Dr. Pat Robertson: Palestinian State Would Be Fatal, Spiritual Right of Israel is Essential

Addressing the Herzliya Conference this morning, Dr. Pat Robertson, Chairman, Christian Broadcast Network warned that a sovereign Palestinian state would fatally compromise Israel's security since a sovereign Palestinian state would have the sovereign right to control the entry of weapons and personnel into the area.

Dr. Robertson warned that it would be a mistake to ignore Israel's spiritually based right to exist, saying that Israel's spiritual right to exist is an essential right, not subject to the vagaries of world politics and that there is a huge Christian population around the world that recognizes and supports Israel's spiritual right to exist.. He urged Israel not to forfeit its Holy places.

MIDDLE EAST
Pat Robertson In Israel: The Arab-Israeli Conflict

December 17, 2003

CBN.com – ARIEL, Israel -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is preparing to unveil his latest plan for dealing with the Palestinians later this week, and at this crucial time in the Middle East, Pat Robertson has traveled to the city of Ariel in Israel. He’s there to learn first hand about the ongoing struggle between Israel and the Palestinians.
LEE WEBB: Pat, I understand you are in the West Bank now. Where exactly in the West Bank are you?

PAT ROBERTSON: Lee, I am in Ariel, they call this the capitol of Samaria. This is an amazing city. It has 18,000 people in it. Behind me is the Biblical Mount Garazeem, the place is filled with

Biblical tradition and this is what is known in the Bible as Judea and Samaria. So I’m here in this disputed piece of territory. And I had the privilege of speaking to Uzi Landau, who is the head of the state security. And we took a little helicopter ride over the famous fence and wall that is being built to separate this West Bank territory from their Palestinian neighbors.

Uzi Landau: By comparison, there are no suicide bombers that come from Gaza to these particular places. The reason is very simple. Because in Gaza we have a fence. And let me tell you, as much as I hate the fence, because I used to be a member of the Board of the Israeli Society for the Protection of Nature, it is [unintelligible] to the landscape. You don’t want to see that, it costs a lot. But when it comes to the need, to the protection of so many lives, there is no alternative for that. And so we got to have it.

ROBERTSON: Well, Lee, I have with me Ron Nachman. He’s the Mayor of Ariel. And Ron, it’s just a joy to be with you here today in this fabulous city. You came here 25 years ago, you and your wife and two tents.

RON NACHMAN: That's correct. We came here, a helicopter landed, and we built two tents [unintelligible], and since that time, we developed a city. You see almost 20,000 people inhabitants. We have a big industrial park with 120 plants and 6,000 employees.

ROBERTSON: We hear in America about settlements. People think of tents, they think of huts. This is a modern city, and you have 6,000 people employed in an Industrial park.

NACHMAN: That's correct.

ROBERTSON: What do they make there?

NACHMAN: They make a lot of things. Electronics, textile, food, metal works, plastic; everything is being done there, and we produced about a half billion dollar(s) a year.

ROBERTSON: Half a billion. And I understand you employ a large number of Palestinians?

NACHMAN: That's correct. We employ there about 1,500 to 2,000 Arab Palestinians.

This is our contribution to the peace. We supply jobs for them.

ROBERTSON: I visited earlier today a university, or college -- the College of Judea and Samaria. I understand you have 8,000 students in this place, they’re learning engineering, they’re learning high tech, they’re learning all kinds of scientific and social science. You draw students from where?

NACHMAN: The students come from all parts of Israel. They’re coming from Galilee, from the north part of Israel, the Negev, from Malat, and the south part of Israel. We have Arab Israelis, about 200 Arab-Israelis and we have Ethiopians, Jewish Ethiopians. All together we have about 8,000 students in the college. It is the biggest college in Israel.

ROBERTSON: The leaders, though, Colin Powell, for example, the State Department, essentially want to restrict any more people coming here, and at one time, as a matter of fact, they closed you down. They wouldn't let you expand at all.

NACHMAN: Let me tell you, Pastor Robertson, I think this is the biggest mistake of the existing policy of the State Department and the American government. I have to be the one to negotiate with, because me and my neighbor, we can make peace. Not any speeches on the stairs of the White House in Washington. It’s me and my neighbor. We are to decide to make peace, and that will come. And that is why I say that all that policy, freezing settlements—you see, that’s not a settlement, it is a city.

