The Illogic of Land Swaps

Posted on February 22, 2016 by First.One.Through

The argument that using the “1967 lines” as the basis for the borders of Israel and Palestine in a two-state solution is flawed at the outset. “Land swaps” simply underscore that absurdity of the argument.

Obama on Israel-Palestine Borders

In May 2011, US President Barack Obama shared his thoughts on the contours of the ultimate borders of Israel and Palestine in a two-state solution: “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

The comment infuriated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pro-Israel advocates. Obama clarified his comments before a pro-Israel group a few days later: “By definition, it means that the parties themselves, Israelis and Palestinians will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967… it allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years…. Including the new demographic realities on the ground, and the needs of both sides.”

Obama’s second statement moved away from his comments about “1967 lines.” By stating that the border would be arrived at through mutual negotiations and look “different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967,” Obama made the comment about the 1967 lines moot. If the parties agree to an entirely new construct for borders, than that would be acceptable too. There is no reason to even mention the “1967 lines” or land swaps.

obama aipac
President Barack Obama at AIPAC May 2011

But the left-wing group J Street was much more aggressive than Obama on the contours of Israel, and lobbied the US government about the 1967 lines and land swaps.

J Street on Israel-Palestine Borders

J Street clearly calls for a two-state solution to be based on the 1967 lines with land swaps as detailed on its site: “This border will be based on the pre-1967 Green Line, with equivalent swaps of land… land of equivalent quantity and quality will be swapped from within the pre-1967 Green Line.”

The group also urged the US government and Jewish groups to strongly condemn any Jews living east of the Green Line (EGL/West Bank). More specificaly, J Street stated:

“J Street is deeply concerned that the pre-1967 Green Line separating Israel and the occupied territory is being effectively erased both on the ground and in the consciousness of Israelis, Jews and others around the world.

The resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will require establishing a border through negotiations between Israel and the new state of Palestine – based, as noted previously, on the pre-1967 Green Line with adjustments. Until that border is negotiated, the Green Line remains the internationally-recognized separation between the state of Israel and the territory won in the Six Day War in 1967.

A disturbing and growing lack of awareness of the Green Line is partially responsible for the 47-year occupation fading from the consciousness of the Israeli and international Jewish publics. Efforts to erase the Green Line from maps and from public awareness serve the interests only of those who seek to establish control over all the territory to the Jordan River.

One step American community groups, businesses, schools and governments could take to foster memory of the distinction between pre-1967 Israel and the subsequently occupied territory would be to use only maps that include the pre-1967 Green Line – a visual reminder of the Green Line and its significance.”

j street bookmark

All of J Street’s arguments: negotiations based on 1967 lines; equivalent swaps of land; and using equivalent “quality” are all illogical. The desire to push the US government to punish Israel was demonic.

The Illogic of “Land Swaps”

There are a number of issues regarding using the 1967 lines and subsequent land swaps as envisioned by J Street.

The 1967 Lines Rewards Aggression. Using the 1967 lines as a starting point for negotiations rewards aggression. When Israel declared itself as an independent state in 1948, it was immediately attacked by five Arab armies from Egypt; Jordan; Syria; Lebanon; and Iraq. The 1967 lines were the Armistice Lines where the warring parties stopped fighting in 1949.

Imagine that in 1948-9, Egypt conquered the entire southern part of Israel, all of the way up until Bethlehem, and Jordan conquered the entire eastern part of the country, leaving Israel as a narrow sliver of coastline from Tel Aviv to Rosh Hanikra. Consequently, imagine that it is this small state that becomes recognized by the United Nations in 1949, within Armistice Lines with Egypt and Jordan.

Further consider that history played out precisely as it did: in 1967 the Arab armies once again threatened to destroy Israel, so Israel pre-emptively attacked Egypt and Syria and then Jordan attacked Israel. Egypt and Jordan lost all of the territory that it took from the 1922 Palestine Mandate for a Jewish homeland in the war.

How would the world react? Would the world demand that Israel needs to return to a stub of a state and give Egypt and Jordan all of the land past the 1949 Armistice Lines? Even if Egypt and Jordan ultimately relinquished their claims to the lands they seized in favor of Palestinian Arabs, would those borders somehow be considered the appropriate borders for Israel and Palestine?

Of course not.

Pushing Israel to accept the borders that the UN endorsed in 1949 would be rewarding the five Arab armies assault on Israel. The areas within the Jewish homeland mandate that are some refer to as “Arab land,” are simply lands that were seized by Arab aggression. Using such 1967 lines/ the 1949 Armistice Lines, is a direct reward to an aggressive war to destroy the Jewish State.

Land Swaps Acknowledges that 1967 Lines are not Borders. Those parties that suggest that land swaps between Israel and a future Palestinian state, inherently admit that the 1967 lines have no merit. How could anyone suggest that a sovereign nation (Israel) give up some of its own land? How could a country annex land of another country (Palestine)? It can do so, if the two parties both acknowledge that the lines are not borders.

This was clearly spelled out in the Armistice Agreement with Egypt that stated “[t]he Armistice Demarcation Line is not to be construed in any sense as a political or territorial boundary.” Similarly, the Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan which stated “The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.”

While J Street urges Israel and Jewish groups to “know its boundaries,” the actual suggestion to engage in land swaps undermines the J Street argument that the 1967 lines have any real significance. If there is any doubt, the Armistice Agreements that created those specific Armistice Lines stated those lines were not borders.

Land Swaps Undermine a call to limit Jewish “Settlements.” J Street and other groups that suggest that no Jewish Israelis should be allowed to live east of the Green Line (EGL/ West Bank), undermine their own argument when they suggest that there should be land swaps. If Israel should give over some of its land west of the Green Line to a future Palestinian State, that would mean that Jews should also be prohibited from living in those border areas in Israel too. Swapping land means that those Jewish communities in Israel would be considered a similar threat towards peace as the “settlements” in EGL/West Bank.

If people really believe that Jewish communities threaten the viability of a Palestinian State, the same parties that argue for banning Israelis in EGL/West Bank should argue similarly argue against Jewish communities in Israel that threaten the ability to effectively conclude land swaps.

That suggestion is clearly absurd.

Therefore if it is not a problem for Jews to move into communities that are west of the Green Line, than it is not an issue for Jews to move east of the Green Line.

Phantom Size. The suggestion that the exact number of square kilometers of the “West Bank” and Gaza that were created by the 1949 Armistice Lines is somehow a sacred amount is ridiculuous. As described above, the “West Bank” was an artifice created by a war of Arab aggression against Israel in 1948. There is/was nothing inherently special about where the warring parties stopped fighting.

It is therefore non-sensical to suggest that the “equivalent quantity”of land be exchanged between the parties. The Armistice Lines were arbitrary, non-permanent lines, and therefore the amount of land on either side of those lines are also arbitrary.

Further Absurdity of “Equivalent Quality.” J Street outdid itself in promoting a concept that went beyond the illogical suggestions of the 1967 lines land swaps. It proposed that the land swaps between Israel and the Palestinian Authority should be based on land of “equivalent quality.” In other words, J Street did not only propose that there be a swap of 50 square km on one side of the Green Line for 50km on the other side. J Street introduced the concept of “quality.” The far left-wing group argued that desert land would not be equivalent to an aquifer. Holy land would not be equivalent to non-Holy land.

