Letter To Israeli Leadership

President Herzog, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Speaker Ohana, Members of the Knesset, and the People of Israel,

I am Elder Kepha Arcemont, writing on behalf of Miqdash Bethel. I do not write as your enemy. I write as one who has studied your own Torah and loves the truth enough to speak it plainly. The ancient Hebrew prophets directed their hardest words inward — to the nation itself, to its kings, its priests, its courts. Amos stood in Beit El and told the priests what Yahweh required. Yirmeyahu stood in the gates of Yerushalayim and told the city what was coming. This letter is written in that spirit — with the respect that tells you the truth because it believes you are capable of hearing it.

A WORD TO PRESIDENT HERZOG: YOU CARRY A NAME THAT DEMANDS SOMETHING OF YOU

President Herzog, you bear the name Yitzhak — named after your grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, first Chief Rabbi of Ireland and first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel. A man who traveled through the ruins of destroyed European Jewish communities after the Shoah rescuing Torah scrolls from the ashes and searching for orphaned Jewish children hidden in Christian homes. Your grandfather understood that the Torah is not a possession. It is an obligation to be lived.

'The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.' — Vayikra / Leviticus 19:34

You yourself, in your inaugural address, warned the nation that sin'at chinam — baseless hatred — was the force that brought down both Temples. The Talmud in Yoma 9b confirms it. You named the danger. You quoted the text. The question this letter places before you is whether you will act on what you already know. You have moral authority that no politician can claim. The ceasefire has opened a window. I am asking you — as the grandson of Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog — to use that authority now.

A WORD TO PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: HISTORY IS WATCHING

Prime Minister Netanyahu, you are the longest-serving prime minister in Israel's history. You have outlasted adversaries and survived crises no other leader has faced. You seek a place in history as the man who secured the hostages and ended the war. I address that ambition directly — because it reveals something important.

A ceasefire alone is not enough for the legacy you seek. A ceasefire that does not resolve the underlying condition is a pause, not a peace. The peace that lasts will not be achieved by further military operations or further partition. It will be achieved by truth. And the truth — established by genetics, archaeology, and the testimony of your own state's founders — is that the Palestinian people are not foreign enemies of the Hebrew legacy. They are its carriers. They are the descendants of those who never left.

'Tzedek tzedek tirdof — Justice, justice you shall pursue, that you may live and inherit the land.' — Devarim / Deuteronomy 16:20

The repetition of tzedek is the Torah's most insistent form of emphasis. The prime minister who builds peace on the foundation of Yehezkel's prophetic vision — one land, shared inheritance, covenant justice — will be remembered not as a wartime leader but as a statesman. That is the legacy. The Torah sets the standard by which it will be measured.

A WORD TO SPEAKER OHANA AND THE KNESSET: THE PARLIAMENT OF THE COVENANT PEOPLE

Speaker Ohana, you introduced President Trump to the Knesset by comparing him to Cyrus the Great — the Persian king who allowed the Hebrew exiles to return. Cyrus is praised in the Hebrew scriptures because he used his power to restore rather than destroy. He is the only non-Hebrew figure given the title mashiach in the Tanakh — precisely because he acted in accordance with justice toward a people not his own. The Knesset is the parliament of the nation that calls itself the heir of the covenant. Its members have the power to legislate, authorize, investigate, and hold the nation accountable to its covenant obligations. The settlement enterprise in the West Bank — cursed by the Torah's own words in Devarim 27:17 — is authorized through Knesset legislation and budget allocations. These are covenant matters. The Knesset cannot stand apart from them.

'Seek good and not evil, that you may live. Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate.' — Amos 5:14-15

A WORD TO THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL: YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS DONE

To the families who gathered every Saturday in Hostage Square. To the soldiers who returned from Gaza carrying questions they cannot answer. To the citizens who poured into the streets to protest the judicial overhaul — showing they still believe in the rule of law. You are not your government's decisions. But you are responsible for what your government does in your name.

Your own founders — Ben-Gurion and Ben Zvi — wrote in 1918 that the Palestinian fellahin were likely descended from the Hebrew farmers who never left after the Roman wars. The Samaritans still living near Nablus under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction are recognized as the most direct surviving remnant of the Northern Kingdom of Yisra'el. They are Yisra'el — still standing on the land after three thousand years, under Palestinian governance. This is not a reason to abandon your identity. It is a reason to expand your understanding of who your family is.

