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This essay is available for download in PDF format at the author's website.
There is a widely accepted belief that United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 "created" Israel, based upon an understanding that this resolution partitioned Palestine or otherwise conferred legal authority or legitimacy to the declaration of the existence of the state of Israel. However, despite its popularity, this belief has no basis in fact, as a review of the resolution's history and examination of legal principles demonstrates incontrovertibly.
Great Britain had occupied Palestine during the First World War, and in July 1922, the League of Nations issued its mandate for Palestine, which recognized the British government as the occupying power and effectively conferred to it the color of legal authority to temporarily administrate the territory.[1] On April 2, 1947, seeking to extract itself from the conflict that had arisen in Palestine between Jews and Arabs as a result of the Zionist movement to establish in Palestine a "national home for the Jewish people",[2] the United Kingdom submitted a letter to the U.N. requesting the Secretary General "to place the question of Palestine on the Agenda of the General Assembly at its next regular Annual Session", and requesting the Assembly "to make recommendations, under Article 10 of the Charter, concerning the future government of Palestine."[3] To that end, on May 15, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 106, which established the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to investigate "the question of Palestine", to "prepare a report to the General Assembly" based upon its findings, and to "submit such proposals as it may consider appropriate for the solution of the problem of Palestine".[4]
On September 3, UNSCOP issued its report to the General Assembly declaring its majority recommendation that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states. It noted that the population of Palestine at the end of 1946 was estimated to be almost 1,846,000, with 1,203,000 Arabs (65 percent) and 608,000 Jews (33 percent). Growth of the Jewish population had been mainly the result of immigration, while growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase. It observed that there was "no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas", and even in the Jaffa district, which included Tel Aviv, Arabs constituted a majority.[5] Land ownership statistics from 1945 showed that Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district in Palestine. The district with the highest percentage of Jewish ownership was Jaffa, where 39 percent of the land was owned by Jews, compared to 47 percent owned by Arabs.[6] In the whole of Palestine at the time UNSCOP issued its report, Arabs owned 85 percent of the land,[7] while Jews owned less than 7 percent.[8]
Despite these facts, the UNSCOP proposal was that the Arab state be constituted from only 45.5 percent of the whole of Palestine, while the Jews would be awarded 55.5 percent of the total area for their state.[9] The UNSCOP report acknowledged that
With regard to the principle of self-determination, although international recognition was extended to this principle at the end of the First World War and it was adhered to with regard to the other Arab territories, at the time of the creation of the 'A' Mandates, it was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there. Actually, it may well be said that the Jewish National Home and the sui generis Mandate for Palestine run counter to that principle.[10]
In other words, the report explicitly recognized that the denial of Palestinian independence in order to pursue the goal of establishing a Jewish state constituted a rejection of the right of the Arab majority to self-determination. And yet, despite this recognition, UNSCOP had accepted this rejection of Arab rights as being within the bounds of a legitimate and reasonable framework for a solution.
Following the issuance of the UNSCOP report, the U.K. issued a statement declaring its agreement with the report's recommendations, but adding that "if the Assembly should recommend a policy which is not acceptable to both Jews and Arabs, the United Kingdom Government would not feel able to implement it."[11] The position of the Arabs had been clear from the beginning, but the Arab Higher Committee issued a statement on September 29 reiterating that "the Arabs of Palestine were determined to oppose with all the means at their disposal, any scheme that provided for segregation or partition, or that would give to a minority special and preferential status". It instead
advocated freedom and independence for an Arab State in the whole of Palestine which would respect human rights, fundamental freedoms and equality of all persons before the law, and would protect the legitimate rights and interests of all minorities whilst guaranteeing freedom of worship and access to the Holy Places.[12]
The U.K. followed with a statement reiterating "that His Majesty's Government could not play a major part in the implementation of a scheme that was not acceptable to both Arabs and Jews", but adding "that they would, however, not wish to impede the implementation of a recommendation approved by the General Assembly."[13]
The Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question was established by the General Assembly shortly after the issuance of the UNSCOP report in order to continue to study the problem and make recommendations. A sub-committee was established in turn that was tasked with examining the legal issues pertaining to the situation in Palestine, and it released the report of its findings on November 11. It observed that the UNSCOP report had accepted a basic premise "that the claims to Palestine of the Arabs and Jews both possess validity", which was "not supported by any cogent reasons and is demonstrably against the weight of all available evidence." With an end to the Mandate and with British withdrawal, "there is no further obstacle to the conversion of Palestine into an independent state", which "would be the logical culmination of the objectives of the Mandate" and the Covenant of the League of Nations. It found that "the General Assembly is not competent to recommend, still less to enforce, any solution other than the recognition of the independence of Palestine, and that the settlement of the future government of Palestine is a matter solely for the people of Palestine." It concluded that "no further discussion of the Palestine problem seems to be necessary or appropriate, and this item should be struck off the agenda of the General Assembly", but that if there was a dispute on that point, "it would be essential to obtain the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on this issue", as had already been requested by several of the Arab states. It concluded further that the partition plan was "contrary to the principles of the Charter, and the United Nations have no power to give effect to it." The U.N. could not
deprive the majority of the people of Palestine of their territory and transfer it to the exclusive use of a minority in the country…. The United Nations Organization has no power to create a new State. Such a decision can only be taken by the free will of the people of the territories in question. That condition is not fulfilled in the case of the majority proposal, as it involves the establishment of a Jewish State in complete disregard of the wishes and interests of the Arabs of Palestine.[14]
This is a very explicit and factual summary on a matter that has been habitually marred by blatant propaganda.
Alex, as IF you know all the facts on this matter. There are plenty of errors on the part of the author and you subscribe to his thoughts without making a single statement to show why. Here's the call. You are disqualified from having any input of value.
Barry, you are welcome to try to substantiate your assertion I've made "plenty of errors" by pointing out even a single one.
Here is an error. You say: " while growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase."
Prove it! Prove that growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase. You know that you cannot prove it, but you offer it up as a given. I know for a fact that the most common last name in Gaza is Masri, which means Egyptian. I know that the British officially ignored Arab immigration from Syria and Egypt because they had no political reason to keep track of it. The borders were very porous during the time of the Ottomans and the British Mandate. The Arabs came for obvious reasons: good paying jobs that came along with the Jewish immigration to the region. You cannot disprove this, and you know it.
Secondly Jews outnumbered Arabs in Jerusalem since 1840. This is a known statistical fact.
Here are just two "mistakes" in your article out of a whole bunch of others. Yet, I am sure these are not simple mistakes. Israel is the only country in human history that has to defend its existence after sixty years of independence.
Let me take you up on that Jeremy. In fact, I already have. Despite your painting yourself as a know it all expert, in fact you are not. Your reasoning re: article article 242 is way off. Show me where the French version of an article is deemed to be as law binding as a final draft English version.
Your lack of understanding of the intent of the article, or perhaps your ingrain bias, shows you not to be an expert of any kind. I will write again later with more details but it's always informative to dissect the bravado of someone who thinks he knows it all when in fact he can't see the forest for the trees. In short, you will fool many but not those who know.
Barry, the facts are as I've stated them. The French representative to the U.N. Security Council, Armand Berard, stated during the session immediately after the resolution was adopted: "We must admit, however, that on the point which the French delegation has always stressed as being essential – the question of withdrawal of the occupation forces – the resolution which has been adopted, if we refer to the French text which is equally authentic with the English, leaves no room for any ambiguity, since it speaks of withdrawal "des territoires occupés", which indisputably corresponds to the expression "occupied territories"."
The concept that authorized texts in multiple languages are equally authentic was codified in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties", which stipulated that "When a treaty has been authenticated in two or more languages, the text is equally authoritative in each language". The U.N. Charter states explicitly that "the Chinese, French, Russian, English, and Spanish texts" of the Charter "are equally authentic", establishing French as an official language of the U.N. Security Council. This fact was emphasized under the Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council, which state that "Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish shall be both the official and the working languages of the Security Council." The U.N. Joint Inspection Unit report, "Implementation of Multilingualism in the United Nations System" observes that, "Similar to Article 111 of the Charter of the United Nations which stipulates that 'the Chinese, French, Russian, English, and Spanish texts are equally authentic', the texts of constitutive acts of treaty-based organizations or the texts of treaties administered by them have been signed in one or a given number been signed in one or a given number of languages and such texts are considered as authentic texts." Michael C. Wood, a member of the International Law Commission, a U.N. body, has observed that "there are six official and working languages of the Security Council, and resolutions of the Council are adopted and published in all six. In principle, all six language versions are authentic." Professor Michael Lynk has similarly observed that "Since English and French have equal and primary status at the Security Council, a legal interpretation must strive for a meaning that harmonizes any possible distinctions between the different linguistic texts of a resolution. Plainly, the harmonious meaning would be the complete-withdrawal reading, which is also … the only reading that is consistent with the inadmissibility principle." The equal authoritativeness of the French text under international law is indisputable, despite such vain attempts to suggest otherwise.
United Nations Security Council 1382nd Meeting (S/PV.1382), November 22, 1967, http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/85255e950050831085255e95004fa9c3/9f5f09a80bb6878b0525672300565063.
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf.
Charter of the United Nations, Article 111, http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml.
Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council (S/96/Rev.7), http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/scrules.htm.
Implementation of Multilingualism in the United Nations System, Joint Inspection Unit, United Nations, 2003, http://www.unjiu.org/data/reports/2002/en2002_11.pdf.
Michael C. Wood, "The Interpretation of Security Council Resolutions", Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law Volume 2, 1998, http://www.mpil.de/shared/data/pdf/pdfmpunyb/wood_2.pdf. The website of the International Law Commission is: http://www.un.org/law/ilc/. Wood has also presented "The Interpretation of Security Council Resolutions" in lecture format, the video of which is available on an official website of the U.N., http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ls/Wood_PS.html.
Michael S. Lynk, "Conceived in Law: The Legal Foundations of Resolution 242″, Social Science Research Network, July 2, 2007; p. 13, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1411698.
Jeremy Jeremy, with regards to our ongoing debate on article 242, you are once again incorrect and I must admit, I'm getting a little tired of trying to get you to see the truth.
For example, in the box below, Oct. 30, you mention the French rep to the UN Security Council, saying, blah blah blah, which was his right to say, but it carried no weight. "we must admit", WHO must admit, he was "pleading" but not "reading" the law. And the codification at the 1969 Vienna Convention was two years after article 242 was drawn up so it had little bearing on 1967.
To my knowledge, while France and Russia both wanted THEIR versions to be the legal one, neither was. Only one final version of article 242 was voted on – the English one – and that subsequently became the legal draft. Why don't you know that?
You certainly could not have two different versions of the law, yet that is what you are saying happened, if the French version had as much validity as the English.
You are guilty of high schticking, 30 minutes in the corner with a dunce cap on.
Barry, the facts on 242 are precisely as I've stated them. To each of your arguments: a) The Vienna Convention, as I said, "codified" the principle, it didn't create it. The principle existed in 1967. French is both an official and a working language of the UNSC under the U.N. Charter and the Provisional Rules of Procedure for the UNSC, both of which, you will observe, predate the June '67 war. As the U.N. Joint Inspection Unit has noted, as an official and working language of the U.N., the French text of UNSC resolutions are equally authentic. Michael C. Wood is an authority on international law and member of the International Law Commission, a U.N. body, and he has observed that under international law, the French text of UNSC resolutions is equally authentic. Michael S. Lynk, a law professor at the University of Ontario, has similarly observed that both texts are equally authentic under international law. b) The French delegate was observing the fact that the French text is equally authentic. You will observe that nobody – not even Abba Eban – challenged that statement of his. Why not? Because every delegate there knew he spoke an elementary and totally non-controversial truth.
I'll give it to you Jeremy, you are full of bluster and self confidence but like so many of your kind, it is misplaced and far from accurate. We'll stick with article 242 for now and I'll write more later as well. Israel has most definitely fulfilled its part of Resolution 242. When you deny that you are letting us know that you live in a world of fantasy and scholarship, a dangerous combination in any culture to be sure.