What is the conversion factor between the different types of land? Who knows! Just add some subjective requirements to simplify negotiations that are already going nowhere for decades and are illogical at the start. That should speed things up!

benami-J Street
J Street leader Jeremy Ben Ami

When people pick on Obama for being anti-Israel, they should consider his rather moderate stance compared to the advice he receives from J Street.

Related First.One.Through articles:

J Street: Going Bigger and Bolder than BDS

The Legal Israeli Settlements

The Left-Wing’s Two State Solution: 1.5 States for Arabs, 0.5 for Jews

The Long History of Dictating Where Jews Can Live Continues

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The United States Joins the Silent Chorus

Posted on January 27, 2016 by First.One.Through

Nations of the World Are Silent

On October 1, 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He rebuked the governments in the room for their indifference to Iran’s call for destruction of the Jewish State. He said that “Iran’s rulers promised to destroy my country, murder my people, and the response from this body, the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here has been absolutely nothing. Utter silence. Deafening silence.” He then paused for 45 uncomfortable seconds, so that the people in the room could better understand how Israel is outraged by the lack of condemnation from governments around the world, against the outrageous comments from Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations
October 2015

The United Nations is Silent

Time and again, the United Nations itself chose to remain silent when Israeli Jews were deliberately attacked. The UN Media Centre wiped the murder of Jews from its records. The global body refused to call the crimes “terrorism.” The UN ignored deaths within Israel. Overall, the United Nations was silent when Israeli Jews were targeted. Was it because the UN considered Israel itself to be a terrorist state so any deaths were actually Israel’s fault? Perhaps the UN was upset that it voted to create a Jewish State in the first place. Whatever the motivation, the UN remained silent.

The United States is Silent

The United States is home to over 5 million Jews, the largest number of Jews after the State of Israel. For much of Israel’s existence, the United States has been the country’s main ally.

However, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, the United States has softened its support for Israel, such as removing pro-Israel positions in the Democratic platform (the US will never deal with Hamas; future borders of Israel will NOT follow the 1949 Armistice Lines; Palestinian “refugees” would NOT settle in Israel; Jerusalem is the capital of Israel). Still, the US government supported Israel’s right to defend itself, even while the US distanced itself from Israel, by not actively supporting Israel in combatting Palestinian terror.

In January 2016, the US – once again – had the opportunity to address the incessant nihilistic death chants from Palestinian Arabs. Not just the incitement from the acting President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and others in the PA government, but in established PA laws. The decades-old PA law calls for the death penalty for any Arab that sells land to a Jew. While the New York Times refused to print such basic facts for years, the arrest of radical left-wing “activist” Ezra Nawi put the law in plain public sight for everyone to see: the PA not only demands a Jew-free state (an anti-Semitic demand which Obama supports), but will kill to make sure that such anti-Semitic demands are met.

How did the US respond?

US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro
January 2016

Dan Shapiro, the US Ambassador to Israel spoke at an Israeli conference while Israelis buried a young mother who was stabbed and killed by a Palestinian Arab in an unprovoked attack. During his comments Shapiro attacked the Israeli government’s position of allowing Jews to build and buy homes east of the Green Line (EGL), and stated that that Israel was too lax in prosecuting crimes that Israelis commit against Palestinian Arabs.

Shapiro did not comment on the Palestinian law that calls for the death penalty for Arabs that sell land to Jews. He said nothing about Israel’s arrest of Ezra Nawi who helped the PA catch Palestinian Arabs who sold homes to Jews, for the PA to torture.

When John Kirby of the State Department was asked to comment about Shapiro’s statements, Kirby defended Shapiro as repeating the US’s position on Israeli settlements. He remained mum on Palestinian law that called for the death penalty on those that sell land to Jews.

The United States added a silent echo to the ugly mute chorus. No condemnation for those who call for the destruction of Israel. For the killing of Jews. For the killing of those that work with Jews.

As Simon and Garfunkel sang in 1964 “Silence, like a cancer grows.“

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Invisible Anti-Semitism in Obama’s 2016 State of the Union

Obama’s Select Religious Compassion

The United Nations and Holy Sites in the Holy Land

Obama’s “Values” Red Herring

International-Domestic Abuse: Obama and Netanyahu

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A Native American, An African American and a Hispanic American walk into Israel…

Posted on January 18, 2016 by First.One.Through

Restoring the indigenous population to their land

Native Americans: Native Americans lived in the United States for millennia before Europeans discovered the land. Within a few hundred years, the Europeans overwhelmed the native population and effectively banished them from their lands and homes. To add insult to the injury, the invaders forced new religions onto the remaining tribes.

In the 20^th century, Americans began to slowly reverse course and offered more rights to the Native Americans, including American citizenship in 1924. At present, the United States recognizes several hundred Native American tribes and gives them some degree of autonomy in lands of their own.

Jews: Jews have lived in the land of Israel for roughly 3700 years. They had two independent kingdoms in the land and built their holiest Temples there. Roughly 1900 years ago, Romans destroyed the Second Jewish Temple, forced conversion on thousands of Jews, banned Jews from Jerusalem, and renamed their holy land “Palestine”. While some Jews continued to live in the Holy Land, most were dispersed throughout the world.

In the 1800s Jews began to move back to their holy land in greater numbers. While much of the land had been taken over by Arabs who invaded Palestine in the 7^th century, the world sought to reconstitute the Jewish homeland as so declared in the the 1922 League of Nations Mandate of Palestine. The British assumed their Mandate of Palestine to encourage Jewish immigration, land ownership and citizenship in Palestine in 1924, the same year that America offered all Native Americans citizenship.

From Slavery

African Americans: While the Europeans came to conquer the New Worlds of North and South America, they brought Africans with them to be their slaves. It took hundreds of years for the United States to abolish the inhuman treatment of African Americans.

Jews: The Jewish people became a nation when they emerged from hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt 3500 years ago. It was only at that time that they received the Bible and entered the promised land.

On January 1, 1863, US President Abraham Lincoln freed the black slaves in America, and just three days later, he abolished the most anti-Semitic decree in US history when he overrode General U.S. Grant’s order to expel the Jews. In one week, Lincoln actively asserted the self-evident rights and dreams in the US Constitution, “that all men are created equal,” including blacks and Jews.

Advancing Minorities’ Interests

Hispanic Americans: Hispanics were always a decent segment of the United States population from the earliest colonies. However, in 1964 and 1965, new laws were passed in the United States which dramatically increased their number and visibility. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination unlawful, and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 ended a quota system from certain countries. With those actions, the number of immigrants coming to the USA from Latin America jumped from 9% to 44% from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Jews: Jews were an unwelcome minority in many countries in the world, and in many parts of the United States. Golf Clubs, universities and private clubs would not admit any Jews – some publicly, and others, privately. The same laws that addressed inequalities for black and Hispanic minorities, also helped Jews in America.

Beyond America’s shores, just a few years after the acts of 1964 and 1965, the Kingdom of Jordan which had evicted and banned every Jew from the area of Palestine it conquered in 1949, attacked Israel again. In so doing, it lost that region of Palestine it had illegally annexed, the “West Bank.” Israel quickly repealed the anti-Semitic bans and welcomed Jews once more.

