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Settling the Land

Netanyahu urges knowledge of secular claims


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
April 01, 2005

Israeli Jews and their supporters must educate themselves on Israel’s historical rights to this land in order to convince those who are not susceptible to the Jews’ biblical claims, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

Those who already believe in the Bible need no convincing, but Israel’s secular critics will not give credence to its God-given birthright, the former prime minister said in an interview with Israel National Radio.

“I think the fact that we have been here for thousands of years gives us sufficient rights without the religious aspect,” Netanyahu responded when asked if he believed God had given the Land of Israel to the descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

“Certainly around the world there has been an understanding that national rights devolve to those people in a particular land that have settled it and lived there for a very, very long time and had not forsaken it even when they were thrown out of it,” he said.

“The fact that the religious camp believes that there are other rights, other reasons, religious reasons that endow it – should not preclude it from studying the enormous literature that developed in the 19th and 20th century to decide which people deserve what land after the two great wars – 1917 and 1945.”

Netanyahu explained to interviewer Eli Stutz that that literature was formulated on a basis that makes sense to the secular world, and wielded properly is a powerful tool in favor of Israel’s claims.

Both Israel’s secular and religious camps are at fault for failing to remember and promote “this whole line of [secular] Zionist reasoning which is ingrained in the minds of nations and can be used to dispel all the vilifications and distortions of modern history,” he stated.

“The religious do not need persuasion; it’s the secular that need persuasion. You are not going to persuade them with religious arguments because they are not susceptible to that.”

Unfortunately, Netanyahu pointed out, the Arabs have learned this lesson well and are “using a distortion of the argument I am proposing” to convince the world the land is and always has been theirs.

“We don’t have to distort; we just have to report the truth.”

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