Friday, July 14, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
In one part of the essay that mentions this week's Torah portion he says,
Why were the borders of the land reduced in Parashat Masei?The borders of the Land of Israel are from the [Nile] River to the Euphrates River. However, in practice, in Parashat Masei, when God commanded Israel to occupy the land and settle it, he commanded to conquer only the western side of the Jordan. Because the mitzvot of settling the land must be fulfilled according to the ability of the people of Israel. And since the number of Israel was not sufficient to settle the whole Land of Israel, the mitzvah was to first conquer the more sacred part, to the west of thee Jordan. And only after they multiply, they would be able to gradually expand towards the eastern Jordan and all the territories of the Promised Land of Israel (Ramban Bamidbar 21:21; Malbim ibid.).Therefore, from the beginning, Israel did not intend to conquer the land of Sihon and Og, and only after they did not accept the peace offer and went to war against Israel, the people of Israel conquered their land. And there was still no intention to settle there, so when the sons of Reuven and Gad asked to cross the Jordan, Moses was very careful about them, but in retrospect he granted their request after they promised to be pioneers in conquering most of the land. In practice, there were not enough Jews to enter the Western Jordan, and it remained sovereign enclaves of Gentiles there, who caused great trouble to Israel for about four hundred years, as recounted in the Book of Judges.
Rabbi Melamed is saying that God Himself commanded the Israelites to only conquer the land to the west of the Jordan, and not the entire expansive borders, because there simply weren't enough of them to effectively rule a larger area - and even the parts of Transjordan that they settled was a cause of problems since they didn't have enough people. Certainly it is not desirable today to conquer much of the Arab world.
Arab media is looking at this article and saying,
Rabbi to the Jews: They multiplied so that we fight Egypt and Iraq and control the Nile and the Euphrates
The extremist Jewish rabbi , Eliezer Melamed, claimed that the borders of the Israeli occupation should extend from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, to repeat the occupation narratives that prove Tel Aviv's desire to dominate the Arab region .
Which he is hardly saying - he is complaining that we do not have enough Jews to even control the entire area west of the Jordan properly! Nowhere does he call for a war with Egypt and Iraq!
Now, other Arab sites are chiming in about the "racist" rabbi who merely quoted the Torah about the ideal borders of Israel that no one is calling for today.
Usually, when these kinds of things happen -and they happen pretty often - it is a secular Israeli newspaper that misinterprets the words of some rabbi to make him sound racist. Here, apparently the Arab media themselves decided to interpret the d'var Torah in an entirely wrong way - because they know no one will fact check them.
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