American Minorities Come to Israel

Minority groups in America “get” the Jewish State of Israel. African-Americans understand a history of slavery and persecution. Native Americans understand being torn from land, culture and religion. Hispanic Americans understand being excluded.

When these groups look at Israel, they instinctively get why the world made some attempt to rectify the long history of expelling and murdering Jews throughout Europe, Russia and northern Africa. They have sought the same kind of consideration themselves.

But even more, when they come to Israel – to the reconstituted Jewish State – they see a success story. They see that the vanquished can be victorious. Where the excluded are now the leaders. Where the defenseless are now a military powerhouse. Where a forgotten language has been reestablished. Where a barren land has become an environmental leader. Where a bankrupt society has become a financial success story.

Minorities that come to Israel see a country where minorities count. Where women account for 24% of the Israeli Knesset, compared to only 16% in the US Congress. Where Arabs represent 14% of the Knesset, versus only 8% black representatives in the US Congress.

Martin Luther King said “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect her right to exist, its territorial integrity and the right to use whatever sea lanes it needs. Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.”

Israel is not just a success story for Jews; it is a beacon of hope for minorities around the world.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Israel, the Liberal Country of the Middle East

In Israel, the Winner is… Democracy

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The Left-Wing’s Two State Solution: 1.5 States for Arabs, 0.5 for Jews

Posted on January 17, 2016 by First.One.Through

The two state-solution for the “Question of Palestine” has been bandied about for decades. At the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs seemingly came to a conclusion that there would be a division of the land, one for Arabs and one for Jews. However, when the negotiations reached a critical juncture in September 2000, the head of the Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat (fungus be upon him), opted to terminate the peace process and launched another war of terrorism against the Jewish State.

Fifteen-plus years and several thousands of dead and injured later, the concept of a two state solution still lingers. While in principle the concept harkens back to the 1947 United Nations Partition plan of two states for two peoples, the radical left has pushed aggressively for a different configuration of two states to the liking of Palestinian Arabs: one and one-half states for Arabs, and one-half of a state for Jews.

The 1.5 Arab States

The 100% Arab State of Palestine. Palestinian Arabs are seeking a new country which will be devoid of any Jews. Acting President of the Palestinian Authority made his demand clear in July 2013. His declaration is consistent with every action taken by Palestinian Arabs over the years:

Palestinian laws which make it a crime for any Arab to sell land to a Jew (consistent with Jordanian law);
Jordanian law specifically excluded Jews from the “West Bank”/ east of the Green Line (EGL) being granted citizenship;
Demand that any and all Jews be removed from EGL (including Jews who live in existing homes that have been around for decades);
No Jewish visitor on Palestinian college campuses (Bir Zeit);
No Jewish businesses may operate in the disputed territories

These demands are blessed by several radical left-wing Jewish groups. Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, Independent Jewish Voices (Canada), and European Jews for a Just Peace, advocate for BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) for any business that operates east of the Green Line (EGL) and in Israel itself. Individuals like Rabbi Ellen Lippmann on the board of J Street, also see no problems with BDS for Jews living in EGL.

Non-Jewish left-wing radicals take note of the Jewish positions. US President Obama has not just called new Israeli towns in EGL “illegitimate,” but argued that no Jews should be permitted to live in EGL, even in homes they legally purchase such as in SIlwan, in eastern Jerusalem. Author Tuvia Tenenbom noted that Europeans and others need not be openly anti-Semitic anymore; they can just fund the rabidly anti-Zionist Jewish groups that bless a Judefrei Palestine.

Top picture: Silwan, in eastern Jerusalem, founded by Yemenite Jews
(photo: late 19th Century)
Bottom picture: mostly Arab Silwan in 2013 (photo: First.One.Through)

The 50% Arab State of Israel. Other left-wing groups like Adalah (supported by the New Israel Fund), seek to dismantle the Jewish State and replace it with a bi-cultural state. They advocate for the removal of anything associated with Judaism such as the Jewish symbols on the flag, in front of the Knesset and in the national anthem.

The left-wing groups are also against any Jewish preferences in Israel, such as the Law of Return which enables Jews from around the world to become citizens of Israel on an expedited basis. The revised neutral state of Israel would have Jews living as a minority, as the Palestinian Arab Right of Return would bring millions of Arabs into this bi-cultural state.

In the end, the Holy Land would have a completely Arab, Jew-free state called “Palestine,” and a second democratic, bi-cultural state where Arabs would be a majority, but where Jews would be allowed to live.

150% of the “Holy Basin” for Arabs.
The non-holy 50% for Jews

The 1.5 Arab states in the holy land would also have 150% of the “Holy Basin,” and all of the region’s holy sites.

When the United Nations first drafted a partition plan in 1947, it considered the two holy cities – Jerusalem and Bethlehem – to be a “Holy Basin” which would be part of neither state. As the left-wing now pushes for the 150% Arab plan, they are advancing a radical plan for the Holy Basin.

UN 1947 Partition Plan for the “Holy Basin”
of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem

100% of Bethlehem. As part of the Oslo Accords, Israel handed over control of the City of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority at the end of 1995. Israel only maintains a small presence at Judaism’s third holiest site, the Tomb of Rachel. After Arafat’s Second Intifada, the Israelis were forced to create a wall around the small tomb to protect Jewish visitors. In general, the city is now virtually devoid of Jews and Christians since coming under the Palestinian Authority.

The Holy 50% of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority demands that the entirety of the Old City of Jerusalem, which contains Judaism’s holiest sites, Islam’s third holiest site, and many Christian holy sites, all be part of the Palestinian capital. It is content to let the newer part of the city to the west, which has no holy sites, to be the capital of Israel.

The radical left endorses the Palestinian Arab plan.

The fact that only Israel has allowed freedoms of access and religion in Jerusalem does not sway people who claim to seek “justice.” Groups which claim to advance “human rights,” advocate for an anti-Semitic Jew-free agenda in Palestine. Further, using the maxim that the best defense is a good offense, these groups consider anyone that points out the bias of their plan and impracticality of diving a capital city to be right-wing racists.

The joys of being a radical liberal is that you can feel 150% morally superior while waving banners of “justice” and “human rights”, even while trampling on those very principles.

Related First.One.Through articles:

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The Arguments over Jerusalem

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“Peace” According to Palestinian “Moderates”

Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

Israel, the Liberal Country of the Middle East

Today’s Inverted Chanukah: The Holiday of Rights in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria

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Squeezing Zionism

Posted on January 15, 2016 by First.One.Through

Zionism started before the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and before Theodore Herzl wrote “The Jewish State” in 1896. However, the core elements of Zionism that people recognize came from the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Those key elements found their way into the 1920 San Remo Conference and ultimately, the 1922 League of Nation’s Palestine Mandate. Those key points are:

Jewish History in the Holy Land: “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine”
Reestablishing the Jewish homeland: “recognition… to the grounds for reconstituting their [Jewish] national home in that country [Palestine]”
Immigration: “shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions”
Owning land: “shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes”
Citizenship: “facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine”
Freedom of worship and religion: “securing free access to the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites and the free exercise of worship…. complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, are ensured to all. No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.“

Each of these principles is under attack.