Barry, this argument is premised in turn upon your incorrect interpretation of 242. See comments above and below.
Barry Lubotta. " Israel has most definitely fulfilled its part of Resolution 242."
Twaddle — Israel has fulfilled only part of it's obligations, peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. It still occupies Sovereign Syrian territory and arguably Sovereign Lebanese territory.
The resolution was to end hostilities between "states". All states in the region had defined, acknowledged boundaries in 1967. All the "states" in the conflict were to have "respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;" http://wp.me/PDB7k-6r
The resolution leaves Israel as the Occupying Power over territories outside the extent of the Independent Sovereign States involved in the conflict. I.e., Palestinian territories. Under the UN Charter Chapt XI Occupying Powers have an obligation to protect the occupied, their territory, their rights until such time as they are able to govern themselves. At which time, occupation must end.
Let's debate article 242 on which you are a self described expert. I pointed out that the omission of the word "the" meant something substantial and somewhere below in these comments, you negated that. Well, I supposed you know more than these fellows. Sure you do.
Professor Eugene Rostow, then U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, went on record in 1991 to make this clear:
"Resolution 242, which as undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until 'a just and lasting peace in the Middle East' is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces 'from territories' it occupied during the Six-Day War – not from 'the' territories nor from 'all' the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip."
Professor Rostow continues and describes:
"Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy in 1967 made it perfectly clear what the missing definite article in Resolution 242 means. Ingeniously drafted resolutions calling for withdrawals from 'all' the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly. Speaker after speaker made it explicit that Israel was not to be forced back to the 'fragile' and 'vulnerable' Armistice Demarcation Lines ['Green Line'], but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called 'secure and recognized' boundaries …
Lord Caradon, then the United Kingdom Ambassador to the UN and the key drafter of the resolution, said several years later:
"We knew that the boundaries of '67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers; they were a cease-fire line of a couple decades earlier. We did not say the '67 boundaries must be forever."
Referring to Resolution 242, Lord Caradon added:
"The essential phrase which is not sufficiently recognized is that withdrawal should take place to secure and recognized boundaries, and these words were very carefully chosen: they have to be secure and they have to be recognized. They will not be secure unless they are recognized. And that is why one has to work for agreement. This is essential. I would defend absolutely what we did. It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be. I know the 1967 border
It is not a satisfactory border, it is where troops had to stop in 1947, just where they happened to be that night, that is not a permanent boundary … "6
In a 1974 statement he said:
"It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of 4 June 1967. … That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis return to them and I think we were right not to."7
Firstly, such an interpretation as you claim for 242 is irreconcilable with the emphasized principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.
Secondly, readers will observe that all the quotes you offer to support your interpretation were made ex post facto. The relevant documentary record is that prior and up to the adoption of the resolution. There is nothing from that record to support your interpretation. Moreover, these quotes are cherry-picked from the record, and proponents of your argument simply ignore others from the same individuals that contradict their claims. For example, Lord Caradon also stated:
"[I]t is necessary to say again that the overriding principle was the 'inadmissibility of territory by war' and that meant that there could be no justification for annexation of territory on the Arab side of the 1967 line merely because it had been conquered in the 1967 war."
According to the then Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Gideon Rafael, Lord Caradon actually tried to insert the definite article "the" before "territories" in the draft resolution, but the Israelis and Americans rejected this wording. It was not Caradon's view at the time Resolution 242 was passed that the absence of the definite article meant Israel could unilaterally choose to retain some of the occupied territory, but rather that there should be a final settlement on borders that involved minor and mutually beneficial revisions to the 1949 armistice lines.
Similarly, British Foreign Secretary George Brown stated explicitly prior to the adoption of Resolution 242 that any peace settlement must derive from the principles of the U.N. Charter, which leads to the conclusion that Israel must withdrawal from the territories it occupied: "I see no two ways about this; and I can state our position very clearly. In my view, it follows from the words in the Charter that war should not lead to territorial aggrandizement." He later reiterated, also prior to the adoption of the resolution, "I should like to repeat what I said when I was here before: Britain does not accept war as a means of settling disputes, nor that a State should be allowed to extend its frontiers as a result of a war. This means that Israel must withdraw."
Thirdly, the absense of the definite article "the", as I already noted, has no bearing grammatically on the meaning. It simply means the noun "territories" is plural — the Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Sinai, plural. This is also a moot argument since the French text, equally authentic, does contain the definite article (see above).
Fourthly, by your logic, 242 calls upon Egypt to permit Israeli shipping through some but not all of the international waterways, since there is no definite article before the noun in sub-clause 2 of the first operative clause of 242.
Your argument false flat no matter how you want to look at it.
Lynk, pp. 10-11.
UNSC 1382nd Meeting (S/PV.1382)
Wrong again, Jeremy, you've got to stop telling your readers things that are just not true. Allow me to elaborate.
Your first sentence, concerning the "emphasized principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by was" sounds good until you realize that Israel fought a defensive war even though it launched a pre-emptive strike (yes, that can happen and does). There were months of belligerent declarations coming from the Arab side which went beyond mere power projection. The Arab states did not wish to just defeat Israel but to destroy it.
• "We intend to open a general assault against Israel. This will be total war. Our basic aim will be to destroy Israel." (Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, May 26, 1967)
• "The sole method we shall apply against Israel is total war, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence." (Egyptian Radio, 'Voice of the Arabs,' May 18, 1967)
• "I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." (Syrian Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad, May 20, 1967)
• "The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. … Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map." (Iraqi President Abdur Rahman Aref, May 31, 1967).
That is why the UN Security Council recognized that Israel had acquired the territory from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria not as a matter of aggression, but as an act of self-defense. That is also why Resolution 242 was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter rather than Chapter VII. As explained above, UN resolutions adopted under Chapter VI call on nations to negotiate settlements, while resolutions under the more stringent Chapter VII section deal with clear acts of
aggression that allow the UN to enforce its resolutions upon any state seen as threatening the security of another state or states.
Although Resolution 242 refers to "the inadmissibility" of acquiring territory by war, a statement used in nearly all UN resolutions relating to Israel, Professor, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, explains that the principle of "acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible" must be read together with other principles:
"… namely, that no legal right shall spring from a wrong, and the Charter principle that the Members of the United Nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State."
Resolution 242 immediately follows to emphasize the "need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every state in the area can live in security."
So the above destroys your first premise. Case closed.
And I should like to point out again that you, Jeremy Hammond, do not understand the true meaning of article 242 despite your protestations to the contrary.
Let me state this again. The absence of the definite article "the" has a lot of bearing on article 242. Why the heck to you think it took six months to create a one page document????
That word, and others, were fought over for lengthy periods and the final legal version, the English version, does not contain the word "the" before territories for a sound reason, which I've previously provided.
To those who have not read previous posts, Mr. Hammond asserts that the French version of 242 was just a valid as the English version. The French did indeed want that, but they did not prevail. ONLY the English version was voted on and that is the version that pertains to International Law. And the reason the French wanted THEIR version t be accepted is that it contained a few different words than the English version, words which could change the meaning of article 242.
I do agree with you that Lord Caradon did try to insert the word "the" before territories but it was rejected – for reasons I've stated. For those tuning in late, "the territories" could be interpreted to mean "all the territories" but that was not the intent of article 242 in it's final version, the one that was voted upon.
By leaving off the word "the" to read (i) Withdrawl of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" the drafters of the article meant that Israel had to withdraw from some of the territories, which in fact that did within months, about 90% to be exact. If the drafters had meant "all of the territories", which the French and Arabs wanted included but did not get, they would have done so.
Finally Jeremy, I find pathetic the example you gave in your fourth point, that you argue there is similarity in clause 2 (a), which reads "For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;". You see, waterways can be either international or not, but territories cannot be territories or not. When one specifies "international waterways" in the area, one refers to all waterways, therefore, there is no need to say "the" it is implied. Refering to territories however, has no such delicate inferences. Territories are either "all the territories" or "territories" which implies some of the territories.
And why would you discount the quotes from those who actually drafted the article when they said in their own words that they meant "some of the" and not "all of the". Is that not picking the bone a little too closely? The fact that they said it afterwards does not diminish what they meant during the six month drafting process.
You were put on this earth Jeremy, to use your common sense and the knowledge you have learned to come up with sound thinking. I have no qualms with your desire to make a difference in the world provided you get it right most of the time. Unfortunately, you appear to have an inbred bias that finds every fault lies with Israel. There is no sense of balance to your writing, no real objectivity other than to support your already made up mind, and certainly not enough common sense. You are hereby requested from now on to use your God given brain to present the truth about which you write. There are two sides to every story, quit burying your head in just one of them.
Barry, even if we assume your argument is correct, that the war was "defensive" (it wasn't), it doesn't change anything. The emphasized principle is NOT "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, except by a war of self-defense". Acquiring territory by war is illegal under international law. Period.
You falsely accuse me of telling readers things that aren't true, then write: "the UN Security Council recognized that Israel had acquired the territory from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria not as a matter of aggression, but as an act of self-defense." That is a lie, and your hypocrisy is instructive.
As for your suggestion that sub-clause (i) of the 1st operative clause of 242 is conditioned upon sub-clause (ii), that is also false. The resolution states that both withdrawal and non-belligerency and secure and recognized boundaries are required. It does not condition one upon the other. That is yet another lie.
The French text is equally authentic as the English. So the argument over the "the" is moot anyway, but even if we forget that fact for a moment, as I've already gone over:
(a) the absence of the definite article has no bearing on the English grammar, and does not define the extent of withdrawal. The absence of the "the" simply means "territories" is a plural noun. The Golan, West Bank, Gaza, and Sinai — "territories", plural. The extent of withdrawal is not defined by the existence or absence of an article before a noun, but by the complete phrase, "from territories occupied in the recent conflict". So a simple litmus test is to ask: Is it a territory occupied in the '67 war? If yes, then, under 242, Israel must withdraw. It is not possible to read the text as meaning "some of the territories". Thus, in plain English, 242 calls upon Israel to totally withdraw. Also, your argument on why the same logic wouldn't also apply to sub-clause (ii) of the first operative paragraph is nonsense. Clearly, the absence of the definite article "the" before the noun phrase "international waterways" does not mean Egypt could blockade Israel's passage through some of those waterways. This logic defeats itself on all counts.
(b) Such an interpretation is irreconcilable with the emphasized principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, and thus prima facie invalid.
(c) The meaning of UNSC resolutions is for the UNSC to decide, and member states made it clear in the discussions over 242 that their intent was that Israel should fully withdraw in accordance with the emphasized principle.
Your insults serve only to embarrass yourself, Barry. You'd do well to refrain from such.
Barry Lubotta Twaddle.
The debate over 'the' and or 'all' simply delayed the passing of the resolution. The meaning is not altered.
Both Caradon & Rostow actually DISPROVE your notions.
DO you have some odd reading comprehension problem?
"Resolution 242….calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until 'a just and lasting peace in the Middle East' is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces 'from territories' it occupied during the Six-Day War – not from 'the' territories nor from 'all' the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip."
Likewise with Caradon. Nowhere in UNSC Resolution does it call for negotiating any boundary/border/frontier. The parties to the conflict were all stats. They had already recognized boundaries.
And Jeremy, just in case you don't follow what I've submitted below, let me lay claim once again to the word "the" which you argued against and also your words saying the French version was as valid as the English version of article 242.
Jeremy's words "Also, as a simple point of fact, grammatically, all the absence of the definite article means is that "territories" is a plural noun. The Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Sinai — "territories", plural, from which Israel must withdraw.
Also, as another simple point of fact, the French version, equally authoritative, does contain the definite article — so your argument is moot on that count as well."
Really, is that so? The following is at odds with your findings. Let's see, who should we trust. Someone who was there and who participated or you, who years later wishes to revise history.
"It is true, as Arab leaders correctly note, that certain suggested drafts of Resolution 242 exist that contain that tiny controversial "the" in reference to territories. Arab leaders say this proves that Israel must withdraw from all territories captured in 1967. However, those versions of the resolution are in French. Under international law, English-language versions are followed and accepted as the conclusive reference point, and French versions are not."
