Kfar Adumim Settlement, Judea (West Bank) We stand on a promontory gazing at the bleached beauty of the Judean Desert. We could be looking at hills on the moon with a few human outcroppings: just down and to the left is the village of Anatot, birthplace of the prophet Jeremiah. Eleven miles to the west we see Jerusalem, with the Mount of Olives — where tens of thousands of Jewish graves were desecrated during the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem (1948-1967) — standing guard; we see Ramallah, seat of the “Palestinian government,” 12 miles to the northwest; Jericho, 18 miles to the east; and not far beyond it, Jordan. At night, the lights of Amman are visible, twinkling. Below us, a sheer drop, is Wadi Kelt, a great fissure in the summer-barren hills that fills and floods with the winter rains to tinge the desert landscape green. Across the wadi is Mitzpeh Hagit, an “illegal outpost “named for a daughter of Kfar Adumim murdered by a Bedouin terrorist as she hiked in the crevice ten years ago. “This is a response of settlers to terror murders,” says our host, one of the original 18 settlers of Kfar Adumim. “We don’t rush out to seek revenge by murdering in return. We respond to it and honor the murdered by establishing outposts in their names.” It doesn’t look like much. How many live there, I want to know. He shrugs. Not enough. But behind us Kfar Adumim bustles with life. Here’s what you can see here: a thriving community now 400 families strong, comprising 2,500 or so people, including many of the first generation of children born and raised here who have come back after their army service and education to raise a new generation — that would be an instance of the “natural growth” that is sending the Zionism-allergic Obami into anaphylactic shock; a schoolhouse where all the children of the settlement are taught; a synagogue; houses shaded from the desert sun by spreading palms and towering eucalyptus; the spikes and spines of succulents everywhere. All of this scratched and scrabbled out of the desert from nothing at all by an idealistic bunch of pioneers who settled here in 1979. Here’s what you can’t see here: Palestinians. Not a single one. Here’s why: There aren’t any within 10 miles. They weren’t robbed, displaced, or dishonored by the building of this settlement or that outpost. They just never lived here at all. Around the dinner table are members of the Israeli “elite,” highly educated and mostly left: a government official, a banker, a retired government official, a journalist, a scientist. The talk is all politics, Israeli and American, and of course Iran. Our host begins to express his worry that Obama’s response to Iran has increased the already great existential threat to Israel. The journalist — he’s really no more than a political gossip columnist like Al Kamen, but newspapers are still read widely in Israel, so he’s “influential” — interrupts with a peroration on the stupidity of George W. Bush and the insanity of his Iraq war. He throws in an attack on the U.S. policy on Cuba, just for good measure. A scientist informs me how much hope and spirit Obama has brought to America. I say I think he’s just a plain old political hack dressed in a cool young man’s empty rhetoric. She performs the civilized lefty two-step: the dumbfounded smile followed by the condescending sigh. It’s almost worse to hear leftist garbage spilling out of the mouths of Israelis. I jump into an argument about bargaining for a “peace” agreement to say that withdrawing from settlements in Judea and Samaria with a people entirely inimical to the survival of Jews is the height of insanity. “They don’t just want your settlements. They want Jerusalem, too. And they want you to disappear into the sea.” There’s an existential threat to Israel, and it’s a lot closer to home than Iran, or even the local Arabs. As the party is breaking up, the journalist turns to me, laughing: “When we post-Zionists want to remember what it was like to be a Zionist, we’ll think of you.” On our way back to Jerusalem we are stopped at a checkpoint, and happy to be so.