History

Palestinian Arabs did not always doubt the history of Jews in the Holy Land. In the 1920s, the official guidebook of “Al Haram al Sharif” published by the Supreme Moslem Council, stated that the Temple Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute” (page 4). Yet today, the entire history of Jews in the Holy Land is challenged by Palestinian Arab extremists (and “moderates”).

Acting President of Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations General Assembly several times. In those speeches he spoke of the history of Jesus and Mohammed in the Holy Land, but ignored the history of the Jews in the land including: Jacob; Joseph; Joshua; David; and Solomon.
Various leaders of the PA have declared that: there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem; if there was a Temple it wasn’t on the Temple Mount; and Israel is manufacturing ancient artifacts to fabricate a Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
Abbas claimed that Israel has attempted to “Judaize” Jerusalem, including claiming that the Western Wall is actually Islamic and known as the al-Buraq wall.
Abbas claimed that Jesus was a Palestinian, rather than a Jew. His comments have continued to be repeated by PA officials and television.
Arab states are so upset about the history of Jews in the Holy Land, that 22 Arab states pressured UNESCO to cancel an exhibit called “People, Book, Land — The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land”

Inscription dating to 840 BCE in Tel Dan, northern Israel
referring to the “House of David”

Recently, some politicians outside of Israel have finally begun to push back on the Arab narrative that denies Jewish history. US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), remarked in December 2015 that “denying the historic connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem is false. Amazing archeological discoveries are frequently made that prove the roots of the Jewish people are in Israel.”

Seal of King Hezekiah found in Jerusalem, around 700 BCE

Arabs came to the Holy Land during the Islamic invasion of the 7th centuries. An Arab claim to being indigenous to Israel is like the Portuguese claiming to be indigenous to Brazil because they have been there for hundreds of years. There were people who lived there for thousands of years before the new people invaded, and continue to live there and claim the place as their home.

RECONSTITUTING The Jewish Homeland

The Arabs hope that by denying the history of Jews in the Holy Land, they can claim that they are the indigenous people of the land, and Jews are simply European colonialists. The claim that Israel is a new colonial force is repeated often by Palestinians and plays well to Europeans that have rethought their own colonial past.

However, Israel is not, nor has it ever been, a European colony.

Jews have lived in the Holy Land for over 3,700 years and were the only people to have independent political governments in the land. They are also the only people to have their religious holiest sites in the land.

It is not a coincidence that Arabs shout to “Free Palestine” as opposed to “Create Palestine” as a new independent country. The Arabs claim that the land was never home to Jewish Kingdoms and has always been Arab land.

The Prism of Sennacherib, from roughly 689 BCE describing his attack on
the Jewish King Hezekiah in Jerusalem, as mentioned in 2 Kings: 18:13

Immigration

Arabs sought to deny Jewish immigration to Palestine immediately after the San Remo Conference. Several Arab riots broke out in the 1920s, and in the 1930s the Arabs were able to convince the British to curtail Jewish immigration. In 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust in Europe, the British issued the White Paper which capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 people for five years. The goal was to keep Jews as a permanent minority in Palestine.

Arabs and left-wing Israeli radicals continue to call on limiting Jewish immigration to Israel. In December 2015, Haaretz columnist Amira Hess said at a conference run with the New Israel Fund that Jewish “immigration to Israel under today’s circumstances — especially on the part of citizens of free Western countries — constitutes complicity in the crime.”

Owning Land

The British and Arabs reduced the amount of land available for Jews to settle since the time that the Mandate took effect in 1922.

By 1928, the area now known as Jordan, was split from Palestine.
In 1929, after Arabs massacred Jews in Hebron, the British evacuated all of the remaining Jews from the city
In 1937, the Peel Commission suggested partitioning the land into two
In 1940, British drafted the Land Transfer Regulations which limited where Jews could purchase land to only one-third of the remaining part of Palestine
In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into Arab and Jewish States
In 1949, after five Arab armies attacked Israel at its founding, Jordan illegally annexed Judea and Samaria and evicted all Jews from the territory, including the eastern part of Jerusalem, counter to the Fourth Geneva Convention
In 1967, after Jordan (and Palestinians who were then Jordanian citizens) attacked Israel and lost the area that they had termed the “West Bank,” they still fought to keep Jews from living in the land

The Jordanians had a Land Law in effect in the West Bank that prohibited the sale of any land to Jews from 1949 to 1967, punishable by death. In 1997 – AFTER the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian Authority and Israel – the Palestinians confirmed that such land sales to Jews would be considered treason and a capital offense.

Radical left-wing activist Ezra Nawi blew whistle on Arabs selling land to Jews
was arrested by Israel in January 2016

Citizenship

When the British left Palestine in 1948, Israel gave citizenship to everyone in Israel – Jews and non-Jews alike. However, after the Arabs attacked Israel and Jordan assumed control of the West Bank, Jordan only granted citizenship only to Arabs. The 1954 Jordanian law extending citizenship to Palestinian Arabs spelled out that Jews were excluded: “Any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and was a regular resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between 20 December 1949 and 16 February 1954.”

Arab groups like Adalah and left-wing groups like the New Israel Fund (NIF) complain today about Israel’s Law of Return that allows Jews to become citizens of Israel on an expedited manner, a Law that non-Jews cannot use, claiming that such law is discriminatory. The groups fail to note that Israel institutes a Law of Return in the same manner that dozens of other countries use such a law to enable people with a lineage to the country to become citizens quickly. The Jewish people have ties to the prior Jewish kingdoms in the Holy Land, while the Arabs, many of whom arrived over the past century, but certainly not before the 7th century, have no such ties.

When you see an advertisement about “social justice” and “equality” from groups like the NIF, they are attacking these fundamental principles of Zionism and common international laws.

Freedom of Worship

When the League of Nations endorsed the principles of Zionism, they also sought to ensure equality and fairness for the Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants throughout the region. One of the areas that they highlighted was the access to each religion’s holy places. In theory.

Jews were banned from visiting or worshipping on the Temple Mount back in the 1550s under Suleiman I. The Ottoman Muslim leader enabled Jews to pray at the Western Wall, or the Kotel, but denied them their historical access to their holiest place. Moslems similarly forbade Jews from visiting their second holiest place, the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs in Hebron.

When Israel took control of the post-1929 Palestine Mandate land in 1967, they sought to reestablish Jewish rights at the holiest Jewish places – just as called for in international law endorsing Zionism.

As detailed in “The United Nations and Holy Sites in the Holy Land,” Israel attempted to assert Jewish rights at their holiest places including: The Temple Mount; the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs; Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem; and Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem/Nablus. It has been a struggle.

To this day, Jews are still banned from worshipping on the Temple Mount. This is just fine with the United Nations as highlighted in “The UN’s Disinterest in Jewish Rights at Jewish Holy Places.”

The United Nations Complicity in
Squeezing Zionism

It is understood that the Arabs would argue strongly for their own cause. They have pursued an Arab and Muslim maximalist approach to the Holy Land for centuries.

However, the United Nations has backtracked significantly from its early endorsement of Zionism. Under British administration, immigration was cut and the ability to own land was diminished. When it came to vote at the United Nations to admit Israel as a new country, to “reconstitute the Jewish homeland,” Britain abstained.

The United Nations learned from Britain, and has continued to squeeze Zionism, such as recanting on the principle that Jews should have the freedom to worship at their holiest places, as discussed above.