Arthur J. Goldberg,8 the U.S. Ambassador to the UN in 1967 and a key draftee of Resolution 242, stated:
"The notable omissions in language used to refer to withdrawal are the words the, all, and the June 5, 1967 lines. I refer to the English text of the resolution. The French and Soviet texts differ from the English in this respect, but the English text was voted on by the Security Council, and thus it is determinative.
In other words, there is lacking a declaration requiring Israel to withdraw from the (or all the) territories occupied by it on and after June 5, 1967. Instead, the resolution stipulates withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal. And it can be inferred from the incorporation of the words secure and recognized boundaries that the territorial adjustments to be made by the parties in their peace settlements could encompass less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories."
See my previous comments, to which I will add that, again, these quotes from Goldberg were made ex post facto and are thus irrelevant. Again, the relevant documentary is that prior to and up until the adoption of 242. That record includes agreeing in the General Assembly between the U.S.-USSR on jointly drafted resolutions calling for Israel to fully withdraw all its forces to the pre-June 5 armistice lines. Goldberg was the head of the U.S. delegation when it agreed in principle with those two draft resolutions. Goldberg repeatedly reassured the Soviets throughout the drafting process at the UNSC that the U.S. had not moved fundamentally from that position.
Furthermore, it is not for the U.S. to unilaterally interpret UNSC resolutions. UNSC resolutions are for the UNSC to interpret, and the majority of UNSC members explicitly noted their view that 242 meant Israel must fully withdraw.
Resolution 242 was adopted unanimously by all 15 members of the Security Council, most of whose representatives were explicit in their interpretation of the draft text as calling for Israel to fully withdraw from the occupied territories. As already noted, this understanding on intent was reflected in George Brown's statements that "war should not lead to territorial aggrandizement" and "Britain does not accept war as a means of settling disputes, nor that a State should be allowed to extend its frontiers as a result of a war. This means that Israel must withdraw."
Lord Caradon reiterated that position of the U.K. during deliberations over the draft resolution, stating that "As to the first operative paragraph, and with due respect for fulfillment of Charter principles, we consider it essential that there should be applied the principles of both withdrawal and security, and we have no doubt that the words set out throughout that paragraph are perfectly clear."
Two days before the vote, Caradon again reiterated: "If I had to sum up the policy which has been repeatedly stated by my Government, I would go back to the words used by my Foreign Secretary in the General Assembly less than a month ago. These were his words: "I should like to repeat what I said when I was here before: Britain does not accept war as a means of settling disputes, nor that a State should be allowed to extend its frontiers as a result of war. This means that Israel must withdraw. But equally, Israel's neighbours must recognize its right to exist, and it must enjoy security within its frontiers…." In our resolution we stated the principle of the "withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" and in the preamble we emphasized "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war". In our view, the wording of those provisions is clear."
The French position that the resolution required a full withdrawal and that there can be no mistake on that point, since "the French text which is equally authentic with the English, leaves no room for any ambiguity", has already been noted.
Vasili Kuznetsov, the Soviet representative at the Security Council, expressed his government's intent in supporting the passage of the proposed resolution by saying: "We know from the statements of Israel statesmen, and in particular from that made yesterday by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Israel and just published in The New York Times, that Israel makes a definite claim to keep some of the territories seized from the Arab States. Consequently, the United States draft leaves open the possibility that Israel's forces may not be withdrawn from all the Arab territories they have seized and that part of these territories may be kept by Israel. If this is not so, we hope that the United States representative will give us a clear and unambiguous explanation to the effect that the United States supports the withdrawal of Israel's forces from all the occupied territories to the positions occupied prior to 5 June 1967. It is obvious that the provision for the withdrawal of troops must be so clearly formulated as to leave no loopholes whereby anyone can interpret it in his own way."
The U.S. never responded to this request for a clarification for the U.S. position by expressing any clear and unambiguous intention that Israel should be permitted to acquire any of the occupied territory, apart from minor and mutually agreed upon revisions to the 1949 armistice lines. Two days before the vote, Kuznetsov reiterated his government's position: "As long as Israel troops occupy the Arab territories they have seized, as long as no stop is put to the colonialist appropriations of these lands by the aggressor, and as long as he is not forced to leave them, there will be, and there can be, no peace in the Middle East…. During Security Council debates, the Soviet delegation has repeatedly drawn attention of all members of the Security Council to the fact that the key question, the crux of the problem in the Middle East is the question of the withdrawal of Israel troops from all the Arab territories they have occupied, i.e., the question of removing the main consequence of, the Israel aggression against the United Arab Republic, Syria and Jordan in June 1967. The statements, of a number of Council members have shown that this view is widely shared in the Security Council. It cannot be denied that only the withdrawal of the aggressor's troops from the territories he has seized, from all the territories he has seized, can pave the way for a lasting and just peace in the Middle East. Any other assertion would be opposed to the most elementary rules governing relations among States, rules which must be respected if there is to be peace in the world."
Again, on the day of the vote, Kuznetsov declared: "However, we voted for the United Kingdom draft resolution, as interpreted by the representative of India, whose views we share. Thus, in the resolution adopted by the Security Council, the "'withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict" becomes the first necessary principle for the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Near East. We understand the decision taken to mean the withdrawal of Israel forces from all, and we repeat, all territories belonging to Arab States and seized by Israel following its attack on those States on 5 June 1967. This is borne out by the preamble to the United Kingdom draft resolution [S/8247] which stresses the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war"…. It has been made clear, both from representatives' statements in the Security Council today and from the many statements made during the preceding days, that this is the basic content of the resolution and that it has thus been interpreted by all the members of the Security Council."
His reference was to the statement by Mr. Parthasarathi, the Indian representative at the Security Council, who had earlier that day expressed his government's intent in supporting the resolution:
Members of the Council will recall that during the fifth emergency special session an overwhelming majority of Member States of the United Nations, whether they voted for the Latin American draft resolution 2/ or the non-aligned, Afro-Asian draft resolution, had reaffirmed the principle of non-acquisition of territory by military conquest and had supported the call for the withdrawal of Israel armed forces to the positions they held prior to the outbreak of the recent conflict on 5 June 1967. On this point there was universal agreement among the membership of the United Nations…. The principle of the inadmissibility of territorial acquisition by force is absolutely fundamental to our approach and we cannot accept or acquiesce in any decision that leaves out territories occupied by military conquest from the provision of withdrawal…. It is our understanding that the draft resolution, if approved by the Council, will commit it to the application of the principle of total withdrawal of Israel forces from all the territories–I repeat, all the territories occupied by Israel as a result of the conflict which began on 5 June 1967. In other words, the draft commits the Council to the withdrawal of Israel forces from the whole of Sinai, Gaza, the Old City of Jerusalem, Jordanian territory west of the Jordan River and the Syrian territory. This being so, Israel cannot use the words "secure and recognized boundaries", contained in sub-paragraph (ii) of operative paragraph 1 of the United Kingdom draft resolution, to retain any territory occupied in the recent conflict. Of course, mutual territorial adjustments are not ruled out, as indeed they are not in the three-Power draft resolution co-sponsored by India. This is our clear understanding of the United Kingdom draft resolution."
The President of the Security Council and Mali representative to the U.N., Mamadou Boubacar Kante, stated his government's position by saying: "The immediate stumbling block in the crisis is the withdrawal of the Israel forces from the territories of the United Arab Republic, Jordan and Syria which they occupied following the aggression of 5 June 1967. Their withdrawal is a prerequisite for any political solution to the crisis. The first task of the Council is therefore to secure, in application of the provisions of the Charter, the withdrawal of the Israel forces to the positions they held before the aggression."
He again reiterated on the day of the vote: "My delegation therefore wishes its vote today to be interpreted in the light of the clear and unequivocal interpretation which the representative of India gave of the provisions of the United Kingdom text, namely: first, that the withdrawal of all the armed forces of Israel from all the Arab territories occupied since 5 June cannot be made subject to any condition whatever…. For all those reasons my delegation, in voting for the draft resolution on the Middle East submitted by the United Kingdom, was anxious to record its unshakable adherence to the principles of the Charter. My country therefore continues to believe more than ever that the withdrawal of forces from territories occupied by military conquest is a prior condition for any solution of any armed crisis."
The Ethiopian representative, Endelkachew Makonnen, stated on the day of the vote: "With regard to the principles that need to be affirmed, we deem it most essential that due emphasis be put on the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war and hence on the imperative requirement that all Israel armed forces be withdrawn from the territories occupied as a result Of military conflict, and likewise on the need to ensure conditions of permanent peace in which all States in the area can live in security free from threats or acts of force. It follows from this that we seek the termination of all claims or states of belligerency and consider that there should be, mutual respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and, political independence of all States in the area."
The Bulgarian representative, Milko Tarabanov similarly stated his government's position: "We note with satisfaction that in the resolution adopted, the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, proclaimed in the preamble as a general principle, is clearly and explicitly confirmed in the first operative paragraph, which calls for the "withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict". Thus it is a definite call for the withdrawal of Israel's troops from all the territories occupied since 4 June 1967. That is a practical application of the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war stated in the preamble to the resolution."
Even the U.S. position was that the text finally adopted reflected a consensus among members of the Security Council, thus at least tacitly acknowledging that its intent was that Israel fully withdraw from the occupied territories. Arthur Goldberg stated two days prior to the vote that: "The States, although adhering to the views expressed in its draft resolution of 7 November [S/8229], will vote in favour of the United Kingdom draft resolution for two principal and prevailing reasons. First, the United Kingdom resolution commands, in our opinion, a substantial con-sensus in the Council and is entirely consistent with the policy of my Government as set forth by President Johnson in his statement of 19 June and as stated by me in the several interventions I have made in the Council, I reaffirm that policy without any reservation today."
Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume XIX.
UNSC Meeting Verbatim Records, November 1967.
As a Zionist, I couldn't agree more with this article's conclusion that the UN did not create Israel. The truth is that Israel created itself by declaring independence and then successfully defending that independence through force of arms, which is exactly the same way that the United States created itself in the American Revolution.
I find it ironic than a leftist, anti-Zionist website like this one would come to such a conclusion. Anti-Zionists frequently claim that Israel owes the UN system some kind of special obedience because of the supposed role of UNGAR 181 in its creation.
In fact, Israel has no such obligations. Like any other General Assembly resolution, Resolution 181 was nothing more than a non-binding recommendation. The Arabs were legally entitled to ignore it and launch an invasion (although they've since come to regret that decision). Similarly, Israel is entitled to ignore Resolution 194 — the oft-cited basis for the so-called right of return of Palestinian Refugees — as well as the numerous other resolutions it doesn't agree with.
Yes, you are right, the U.S. was also created through ethnic cleansing and genocide. I find it ironic that a self-declared Zionist would point that out as though the similarity somehow suggested legitimacy for the state's creation.
You are wrong on Israel's obligation to the U.N. Israel requested membership, and that request was granted. As a party to the U.N. Charter, Israel has a legal obligation to comply with Security Council resolutions. Israel is in perpetual violation of international law by failing to uphold it's responsibilities and obligations as a member state, along with violating other relevant bodies of international law, such as the Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is also a party.
As for the '48 war, the Arabs didn't invade. One can't "invade" one's own land. It was the Zionists who invaded the Arabs' land, and who ethnically cleansed Palestine. Israel is legally obligated to recognize the right of return and comply with 194 and any and all relevant resolutions of the Security Council, such as 242, which calls upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied Arab territories.
So then it seems you agree with me that Israel's founding was as legitimate as that of the United States of America. I don't know, maybe out on the fringe sectarian Left you find the U.S. lacking in legitimacy, but that only serves to show how marginal you are. The overwhelming majority of decent, patriotic Americans on both the Left and Right are proud of the Revolution and the founding of the Republic. You're not going to win many converts to anti-Zionism by likening Israel to America.
As for the assertions about international law, your hypocrisy is laughable. You just wrote a long article justifying the Arabs' right to reject UNGAR 181 as a non-binding recommendation. And you know what? You're absolutely right on that score. However, if that's the case, it should be glaringly obvious that Israel is equally within its rights to reject UNGAR 194 as a non-binding recommendation. You can rant and whine all you want about the right of return, but you've already negated your own argument. Israel has no binding obligations in this regard, and it certainly doesn't care about your fringe opinions.
