Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the community of Shiloh, in Samaria is “not occupied land.”
Israel is not an occupied nation, it is not an apartheid country.
It is a democracy. And I will always stand with Israel. pic.twitter.com/06Xz6QeOKg
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) February 22, 2023
Tweeting from Shiloh in a video posted to his Twitter account Pompeo wrote “Israel is not . . . an apartheid country. It is a democracy. And I will always stand with Israel.”
Until Pompeo served as Secretary – during the administration of President Donald Trump – the United States considered Shiloh an illegal settlement and post-1967 areas of Israel to be “occupied.”
“This is the heart of the Jewish tradition; this is where the first Tabernacle resided,” he pointed out. “It was Jerusalem before Jerusalem. It was the center of Jewish civil life, and of Jewish spiritual life,” he said.
“For the United States of America to say that ‘no, this is not properly Israel, this is not a place that the Israeli and Jewish people can be,’ was a travesty,” he said.
Pompeo ended that situation during his tenure, declaring in a legal opinion that in fact, Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are not illegal, nor are they violating international law.
“This is not occupied land,” he said. “Israel is not an apartheid nation. This is a place with a deep Jewish tradition, a deep connection to the State of Israel and properly part of the greater Israeli nation.”
Pompeo said he was “proud that we were able to achieve that. It is proper we’re here, it’s peaceful today, there are Jews and Christians and Arabs all here today and living together.
“Make no mistake about it, this place – Shiloh – this place where we’re standing, is a central part of Israel and an important part of Jewish history,” he said, adding that he was “so proud” to have been a “small part of making this legal, and lawful under US law.”