While the UN constricted Zionism, it expanded the cause of Palestinian Arabs:

it created a new definition of “refugee” which included someone that left a house and town, rather than a country
It uniquely extended the definition of “refugees” to descendants, where the UN now considers there to be over 11 million Palestinians
The UN created a stand-alone refugee agency for Palestinian Arab “refugees” (UNRWA) that live in the surrounding area to the Holy Land, giving services to over 5 million people. Every other refugee in the world gets a single under-funded agency
UNRWA has promoted a narrative that all 5 million “refugees” will get to move to Israel, even though they are neither refugees nor have any right to move to Israel under the country’s Law of return
The UN altered its mission for refugees to one of protection and settlement (as it does throughout the world), to one that seeks to undermine Zionism

In 1975, the UN General Assembly endorsed Resolution 3379 stating that “Zionism is Racism,” essentially nullifying on the basic arguments and rights of Jews to their homeland. The effort to limit Zionism had become an effort to terminate it.

Summary

The “Zionism is racism” declaration was ultimately overturned in 1991, in part, because of the efforts of the United States. As US President George Bush argued before the UN: “Zionism is not a policy, it is the idea that led to the creation of a home for the Jewish people, to the State of Israel. And to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of the Jews in World War II, and indeed throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism, is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations. This body cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel’s right to exist.”

Zionism has been getting squeezed since 1917, in rights, size and scope. As Zionism has been squeezed, so has the State of Israel itself.

The “Freedom CHOIR (Freedom of worship and religion; Citizenship; History; Owning land; Immigration; and Reconstituting the Jewish State)” which are fundamental building blocks of Zionism, are under attack. The Arabs have intensified their assault to include basic facts of Jewish history. The British and United Nations have constricted Zionism in size and scope. Left-wing radical groups have now joined the chorus using “progressive” language of “justice” and “equality,” while using the identical arguments of racists that seek to reject Israel.

Review the points of the Freedom CHOIR. Do you believe in Zionism? Will you join the CHOIR or seek to silence it?

Related First.One.Through articles:

The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

The United Nations Applauds Abbas’ Narrative

Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

Real and Imagined Laws of Living in Silwan

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The Invisible Anti-Semitism in Obama’s 2016 State of the Union

Posted on January 13, 2016 by First.One.Through

President Barack Obama gave his final State of the Union address on January 12, 2016. He gave an outline of a speech in four parts: economic opportunity; technology; a safe America; and politics, as he projected a future world ten-plus years out.

Obama State of the Union Address
January 12, 2016 (photo: M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO)

Safe America: Regarding a safe America, Obama continued to limit his global enemies to two parties: al Qaeda and ISIL/ Islamic State. Other countries that shout “Death to America! Death to Israel” like Iran were not labeled enemies that threaten the USA. Obama mentioned Iran just a single time, when he extolled the “principled diplomacy” that “avoided another war.” That may have been true in 2015. But the future in ten-plus years that he facilitated, is a nuclear weapons-armed Iran.

A fanatical, anti-Semitic, America-bashing country with weapons of mass destruction is not a recipe to “keep America safe.” Unless, of course, Obama has banked on Iran limiting its attack only against Israel, as he doubts that Iran would consider attacking the “most powerful nation on Earth.”

Politics of religions: When Obama delved into politics, he not-so-subtly put Donald Trump in his crosshairs as he said “When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country.”

Obama berated Trump for his comments about Muslims in the past. This time, he extended his comments passed the politics of Trump, to anti-Muslim actions in the United States generally. While he repeated prior statements that anti-Muslim actions betray the values of the United States, he added the dimension that Islamophobia “diminishes us in the eyes of the world.” The two additions are noteworthy.

As detailed in “Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism” an average American Jew is over TWICE as likely to be attacked as either a Muslim or black American. Yet anti-Semitism is never flagged by Obama. That is actually too kind. Anti-Semitic attacks are often whitewashed by the Obama administration, such as his denial that Jews were targeted in Paris in January 2015.

Obama’s SOTU remarks add some color to his blindness. He is concerned that Islamophobia “diminishes us in the eyes of the world.” Not so anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism has a long history in the world. Over the past eighteen months it has reared it’s ugly head again in Europe. It is pervasive in the Middle East. As such, flagging anti-Semitism may diminish America’s standing in the world.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and only 16 million Jews, a 100:1 ratio. Islamophobia upsets at least 1.6 billion people and few seem to notice or care about the more prevalent anti-Semitism. So Obama omitted discussing anti-Semitism and only highlighted the less common attacks on Muslims.

In his seventh year as president of the United States, Obama finally made his views on anti-Semitism a little more clear: Jews and Israel are small sacrifices to ensure a safer America.

Related First.One.Through articles:

“Jews as a Class”

Obama’s “Values” Red Herring

Obama’s Select Religious Compassion

Bibi’s Paris Speech in Context

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel

Failures of the Obama Doctrine and the Obama Rationale

Joe Biden Stabs a Finger at Israel

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A Flower in Terra Barbarus

Posted on December 9, 2015 by First.One.Through

Summary: The “Western World” rallies within its own borders when terrorism strikes, but ignores Jihadist radicals operating in the “Old World.” As it does so, it risks forgetting that neither values nor barbarism has borders.

Terra Incognita

The “cradle of civilization” is generally described as the location from where human beings emerged. Archeological evidence pins earliest humanoids in the region around Ethiopia, while biblical scholars point to modern day Iraq. The crescent between those regions is viewed as the birthplace of humankind.

Mankind slowly spread from its cradle to populate Europe, Asia and the rest of Africa. This held true (with few exceptions) until the late 1400s. Mapmakers of the 1470s and 1480s portrayed the known world in just those few continents, kept in check by various “winds.” It was the Columbus journey of 1492 that began the next expansion of civilization into North and South Americas, and then Australia in the early 1600s.

It took many decades to map out and settle these new lands as the voyagers from Western Europe slowly charted these new territories. Maps that initially referred to uncharted areas as “Terra Incognita,” eventually established the “New World.”

Claudius Ptolemy’s view of the World
(Johannes Schnitzer, engraver, 1482)

Western Europe’s New World

The New Worlds of North America, South America and Australia still feel closely aligned with Western Europe hundreds of years after the explorers from Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Netherlands and Great Britain established themselves on those shores. US President Obama stated on November 24, 2015 “Americans have recalled their own visits to Paris — visiting the Eiffel Tower, or walking along the Seine. We know these places. They’re part of our memories, woven into the fabric of our lives and our culture.”

And so it is with much of the New World and Western Europe. While the Europeans established the Americas and Australia/ New Zealand centuries ago, those new lands still feel a unique warmth and connection to the European continent separated by oceans and thousands of miles.

Over the centuries, the New World took in new immigrants from around the “Old World.” Africans were shipped against their will as slaves for the former Western European colonies, while people from Eastern Europe and Asia came on their own more recently.

The New World still prefers the close connections to their old motherlands in Western Europe.

Terra Barbarus

Western Europe was hit with several terrorist attacks after the United States was attacked on September 11, 2001. Those attacks included: Madrid (2004); London (2005); Belgium (2014); an two attacks in France in 2015. The reactions to attacks in Europe were noticeably different than reactions to terrorism in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region over this time period.