As the Iraqis say, "soak it in water and drink it, for all the good it will do you."
No, I agree with you that the U.S.'s founding was as illegitimate as Israel's. One may be proud of the Revolution and espouse a sense of patriotism and still recognize that the U.S. was founded as a result of shameful and criminal acts of racism and violence. There's no sense denying the facts, and acknowledging the truth does not make one unpatriotic.
As for your claim of hypocrisy on my part, what is laughable is this claim itself. On 194, as I noted, I thought you were referring to a Security Council resolution. As I said, Israel is legally obligated to comply with any and all Security Council resolutions. You are correct, any UNGA resolution is non-binding. However, the Zionists nonetheless had an obligation under customary international law NOT to commit acts of ethnic cleansing, and Israel as a party to the Geneva Conventions, UN Charter, and other relevant bodies of international law is legally obligated to respect the internationally recognized right of return of refugees. Your attempt here to somehow legitimize both Israel's ethnic cleansing and its rejection of the right of return is not laughable, though. It's not funny in the least bit. It's simply morally and intellectually cowardly and shameful.
You mention customary international law. Let's take a look at the two cases of mass flight that were the most recent and relevant precedents at the time of the First Arab-Israeli War:
Notice anything similar? What was recognized in the aftermath of these events was the new political and territorial reality, not any sort of right of return. Israel doesn't have to start recognizing anything just because some other countries subsequently started paying lip service to the idea. Israel cares about what's actually binding, not whatever comes to be "internationally recognized."
Raphael, in reply to your comment of 10/27 7:43 pm:
The weight of your arguments are weak throughout, so allow me to pick just one aspect to show you why.
You mention that article 242 calls upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied Arab territories. This shows that you either haven't read the article carefully, or even worse, have not understood what it says. Article 242 calls upon Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab territories. NOTE that the word "the" does not appear before the word occupied. This was done intentionally by the writers of the article, in fact, it took them six months to end up with a one page document. The final version, in English, the only one that counts under International Law, leaves off the "the" because there was no expectation that all the territories would be returned and it was assumed that only when a just settlement of the issues occurred would mutually agreed upon land be returned to the Arabs. In fact and in law, Israel has already met this obligation because it returned the Sinai to Egypt, which constituted a very high percentage of the land conquered.
Furthermore, the reason the creators of the document wrote it this way was they saw the Arabs as the belligerent parties and not the Israelis. Israel may have struck first but there can be no doubt that the war was started by Arab leaders who called for the destruction of Israel and closed the straights of Hormuz. Let's not forget the armies surrounding Israel and the Arab cries for war.
Anyway, this is meant to show someone like yourself who righteously thinks he knows what he is talking about that in actuality, he has not learned much to this point and needs to learn his history more accurately.
Barry, it's you who clearly hasn't read 242 carefully. You'll observe that the preamble emphasis the principle of international law that it is inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Your interpretation irreconcilable with that emphasized principle.
Also, as a simple point of fact, grammatically, all the absence of the definite article means is that "territories" is a plural noun. The Golan Heights, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Sinai — "territories", plural, from which Israel must withdraw.
Also, as another simple point of fact, the French version, equally authoritative, does contain the definite article — so your argument is moot on that count as well.
Also, as another simple point of fact, your argument is irreconcilable with the actual intent of the Security Council, which is manifested in the emphasis on the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. The U.S. alone wished to condition withdraw upon a final settlement. But even the U.S. closest ally in the Council, the U.K., held that position that war cannot lead to territorial aggrandizement, and therefore Israel must withdraw (George Brown).
You should do your research before suggesting others are ignorant, Barry. I'll match my knowledge of Resolution 242 against yours — or anyone else's — any day of the week.
Hammond is wrong about Resolution 242. again, most readers are too young to remember the context of this resolution. This resolution passed after a struggle between the Soviets and their patrons the Arab states, and the U.S. being supportive of Israel. There were no "Palestinians" organized as a polity then (and there hardly is one now.) Egypt, Syria and Jordan had once again gambled to knock off Israel and suffered a stunning military loss that absolutely nobody expected. Israel, a country of less than 3 million people, had defeated armies from combined populations exceeding 100 million people!
The US was not the major patron of Israel at that time. Most military equipment fielded by the Israeli Defense Forces was British and French. It was only after this war that the U.S. became a large arms supplier. Witness the assissination of Robert F. Kennedy, the first U.S. citizen to be murdered by an Arab terrorist named Sirhan Sirhan. He claimed to have done the deed because of Kennedy's vote as a Senator approving the U.S. sale of 50 F4 Phantom fighters to the State of Israel, the first large U.S. arms sale to that country. Sirhan acted because of the perceived injustice and victimization suffered by his family that hailed from Jerusalem.
Sirhan and Hammond have a common cause, to rectify a perceived injustice suffered by the Arabs of Palestine. Hammond argues that this injustice includes what I might describe as an absurd concept of "national theft" of Arab land by the Jewish Zionists and their international supporters. Hammond argues against reality but fails to advance the cause for which he advocates. Sirhan's act of terror and murder never interfered with the relationship between the US and Israel. Revisionists now advocate that Sirhan never pulled the trigger, that he was framed… i.e. another 'dastardly' act against an innocent Arab murderer. But no one in their right mind believes this.
And Hammond digs deep to deny reality, and in order to read what is black on white English, furiously resorts to a French translation in an attempt to revise reality. Do you see a similarity, an ideology of denial shared by both Sirhan and Hammond?
For some reason, no matter how the Israel – Arab issue is framed or characterized, there is no intellectual progress achieved by the Arab side that allows them to take part in the dialectic that will allow for an accommodation between the parties. The Arab brief is like an old phonograph arm, that hits a defect in the record groove and makes no progress toward completing the play.
Raphael and B. Lubotta have the correct interpretation and the Arab's and Hammond's 242 gymnastics have have had no practical effect. Only Hammond and his ilk want to believe that the Israeli military is to withdraw from every inch captured in 1967 which will not happen. Hammond and his kind go through all kinds of maneuvers in an attempt to get the result they want, but simply stated, they are not persuasive and they have failed to achieve anything.
On the other hand, and as time marches on, the Israeli presence in the captured (not occupied) West Bank territories will only grow. There are over 600000 Israelis now living in captured parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank. This number will only grow with time. Hammond can argue that this is a violation of 242, and that the settlements are illegal and that Israelis are mean to olive trees. These complaints will go nowhere. Besides, the settlers see no reason why Jews should not be permitted to live in Hevron or any where else in historical Palestine and they have substantial international support. This, my dear Hammond, is the so called "big picture".
Many Israeli governments have attempted to seek an accommodation with the Arabs. Treaties have been concluded with both Egypt and Jordan (in spite of the perceived grand Zionist theft.)
To make progress, the remaining belligerant Arab leadership will have to completely drop their claims of injustice and right of return and become pragmatic and learn to compromise. The belligerant Arab leadership will have to get over their specialized ideology of collective humiliation. Simply stated, getting a specific ruling in this or that forum, or changing a specific rule or adding a protocol, or reading a resolution in French to justify a failed position, or calling Jesus a Palestinian will not allow for a changed result.
M.R., the facts about 242 are precisely as I have stated them, and I would observe that you didn't actually challenge any of them other than to simply declare me as being "wrong". Gotta do better than that.
Raphael is generally correct, and H. Weizmann states so much in his autobiography. In fact, the U.N. with U.S. backing was contemplating a take over of trusteeship of Palestine upon vacation by the British prior to the declaration of independence by the Jewish Agency. Weizmann stated that no one or country granted another independence, that independence had to be taken and seized. Upon such declaration, the relevant Jewish organizations and their leadership demonstrated their ability to function as an organized polity and succeeded, both diplomatically (through obtaining recognition) and militarily (by repelling Arab aggression) in establishing a state, where the Arabs simply did not. The Arabs as a whole, today, suffer from the same failures as witnessed by the debacles in Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen. Simply stated, these are warrior peoples.
I say generally correct since Resolution 194 refers to the repatriation of ALL refugees seeking to return in peace to their homes, including Jewish refugees who originated from Arab countries. 194 does not specifically refer to Arabs from Palestine.
In another vein, one should consider the foolishness of the argument of Hammond who argues that a minority took from the "majority" and there should have been a democratic resolution to determine the political make up of Palestine. Hammond ignores the reality of the existence of the Jews in Palestine, a large minority, that would be absolutely victimized by the majority Arabs. What fool would consider submitting to something like that? Sane world leadership had already witnessed the victimization of a vibrant Jewish population in "enlightened" Europe and was not prepared at that time to allow the same to happen again in Palestine. As such Hammond ignores the holocaust parameter in the historical context of the Jews in Palestine. World leadership, including the U.S. and the Soviet Union, was not about to allow the slaughter of even more Jews by the Arabs. The common rejoinder of Arab sympathizers is to argue injustice for having to pay for the sins of Europe with respect to the Jews. However, historical FACT shows that the Mufti of Jerusalem and the Iraqi and other Arab and Muslim leadership were collaborators with the Nazis. As such they had a hand in the holocaust in Europe and such claims of innocence should be eschewed. Indeed, Arab sympathy with the Nazis was not helpful at all and underscored their express motives with respect to the Jews of Palestine.
In a broader sense, however, the conflict in Palestine should not be viewed in isolation. The U.N. does have a role to play where nations consent to live by recommendations of such a forum. The recommendations form time to time prove useful, even though recently the U.N. has been proven to be relatively useless. Accordingly, a more appropriate view of what is happening in 'Palestine' should be put into the context of India, Pakistan, Kashmir, Bangla Desh, Kosovo, Bosnia, etc.
M.R., inasmuch as you acknowledge that Israel was founded on the principle of "might makes right", we are in agreement. Our disagreement there is that you seem to accept this philosophy as having legitimacy, and I do not.
As for the democratic solution, your argument that Jews would have been "absolutely victimized by the majority Arabs" seems to be founded on the premise of an inherent anti-Jewishness of the Arab inhabitants. This is also a myth, however. The Arab population was not opposed to Jews, but to Zionism. In non-Zionist Jewish communities, Jews lived in harmony with their Arab neighbors.
Really? What about the Mufti of Jerusalem? HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE MUFTI OF JERUSALEM? (Was he a mythical person?) Wasn't this Arab leader a collaborator with Hitler? You don't deny deny this fact, do you? How tolerant was he? Wasn't he an anti Semite?
And if the Arabs were so tolerant of Jews, why were the Jews kicked out of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen after the creation of the State of Israel? Do these refugees have claims against the governments that kicked them out?
You don't deny that half of the Jews who live in Israel are refugees or the progeny of refugees from Arab countries,do you? (And by the way, today's 'democrat,multicultural' standards that you seem to advocate should classify Jewish refugees from Arab countries as being just as 'Arab' (by virtue of their native birth) as any Egyptian or Syrian or Iraqi who migrated to Palestine to live. Do you hold that a Jew from Egypt has the same right to settle in Palestine as a Muslim from Egypt? Should all so called Palestinians who are Muslim and whose families/ancestors hail from Syria, Iraq, Egypt have to leave Palestine since they really are not native Palestinians?)
You have no proof that the Arab leadership in Palestine was tolerant of the Jews, this is YOUR assumption, and given the objective political facts, a politically motivated assumption. The Arab Mufti of Jerusalem who typified the Arab political leadership was an ant Semite and a war criminal and participated in conspiring with the Nazis for the extermination of the Jews in Europe. He lived in Berlin during WWII. He was friend of Hitler and Eichmann.
Finally, your might makes right assertion is another form of anti Jewish double talk, a favorite mantra of aggressors who lose. The Jews were attacked by Arab armies, they defended themselves and defeated the Arab armies. Vanquishing an enemy attacker in self defense is not a "might makes right" event.
