A three part article:
Part I:
David Ha'Ivri reports:
Recently, I spent several weeks in the New York area speaking publicly and holding meetings on behalf of the Jewish communities in the Shomron (Samaria). As usual, I spoke at venues in the orthodox community and met with community leaders at public events for Israel, I met many people who are interested in becoming more involved in interacting with our communities.
 
However, the two most exciting meetings for me on this trip involved reaching outside of the traditional circle of support for the Jews of Judea and Samaria. On the first occasion,  I spoke at a reception held in a penthouse garden at Union Square in New York City where I met a group of un-affiliated young professionals, Some were Jewish, some not. All had a leftist orientation. All  the members of the group are involved in high profile think tanks,

I propose that we build bridges between the Shomron and these Diaspora Jewish communities.

international investments, media and international relations. The evening was entitled "Meet a real live Jewish Settler from the West Bank". I expected to be given a sign saying "Exhibit A", but it didn't turn out that way.
 
I spoke to the group for an hour, describing our history and views and then answered questions individually. From the outset I made it clear that I did not come to win them over, but to give them our perspective.  After everyone had left, my host told me how surprised he was that his guests told him that they greatly enjoyed hearing and meeting me and even agreed with a lot of what I had to say. This group of young intellectuals who meet as a group socially, entertain international policy markers as speakers and develop opinions on international matters, have views on Israel and the Middle East, but have never before been given the opportunity to interact with a representative of the "Settler" movement.
 
I believe that we do not have the liberty to take for granted that people like these are a lost cause for our agenda and we can allow ourselves to not bother to reach out to them. However, I am not naive, I do not expect them to become our supporters after an hour of my time, but I am sure that this meeting had a great de-demonizing effect. Whether they agreed with me or not, the people who took part in this meeting walked away saying to themselves; "This guy has a point, he believes in what he says and can hold a intelligent and civil conversation." Those are not simple given understandings in these circles.  


Another connection made on this tour was with educators in the Reform Movement. I am not aware of any bridge building that has ever been done between the "Settlement" movement and the Reform Jews of America. Putting politics and theology aside, there are a great number of American Jews whose tie to their people and heritage is  through the Reform movement. A majority of their membership bears to the left. but taking that as a given, are we to give up hope on them and not expose them to the land of Israel movement?. I propose that we build bridges between the Shomron and these Diaspora Jewish communities. 


I was pleasantly surprised that we were received ai warmly. The educators there showed great interest in our school's twinning program and agreed to present this to their board of directors for next year's educational programming. Like the twinning programs that we already have in motion with Jewish schools in LA, NY and Melbourne, these programs offer much for the children involved on both sides. Through their peers they each learn about the Jewish community on the other side of the ocean and strengthen their Jewish identity.


The Shomron Liaison Office is breaking new ground in developing and building relationships between Jewish communities around the world and exposing the positive aspects of our communities to them. These are people  who will influence policy and opinions on these issues.     
 
Part II: Coming Out for Israel
Conservative Congregation Or Yisrael placed the following ad in Boston's Jewish Advocate on Friday:

                                               FIVE REASONS WHY

                                             Congregation Or Yisrael

                               SUPPORTS ISRAEL AND AN UNDIVIDED JERUSALEM

From the time of King David to the present:

1)    None other than the Jewish people has made the Land of Israel, which bears their name “Judea,” their homeland;

2) Many nations and empires, to this very day, have attempted, but  have failed, to destroy the Jews and consume the land of Israel;

3) The threat to Israel’s existence may never have been so dire as now,                                           due to an imminently nuclear Iran;

4) Jerusalem has been the capital of only the Jewish nation;

5) Only the Jewish people yearn for Jerusalem in their daily prayers. 

If the continued existence and safety of the Jewish State of Israel is among your priorities, please join with Rabbinic leadership and membership who share your priorities at Congregation Or Yisrael.

Part III: Message from a Conservative Congregation - Remarks by the leader of Congregation Or Yisrael of Newton, Yonina Pritzker, delivered to a rally of about 500 people supporting Israel and an undivided Jerusalem, in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 23:

The Land of Israel is the Jewish National Homeland: the history, faith, religion, culture, and identity of the Jewish People has been, is, and forevermore, will be tied to this land which bears our name – from the ancient name of Judea, to its modern name of Israel.

Israel and Jerusalem hold the deepest, religious significance for Jews.  Although there are those who keep trying to politicize Jerusalem, this city, which is the object of our eternal love, will never be a political issue.  On the contrary, Jerusalem is the very soul of the Jewish People.

From the time that King David moved the capital of Israel from the city of Hevron to Jerusalem, 3000 years ago, the bond of the Jewish People to our eternal capital has been unparalleled.

The Jewish nation worshipped for over 400 years at the Temple that King Solomon built in Jerusalem.