Regarding the second attack on Paris in November 2015, as well as another Islamic extremist attack in Turkey just days before, US President Obama said: “it’s an attack not just of France, not just on Turkey, but it’s an attack on the civilized world…. This is an attack not just on Paris, it’s an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.””

There were no such broad declarations about “an attack on all of humanity… and universal values” when it came to terrorism in MENA.

The leader of the New World looked back to the Old World and saw terrorism divided into two: attacks on the “civilized world” which held “universal values that we share,” and other attacks from beyond the civilized world, in what can best be characterized by various American politicians as “Terra Barbarus.”

Politicians were not alone in this world view.

The world uniquely lit up Facebook with the flag of France after terrorist attacks. The terrorist slaughters in Nigeria, Kenya and Israel by jihadists over the same weeks barely passed people’s minds or hurt their hearts. The New World looked back on the Old with disgust and disdain: those are uncivilized barbaric lands. Terrorism emerges from there. Terrorism is expected there.

So Obama, himself the son of a man from Kenya, drew borders around the civilized world. It’s physical limit seemed to take him to Turkey, a member of NATO that sits on the edge of wars in Syria and Iraq. The edge of “civilization” touched the cradle of civilization.

Borders or Values

There is a country that sits in that Terra Barbarus that shares western values, and calls out to be recognized as part of “civilization.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly stated that the various jihadist forces that continue to kill in the Middle East, whether Islamic State, Hamas or Al Qaeda, are all “branches of the same poisonous tree.” While his country sat in a dangerous neighborhood, the values of Israeli society were the same as western values. He sought to remind western leaders of that point right after the Paris attacks in November 2015:

“Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic targeting of civilians. It can never be justified. Terrorism must always be condemned. It must always be fought. Innocent people in Paris, like those in London, Madrid, Mumbai, Buenos Aires and Jerusalem, are the victims of militant Islamic terrorism, not its cause. As I’ve said for many years, militant Islamic terrorism attacks our societies because it wants to destroy our civilization and our values.

“All terrorism must be condemned and fought equally with unwavering determination. It’s only with this moral clarity that the forces of civilization will defeat the savagery of terrorism.“

Indeed, Israel is the most liberal country in the entire Middle East and Africa. It’s values are closely aligned with Western Values. Yet despite Obama’s address on values, the West could not look beyond its contours of civilization. Unwilling to reframe its own narrative, the western world has opted to ignore the Israeli liberal society, and cast it as part of that dark side of humanity.

The Future

Should the West continue to ignore the liberal society in the Middle East, it can never expect to realize a different future for the entire region. The warring parties in Terra Barbarus will continue to battle each other, and occasionally reach out and damage the New World like a solar flare. So far, the New World reacts by alternatively bombing and ignoring the barbarians.

To realize a future world with universal values, the world must recognize the blue-and-white flower that has re-emerged in the arid soil in the cradle of civilization. Just as the West promises to fight barbarism that appears on its shores, it must nurture the “humanity” that exists everywhere.

Condemning terrorism was just part of Obama’s speech. Elevating those people that share western values must be part of the battle.

Flower in the hills around Jerusalem
(photo: First.One.Through)

Related First.One.Through articles:

Obama’s “Values” Red Herring

Obama’s Friendly Pass to Turkey’s Erdogan

International-Domestic Abuse: Obama and Netanyahu

Double Standards: Assassinations

Israel and Wars

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Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

Posted on December 2, 2015 by First.One.Through

Many uniformed critics of Israel criticize the creation of Israel and claim that Israel was established as a colonial outpost of Great Britain. The statement is absurd and easily disproven.

International Law, Not British Law

Various international laws approved the immigration of Jews to Palestine and international bodies approved the creation of the Jewish State of Israel.

May 1949: International Approval: The United Nations voted to admit the State of Israel as a member state, at the end of Israel’s war with Arab countries.

May 1948: International Approval: The United States, the Soviet Union and several other countries recognized Israel soon after Israel declared Independence.

May 1948: Israel Declares Independence, but not from Great Britain: Israel waited to declare its statehood until after Great Britain left the holy land and completed its mandate. The Israeli Declaration of Independence never mentioned Great Britain, as GB never viewed the land as a colony (compare that to the language in US Declaration of Independence which mentioned severing ties with GB.)

November 1947 UN Partition Vote: The United Nations voted to create a Jewish State in Palestine with 33 votes in favor, 13 against and 10 abstentions (Great Britain abstained).

July 1922 League of Nations Established Jewish Homeland: The League of Nations (precursor to the United Nations) voted to break apart the old Ottoman Empire and placed the area of Palestine under British oversight. That area of Palestine included areas of Jordan and Israel which were to include a “national home for the Jewish people.”

April 1920 San Remo Conference. The Allies of World War I (Britain, France, Japan and Italy) voted for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The term “British Mandate” has become confused for many people with Israel being a “British Colony.” It is simply untrue. The world powers broke apart huge sections of the Middle East with areas under both British and French administration, including countries today known as Lebanon and Syria. No one refers to any of those countries as a “colony.”

British and French Mandates covering much of the Middle East

British did not favor Jews in Palestine

Despite language in the 1922 Mandate that the British should “facilitate Jewish immigration” to Palestine, the British sided with local Palestinians that sought to curtail an influx of Jews. On the eve of the Holocaust in Europe, when Jews were desperate for a place to flee, the British issued the 1939 “White Paper” which limited the number of Jews that could enter Palestine. That edict likely cost hundreds of thousands of European Jews their lives.

The British decree created tremendous tensions between Palestinian Jews and the British. There were many battles between the groups, the most famous being the destruction of the King David Hotel in 1946.

No Transfer of British People

As described above, the British were merely administrators of Palestine for a period of time. They did not seek a permanent presence of soldiers or civilians. Virtually no British Jews (or non-Jews) relocated to Palestine on a permanent basis over the course of the Mandate period through 1948. The Jews that came to Palestine under the Mandate period principally came from elsewhere in Europe and Russia:

Third Aliyah (1919-1923): 40,000 from Russia and Poland
Fourth Aliyah (1924-1929): 82,000 (many subsequently left) from Poland; Russia; Romania; Lithuania; Yemen and Iraq
Fifth Aliyah (1929-1939): 250,000 from Europe fleeing German Nazis
Aliyah Bet (1939-1948): 110,000, mostly illegally, smuggled from Europe fleeing Holocaust

Rights of the Indigenous Jewish People

The world powers voted to enable a national home for the Jewish people for a few reasons:

Jews were indigenous to Israel, as stated in the Mandate, the world recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”
Jews had been forcibly evicted from their national home
The Ottomans and others made it difficult for Jews to move back and acquire land for hundreds of years

The Jews had political kingdoms and religious Temples in the holy land for over 1000 years, but were expelled against their will. The new international laws were meant to remove the modern roadblocks that were placed before Jews from moving to Palestine and owning land.

Even though it was difficult for Jews to move to Palestine and acquire homes and land under the Ottomans, the Jews were the fastest growing religious group from 1800 to 1914. Jews have also been the largest religious group in Jerusalem since 1870.

Language

The official languages in Israel today are Hebrew and Arabic. While English is widely spoken, it is not an official language, further underscoring that the country never was established as a British colony.