You might advocate for civilians who were victims of the foolish decisions of their leaders and argue that they should not have to pay for their leaders' mistakes, especially if they were not parties to and did not take part in or support 'aggressive action', but "might makes right" does not apply in a war of self defense. Try a better line.
One final question: If a Jew is a Zionist, does this excuse his or her murder by an anti-Zionist? Certainly, I am opposed to communists and Muslim fascists. I don't want to eat dinner with them. Does this give me a cause to murder one? Cut off his head? Shoot his baby and blow up his bus?
The facts are not as you have stated them and you have refused to acknowledge that the Arabs in Palestine were lead by the Grand Mufti Husseini/Husayni. He was a Nazi collaborator. He had no intention of living peacefully with any Jews, be they Zionist or non-Zionist. The real myth of your tale is the idea of a democratic bi-national state with the Arab Nazi collaborator Hysayni in charge of the Arab community (Arab Higher Committee.) What fool buys this rubbish? Why do you ignore this fact. The Arabs in Palestine were led by a Nazi sympathizer war criminal who lived in Germany during WWII. He should have been tried and hung. His progeny and successors espouse his philosophy and continue to rule the Arabs in Palestine to this very day.
The facts are precisely as I've stated them. We could discuss the matter of Husseini, but it is irrelevant to what I said, as nothing he said or did changes the fundamental fact that Jews from non-Zionist communities lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors. As I already noted, the indigenous Jews lived peacefully with the Arabs for a long time before Zionism.
The British Commission of Inquiry into the riots in 1921 noted that "there is no inherent anti-Semitism in the country, racial or religious." On the contrary, Arabs "would welcome the arrival of well-to-do and able Jews who could help to develop the country to the advantage of all sections of the community." The Arabs were opposed to Zionism, not to Jews.
As the Shaw Commission report of 1929 noted, "In less than 10 years three serious attacks have been made by Arabs on Jews. For 80 years before the first of these attacks there is no recorded instance of any similar incidents." Representatives from all sides of the conflict had testified to the fact that before the First World War "the Jews and Arabs lived side by side if not in amity, at least with tolerance, a quality which today is almost unknown in Palestine." The causes of the violence, the Commission determined, were Arab resentment towards Britain's immigration policies and denial of self-determination. "The Arab people of Palestine," the report noted, "are today united in their demand for representative government."
In 1930, Sir John Hope Simpson was commissioned to write a report on immigration and land settlement issues. He remarked on the differences between the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), founded by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and the colonization that took place under the Zionist Organization: "All the cases which are now quoted by the Jewish authorities to establish the advantageous effect of Jewish colonization on the Arabs of the neighborhood, and which have been brought to notice forcibly and frequently during the course of this inquiry, are cases relating to colonies established by the P.I.C.A., before the Keren Heyesod [JNF] came into existence. In fact, the policy of the P.I.C.A. was one of great friendship for the Arab. Not only did they develop the Arab lands simultaneously with their own, when founding their colonies, but they employed the Arab to tend their plantations. . . . It is also very noticeable, in travelling through the P.I.C.A. villages, to see the friendliness of the relations which exist between Jew and Arab. It is quite a common sight to see an Arab sitting in the verandah of a Jewish house. The position is entirely different in the Zionist colonies."
October 28, 2010 – 9:52 am
Indeed. He was never elected by the Palestinians to any representative position.
" Wasn't this Arab leader a collaborator with Hitler?"
He wasn't an Arab leader when he met Hitler. He'd been removed from any office he held. The Grand Mufti of NOWHERE. No Palestinians served for him in the Balkans.
The Palestinians of today were very likely not even born when he was booted out of office.
Also, what "non-Zionist Jewish communities" where Jews lived in "harmony" with Arabs are you talking about? Specific examples, please.
M.R., the facts are as I've stated them. As a valid generalization, Jews from non-Zionist communities lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors in Palestine. Again, the Arabs were not against Jews, but against Zionism. Nothing concerning the Mufti changes those basic facts. This is not my opinion. You wanted one example. The Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) settlements are an example. The indigenous Jewish population is another. If you want documentation of that matter, I defer to my essay, "The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination". You can get the PDF free at my website, http://www.jeremyrhammond.com. Or buy it at Lulu.com or Amazon.com in print or PDF form.
We're discussing Palestine, not Iraq, Syria, Egypt, or any of the other states you mention. That argument is irrelevant.
Your charge of me being "anti Jewish" is baseless and merely a reflection of your own moral and intellectual cowardice.
The war of '48 was a war of self-defense, yes. But not for the Jews. The Arabs took up arms to defend their rights and their property when the Zionists unilaterally, and with no legal authority or legitimacy, claimed Arab land their own and subsequently waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Arab population.
The mission against Zionism is part of the old Soviet nomenclature just as the single democratic state idea is. Anti Zionism has the proven and unmistakable aroma of anti Semitism. There are probably as many anti Zionist Jews as there are Zionist Arabs, and both exist.
However, the facts are contrary to your assertions. ALL Jews were expelled by the Arabs from the Old City in Jerusalem, all synagogues were destroyed. The Mt. Scopus campus was shut down. Jewish settlements in areas taken over by the Arab Legion were destroyed, their inhabitants either killed or expelled. No Jew of any type, Zionist, religious, reform, orthodox, European, American, in other words no Jew from anywhere was allowed to visit the old city and worship at the Western Wall until the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967. This treatment belies your assertions. Jews were hardly tolerated by the Arab leadership and this continues to this day. This is a fact that cannot be denied.
It is this knowledge, and experience with the Arab leadership and actual behavior of the Arab leadership, and their proven anti Semitism a la the Mufti that provided for international support for a Jewish state and that support continues today among people of good will.
I note that where the Arabs actually took over in Palestine there were absolutely no Jewish rights whatsoever. So much for the 'democratic' and tolerant sympathies of the Arab leadership. Note that this is the only example that the rest of the world has to go by.
Further, Mahmoud Abbas states there will not be one Jew left in the Palestine he envisions. What's that all about? Tolerance? The Palestinian Authority prohibits sale of land to a Jew upon penalty of death. Only more examples of what the Arab leadership would have done to the Jews in the so called democratic state. I don't think Arabs who lead governments know how to guarantee anybody's minority or individual rights. This type of animal simply does not exist!
The objective facts are that the Arabs did not demonstrate and have not demonstrated any tolerance towards Jews in the areas they rule or took over. (Look at how they treat each other!) This is proof of the hostile motives of the Arab leadership that cannot be denied.
Add these facts to the horror of the Mufti of Jerusalem and a reasonable person can be justified in viewing the idea of a single state in Palestine being fair to the Jews as a joke.
As an Arab and an Arabist I can see how the success of the Jews in establishing their state in Palestine would be difficult to swallow. But the Arabs were not deseized of anything and have not suffered any objectively measurable change or injustice. The individual Arab land owners remain, as a rule, the land owners. There was a mandatory political authority of western orientation (the British) replaced by the same sort of system – no real loss, only a change in authority. Truly the Arabs have fared better under so called 'occupation' by Israel than they did under the Jordanians and Egyptians.
Further, exactly what did the Arabs lose by the creation of Israel? Absolutely nothing! They did not lose a country because one did not exist. They did not lose the right to self government because they had non – they were under the British. Absolutely nothing was taken from them. Simply stated, they lacked political sophistication and institutions necessary to engage.
The problem with the Arabs is their leadership and their education toward hatred toward Jews all of whom are viewed as Zionists. Perhaps one day the Arab leadership will become reasonable and the education to hatred of Jews will moderate. At that time they will view Zionism as a positive reality
So, basically, M.R., your entire argument relies on what you see as an inherent barbarity and anti-democratic, intolerant nature of all Arabs as human beings? This type of worldview is synonymous with racism.
Your defense of Zionism and the continuity of Israel as a "Jewish State" that discriminates against its Palestinian citizens is apparently constructed upon the premise that – in your view – Jews and Arabs cannot possibly live together under a democratic, representative government with equal rights guaranteed for all under a constitution and within defined geographical borders. Therefore, you believe, Israel should be exempt from all international law that prohibits institutional racism, apartheid, and discrimination and demands that Israel abide by the international conventions, treaties, and declarations to which it is legally bound.
Can you please just admit that you oppose international law, human rights guarantees, and basic tenets of equality and self-determination when it comes to Israel's treatment of Palestinians so we can all be clear about where exactly you stand, without your silly equivocating and awful justifications getting in the way?
Being honest about your own call for Jewish exceptionalism and superiority is the first step to admitting that you are, in fact, a textbook racist who believes that Arabs are biologically, culturally, and intellectually inferior and require colonial domination by Jews (and Westernized Christians, presumably), regardless of the inalienable Palestinian right to self-determination and common humanitarian decency.
That would clarify things a whole lot as well – it would also be the first truthful thing you've said so far.
Nima Shirazi is a complete idiot who resorts to ridicule instead of reason. I am not a racist but I am prejudiced against those who deny the holocaust, call Jews the sons of apes and pigs, falsely accuse Jews of poisoning Arab drinking water, accuse Jews of using the blood of Arabs to make matzah, accuse Israelis of going to war so they can harvest organs of the dead, and on and on. By any objective standard Israel is a free country where Arabs and Jews live together in spite of these provocative accusations. You have a problem with a Jewish state because you hate Jews, pure and simple. Also, the ONLY place in the middle east where Arabs are treated as human beings in in Israel. I've been there and have seen it. I also have the pleasure of knowing Afghanis, Kurds, Iraqis (Shiite and Sunni) Syrians, Egyptians and Arab Palestinians who completely agree with me. They despise their governments. The Palestinian Arabs despise Arafat and his holocaust denying successor Abbas (who received a PhD from a Soviet institution with a thesis on holocaust denial, in case you didn't know.) You spew out blather about racism and discrimination but you know nothing about it. Jews and Arabs live in Israel as equal citizens. The Arabs are a minority. But they are allowed to live there. Abbas has declared there will not be even 1 Jew left in the state of Palestine he envisions. Who is the racist here? I have heard nothing but support of this position from other Arabs like yourself.
But there are some former Arabs who have straightened themselves out and are trying to wake people like you up to your tragic illusions. These are Walid Shoebatt and Mosab Yousef. These sane and normal Arab people agree with ME and not you. Do you know who they are? You should read their books Nima Shirazi. Or are you afraid of the truth?
Look at your people, look at yourself? Where is your pride as a human being? Why do you support suicide bombing of people riding on the bus? Do you think Daniel Pearl should have lost his head simply because he was a Jew? Tell me, is this racism or what?
It is because of dupes like you that Arab society cannot move forward. May I suggest a web site for you: aifdemocracy.org
I am prejudiced against you if all you can say is a Jewish state is racist . This is pure ignorance. First, of all Jews are not a race. There are black Jews, white Jews, Arab Jews (yes, Arab Jews!), Chinese Jews – the truly multicultural people. So get educated and quit calling Jews a race. Remember, even you can become a Jew!
Also, what is this nonsense about Jewish exceptionalism? Give me an example. And exactly what international conventions has Israel violated?
Finally, Arabs do deserve the rights of all human beings, "common humanitarian decency" as you call it. One of the basic rights I would say is not to be blown up in a market place because I happen to be a Shiite Moslem Arab and some Sunni Moslem Arab dude hates me. Or because Hamas hates Fatah. Look at what you Arabs are doing to each other, and then look how much better things are for Arabs inside Israel! Personally, I sympathize with you because of the way your brain has obviously been perverted, and because of the culture of hatred and death (i.e. death to America and death to the Jews … have you heard this stuff before?) and holocaust denial and Jew demonization that you and your people have to endure. Do you really want death to the Jews? To America? The big satan and the little satan? Do you want your mother blown up when she goes shopping for cucumbers? Do you want to be executed for selling your home to a Jew? You poor thing! Quit blaming the Jews and Israelis for the Arabs' problems! Why don't you speak out against the sickness of hatred and violence in Arab society? This is a true embarrassment to normal people. Yes I said NORMAL. Anyone who accepts the Arab culture in Palestine or Iraq or Syria or Lebanon of murder, assassination and market place bombs and bombs in the other sect's mosque is really sick. And those who point the finger at Israel and Jews while refusing to speak out against the sickness in their own family first only adds to the sickness.