THE EVIDENCE YOUR OWN FOUNDERS LEFT YOU: PALESTINIANS AND JEWS ARE BROTHERS BY BLOOD

What follows is not a foreign accusation. It is not propaganda from an enemy. It is the scientific record confirmed by modern genetics, the archaeological consensus of independent scholars, and — most significantly — the documented testimony of the men whose portraits hang on the walls of your government buildings, whose names appear on your universities, your streets, your airports. This is what your own founders wrote. This is what the laboratories have confirmed. And this is what the Torah always knew.

The Genetic Record — What the Science Establishes

Palestinian Ancestry — 81 to 87 Percent Ancient Levantine: Multiple independent peer-reviewed genetic studies — conducted by separate institutions using different methodologies — have reached the same scientific consensus: the Palestinian people carry 81 to 87 percent of their ancestry from the ancient Bronze Age Levantine population. These are the Canaanites, the ancient Semitic peoples, the mixed population among whom the ancient Hebrews lived, worked, intermarried, and built the civilization that produced the covenant you claim. Palestinian blood is not foreign to this land. It is among the oldest blood in it.

The Y-Chromosome — The Paternal Line the Torah Used to Establish Tribal Identity: Studies of the Y-chromosome — the genetic line passed unchanged from father to son across generations, the very line the Torah used to establish tribal membership — found that approximately 82 percent of Palestinian Muslim Arab Y-chromosomes belong to the ancient Semitic Levantine genetic pool. The equivalent figure for modern Israeli Jewish populations is approximately 70 percent. On the paternal line — the line Moshe used to number the tribes, the line by which every man in Bemidbar (Numbers) was identified — the Palestinian people show marginally higher genetic continuity with the ancient inhabitants of the land than the modern Israeli Jewish population does. This is not a political argument. It is a laboratory finding. And it is the finding of the very genetic methodology that mirrors the Torah's own patrilineal accounting of covenant identity.

What This Means in Plain Language: The framing of this conflict as a war between two peoples with separate and unrelated ancient blood claims to the land is not supported by the science. It has never been supported by the science. These are two communities whose ancient ancestors shared the same soil, the same Semitic gene pool, and in many cases the same families — one branch that went into exile and one branch that stayed. The conflict is not, at its genetic root, a war between strangers. It is, in the most precise biological sense the evidence supports, a family divided against itself.

The Testimony of Your Own Founders — In Their Own Words

This is the evidence that this letter asks you to sit with most carefully — because you cannot dismiss it as the argument of an outsider or an enemy. These words were written by the men who built the state you lead.

David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi — 1918: Your first Prime Minister and your second President wrote jointly, before the state existed, that the Palestinian fellahin — the Arab peasant farmers working the soil of the land — were in all likelihood the descendants of ancient Hebrew and Samaritan farmers who remained after the Jewish-Roman Wars and converted to Christianity and then to Islam over subsequent centuries. Ben-Gurion wrote this. Ben Zvi wrote this. They published it. In their own names. The founders of modern Israel acknowledged in their own scholarship that the people working the land were, in biological terms, their ancient kin.

Ber Borochov — 1905: The founding theorist of Labor Zionism — the intellectual tradition from which the Israeli left and much of the founding generation drew their political philosophy — published the same conclusion thirteen years before Ben-Gurion and Ben Zvi. The Arab population of the land was largely descended from the ancient Hebrew inhabitants who had remained. This was not a fringe view. It was the considered historical judgment of Zionism's own intellectual foundation.

President Herzog — you have studied this history. Prime Minister Netanyahu — you have built a political career on the legacy of these men. Speaker Ohana — you represent a parliament that bears the name of the people whose founders wrote these words. The question this letter places before you is not whether you knew. It is what you will do with what you know.

The Samaritans — The Living Proof That Yisra'el Never Left

Three Thousand Years of Continuous Presence: Approximately 800 Samaritans living near Nablus on the West Bank — under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction — are recognized by genetic and historical consensus as the most direct surviving remnant of the Northern Kingdom of Yisra'el. They were never exiled. They maintained their ancient Torah scrolls — scrolls that predate the Masoretic text — and have continued their covenant practice on Mount Gerizim without interruption for over three thousand years. They are not a museum exhibit. They are a living community. And they live today under Palestinian governance.

