was an occupation [by Israel in Judea and Samaria], the notion that people [Jews] voluntarily moving or, in some cases, returning, to such a territory is a war crime is an idea invented solely for the case of Israel. [It] has never been applied elsewhere.”

“Since 1967, there have been many prolonged occupations, all with significant population movements. In none did the UN—or the US—say that these civilian communities are illegal. A rule that is just about Israel is not international law. It is something else,” he said.

To get your Congressman’s contact information, go to https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative.

Ask him or her to support the new US policy of recognizing that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are not illegal. It’s important!