M.R. begins his comment by stating, "Nima Shirazi is a complete idiot who resorts to ridicule instead of reason." Yet Nima is not the one who feels it necessary to call anyone a "complete idiot" to make his arguments. He rather stated the facts. Which is the only response this comment of M.R.'s requires.
Pretty much the only correct thing you've written is that Jewish people around the world do not constitute a "race." Please spread the word (Netanyahu won't be too happy!).
Additionally, as your entire attack on me (and "my" people) is premised on your assumption – or insistence – that I myself am of Arab descent, I feel the need to let you in on a little secret: I'm not an Arab, nor am I a Muslim. But hey, all of us with crazy, foreign-sounding scary names must be Arabs, right? Wrong. Sorry to disappoint. (http://www.sadtrombone.com/)
Now, in lieu of addressing any of your myriad irrelevant statement and accusations, I will just try and use my perverted mind to contemplate why you ended the following demand with a question mark:
"Look at your people, look at yourself?"
Best of luck, M.R., with whatever.
Hammond sets up a straw man argument positing by deduction that UN Sanction is necessary for the existence of the Jewish state in Palestine (Israel.) This argument is nothing but folly and tells us nothing new. Of course the Arabs were against the creation of this state, but to claim there was collective theft by one group from another is a strange idea.
Let's get the setting correct here: Only one unified group of people who were politically organized made a coordinated and sophisticated claim to establish a state on a specific territory. A declaration was made at a politically ripe moment, in part induced by the the POLITICAL resolution (UNGA 181) in support of partition advanced by the U.N. Upon the declaration of independence, the new government of the Jewish state sought RECOGNITION from the international community.
Thus as President Truman declared:
"This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional Government thereof.
"The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel."
Note the phrase "de facto authority", meaning in this context that the authority is recognized as a matter of fact and not as a matter of law. This, in pure essence, is political reality and not a matter of jurisprudence.
To attempt to make the matter one of law instead of politics is a form of windmill tilting. States exist by virtue of their organized polity on the ground and not by judgment and order. They are created and declared by their citizens and not by any judge weighing the virtue of national proposition.
One can debate the meaning of a certain event, such as the adoption of UNGAR 181, and how the same may have been misconstrued, such as Hammond seeks to do in furtherance of, yes, his political views. The thesis in this article is that 181 has been misconstrued and utilized for a legal basis for legal legitimacy, not political legitimacy.
However, there is no such thing as a legal basis in the context of the partition of Palestine, since all the members of that community did not establish a legal framework among themselves to determine how they would partition the land they shared and inhabited. These are complex issues that require a modicum of cooperation between the population as a whole to work out in situ but this did not happen.
Take for instance the situation in Quebec, where there is a movement for an independent French state in Canada (Parti Quebecois.) There have been several votes organized by the citizens of Quebec where the creation of a new state has been proposed. The existing government has responded to this political issue and a procedure to resolve this POLITICAL issue has ended up in referendum, and has been rejected by the population as a whole. Does this mean that the French nationalist movement in Canada is illegal or racist? Perhaps in the future there will be a movement to partition Quebec into French and English sectors, but this is a political issue and not a legal one. However, the movement for French independence in Canada remains alive to some degree.
Or take the situation of the American Civil War. No European power recognized the Confederate States of America (CSA), a political entity that declared independence, but they continued to trade with the confederacy. The USA declared secession to be illegal. The CSA claimed de jure status also. But the POLITICS of the situation prevented Great Britain from recognizing the CSA. The USA enforced its position militarily (might makes right?) in a war that lasted from 1860 – 1865. However, the issue with respect to the legitimacy of the CSA was not a legal matter but a political and military one. However, even in defeat, there are those in the US who remain loyal to the confederacy (a dead political movement) and you can still see the 'stars and bars' flying throughout the south, with diehards echoing the old mantra "the south will rise again."
Or, more recently, take the India/Pakistan/Kashmir partition which occurred at the time that Israel declared independence. There are continued border disputes between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, and there have been wars between the two countries. East Pakistan was invaded by India, with the creation of Bangla Desh being the result. The question of whether the actions of India and native Bengalis were legal is irrelevant. Countries outside of the region urged the parties to settle their differences peacefully.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan refused for several years to recognize Bangla Desh and enlisted Chinese POLITICAL support to keep BD out of the UN. Finally, POLITICAL pressure exerted on Pakistan resulted in the recognition by Pakistan of BD, a country created by force of arms. Again a POLITICAL and not a legal issue.
The POLITICAL decision of the US and the Soviet Union to recognize the newly created State of Israel was a substantial POLITICAL victory of the Jews and a POLITICAL defeat for the Arabs in Palestine. Indeed, many Arabs attacked the Arab Higher Command for its POLITICAL failures in addition to its military failures after defeat of the Arab armies by the nascent and fragile state. Of course, this POLITICAL success would be meaningless had the state been crushed as was hoped for by the Arabs. Some Arab countries continue to withhold their recognition of the State of Israel while others have executed peace treaties with her, again a POLITICAL act.
Hammond's thesis in this article is part of a continuing attempt to cast the emergence of the Jewish state in Palestine as illegitimate and his latest argument is based on a false premise – that the state of Israel is illegal since UNGAR 181 was not a basis for the establishment of the state and as such, any claim for legitimacy to independence based on 181 is also illegal and misguided. But this thesis is irrelevant. The impetus to the establishment of any political entity, be it village, city, county, state or country is POLITICAL in nature ab initio, and dependent first upon its citizenry who conform to a national consciousness and matching and functional political institutions, and then upon other parties for recognition. Whining about legalities and justice is simply irrelevant.
Finally, there are those who complain that the Jewish State of Israel is the only country in the world that must continuously defend its legitimacy. However, this is simply not the case. Defending legitimacy is a normal POLITICAL function of every viable state! Look for instance at other countries in the area, such as Iraq (is it Sunni, Shiite or Kurdish) or Lebanon (is it Shiite, Lebanese, Christian or Syrian?) Each and every country in the world constantly faces challenges to its identity and legitimacy. Granted, this takes place on various levels (i.e. to Euro or not to Euro, border and immigration issues in the U.S., identity politics in Germany, minarets in Switzerland, Wilders in the Netherlands) but debates that form the national consciousness, racial, religious or otherwise, of EVERY nation, happen everywhere, every day and on many, many levels. The POLITICS of nationhood is a continuous and ongoing struggle everywhere. We have recently witnessed the "integration" of Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the POLITICAL disintegration of the eastern bloc countries. Was the revolution and summary execution of Ceausescu in Rumania legal? Carried out by standards that would be approved by the International Court of Justice? DOES THIS MATTER? Of course not, this was pure POLITICS!
The State of Israel is a successful and young country. The future success of the country depends on vigorous debate to shape its national consciousness and POLITICS. It is a polity that has a stable democratic process and judiciary that is respected. Its citizens are loyal and dedicated to the success of the country, and participate and respect, to a necessary and practical degree, the political and judicial processes. The justice system protects individuals, businesses and property and there is a healthy economy. The citizenry of country defends its borders against aggressors and has an effective foreign political and military policy (some whine and call it aggressive and expansive.) These are the ingredients that make up a successful and legitimate POLITICAL entity. This is strictly a matter of POLITICS and will never be a matter of law, not even for the Jewish State of Israel, my dear Hammond.
I've read Jeremy Hammond's article and his following comments throughout the debate underneath. And I've read the posting my M.R.
I would like to believe that any sane and credible person would more closely subscribe to M.R.'s well thought out treatise than Mr. Hammond's dry and unimaginative words, which always seem to finish with something like "reader, you are welcome to try to substantiate your assertion I've made "plenty of errors" by pointing out even a single one.
Well, I for one have pointed out factual errors as have others. That doesn't seem to matter. Mr. Hammond is 100% correct and everyone else, while entitled to an opinion, better not count on their factual reporting being thought correct.
Jeremy Hammond is undoubtedly a bright boy, learned and well researched. None of this means he is correct. History has been strewn with the ashes great orators and writers who could convince followers of their brilliance. And yet those who think of themselves as infallible are so often wrong.
At the end of the day, he is professional propagandist. Self anointed and self important. His writings are fun to read but should not be taken too seriously.
M.R., what I argued is that the U.N. neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any kind of legal authority or legitimacy upon the Zionist leadership to unilaterally declare the establishment of the state of Israel, and, additionally, that the U.N. did not have the authority to do either anyhow.
I don't see that you've actually challenged those arguments in any way.
A) Read the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel. "and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. " Israel obliged itself before becoming a UN Member. BEFORE illegally claiming any territories outside of the extent of it's declared sovereignty.
B) http://wp.me/pDB7k-KL On May 14th 1948 Israel's borders were defined.
On May 22 1948 and June 15th 1949 the Israeli Government confirmed it's borders in correspondence to the UNSC!
May 15, 1948 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/decad169.asp
May 22, 1948 http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/B4085A930E0529C98025649D00410973
June 15, 1949 http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1947-1974/2+Israel-s+position+on+its+frontiers.htm
May 15, 1948 Letter From the Agent of the Provisional Government of Israel to the President of the United States,
"MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: I have the honor to notify you that the state of Israel has been proclaimed as an independent republic within frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947, and that a provisional government has been charged to assume the rights and duties of government for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel, for defending the state against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law. The Act of Independence will become effective at one minute after six o'clock on the evening of 14 May 1948, Washington time." Also available as PDF from the Truman Library
May 22, 1948 The reply of the Provisional Government of Israel (S/766) to the questions addressed to the "Jewish authorities in Palestine" was transmitted by the acting representative of Israel at the United Nations on May 22.
Question (a): Over which areas of Palestine do you actually exercise control at present over the entire area of the Jewish State as defined in the Resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947?
"In addition, the Provisional Government exercises control over the city of Jaffa; Northwestern Galilee, including Acre, Zib, Base, and the Jewish settlements up to the Lebanese frontier; a strip of territory alongside the road from Hilda to Jerusalem; almost all of new Jerusalem; and of the Jewish quarter within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The above areas, outside the territory of the State of Israel, are under the control of the military authorities of the State of Israel, who are strictly adhering to international regulations in this regard. The Southern Negev is uninhabited desert over which no effective authority has ever existed."
June 15, 1949 Israel-s position on its frontiers VOLUMES 1-2: 1947-1974
"As for the frontier between the State of Israel and the area west of the Jordan which is not included in Israel…"
Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907 Art. 42 SECTION III
"Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised. "
C) Israel is a UN Member State, it is obliged to the UN Charter IN IT'S ENTIRETY
"One can't "invade" one's own land."
By your logic, the UK can legally attack Canada or Australia because it's "English" (or 'white', depending on how you look at it) land. You are suggesting that internationally-legal sovereign rights are less legitimate than ethnic nationalism? If that's true, Europe is in a lot of trouble. Not to mention, the Middle East where states were established with arbitrary borders that divided countless ethnic groups (eg, Kurds, DRuze etc.) You're generalizing that "Arabs" are a homogeneous people with appropriate nationalistic rights. In case you haven't been paying attention, the many segments of the Arab world – which is really the Arabic-speaking (mostly) world – are incredibly fragmented along religious, ethnic, linguistic and cultural lines, and have been fighting amongst themselves for hundreds of years. When Jews began to return to Palestine, they were certainly in a minority, but since when do we believe that a minority group has NO rights simply because the majority says so. And they were a minority as a result of an expulsion and centuries of discrimination and massacres. To refuse an exiled group a right of return is to punish the victims twice. Indeed, this right of return is precisely what the Palestinians are reasonably demanding.
And the Arabs themselves were very split at the time, some identifying as Turkish loyalists, others supporting Arab nationalism and still others supporting Zionism, which they felt would benefit the region. In any event, the argument is irrelevant. Arab residents of the region didn't have sovereign rights (which are different than civil and religious rights) any more than English-speaking Americans have the right to attack Canada to prevent Vancouver from becoming too Asian ; the Ottoman Empire ruled until it was defeated by the British, which was conferred all legal rights by the international community. The Arabs might not have liked that (they didn't) but such is the world.