The existence of the Samaritan community is the single most powerful piece of evidence in this entire letter — because it is not genetic data or historical text. It is a community of living human beings who are simultaneously the most direct genetic and cultural remnant of the ancient Kingdom of Yisra'el and citizens living under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. They are, at one and the same time, Yisra'el and Palestinian. Their existence makes the entire framework of 'two separate peoples with no shared heritage' factually impossible to maintain.

What This Means for Israel — Spoken in Love, Not in Accusation

We do not present this evidence to shame the State of Israel or its people. We present it because it is the truth that makes genuine peace possible — and because the Torah demands that truth be spoken, especially when it is uncomfortable, especially when it costs something to hear it.

The Palestinian people are not your enemy by nature. They are not strangers to your covenant. They are, as the science confirms and as your own founders admitted in their own writing, your ancient kin — the descendants of the Hebrews and Samaritans and Canaanites who shared this land with your ancestors for millennia, who worked its soil through every empire that ever came through, who converted their religion when empires demanded it but stayed on the earth that was their inheritance.

The Torah you study — the covenant your state claims as the foundation of its identity and its right to the land — commands you in Vayikra 19:17 not to hate your brother in your heart. It commands you in Vayikra 19:34 to love the stranger as yourself, because you were strangers in Mitsrayim. It pronounces a curse in Devarim 27:17 on the moving of the neighbor's landmark. And it closes the Shema — the declaration of Yahweh's oneness that every Jewish child learns before they can read — with the command in Devarim 6:5 to love Yahweh with everything you are. The God of the covenant is the God of all the people He created. The covenant does not give you permission to destroy the branch of the family that stayed behind while your branch went into exile. It commands you to recognize it.

'Have we not all one Father? Has not one El created us? Why then do we deal treacherously with one another?' — Malachi 2:10

THE TORAH'S OWN ANSWER: NOT TWO STATES — ONE LAND, SHARED INHERITANCE

The Two-State Solution Is Not What the Text Prescribes

This petition deliberately does not endorse a two-state solution — the framework most international bodies currently promote. Before that position is dismissed, measure it against the oldest available text governing this land.

The division of the land into two separate sovereign states mirrors precisely the political catastrophe the Hebrew prophets spent their entire ministries condemning — the split of the covenant nation into the Northern Kingdom of Yisra'el and the Southern Kingdom of Yehudah after the death of Shlomo (Solomon). Recorded in Melakhim Aleph (1 Kings 12), that division was not Yahweh's plan. It was the consequence of corruption and covenant failure. From that moment forward every major prophet — Hoshea, Yirmeyahu, Yehezkel — cried out not for the management of the division but for its healing and reversal.

'I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Yisra'el. And one king shall be king over them all, and they shall no longer be two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms.' — Yehezkel / Ezekiel 37:22

Two states is not a solution. Two states is precisely the condition Yahweh declared He would reverse. A two-state framework institutionalizes the division, draws a permanent internationally recognized border through the ancient inheritance, and calls it peace. But a wall is not peace. A managed conflict with a border fence around it is not peace. It is the postponement of a reckoning that can only be resolved by truth and by justice.

What Yehezkel 47-48 Actually Describes: One Land, Shared Inheritance

The vision Yahweh gave to Yehezkel in chapters 47 and 48 is the most specific prophetic map of the land in the entire Hebrew canon. Its boundaries run from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Jordan River in the east, from Lebo-Hamath in the north to the Wadi of Egypt in the south. This territory encompasses every area currently disputed — the West Bank, Gaza, and the Galilee — as integral portions of one covenantal inheritance. Not partitioned. Distributed. Twelve equal horizontal portions, one for each tribe of Yisra'el, governed from a central sacred district, with twelve gates in the city — three on each side — named after all twelve tribes. One nation. One land. One covenant.