ROBERTSON: It is. Twenty-thousand people with an 8,000 member university and 6,000 jobs in an industrial park is not a settlement.

NACHMAN: And a beautiful hotel.

ROBERTSON: Yes.

NACHMAN: And I say when we fight terrorism, the answer to terrorism is to reason, like you did today. That's what we need to do.

ROBERTSON: Ron, we’re here and people are afraid, and they understand that there have been bombings and so forth. And there have been a couple. At the hotel I talked to the people, but yet your people go about life as if it is perfectly normal, and you are not really afraid of terrorism, are you?

NACHMAN: I don't think this is the proper word, that we are not afraid. Everybody has a sense of fear, you know, of the terror. Coming from New York, September 11th, and in Iraq or wherever else in the world. But we need to be strong. We need to fight terror. We need to fight it. If we don't stand together, United States, Israel, Europe, all the Western world, to fight this Islamic terrorism, we will pay a very high price for it.

ROBERTSON: Yasser Arafat wants this territory he wants to take Ariel as part of what he calls the West Bank. He wants this whole city, and the university and all of your plants, is that right?

NACHMAN: Not only he, but you know, all the claims. The policy is that this is the West Bank. But in the Bible there is no West Bank, in the Bible there is no green line, and in the Bible there is no occupied territories. In the Bible, you see, we have only promised land to Israel. That's what we have and the question, and this is the basic question -- whether we have the right to that land. And if we have the right to the land, so we will stay here. If we don't have the right, we cannot stay here, and how do we know that we have the right? We go to the Bible. Abraham bought the [unintelligible] 4,000 years ago; it’s written. He paid for that. And that was before Christianity. And that was before Islam. And even Jesus, when he walked in Jerusalem, what did he see? A mosque? No. The old city of Jerusalem. That's what He saw. So our rights, the origin coming from the Bible, coming from what God said to the Jewish people. I give you that land. And this is the most important thing. You cannot find that in London, not in Paris, not in Rome and even not in Washington D.C. But here you can find it.

ROBERTSON: Ron Nachman, Mayor of Ariel. And Lee, I am here in the midst of this

contested land. Tomorrow, I will have an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is the finance

Minister of Israel. I think you will find very interesting. I am going to be speaking in a policy conference in Hertzliya tomorrow morning. And I will be having other interviews. So it’s been a fascinating visit to the land of the Bible, and one that is certainly is in need of a great deal of prayer these days.

LEE WEBB: Pat, thank you for that report from Ariel in the West Bank, and we look forward to your interviews tomorrow.

Whenever people make "spiritual" claims on something entirely material, you have the worst kind of Fascism evolving.

So is this like Robertson's 5,300 lb monument to the Bible?

I suspect he's grandstanding for the free Big Media advertising. A cozy arrangement for the Amen Corner's pulpit warriors continues!
Dr. Robertson warned that it would be a mistake to ignore Israel's spiritually based right to exist

He sounds like this whining UN Collectivist Swine (get your barfbags ready):

Miss Lois O’Donoghue, Chairperson, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (1993): Indigenous peoples possess communal identities with collective rights.[MEGA-BARF] Individual human rights will not be weakened by reference to the collective rights of indigenous peoples.[Barf] Rather the collective rights of indigenous peoples complement, and indeed strengthen, the individual rights of 300 million indigenous persons.
It is precisely because the collective rights have not been acknowledged that the individual rights of indigenous persons - for example, the right to equality of opportunity in the provision of education, employment and health care [super triple mega BARF!!!] - have not yet been realized in any nation of the world.
Only when our collective identities have been recognized will the appalling disadvantages that we suffer as individuals be redressed.

IOW, "please recognize collective rights so that we can enslave you in the name of the collective."

But thankfully, we all know this thanks to Ayn Rand (MHNBP):

The notion of ‘collective rights’ (the notion that rights belong to groups, not to individuals) means that ‘rights’ belong to some men, but not to others – ... Nothing can ever justify or validate such a doctrine – and no one ever has. Like the altruist morality from which it is derived, this doctrine rests on mysticism: either on the old fashioned mysticism of faith in supernatural edicts, like ‘The Divine Rights of Kings’ – or on the social mystique of modern collectivists who see society as a super-organism, as some supernatural entity apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members.

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