The fact is the UN recommended partition as the only viable solution after decades of fighting. The alternative was a continuation of a this civil war. and even more deaths. So the Jews said 'yes' and the 'Arab' world said no. If you want to criticize Israel for ignoring Security council resolutions you must also concede that this mess began with an Arab refusal to accept Security Council Resolution 181. There could have been a Palestinian state 62 years ago. It was not Israel that prevented that. Would it have been better if Arabs and Jews could have laid down their guns and created a single state in which all faiths and peoples were respected? Of course. Did that look like it was going to happen in 1947-48? Not a chance. Sometimes the best solution to a problem is a choice between bad and worse. That doesn't make it any less legitimate.
I've employed no such logic as that which you attribute to me, Moe. I've no interest in debating strawman arguments.
No, the partition plan was in no way viable. Such an injustice as the plan consisted of could never be a solution. The only viable solution was that proposed by the Arabs, an independent Palestine in which the rights of the Jewish minority were recognized and protected under a Constitution establishing a representative democratic government that would include Jewish representation. No, the mess did not begin with the Arabs' most reasonable rejection of General Assembly Resolution 181 (not a Security Council resolution). It began with the onset of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, well before 1947, which was premised upon the rejection of the rights of the native population of Palestine.
Jeremy, you continue to speak the double talk that is not accurate (see my post above on article 242). The Zionist movement to establish a Jewish state was finally recognized in San Remo, Italy in 1920 where the Principle Allied Powers, who had the rights of disposition, gave the Jewish people the right to their homeland in the area that was largely known as Palestine. The Jewish people did not reject rights of the native population, and in fact, the Principle Allied Powers explicitly mentioned that the civil and religious rights of the native population must be observed, though there was no mention of political rights. This is important because the very next line said that the political rights of the Jewish people had to be observed in Arab countries. The result? Israel has lived up to it's part of the bargain but the Arab countries have not.
The incorporation of the Balfour Agreement was adopted in San Remo and by 1922 became a part of International Law by the League of Nations that is still valid to this day. If you are so entrenched as believing in International Law, then perhaps you had better bone up on this one because it's on the books.
Barry, see my reply above re: 242. Your interpretation is unsustainable.
Also, vis a vis San Remo, the Mandate, etc., you are wrong on that count, as well. The notion that Party A has some kind of legal right to take land from Party B and give it to Party C is asinine, prima facie invalid. I would observe that the International Court of Justice has pointed out that , the creation of a Mandate under the Covenant of the League of Nations "did not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty."
As a final observation, your arguments rest on the assumption of rejection of the Arab Palestinian's right to self-determination. That speaks for itself.
I suppose you would rather the Turks be back controlling large swathes of the mideast.
On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:
"Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected."
On September 21, 1922, the then President Warren G. Harding signed the joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
Here is how members of congress expressed their support for the creation of a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine – Eretz-Israel (Selective text read from the floor of the U.S. Congress by the Congressman from New York on June 30, 1922). All quotes included in this document are taken verbatim from the given source.
(Rept. NO. 1172)
Representative Walter M. Chandler from New York – I want to make at this time, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, my attitude and views upon the Arab question in Palestine very clear and emphatic. I am in favor of carrying out one of the three following policies, to be preferred in the order in which they are named:
(1) That the Arabs shall be permitted to remain in Palestine under Jewish government and domination, and with their civil and religious rights guaranteed to them through the British mandate and under terms of the Balfour declaration.
(2) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, they shall be required to sell their lands at a just valuation and retire into the Arab territory which has been assigned to them by the League of Nations in the general reconstruction of the countries of the east.
(3) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, under conditions of right and justice, or to sell their lands at a just valuation and to retire into their own countries, they shall be driven from Palestine by force.
"Mr. Speaker, I wish to discuss briefly each of these alternatives in order. And first let me read the now celebrated Balfour declaration of date of November 2, 1917, during the progress of the Great War, and afterwards incorporated in the preamble of the British mandate authorized by the League of Nations. The Balfour declaration was in the following language:
His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, 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 the Jews in any other country.
"If this is not a condensed and at the same time a complete bill of rights both for the Arabs of Palestine and for the Jews who intend to remain in their present homelands outside of Palestine, I have never read or seen one. It is conceded by the Arabs themselves that the present government of the country under the British mandate and through the Zionist organization as an administrative agency is infinitely better than the government of the Turks who were chased out of the country by Allenby, the British general. It is probably better than any that the Arabs could create and maintain for themselves.
"I respectfully submit that the Arabs in Palestine should be and would be happy and content under the present government of that country if it were not for Turkish and Arab agitators, who travel around over the land stirring up trouble by making false representations concerning the true character of the Zionist movement, and by preaching a kind of holy war against the immigrant Jews who arrive from day to day. The Arabs are well represented in the personnel of the present Palestine administration, which has recognized their language as one of the official languages of the country, and has given official standing to the Moslem religion.
"In the second place, if the Arabs do not wish to remain in Palestine under Jewish government and domination there is plenty of room outside in purely Arab surroundings. The British Government and her allies made overtures and gave pledges to the Arab people to furnish them lands and protect their freedom in consideration of Arab alliance with the Allies during the World War. That pledge has been kept. The Hedjaz kingdom was established in ancient Arabia, and Hussein, Grand Sheriff of Mecca, was made king and freed from all Turkish influence. The son of King Hussein, Prince Feisal, is now the head of the kingdom of Mesopotamia [Iraq], and Arab predominance in that country has been assured by the Allies to the Arab people.
"Mesopotamia is alone capable of absorbing 30,000,000 people, according to a report submitted to the British Government by the Great English engineer, Sir William Wilcocks. Arab rights are also fully recognized and protected by the French mandate over Syria. There are also several flourishing Arabic cultural and political colonies in Egypt. In short, the Arab-speaking populations of Asia and Africa number about 38,000,000 souls and occupy approximately 2,375,000 square miles, many times larger than the territory of Great Britain. In other words under the reconstruction of the map of the east, the Arabs have been given practical control of Greater Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and parts of Egypt, which gives them an average of 38 acres per person. If the Arabs are compelled to leave Palestine and turn it over entirely to the Jews, it is admitted that the Arab race would still be one of the wealthiest landowning races on the earth. Therefore, I contend that if they will not consent to live peaceably with the Jews, they should be made to sell their lands and retire to places reserved for them somewhere in Arabia [Saudi], Syria, Mesopotamia, or Egypt, that suit them best, and where they can worship Allah, Mahomet [Muhammad], and the Koran to their heart's content. After all is said, the fact remains that the Arabs have more lands than they need, and the Jews have none. I am in favor of a readjustment under the Balfour declaration, without too great regard to nice distinctions in the matter of the question of self-determination. This thought brings me to my third proposal heretofore mentioned, that the Arabs should be driven out of Palestine by the British and Jews, or by somebody else, if they will not listen to the voice of reason and of justice.
"I shall probably be told that, regardless of the question of land and property rights, the Arabs have an interest in the holy places around Jerusalem. Admitting that their claims in this regard are just, there should be no trouble along this line. There is no reason to believe that Jews and Christians would deny them access to the holy places in the pilgrimages that they might desire to make from their Arab countries. But if the rights of the Jews to their ancient homeland are to be made dependent, as a final question, upon Moslem interests in the holy places around Jerusalem, I am willing and prepared to repudiate these rights entirely and to shut the Arabs out altogether."
Barry, as I've already noted, the International Court of Justice has observed that the establishment of a Mandate under the League of Nations did not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty. Thus, the whole premise of your argument is false.
Tell me something Hammond, if the UN did not consider UNGAR 181 as being substantively legitimate, why then did the UN as a body admit the Jewish State of Israel as a member of the UN pursuant to passage of 181? You're not going to argue that the vote to admit Israel to the UN never took place are you? Certainly the member states of the UN understood the meaning of 181 and this was confirmed by the admission of Israel to that body.
Indeed, the fact that at that time of the declaration, before the whole world to see, and with the clear expression of the declaration of independence making reference to UNGAR 181, the UN conferred legitimacy on Israel by admitting her and thereby accepting the declaration in itself as being LEGITIMATE, n'est pas? (That's French for "correct" or "isn't this so" in case you didn't know, and to help you understand my dear Hammond.)
Barry Lubotta
"Representative Walter M. Chandler from New York – I want to make at this time, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, my attitude and views upon the Arab question in Palestine very clear and emphatic. I am in favor of carrying out one of the three following policies, to be preferred in the order in which they are named:
(1) That the Arabs shall be permitted to remain in Palestine under Jewish government and domination, and with their civil and religious rights guaranteed to them through the British mandate and under terms of the Balfour declaration."
The arrogant jerk had obviously not bothered to read the Mandate Article 7
UNGA Res was non binding. It outlined the legal conditions (binding) under which either party could declare Independent Sovereignty (binding on the entity declaring and on the surrounding states), The resolution itself could not possibly be binding. Independence by it's very nature is UNILATERAL. No one can force an entity to be or declare Independence
Furthermore there is no article requiring co-singing, this too would have been against the very basic notions of independence.
Either party could declare, independently of the other. No party was obliged.
The Arab States had a right to completely ignore it. Israel chose to define itself by it. May 15, 1948 Letter From the Agent of the Provisional Government of Israel to the President of the United States,
"MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: I have the honor to notify you that the state of Israel has been proclaimed as an independent republic within frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947, and that a provisional government has been charged to assume the rights and duties of government for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel, for defending the state against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law. The Act of Independence will become effective at one minute after six o'clock on the evening of 14 May 1948, Washington time." http://wp.me/PDB7k-Y#look
Israel was recognized by the majority of the International Community of Nations based on this notification, over riding any Arab States legal objections. Proven by the fact that Israel is recognized as an Independent Sovereign State & UN Member State
Israel CONFIRMED it's frontiers May 22nd 1948 and June 15th 1949 in statements to the UNSC, BEFORE it illegally claimed any territories outside of it's recognized frontiers. http://wp.me/pDB7k-KL
The Israeli Declaration of Independence was not a legal pleading, but a political announcement. In any event, I agree that it erred in attributing the legitimacy of Israel to the UN General Assembly.
The actual legality of Jewish control over Palestine comes from acts of the League of Nations, the 'Palestine Mandate' and the 'San Remo Conference of 1920′. Acts of the League were absorbed into the UN by the UN charter.
As the lands of the defunct Ottoman Empire were distributed, national rights went to Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Later, a piece of Palestine was cut off to make the Arab monarchy of Jordan. The Jews were given Palestine, by international law, provided they protected the "Civil and religious" rights of others. Despite massive Arab violence, Israel has endeavored to protect the rights of Arabs. Arab citizens of Israel have more prosperity and freedom than the Arabs in the camps in Lebanon, Syria or Jordan, or the citizens of Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
See: http://www.netanyahu.org/inlawreglano.html
See: http://www.acpr.org.il/ENGLISH-NATIV/02-issue/grief-2.htm
Of course, all of the above means only that Israel, and the West Bank settlements, are legal under international law. But international law does not make history. History is made by economics, natural events, military confrontations, human nature, and possibly class struggle. Israel has a strong economy, great people, and an excellent military, long may it wave.
Also, of course, history is influenced by essayists and their ideas. Here I think Israel is not really doing so well.
Your argument is incorrect, Freddy. As the highest court in the world, the International Court of Justice, has noted, the creation of a Mandate under the Covenant of the League of Nations "did not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty." As the ICJ has also observed, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is "occupied Palestinian territory".
1. The ICJ doesn't have jurisdiction, their advisory opinions are as binding as yours or mine. It is not the "Highest court" unless they are smoking something illegal.
2. The Mandate did not create 'cession' as Palestine was already split off from the Ottoman Empire, yet outside the sovereignty of any state.
3. The clear and unambiguous purpose of the Mandate system was to create sovereign states. Which it did. If Israel is not legally sovereign, then neither is Syria or Iraq.
4. The West Bank cannot be occupied "Palestinian" territory, as there is no such nation, and there was no such nation at the time of its takeover in the 1967 war, when the West Bank was wrested from Jordan.