ISRAEL:
RE-ESTABLISHED under International Law

In short, there is no basis whatsoever for calling Israel a British colony. The global community approved facilitating the free movement of Jews back to their holy land, where Jews already lived. The global community ultimately approved RE-ESTABLISHING a Jewish State. This was not Great Britain arbitrarily creating a colony for its own purposes.

It should also be underscored that Zionism was not only a modern idea conceived by Jews as a reaction to anti-Semitism in Europe and Russia. Henry Dunant (1828-1910), the winner of the first Nobel Peace Prize was an ardent Christian Zionist who strongly advocated for the rights of Jews to live in Palestine in the 1860s.

Vote for Israel at United Nations, 1947

The “West Bank” is not an Israeli Colony

As detailed above, the global community approved the rights of Jews to move to their ancient homeland in the holy land. That right was given to the entire region, including Judea and Samaria. While the UN voted to recognize a Jewish State within a section of Palestine, the right to move throughout the region was approved in repeated resolutions many decades ago.

While the UN does not recognize Judea and Samaria to be part of Israel, they also do not recognize it as part of Jordan that illegally annexed it in 1950 (Jordan gave up all claim to the region in 1988). The UN would like to see that region be part of a new Arab State of Palestine through negotiations with Israel.

The desire to see a new Palestinian State does not mean that international law protecting the rights of Jews to live in the region are null and void. The 1922 British Mandate Article 15 specifically stated that “no person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.” “No person” included Jews, and “Palestine” covered the entire mandate area of 1922.

The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 which were negotiated between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, specifically stated that Israel controls and administers most of the “West Bank.” As such, Israel approves housing and roads and infrastructure for everyone. So the Palestinians agree that Israel is in charge of housing and international law approves Jews living in the region. Israel acts as the administrator, much in the same way that Great Britain acted as the administrator for Palestine from 1922 to 1948.

Lastly, the “settlements” are principally located next to greater metropolitan areas within Israel. Unlike European colonies which were across oceans and thousands of miles from the country, these Jewish homes are just suburban communities of major Israeli cities like Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They happen to be on the other side of an invisible “green line” that was the Armistice Lines of 1949. Those Armistice Agreements specifically stated that those lines were not to be considered borders.

Conclusion

Jews have lived throughout the holy land for thousands of years, including all over Judea and Samaria/ the “West Bank”. International laws facilitated the ability of Jews to move back to, and throughout, their homeland.

Jews were self-governing for over a thousand years in the holy land. International laws reconstituted the national Jewish home.

While Jordan illegally attacked Israel and expelled all of the Jews from Judea and Samaria counter to the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, those illegal actions cannot make it illegal for Jews to once again live in homes they legally purchase throughout the land.

When you hear acting-President of the Palestinian Authority chant “colonial occupier” or uninformed people claim that Israel is a colonialist tool, send them this article.

Related First.One.Through articles and video:

The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

The Legal Israeli Settlements

Recognition of Acquiring Disputed Land in a Defensive War

Palestinians agree that Israel rules all of Jerusalem, but the World Treats the City as Divided

The Arguments over Jerusalem

Video: Judea and Samaria (Foo Fighters)

Video: The “1967 Borders” (The Kinks)

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The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

Posted on December 1, 2015 by First.One.Through

Some political analysts have suggested that Europeans tend to be more negative in their attitudes towards Israel than Americans, due to the former’s rejection of their colonialist past. The retreating by the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese and Belgians from the colonies that they had established hundred-plus years prior in India, Algeria, Tunisia, Congo, Morocco and other countries, was part of a repositioning of the world back to local sovereignty. The colonialist era has been cast in a racist light and rejected by today’s more “pluralistic” societies.

Palestinians have taken note of the change in attitudes, and have adopted new vocabulary to instigate the Europeans against Israel whereby the charges of “colonialist” has accompanied the accusation of being racist.

From “Zionism is Racism”
to “Colonial Occupier”

In the 1970s, the head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, led the world on a venomous attack against “Zionism.” In 1975, Arafat succeeded in getting the United Nations to pass Resolution 3379 condemning “Zionism is Racism.” Somehow, the world became convinced that the national aspirations of Jews to be self-governing was uniquely racist compared to every other nationalistic aspirations.

It took sixteen years for the United Nations to erase the charge, but the venom remained in the UN bloodstream.

At the UN, the “Question of Palestine” ceased to be a territorial dispute, and became an ethical question for the United Nations: should the global body have created and voted for the Jewish State? Did it do so, solely because of the guilt from the Holocaust?

The current acting-President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, stokes that question to the mini-inferno that sits in the United Nations today. He constantly uses the term “colonial” to describe the emergence of Israeli “settlements,” and characterizes Israel as a recent foreign transplant on Arab soil. For some of his listeners, the malicious appearance of Israeli Jews began in the “West Bank” in 1967. For others, the Jewish colony overran the entirety of Palestine when the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish State and Arab State in 1947.

Acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas
Addressing the United Nations, November 29, 2012
(photo: Richard Drew/AP)

As Abbas said in his address to the UN on November 29, 2012: “Israeli occupation is becoming synonymous with an apartheid system of colonial occupation, which institutionalizes the plague of racism and entrenches hatred and incitement.”

The Palestinian’s pivot was subtle but significant. Self-determination (like Zionism) in itself was not a crime. Indeed, the Palestinian Arabs seek the same right for themselves. However, the Israelis’ “colonial occupation” was unique and the root cause of the problem. It was not necessarily the Jews’ goal of self-determination, but the act of colonialization that created “racism” and “incitement.”

Somehow, the Europeans and a growing number of countries, have embraced these narratives, particularly that Israel in its entirety was a UN mistake.

International Remorse for Partitioning Palestine
November 29, not June 4

The clarity of the global adoption of these positions can be found in the annual commemoration of the day of the partition vote on November 29, 1947.

In 1977, while the “Zionism is Racism” edict was still fresh, the United Nations passed another resolution to annually commemorate the UN Partition vote, as the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”

The decision to partition Palestine was approved by Jews and rejected by Arabs in 1947, yet the UN specifically chose that date to stand in “solidarity with the Palestinian People.” On its face, it would seem like a cruel decision to create a holiday for a people on the very day that those people despised.

However, taken together with the “Zionism is Racism” resolution of 1975, the picture becomes more clear: the UN believed that the decision to partition the land was a mistake. The global body concluded that the Palestinians were correct in the assertion that the UN created a racist, anti-Arab entity in Palestine. The Palestinians were correct to reject the partition plan in 1947. The fault belonged to the United Nations, not the Palestinians, right at creation.

The United Nations did not choose June 4 or June 10 as the date to stand together with Palestinians. Those dates in 1967 were the beginning and end of the Six Day War when the Jordanians (together with Palestinians who were then citizens of Jordan) launched an attack on Israel and consequently lost the “West Bank” which they had illegally annexed. If the root cause of the plight of Palestinians was “Israeli settlements” in the West Bank, then those dates would have been more appropriate to anchor the anniversary.

But the United Nations wanted to mark its own poor decision. While the Palestinians rejected partition in 1947 and launched wars in 1948 and again in 1967, those bad decisions and actions were not deemed relevant. The UN chose to tell the Palestinians that it was not their fault. Their situation stemmed from decisions that the UN itself made.

