“Beyond Words” is a seven
volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings from 1960 – 1990 that
originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his
privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also
includes a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi
Kahane's life.
“Beyond Words” now can
be bought at Amazon.com. On the search line, type… Beyond Words
Kahane.
Beyond Words
Selected Writings of
Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990
Volume 1
Amman and Jerusalem
November 22, 1968
There
is great agitation and indignation within the United Nations today. It
all centers around demands for return by Israel of the land won from Jordan
last year. What land? The area that is commonly known as the West
Bank of the Jordan. There is really more than a little irony in this
demand. Indeed, it approaches the heights of chutzpah.
It
is not only that a state which attempted to destroy another one and lost has
the gall to demand terms more properly suited to a victor. It is not even
the fact that the land Jordan demands was never legally and rightfully annexed
by it in the first place. It is really the fact that the state that calls
itself Jordan is an entity that is illegal, per se.
As
the great holy war swung into its full gear, the little king of the little
Kingdom called Jordan began to rain his shells into Jewish Jerusalem. His
troops crossed the armistice line and seized territory in the no-man’s land in
the city. His words and acts were thrown into the battle to wipe out
Israel and decimate its inhabitants.
Alas,
Allah was unkind to Russia and the king’s legion, and uniforms flung aside,
aircraft burning, shoes cast away – the Jordanians fled east. From the
plunderer came forth plunder and the Israelis swept to the Jordan to put an end
to the insanity of a border that, in one place, was only fifteen miles from the
Arab devil to the blue Mediterranean Sea.
The
land that was taken, however, was not “Jordanian.” It was part of
pre-1948 Palestine; it was part or Eretz Yisroel, it was Jewish soil from the
time of Abraham.
Here
was the Old City of Jerusalem where Abraham brought his son Isaac for the Akeda;
here was the city where David and his dynasty ruled; here was the sacred Temple
Mount with its Western Wall waiting to be redeemed.
Here
was Bethlehem were Rachel wept for her children on the way to Efrat. Here
was Hebron where the Patriarchs impatiently lay in anticipation of a speedy
redemption. Here was Jericho where the walls crashed down to herald the
inheritance of the Holy Land by the Egyptian exodees. Here was Judea and
Samaria and all the places and sites that have become familiar to a Jewish and
non-Jewish Biblical world.
Here
was Jewish Eretz Yisroel, a land that had been reluctantly left outside the
borders of a Jewish state in 1948 as the Jews of Palestine sorrowfully agreed
to temporarily accept partition of their land in their desperate need of some
land to house the displaced of Europe and the oppressed of greater Arabia.
But
the agreement was conditional and the Arabs, predictably, relieved the Jewish
state of any need to adhere to that condition. The Arabs in psychopathic
consistency refused any idea of compromise and rejected partition. Their
armies rushed in to battle the yahud, and the U.N. sat in an
impotence that was destined to become its favorite pose.
It
was Jewish blood that won and secured a Jewish state, and the plan that was
rejected by the Arabs was buried, unmourned and unlamented. And the West
Bank of the Jordan? Under the U.N. plan it was to be given to an Arab Palestine
state; under the Arab plan it to be given to an Arab Palestine state; under no
circumstances did anyone foresee a usurper Jordan annexing it.
And
yet, that is exactly what happened. Possessed of a British-trained and
run Arab Legion, King Abdullah proved to be the only foe that Israel could not
overcome. His army seized the West Bank and Old Jerusalem and decided
that Israel would not have it and neither would an Arab Palestine be
created. From now on, it was to be part of Jordan.
No
one accept this. The U.N. denied the legality of the move; the Israelis
refused to recognize it and the Arab states themselves fumed at the annexation.
On
December 13, 1948, Egypt’s King Farouk served notice that he did not recognize
Jordan’s right to the West Bank. The Arab League threatened expulsion of
Jordan from the body (Abdullah yawned and welcomed the move). Faced with
a fait accompli, the Arab League never did recognize the grab
but adopted a resolution on May 13, 1949 “to treat the Arab part of Palestine
annexed by Jordan as a trust in its hands until the Palestine case is fully
solved in the interests of its inhabitants.”
