Greater Jerusalem Includes Judea and Samaria

Happy Yom Yerushalayim, Anniversary of the Reunification of Jerusalem back in 1967! Baruch HaShem/Praise The Lord!

I have written previously about how the sign of a well thought out peace plan was of one that took into account not only secular humanistic International Law, but also religious beliefs of how the future of the West Bank should look. That way you minimize potential religious extremism by already anticipating future hot spots and preemptively avoiding them entirely by meeting those concerns as a serious part of one's diplomatic efforts to seek optimum pragmatic resolutions to the issues at stake. This is the HOLY LAND we are talking about, and you can't just divide religion from politics and synagogue from state and expect to resolve anything.

I was thinking about that when I read the Prime Minister's potentially disturbing verbal dismissal of challengers in the internal Likud Party elections. In the context of a speech about Likud Party respect for the rule of law, PM Netanyahu was reported to say, “We are not a messianic and extremist movement, but rather a national and liberal one."

Bibi needs to recall that messianic beliefs run deep in Jewish and Christian faiths, and to equate them with lawlessness does not do anyone who loves peace any favors.

Perhaps the Prime Minister meant that differently than the way it sounded, but it was a careless remark, albeit in the heat of the moment of intense internal party politics.

Bibi and his supporters must remain vigilant that he must not continue down the path that such a verbal blunder implies, in order to avoid fueling those who would blame religion and the religious for all of the world’s problems rather than as a great source for objective standards of ethics and morals.

When the Prime Minister spoke yesterday at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, he said, "No other people are as connected to their capital as the Jewish people are to Jerusalem."

What then is Jerusalem? Many nations would be happier if Israel accepted that Jerusalem is merely the Western half of the city, which didn't even exist in the days of the Bible. To many Israelis, Jerusalem includes the Old City. Yet to any Bible student, its borders go even further still. “Jerusalem, mountains surround it, as the Lord surrounds His people…” (Psalm 125) For two thousand years the liturgy of the Jewish wedding has spoken of the united “streets of Jerusalem” and “mountains of Judea”. The Tabernacle rested for hundreds of years from the time of Joshua until the time of Solomon in various Samarian cities including Shiloh and Beth El and then Solomon moved it permanently to the place his father David had discovered was Divinely selected as the permanent site for holiness to commune with this world; the Temple Mount at the Eastern edge of the City called Jerusalem.  From a religious standpoint, The Holy Land begins at Jerusalem and spreads outwards from there, the mountain of the Temple of the Lord shall be the head of mountains (not the only mountain) and exalted above hills (not cut off from them). (Isaiah, chapter2, verses 3 and 2)

God’s boundaries are far broader than secular municipal maps currently show.

Jerusalem is intrinsically linked to the territories surrounding it according to Biblical prophecy. That is a serious concern of many religious people. Even non extremists ones as well, believe it or not.

Greater Jerusalem includes Judea and Samaria. From the Tomb of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the Tombs of Joseph and Rachel, the heartlands of the Bible is Judea and Samaria.

It is not extremist to say that.

It's a plain fact that anyone who opens a Bible can discern.

The key is to meet that truth honestly and still find a path to peace.

If you need help with that, write me and I can offer some, by the grace of God.