Today, while the UN may no longer outwardly state that “Zionism is Racism,” the global body has adopted Abbas’s narrative that the UN planted a colonialist flag in Palestine. The Europeans and liberal press now echo Abbas and the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who claim that Israel is a foreign and dangerous entity that was unnaturally inserted into the Middle East, and that the Arabs are the sole indigenous people and the land itself is inherently “Arab.”

It is well passed time for Israel to actively combat this claim of colonialization, the way activists overturned the “Zionism is Racism” UN edict in 1991. It is time to clearly educate the world that RE-ESTABLISHING the Jewish State and not banning where Jews can and cannot live is neither colonialist nor racist, but the essence of freedom and justice.

Related First.One.Through articles and video:

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

The United Nations Applauds Abbas’ Narrative

The Holocaust and the Nakba

The Legal Israeli Settlements

UNRWA’s Ongoing War against Israel and Jews

Nicholas Kristof’s “Arab Land”

Video: I hate Israel – Zionism

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Recognition of Acquiring Disputed Land in a Defensive War

Posted on November 29, 2015 by First.One.Through

On November 13, 2015, several resolutions were put forth at the United Nations to advance the cause of a Palestinian State. Some of the statements made in the resolutions are self-contradictory and undermine the very foundation of the claims that Israel occupies “Palestinian territory.”

Claim of Israel’s Illegal Acquisition
of Land by War

In the Resolution Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine (A/70/L.13), there is a claim that Israel illegally took control over Palestinian land:

“Reaffirming the principle of
the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war“

This statement underlies the argument that many people have against Israel’s settlements in the “West Bank”: that Israel enlarged its boundaries when it “seized” (to quote the New York Times) Palestinian land in the Six-Day War in 1967. The claim stems from some international laws in the United Nations:

UN Charter (1945) Article 2: Paragraph 3: “All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that peace and security, and justice are not endangered.”
UN Charter (1945) Article 2: Paragraph 4: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (1970) Principle 1: “Every State has the duty to refrain in its international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. Such a threat or use of force constitutes a violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations and shall never be employed as a means of settling international issues.“

What is peculiar in the condemnation of Israel, is that the UN and Palestinians already acknowledge that Israel “seized Palestinian land” in 1949 and have endorsed it, as detailed below.

In the very same November 2015 UN resolution, the various countries that put forth the resolution (Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Comoros, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and State of Palestine), stated the following:

“Noting with concern that it has been 68 years since the adoption of its resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947 and 48 years since the occupation of Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, in 1967,”

Note that “the occupation of Palestinian territory” is claimed to have started in 1967. If there is a valid claim that Israel seized “Palestinian” land , the argument should extend to territory that Israel acquired in 1948-9. Yet the Palestinians curiously omit such claim not because they don’t view everything as Palestinian land, but because Israel has not sought to annex the West Bank.

Israel
November 29, 1947 to June 10, 1967

On July 24, 1922, the League of Nations (precursor to the UN) drafted a resolution that recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home… [and] will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home… [and] shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.” It was on this basis that the world joined in the Zionist dream of further encouraging Jewish aliyah to Israel to create a Jewish homeland.

After several decades of Arabs fighting the law and seeking the end of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the British who oversaw the territory turned to the United Nations to implement a compromise solution. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into distinct Jewish and Arab states. UN resolution 181 (which was specifically mentioned by the parties above in the 2015 UN resolution), was passed with 33 votes affirming; 13 against; and 10 countries abstaining.

On May 14 1948, as the British left Palestine, Israel declared itself as an independent state along the borders that were approved by the United Nations. Several countries recognized the country including the US; the Soviet Union; Poland; Ireland; Yugoslavia; and South Africa, among others. For their part, the Palestinian Arabs did NOT announce their own country along the UN stated borders.

Borders approved in UN resolution 181
November 29, 1947

Instead, with the approval of the Palestinian Arabs, several Arab countries – principally Jordan; Egypt; Syria; and Iraq, with forces also from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – invaded Israel. In doing so those countries broke several international laws passed by the United Nations listed above about the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State.”

At war’s end, Israel took additional land from the region that was originally allocated by the UN to be a Palestinian Arab state. Armistice agreements between Israel and the various warring parties were executed in 1949 which included language that the Armistice lines were NOT to be construed as final borders. Egypt assumed control of the Gaza Strip and Jordan took control of Judea and Samaria, later annexing it into an area referred to as the “West Bank” in a move that was never recognized by the United Nations.

Borders after 1948-9 War

The world recognized the incremental land that Israel captured in its defensive war against the Arab armies in 1949. That incremental land was disputed, and not part of any independent country or member state of the UN.

Israel
Since June 10, 1967

Even with the Armistice agreements meant to assure peace, Egypt and Syria made many provocative statements and actions that threatened Israel in early 1967. In response to those threats, Israel launched a preemptive attack on Egypt and Syria in June 1967. Despite warnings to remain out of the conflict, Jordan (together with Palestinian Arabs who were granted Jordanian citizenship in 1950) launched an attack on Israel from its illegal territory in the “West Bank.”

Once again, the Arab countries broke international law as well as the Armistice agreements they had in place with Israel. As in the 1948-9 War, Israel legally defended itself and captured additional land:

Gaza (held by Egypt but not legally part of any country);
Sinai (part of Egypt)
Judea and Samaria/ West Bank (annexed illegally by Jordan, but not legally part of any country);
the Golan Heights (from Syria)

Additional land added to Israel after
1967 Six Day War

When the Palestinian Arabs today discuss “the occupation of Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, in 1967,” they are referring to land that is NOT, nor has it ever been part of a Palestinian state. They are referring to lands that have been disputed for decades, that they would LIKE to have as a future Palestinian state.

Conclusion

The world accepted the acquisition of additional land by Israel in 1949. The lands acquired were not “seized” in an offensive war against another country, but were disputed lands taken in a defensive war. The West Bank and Gaza were taken similarly in 1967 (note that Israel left Gaza completely on its own in 2005). The Sinai peninsula was returned to Egypt in 1982.

The Palestinians refused to accept Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947 and never declared an independent state. While Israel has thus far only annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem that was divided in the 1948-9 War, it has left open the possibility of dividing Judea and Samaria, even though it was acquired in exactly the same manner as lands taken in 1948-9.

It is peculiar that countries acting on the Palestinian Arab’s behalf today should call out “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” when several of those countries illegally warred against Israel in 1948-9, and the world gave Israel incremental disputed land at that time. Arab countries repeated their illegal wars against Israel in 1967 and are now trying to recast history when the situation was identical to 1948-9.

The world accepted the additional land acquired by Israel in 1949 and the Palestinians admit as much when they only refer to land “occupied” since 1967. The global community should accept Israel’s annexation of additional land when Israel chooses to annex it, and stop mischaracterizing the disputed land as “Palestinian territory,” implying a history with claims that do not exist.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Legal Israeli Settlements

The Green Line

Names and Narrative: The West Bank / Judea and Samaria

Names and Narrative: Palestinian Territories/ Israeli Territories

The Narrative that Prevents Peace in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Palestinians agree that Israel rules all of Jerusalem, but the World Treats the City as Divided

Real and Imagined Laws of Living in Silwan

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