So
much for the Jordanian claim to the West Bank. The land it claims is
Jewish land, sorrowfully given up in return for a peace and friendship the
Arabs never gave. Their rejection of the latter doomed the former, and
the land returned to tis true owners.
What
is more important, however, is the need to examine the very basis of the
travesty that calls itself Jordan. In itself it is an illegality, a
travesty of justice, a robbery of Jewish possessions.
There
never was Jordan until perfidious Albion – the British Colonial Ministry –
decided to invent one, and the story is one that more should know about.
When
the Balfour Declaration backed the establishment of a Jewish national home in
Palestine, there was never any country that was known as Jordan. The
historic boundaries of ancient Israel included the east bank of the Jordan, and
Balfour himself made this clear in a memorandum dated August 11, 1919:
“Palestine
should extend into the lands lying east of the Jordan?”
What
happened?
A
desert chieftain named Abdullah ibn-Hussein and his brother Feisal, fleeing the
Arabian wrath of Ibn Saud, were offered in 1920 the thrones of Iraq and Syria,
respectively. Unfortunately for the Arabs, the French, who were given
mandatory powers in Syria by the League of Nations, informed Feisal that he was
most unwelcome in Damascus. The Arab took the Gallic hint and departed
Since
both brothers were British pawns in the struggle by the Colonial Office to make
the Middle East British, Feisal was given the throne of Iraq by the British
Foreign Office, while Abdullah was left holding an empty kingdom-bag.
Faced
with this, Abdullah began to make all manner of bellicose sounds about marching
on Syria and ousting the French. While Paris hardly lost sleep, the
British did not relish the idea of a confrontation between their puppet and the
French and so, in 1921, Winston Churchill met with Abdullah and offered him an annual
subsidy and established a new country to be known as “Transjordan” for Abdullah
to rule.
It
little mattered that such a step was illegal and that it robbed Jewish
Palestine of a major share of its land. Whitehall proposed and Whitehall
disposed.
Transjordan
came into being, a comic-opera illegality, ruled in theory by Abdullah but in
practice by London.
This
was the state that on May 31, 1967 signed a defense agreement with Nasser to
destroy Israel; this was the state that declared through its king, on that same
day: “With the help of G-d and the solidarity of the Arabs we will see the
victory of truth over the lie-s of the enemy”; this is the state whose radio
declared during the terrible days of June 1967.
“How
long did we wait and prepare for these hours of honor and for the day the Arabs
would advance . . . Be ready to meet on the soil of eternal Falastin [Palestine].”
(June 1, 1967)
“Free
citizens, heroic sons of Jordan. The hoped-for moment has arrived.
Forward to arms, to battle, to new pages of glory. To regain our rights,
to smash the aggressor, to revenge.”
(June 5, 1967, 0915 hours)
“We
are living through the most sacred hours of life . . . Long did we wait for
this battle in order to erase our shame.”
(The Premier, June 5)
“Today
the soldiers of Hussein have brought doom to the Jewish strongholds in
Jerusalem . . . They destroyed the Knesset and have liberated the holy soil
from the Zionists. The heroic soldiers are marching forward towards Tel
Aviv.”
(June 5, 1800 hours)
“Froward
toward your meeting with Rabin in Tel Aviv.”
(June 5, 1155 hours)
Rabin
was waiting, but the Jordanians never came. They busily were heading in
the opposite direction, where they sit today, and demand the return of a
territory that was never theirs to a state that was illegal from its inception.
Anyone
reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane / Rabbi Binyamin Kahane article and is not on my
personal list to receive these weekly articles, please contact me at barbaraandchaim@gmail.com
Facebook:
Barbara
Sandra Ginsberg
Otzma Yehudit for Anglos