They lived at that time as a free and sovereign nation in the Land of Israel, for 700 years: from the time Joshua re-entered the land with the Israelites, until the time the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 586 B.C.E.  Seventy years later, the Jews lovingly rebuilt the holy Temple which then stood for centuries, until the Romans destroyed it in the 70 C.E.

The city of Jerusalem has always been central in Jewish life.  On Passover, we say L’shana HaBah b’Yerushalayim, “Next year in Jerusalem.”  On Tisha B’Av, Jews sit in mourning and weep Lamentations over the destruction of the holy city and Temple.  When building a home, Jews leave an unfinished corner to remember Jerusalem, still not rebuilt; and every Jewish wedding, the groom breaks the glass, showing that he places Jerusalem above his highest joy.

The entire Jewish nation brought sacrifices to Jerusalem.  Jerusalem is the Jewish People’s holy city, and every Jew turns toward it to pray.

Over the millennia, many conquerors tried to consume Israel, which was then called Judea, within their own empires: the Babylonian empire tried; the Persian and Greco-Assyrian, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine, Arab Caliphates, Turkish, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mameluke, and Ottoman

But in all of these attempts, the Land of Israel, this ancient land of Judea, remained the country of only one people, and Jerusalem has served as the capital of only one nation – that of our Jewish Nation.

This past year, we remembered the 80th anniversary of the Hevron Massacre.  In August of 1929, the Jews of Hevron, men, women, and children, were brutally massacred.  The slaughter was bloody: parents and children were murdered within sight of each other.  The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini had been inciting the crowds, challenging the Jews’ connection to the Kotel, the Western Wall, claiming that the Jews were trying to take control of the mosque on the Temple Mount.

So we see that well before 1967, well before the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, back in 1929, Jews were already being slaughtered, and the Jewish connection to Israel was being denied.

During the past few months, you may have heard about Israel compiling a list of National Heritage Sites, documenting places within Israel deserving of recognition and preservation.  The announcement of these places of importance to Jewish history and heritage was met with rioting by Israel’s opponents: how dare the Jewish People have history in their ancient homeland, and be so bold as to affirm that history?!

A person has to ignore and willfully rewrite history in order to deny the Jewish right to Israel and Jerusalem.  But this is precisely what is being done every day.

Recently, the HURVA Synagogue in Jerusalem, which was built centuries ago, was restored after being destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948.  What was the reaction to this rebuilding of our desecrated, destroyed synagogue?  Inciting claims that the Jews are trying to claim history in Jerusalem and trying to destroy the mosque on the Temple Mount, a mosque which is not anywhere near the HURVA Synagogue.

The pattern is clear: there is an ongoing, fundamental rejection of the right of the Jewish People to a sovereign Jewish state in their historic, Jewish homeland.

There has been an ongoing effort, by those who want to destroy all evidence of Israel’s connection to the land, to bulldoze the archaeological remains of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.  These uprooted and destroyed pieces of history are regularly dumped into the valley next to the Temple Mount from which attempts are now being made to salvage these desecrated remains. The denial of the Jewish connection to Israel and Jerusalem, the claim that Jews are trying to “Judaize”  Jerusalem, these accusations should fall like an assault on the ears and sensibilities of anyone who honors truth, who honors history, who honors what is just.

In the United Kingdom, an agency that monitors the accuracy of advertisements recently upheld a complaint about an ad for trips to Israel.  The ad displayed the various places that could be seen on a brief visit to Israel. This agency rejected the ad for use within the United Kingdom, saying that it was misleading because it showed a picture of the Western Wall.  According to this agency, it is debatable as to whether the Kotel, the Western Wall, is in Israel, debatable as to whether the holiest place in the world to Jews, belongs to Israel!

If something so clear, so straightforward, as indisputable as Jerusalem; if something as unmistakable as the Jewish connection to Jerusalem can be so rewritten, so misrepresented; if those around the world can literally turn history on its head and accuse Jews of being occupiers in Jerusalem, then the absolute, dire necessity to stand up and fight against this attempt to subvert the truth, and, in the process, rob Jews of their history, heritage, and homeland has never been made more clear.

It is simply unacceptable to have Jewish history rewritten and erased.  Israel did not come from the Holocaust; there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel from ancient times to today.  Many, the world over, keep trying to conveniently begin the Jewish connection to Israel with the founding of the modern state in 1948, while others, simultaneously, work to systematically destroy all evidence of the ancient and ongoing Jewish presence in the land.

But the Jewish thumbprint and footprint, the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel is everywhere, throughout the millennia; and the history and discoveries, numerous as they are, continually, unequivocally defy the never-ending claims to the contrary.

Israel is a microcosm, and good people of all faiths who simply refuse to abandon history are routinely vilified.  The injustice surrounding Jerusalem is the ultimate paradigm of the challenges we face.  This is a threat to good people everywhere.  This is a threat to the cherished values of a just society.