But the verse that changes everything — the one that the international community has never placed on any negotiating table — is this:

'You shall allot this land as an inheritance for yourselves and for the strangers who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the stranger resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, declares Yahweh Elohim.' — Yehezkel / Ezekiel 47:22-23

Yahweh does not give the strangers dwelling in the land — the gerim, those who have lived on its soil for generations — a separate state. He does not expel them. He does not subjugate them. He gives them a covenantal inheritance within the tribes, equal to the native-born, assigned in whatever territory they actually dwell. The Palestinian people — who carry 81 to 87 percent of their ancestry from the ancient Bronze Age Levantine population, who have worked this soil continuously for four thousand years — are not described in Yahweh's own prophetic vision as a separate nation requiring a separate state. They are described as members of the covenant community of the land, with a rightful inheritance within it.

The two-state solution offers a fence and a passport. The covenant of Yahweh as spoken through Yehezkel offers an inheritance. These are not the same thing. One produces neighbors divided by a wall. The other produces a family — each on their own portion, each equal before the law of the land, each bearing an inheritance that cannot be taken from them.

The Covenant of Avraham: A Multitude of Nations

The covenant Yahweh made with Avraham in Bereshit (Genesis) 17:4-5 was not a covenant with one ethnic group alone. Yahweh said explicitly: 'I have made you the father of a multitude of nations' — av hamon goyim. Not one nation. A multitude. The inheritance of Avraham was never the exclusive possession of a single bloodline. It was the home of the multitude that descended from him — which the genetic record now confirms includes the Palestinian people as surely as it includes any other. A peace built on this foundation — one land, shared inheritance, equal standing for all who dwell within it, governed by covenant justice — is the only framework the text supports, and the only one that could produce a peace the next generation does not have to fight over again.

FORMAL REQUESTS

Request 1 — Full Implementation of the Ceasefire: Honor the ceasefire completely. Phase Two must proceed in good faith. The people of Gaza have suffered catastrophically. The covenant forbids adding to that suffering for political gain.

Request 2 — Immediate and Complete Halt to Settlement Expansion: Every new settlement unit in the West Bank is a boundary stone moved in violation of Devarim 27:17 and in violation of the ICJ's binding rulings. The Knesset must legislate an immediate, complete, and permanent halt.

Request 3 — Full Compliance with ICJ Rulings: The occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal under international law. Compliance is both a legal obligation and a covenant one.

Request 4 — Formal Recognition of Palestinian Indigenous Identity: The State of Israel should formally recognize through Knesset resolution that the Palestinian people are among the indigenous descendants of the ancient peoples of Kena'an — including descendants of Hebrews who remained on the land — with a rightful inheritance within the land as established by Yehezkel 47:22-23.

Request 5 — Champion the Yehezkel Framework Over Partition: Abandon the two-state framework — which the text itself names as the division Yahweh declared He would reverse — and champion instead the prophetic vision of Yehezkel 47-48: one land, one governing covenant framework, shared inheritance for all who dwell within it, governed by justice.

Request 6 — A Truth and Reconciliation Process: The only peace that will survive the next generation is one built on teshuvah — acknowledgment, accountability, and restoration. Establish a formal truth and reconciliation process grounded in the covenant obligations of both peoples toward one another.

CLOSING: THE BROTHERS CAN WEEP ON EACH OTHER'S NECKS AGAIN

After years of estrangement and fear, when Ya'akov crossed back into the land and Esav ran to meet him — Esav fell on his neck and wept. The brothers who had lived as strangers and potential enemies wept on each other's necks when they finally stood face to face. The rabbis have always taught that this moment was available at any time. The estrangement was not inevitable. The reunion was always possible. What it required was the willingness to cross the river and face the brother.

The Palestinian people are not your enemy by nature or by blood. They are, as the science confirms and as your own founders admitted, your ancient kin — the descendants of those who worked this land alongside the ancient Hebrews for four thousand years. Underneath all the violence and the fear, as the Torah knew and as the genetics now confirm, there is a brother.

'Hineh mah tov umah na'im shevet achim gam yachad — Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.' — Tehillim / Psalm 133:1

Hineh mah tov umah na'im shevet achim gam yachad.

Respectfully, urgently, and in covenant truth,

Elder Kepha Arcemont

Miqdash Bethel

P.O. Box 762

Pearl River, Louisiana  70452  |  United States of America

Telephone: 402-218-9530

Email: miqdashbethel@gmail.com

Date: March 4, 2026

Written in the tradition of the Nevi'im — the Prophets —

who spoke truth to power when it cost them everything to do so.