from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 08 Jun 2009 07:29 PM PDT

Since Obama has made Settlements the central issue in his
attack campaign against Israel, let us take a look at what they are, and
what they are there for.

The Settlements occupy the high ground, creating defensible
communities surrounding Israel's capital and moving outward. They vary
from major cities such as Maaleh Adumim (Red Mountain) that hold
populations as large as 50,000 people, to small outposts that are nothing
more than a handful of families living in a handful of caravans, with only
some firearms, a fence and a few dogs for protection.

The term
settlement is used for any Jewish towns, villages or outposts in territory
that Israel liberated during the 1967 war, even if those towns and
villages had existed before 1948 and were captured by the Egyptians or
Jordanians then.

That is the first part of the double standard. So
for example, Jordan's armed capture of East Jerusalem in 1948, after a
prolonged siege and expulsion of its Jewish residents, was recognized as
legal. Israel's recapture of East Jerusalem and reunification of the city
in 1967, is treated as illegitimate.

Then there is Kfar Darom
(South Village) whose Jewish presence dated back nearly 2000 years. The
residents of Kfar Darom lived on land they had bought and paid for,
survived Arab attacks over the years, and finally during Israel's War of
Independence in 1948, the village's militia managed to hold the Egyptian
Army at bay for several months.

The Egyptian forces using armor, artillery and even air attacks
were unable to break through a defensive line held by 30 young men and
women. Similar defenses of other villages such as Nirim, Yad Mordechai and
Negba managed to thwart the Egyptian advance further into Israel. When the
residents of Kfar Darom, running out of food and water, were finally
evacuated, they had demonstrated the powerful defensibility that
individual communities contributed to the country as a whole.

And
when the area was liberated from Egypt in 1967, Kfar Darom was once again
rebuilt and turned into a thriving community that exported agricultural
products around the world. Nevertheless despite the fact that it was
actually a rebuilt community, international diplomats insisted on calling
it an illegal settlement.

To demonstrate Israel's willingness to
make peace, Israel forcibly expelled the residents of Kfar Darom, as part
of the Disengagement Plan, which handed over all of Gaza to the
Palestinian Authority. Gleeful mobs promptly torched the synagogue. Gaza
was taken over by the Islamic terrorist group Hamas and the former Jewish
towns of Gaza, built in strategic locations, became prime launching pads
for rockets and missiles shot deep into Israeli territory, hitting as far
as the city of Ashkelon.

Gaza served as the ultimate lab test for
demonstrating why Israel could not afford to hand over any more territory
to Islamic terrorists. The handover of Gaza led to Hamas gaining power and
to the bombardment of towns and cities well within internationally
recognized parts of Israel. Yet now Obama expects Israel to ethnically
cleanse as many as 250,000 Jews in order to turn over vital territory to
terrorists. There can be no real surprise that Israel isn't
interested.

Furthermore Obama expects the Palestinian Authority to be given
control over parts of Jerusalem. When Jordan seized East Jerusalem,
snipers used it to take potshots into Israeli apartment buildings inside
West Jerusalem. Prices for apartment buildings within range of Jordanian
positions dropped sharply as a family might be sitting down to dinner, not
knowing whether there was a sniper drawing a bead on them while they ate.
That was the situation under the fairly stable and moderate Hashemite
kingdom. The situation would be unimaginably worse with those Jordanian
snipers replaced by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, and the rifles replaced by
missile tubes.

What Obama really wants is for Israel to put its own
center of government in shelling range from a terrorist group ensconced in
its own capital. No rational person should need an explanation for why
Netanyahu has said, no.

Obama has presented no serious plan to
dismantle and disarm terrorist groups such as Hamas. Instead he is
pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions, to ethnically cleanse
its own population and turn over the strategic high ground to the
terrorists-- in exchange for nothing.

While Obama presses his
demands, using a concentration camp that was part of the Nazi final
solution, as part of his PR campaign against Israel, a new outpost has
gone up named mockingly after Obama. Like the other "illegal" outposts, it
is an attempt by patriotic Israelis to hold the high ground against the
terrorists who would otherwise use it to wreak havoc even deeper inside
Israel. Their message is that Obama may push for the destruction of their
homes, but they intend to keep building long after he is gone.

Obama may have the power, but they are determined to hold the
high ground. And the high ground they hold forms a chain, a chain of
hilltops that protects the larger cities and towns, which in turn protect
major cities such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. After all it is only 37
kilometers/22 miles from Tel Aviv to one of the larger settlements. A
drive of only 35 minutes is what separates Israel's second largest city
from the imminent danger that the settlements are there to prevent. And
like the handful of young men and women who daringly fought the Egyptian
Army to a standstill, the hilltop youth are prepared to serve that
function again, living on the front line in the war against
terrorism.