By LifeSiteNews (Politics) | Created at 2024-11-15 20:19:15 | Updated at 2024-11-15 22:58:29
2 hours ago
Fri Nov 15, 2024 - 3:17 pm EST
(LifeSiteNews) — News of the election victory of Donald Trump was celebrated by religious Zionist leaders in Israel, who believe he will endorse their plan – now underway – to expel or exterminate the entire non-Jewish population of the West Bank.
Finance Minister and Israeli religious extremist Bezalel Smotrich made a televised announcement in which he expressed his hope that Trump will endorse his ongoing move to illegally annex the occupied territories.
“I intend, with God’s help, to lead a government decision that says that the government of Israel will work with the new administration of President Trump and the international community to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.”
The West Bank, to which Smotrich refers using Zionist terms, is nominally reserved as the land for a future Palestinian State. Yet his plan, which was announced in 2017, is not only concerned with making the “Two State Solution” impossible, it is a plan to create a Greater Israel, by expanding its current borders and removing all non-Jews – whether Muslim or Christian – from its new lands.
The Financial Times reported that Smotrich’s plan had sparked “outrage,” with “diplomats saying the move was illegal under international law” and would destabilize the entire region. The greatest ally of Israel, the U.S. government, “condemned” the announcement to annex the West Bank.
Yet Smotrich’s plan is not news. It was published in Hebrew in 2017 – as Ha’aretz reported here in the same year. Former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman remarked on November 13 that the diplomatic community has been fully aware of the “Subjugation Plan” – as it is known – since its inception.
It begins with Smotrich saying the “Two-State plan is a dead end.” He explains that there “is not, and never will be” an Arab state on “this side of the Jordan [river].” An English translation can be found here.
Smotrich says the solution is threefold – those who remain can live without legal rights under Jewish rule. Those who will not accept this can leave or be killed. Smotrich states, “This plan is the most just and moral on every scale – historical, Zionist and Jewish – and is the only one that will bring peace, peace and coexistence.”
He says this plan should be realized by abandoning the “international community” and building “settlements” backed up with military and non-military force. This is what is happening in the West Bank now. Smotrich, who lives in an illegal “settlement,” appointed himself to take charge of policy in the West Bank. Earlier this year, he announced an initiative to massively increase the seizure of homes and land by violence, calling for a million Zionists to do so in his “mega-dramatic” plan.
Smotrich says that his “Decision Plan… is the only plan based on the vision of the Greater Israel.” What does that mean?
As LifeSiteNews reported, Smotrich told Franco-German TV station Arte that he envisions a greater Israel which will one day absorb parts of bordering nations such as Lebanon, Syria and Egypt – as well as the “annexation” of the occupied Palestinian Territories he is now undertaking.
READ: Israeli minister brags about disturbing plan of conquering the Middle East
Smotrich told Arte that his vision of “Greater Israel” was inspired by his religious Zionist reading of historical Jewish “sages.”
The violent expulsion of non-Jews from the West Bank has included the seizure by armed settlers of the land of one of the last remaining Christian families near Bethlehem.
READ: Israel is evicting one of the last Christian families near the birthplace of Our Lord Jesus
This news may be surprising to those who follow the heretical notion of “Christian Zionism,” whose misguided tenets are explained in detail by Catholic Brother Andre Marie MICM in a recent broadcast on the Mike Church Crusade Channel.
As Brother Andre reports, religious Zionism is incompatible not only with Catholicism, but also with Christianity more generally – and is rejected by many Orthodox Jews for the same reason. What is that reason? It asserts that the savior of mankind is neither God nor Christ – but the Zionists themselves, argues Br. Andre.
This perspective would explain the zelotic self-belief demonstrated in the person of Smotrich, whose ardent hopes for support from Trump rely also on the exploitation of another claim – that “God blesses those who bless Israel.”
As Br. Andre explains, this “Israel” is in fact those who follow God – namely, the Catholic Church – and not the nation-state whose borders Smotrich seeks to expand with a false invocation of the Lord.
The hope of this artful deal may also lie in the promise of a ceasefire in Lebanon – whose southern territories Smotrich hopes to absorb in his Greater Israel.
A gift to Trump or Trump’s gift to Zionism?
Yet news of this ceasefire as a “gift” to Trump from Netanyahu, who routinely ignores the U.S. government, must be tempered with the knowledge that Israel’s astonishing aggression from the air is paired with a disastrous and failing ground campaign.
The meaning of this assault is also to secure territorial gains for Israel, as their demands include the right to continue military operations south of the Litani river, whilst insisting that Hezbollah retreat. News reports indicate that French negotiators have rejected the Israeli demand that they retain the right to conduct military operations in Southern Lebanon as a condition to ceasefire. This would effectively hand sovereignty of Southern Lebanon to Israel.
“Several diplomats said that it would be all but impossible to get Hezbollah or Lebanon to accept any proposal that included this demand,” reported Straits Times, with Al Jazeera saying Israel’s “maximalist demands” mirror a similar approach seen in its ceasefire negotiations over Gaza.
“Talks of a ceasefire do not appear serious because the conditions amount to a complete and unconditional surrender by Hezbollah, and I do not see either Hezbollah or [its main backer] Iran going along with this capitulation,” said Karim Emile Bitar, an “expert on Lebanon and an associate professor of international relations at Lebanon’s Saint Joseph University.”
There are also military as well as diplomatic reasons for Israel to seek a pause in its plans.
As Hezbollah have pointed out, in one of Israel’s six previous Lebanon wars the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) reached Beirut in seven days in 1982. In 2006, they were halfway into Lebanon within 33 days. This time the Israelis have penetrated no further than a few kilometers from the border.
Soldiers are now deserting and refusing to serve, according to reports in the Hebrew press in Israel, which are supported by former defense minister Avigdor Liberman. Liberman is no friend of peace, however, and has said that Israel should occupy Southern Lebanon for “50 years.” The leader of a secular nationalist opposition party, Liberman says that “Israel will not exist in 2026” if Netanyahu is not replaced – by someone like himself.
Israel has at the same time been intensively bombing civilian areas of Lebanon, including the capital, Beirut.
Visiting sites bombed by Israel last night in Beirut’s southern suburbs. It’s getting worse day by day. pic.twitter.com/I3OAxyQi4y
— William Van Wagenen (@WVanwagenen) November 14, 2024
An area of Beirut known as “Dahiya” has once again been heavily bombed. The name of this sector of Beirut is given to a doctrine of intentionally destroying civilian infrastructure to cause maximum harm to the population. This “Dahiya Doctrine,” named after the Israeli general Gadi Eisenkot’s brutal 2008 assault on the area, is part of the Israeli army’s war-fighting strategy – both in Lebanon and in Gaza – and explains the use of heavy aerial bombardment of apartments, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, roads and energy and water supplies.
This is the doctrine of the state which now begs Donald Trump’s blessing to expel, exterminate and expropriate the non-Jewish population from the Holy Land.
As his tenure fast approaches, the time is coming soon when one side of this bargain is going to suffer buyer’s remorse. Will Trump deliver peace for his voters – or Greater Israel to the Zionists in the land of Christ?
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