LETTER: Crux of Palestinian problem today

SIR – To the two writers who doubt the authenticity of the Bible, I would point them to the thousands of archaeological sites, antiquities, relics, and treasures that prove that the ancient Land of Israel was not built by the Palestinians but by the Jews. 

Try Kings Solomon and David, let alone Abraham who bought land in Hebron, and Moses who led the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt back to their Promised Land.

Mr Storey runs away from the evidence by wrongly claiming that the Bible speaks of a ‘spiritual Israel, not a physical one.’

Wrong! The Bible, Mr Storey, speaks of both.

Secular or religious, the Jewish people built that land, yearned and prayed for it when exiled from it, but we always returned, even after two thousand years of exile, and we will not be deprived of our heritage, not by UNESCO that officially denies there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and, therefore, there could not have been a Jesus. By denying one, you deny the other. And not, Mr Storey, by the replacement theologists that deny that Jesus was a Jew but instead a ‘Palestinian messenger.’ That’s how far Israel - read ‘Jew’ - hatred gets you.

But Mr. Storey is right about one thing. Uganda was offered by the British to the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, who rejected the offer. When British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, asked him why he insisted on a return of the Jewish people to a desolate part of an Ottoman Empire they once had two millennia earlier, Dr Weizmann replied, ‘because Jerusalem was our capital when London was a swamp.’

That, Messrs Storey and Turner, is both spiritual and physical. 

Now let’s talk of peace. If these two writers would truly like to see the establishment of a Palestine let them devote their energies and writing talents to dissuade the Palestinian leadership and people away from decades of Jewish rejection, war, and terror, and instead adopt the notion of living alongside the Jewish State of Israel. I can promise them there will be peace tomorrow. 

Israel has proven its ability and desire to compromise and make peace. Just ask Jordan and Egypt.  The tragedy is that the Palestinians still think they are the spearhead of a greater Arab campaign to remove the Jewish presence from the Middle East. 

Peace can never come as long as they continue to think that they are heroes and martyrs in this struggle. 

That is what their leaders are telling them. That is the crux of the Palestinian problem today.

Barry Shaw,

Associate at the Israel Institute  for Strategic Studies.

Netanya, 

Israel.