A History Lesson Is In Order
Amid reports that Israel has revived plans to construct a new neighborhood in the eastern sections of Jerusalem, it is instructive to review the largely untold story of Palestinians building entirely illegally on Jewish-owned property in the same areas.
The illegal Palestinian construction has worked to generate facts on the ground, creating de facto Palestinian neighborhoods inside peripheral Jerusalem that are virtual no-go zones for Israeli civilians. The illegal housing has impacted previous Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Numerous Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals designated these very areas future Palestinian territory due to the large concentrations of Palestinians living in them.
Last week, the Israel Housing Ministry reportedly decided to bring back plans to build a Jewish neighborhood of 10,000 or more homes in the currently defunct Atarot Airport, located near Qalandia just north of Jerusalem.
Some in the news media are painting the homes as controversial because they are slated for the eastern sections of Jerusalem. Judaism’s holiest sites – the Temple Mount and Western Wall – are located in eastern Jerusalem, which is steeped in Jewish history.
The Jews maintained a historic presence in Jerusalem, including in the eastern sections, until they were forced to leave the Old City en masse in 1948. Jordan illegally occupied and annexed the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem from 1948 until Israel captured the lands in a defensive war in 1967.
The 1967 Six-Day War was launched after Arab countries used the territories to stage attacks against the Jewish state. In 1988, Jordan officially renounced its claims to the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and unilaterally recognized terrorist Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”
Lost in the news media coverage of eastern Jerusalem is that major swaths of land there are legally owned by Jews, including at the Atarot Airport and in Qalandia where the plans for the new Jewish homes are centered.
In 2007, I extensively investigated those areas and found Jewish-owned land was utilized to illegally construct Palestinian apartment buildings, a refugee camp and a United Nations school.
I reported at the time: “The properties in question include about 270 acres in the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods of Qalandia and Kfar Akev, located near an old Israeli airport, and about 50 acres in a north Jerusalem suburb known as Shoafat, which is adjacent to the Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev.
“The lands were legally purchased on behalf of JNF using Jewish donations in the early 1900s, immediately after the organization was founded in 1901 with the specific charge of repurchasing and developing the land of Israel for Jewish settlement.
“A tour of Qalandiya and Kfar Akev found dozens of Arab apartment complexes, a Palestinian refugee camp and a United Nations school for Palestinians constructed on the land.”
I also further reported in 2009 that these de facto Palestinian enclaves in peripheral Jerusalem neighborhoods have become virtual no-go zones for Jewish Israelis due to security concerns. The Jerusalem police confirmed at the time that security arrangements discourage Israeli Jews from entering the neighborhoods. Those security arrangements are still in effect today.
They Hated Trump From The Word ‘Go’
Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been clouded by an unprecedented obfuscation campaign by Democrats, some Republicans, the establishment news media, and a coalition of outside agitators attempting to disrupt the billionaire’s presidential agenda, smear top administration officials, sow seeds of chaos, and delegitimize his already historic presidency.
A review of events is instructive. Even before Trump took office, the attempts to delegitimize the billionaire kicked into high gear when Hillary Clinton’s campaign joined the improbable recount efforts led by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. When those efforts failed miserably, the Clinton campaign turned to an outlandish attempt to usurp Trump’s Electoral College victory.
Trump’s inauguration was marred by threats of mass protest by a movement dubbed DisruptJ20, which Breitbart News exposed as being made up of professional left-wing activists with ties to groups financed by billionaire George Soros.
Trump’s inauguration was followed 24 hours later by a so-called Women’s March seeking to taint the newly installed president. That protest group was a coalition that reportedly consisted of more than 50 “partners” tied to Soros. This journalist first reported on the march leaders’ own close associations with Soros.
Trump was also welcomed to office by Soros-financed advocacy groups openly working for the new president’s impeachment.
Some of the basis for the many attempts to delegitimize Trump center on unsubstantiated Russian intervention claims that began after Trump was elected and have since been repeatedly utilized to delegitimize the president.
Only last week, it was revealed that the controversial, partially discredited 35-page dossier on Trump compiled by a former British intelligence officer served as the FBI’s justification for seeking court approval to clandestinely monitor Carter Page, who has been identified as a foreign policy adviser to Trump.
This is not the FBI’s only use of the dossier. Last month, the BBC reported the document served as a “roadmap” for the FBI’s investigation into claims of coordination between Moscow and members of Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump has been the target of numerous major protests depicted as grassroots by some news media outlets. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes clear that many of the major protest movements are led by professional agitators are have close ties to prominent leftwing financing, especially Soros links.
Meanwhile, as Trump plans a slew of policies that could dismantle key parts of Barack Obama’s presidential legacy, the former president seems to be returning to his roots as a Saul Alinsky-style radical community organizer.
This time, Obama and his associates’ objective is to stop Trump’s domestic and foreign policy agendas on virtually all fronts – immigration reform, border security, the roll back of the controversial Obamacare system, and more. According to some accounts, Obama and his associates may be seeking no less than Trump’s impeachment.