The ICJ most certainly did have jurisdiction in the case in which it judged that the creation of a Mandate under the Convenant of the League of Nations "did not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty." And it most certainly did have jurisdiction, and was duty-bound to comply with the U.N. request to issue an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of the wall, in which it judged that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are "occupied Palestinian territory".
I'm afraid it doesn't bode well for your argument that the ICJ is a more credible legal authority than Freddy.
Let's talk about self-determination.
Iraq (up until recently at least): An illegitimate state that negated the self-determination of its majority Shiite population.
Jordan: An illegitimate state that negates the self-determination of its majority Palestinian population.
Syria: An illegitimate state run by an Alawite hyper-minority that negates the self-determination of its majority population.
Lebanon: Actually run by Syrians/Iranians which negates the self-determination of its majority population.
PLO: Founded by The Arab League, and not Palestinians. At the time, the organization was only interested in negating the self-determination of the Jewish majority in Israel. It had little ambitions for the self-determination of Palestinians in Egyptian Gaza, or those in the Jordanian West Bank. Recently, PA President Abbas requested from the Arab League instructions on whether to renew peace talks with the Israelis. Why didn't Abbas go to his own people- why did he negate the self-determination of the Palestinians?
Israel: Majority of the population is Jewish- the civil rights of Arabs are protected. The principle of self-determination thus legitimizes the State of Israel.
Clearly, Hammond's interest in self-determination is limited to his desire to delegitimize Israel. Indeed, Hammond's interest in law is how it can be used to promote lawlessness.
"Israel is legally obligated to recognize the right of return"
Not quite:
1)The Right Of Return is generally based on non-binding UNGA resolutions. 2) The Right Of Return does not include descendants of refugees.
3) Israel had invited refugees to return, but they refused and thus, have waived their rights. The resolution does not call for the return of refugees, but rather calls on Israel to "permit" the refugees to return. The Israelis have already complied.
4) Resolution 194 conditions the right of return to those "wishing to.. live at peace with their neighbours". The PLO's demand of the Right Of Return is manifestly a non-peaceful one. It's in their documented official policy.
Hammond's interest in this right, is not based on compassion for Palestinians who are discriminated against by Arab gov'ts, but based on his animosity towards Israel.
Ephraim, the question is one of recognizing equal rights to self-determination for both Arabs and Jews. Your comments are meaningless inasmuch as they are premised upon an assumption of rejection of the right to self-determination of the Arab Palestinians.
The League of Nations did not call for equal rights for Arabs and Jews in Palestine. Arabs got their own nations of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Jews got sovereignty over Palestine.
If unequal rights were really your issue, you would be up in arms at the exclusion of Jews and Christians from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The League of Nations did not confer "sovereignty over Palestine" to the Jews, nor could it. As already noted, the International Court of Justice has observed that the creation of a Mandate under the Covenant of the League of Nations "did not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty."
The rejection of the right of the Arab Palestinians to self-determination is the issue. As for your logic to the contrary, it's a non sequitur: my government doesn't support such policies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as it does the policy of rejectionism of the Israeli government.
Jeremy, there were two distinct comments within a single post. The first, related to the lack of self-determination within Arab countries and questions why (some) pro-Palestinian activists are not concerned about those Arabs (which include Palestinians). That comment was based on facts and not on any premise.
The second comment was regarding to the nature on Israel's obligation under resolutions calling for the Right Of Return. Not a single one of the four points was based on a premise of rejecting anyone's self-determination.
In any case, you argue that the "comments are meaningless" because they are based on a premise. It could be that the premise is wrong, but the conclusion is correct. In terms of basic logic: The law of Modus Tollens states that if a conclusion is shown false, then so is the premise false. However, proving the premise false doesn't disprove the conclusion.
Ephraim, Israel was founded on the premise of the rejection of the Arab Palestinian's right to self-determination. It continues to reject that right today, illegally occupying Palestinian land, including East Jerusalem, and building illegal settlements contrary to it's obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Charter.
Your language: Translation: "Bla bla bla bla. I can't refute a single point of fact or logic you've presented. Bla bla bla bla bla."
My language: Had the Arabs accepted partition in 1947, they would have had 7/8 of the land under the Palestinian Mandate, and equal rights within Israel. Explain how keeping 7/8 and sharing 1/8 is a violation of self-determination. Self-determination does not mean exclusive plenary political control. Self-determination is not identical with full sovereignty.
You have shown lack of concern for self-determination for Arabs elsewhere in the region. I doubt you actually believe in the concept.
Ephraim, the Arabs owned 85% of the land of Palestine and the Jews just 7%. Had the Arabs accepted the partition plan, it would have meant surrendering their right of self-determination and handing over most of their property to the Jews for their state. This plan was outrageous, unjust, and otherwise totally unreasonable. Characterizing it as somehow being a missed opportunity is simply asinine. No people in their right mind would accept such a plan as the Arabs were asked to do.
It's the Jews who rejected the only just solution proposed, which was for the world community to recognize the independence of Palestine and establish there a single democratic state in which the rights of the Jewish minority were recognized and protected under a constitution that would also guarantee them representation in the legislative assembly. It's the Jews who missed the opportunity in this case, not the Arabs.
"Ephraim, the Arabs owned 85% of the land of Palestine"
Not true. Most of the land was state-owned.
The rest of your comment is not revelant to the point I made- which it seems you have ignored: Self-determination does necessarily imply sovereignty. Recall that Arabs received 7/8 of Mandatory Palestine. The Arabs on the remaining 1/8 were given equal rights. It's a tough sell to prove that a denial of self-determination. And you haven't done so.
Another point, (though it be peripheral): You claim that the Arabs proposed a democratic state. Given that the Arabs never established a democratic state for their own people, have continuously violated Palestinian rights in particular, were allied with anti-democratic movements- how can such a proposal, (assuming it did exist) be taken seriously?
No, much of the land was state owned, but Arabs were in possession of 85% of it. Self-determination is the exercise of sovereignty. By definition. The Arabs were denied their right to self-determination. By definition. The Zionists rejected the Arab proposal for a democratic solution. You can dismiss that fact, but you can't change it.
October 27, 2010 – 5:44 pm
"Iraq (up until recently at least): An illegitimate state…"
Iraq became an Independent State in 1932 by the same Customary International Laws under which Israel became a State in 1948.
Why do you spout complete rubbish?
"Jordan: An illegitimate state that negates the self-determination of its majority Palestinian population"
Same. BTW all citizens of Jordan are Jordanian
"Syria: An illegitimate state.."
Same You're spouting drivel
"1)The Right Of Return is generally based on non-binding UNGA resolutions."
RoR is based on the UNHCR Statute, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter and Customary International Law. The same rights apply to Jewish folk if they have not forgone their right by becoming a citizen of a country other than that of return
" 2) The Right Of Return does not include descendants of refugees"
Correct. The Palestinians have never claimed RoR for lineal descendants. Their claim is based on UNGA Res 194. UNGA Res is based on the UNHCR definition of refugees.
"3) Israel had invited refugees to return"
Twaddle Israel was denying RoR by Aug 1948, based on the spurious and, according to the Declaration for the Establishment of the State pf Israel, the mathematical impossible notion of a demographic threat . (If they were to have stayed per the Declaration there was no mention of a demographic threat. Yet if they were to have returned a few weeks later (Aug 1948), they would be a demographic threat)
"..but they refused and thus, have waived their rights."
It wasn't EVER offered. They maintain their rights by not taking citizenship in a country other than that of return.
" The resolution does not call for the return of refugees, but rather calls on Israel to "permit" the refugees to return."
Point out the word 'permit'
" The Israelis have already complied."
They have not. Family unification is not RoR for refugees.
"4) Resolution 194 conditions the right of return to those "wishing to.. live at peace with their neighbours". The PLO's demand of the Right Of Return is manifestly a non-peaceful one."
RoR is an indivdual right. It ihas NOTHING to do with the stance of entities. The PLO can only really argue that the right be recognized.
Furthermore the UTTER STUPIDITY of your argument lies in the fact that were they to return and undertake to live in peace in Israel, THEY WOULD NOT BE A PART OF Palestine under the PLO or any other regime in Palestine. How &*(*^% stupid can you be?
"Hammond's interest in this right, is not based on compassion for Palestinians who are discriminated against by Arab gov'ts, but based on his animosity towards Israel."
Hammond has based his stance on the laws and conventions.
You base your replies on completely stupid waffle.
I am horrified by this discussion. Mr. Hammond, it is your failure to justify the existence and acceptance of Israel that makes you a source of motivation to prevent compromise. It matters not one wit to a single Jewish mother or father whether your reasoning is right or wrong. It is the peaceful future for their children that matters. There is more than sufficient reason to believe that Jews need a place of safety from Arabs, Muslims, Leftists and raw anti-Semites. Israel is that place. Anything else denies Darwin's insights, thus making your own thinking more than irrelevant. Frankly, if you insist on a zero-sum game, then I prefer for the Jews to win.
Jerry, for any just solution to the conflict to be found, a proper understanding of its roots and recognition of the injustices which occurred in the past is crucial. Ignorance of the truth will only result in more hatred and violence.
Roots are interesting, Mr. Hammond, but they constitute a child's game when stacked against the future consequences of "justice.'"
Allow me to recall to you a catch-phrase of the 1960 Civil Rights – "No Justice, No Peace." That idea was essentially a threat of violence – as in the Middle East today. The way things turned out in the United States was the consequence of the opposite of the phrase – "No Peace, No Justice." Racial peace in the United States has stemmed from the 1950s government decision to integrate the races. The call for Justice in your sense would surely have resulted in a different United States and may still result in chaos. I am not sanguine about the perversion of the Voting Rights Act to apply only to "minorities" in the current culture of the Department of Justice.
The bottom line is that Israel is safest with the broadest geographical basis. Let the Arabs swallow its current boundaries for the sake of Peace. Being able to accept Israel in the Arab geographical center means that Islam can change and adjust. If Islam cannot adjust, the world, not merely Israel, is in for a hell of a time in the near- and intermediate-future. And, I reiterate, a small bit of that future rests with people like you who insist upon draconian justice for the Jews only. Your current call for Justice for the Palestinians is sophist in light of your inability to foresee or even consider the future meaning of a "just" world for the Jews. Thus, your words defy reality, which includes the future.
So you want peace without justice? If that's not what you're trying to argue, you lost me. And if that's what you're saying, its asininity speaks for itself.
I am struck by this demand for 'justice' by the Arabs and their fellow interlocutors. Especially since they had an equal if not a greater hand in creating their own 'stew'. Certainly justice demands that Arabs take responsibility for their actions mostly motivated by blind hatred of the Jews and waging war from a presumed position of strength by numbers (i.e. Arab majority.) But when a group wages war and loses, even if they are a majority, the group loses! This is justice! The Arabs gambled since they were the majority and thought they could murder and drive out the Jews with war. This is a fact that only the Arab losers want to deny, by demanding a 're-do' or 'second chance' in some supposed "court". They want the land and the 'marbles' they lost back! Hammond wants them to get a do-over.
The appeal for justice comes as a result of defeat after a military gambit (more than one to be sure) pure and simple, and plays the refugee card, the 'stolen land' card and the 'trampled rights of the majority' card.
Hammond argues for justice based on a majority / minority spectrum.
He argues under the pretense of one state with protected rights for all, the old, tattered Soviet tool position. By deduction, he argues that since there were more Arabs than Jews in Palestine, the Jews were not entitled to a state of their own (and perhaps they should have been driven into the sea and murdered by 'majority rulers'.)
Clearly, UNGAR 181 did not create the Jewish state of Israel or the Arab state of Palestine. To allege so is to make a straw man argument and deny the context of the resolution and reference in the Israeli declaration of independence. Naturally, only people can create a state and this is what happened with Israel. UNGAR 181 merely demonstrated that at that moment in history, the idea of a state for Jews in Palestine resonated with the UN General Assembly as being valid despite Arab protestations. The Arab leadership had a say in the debate and their say was rejected! This was a political opinion and not a legal one, but since the Arabs had a voice in the debate, and since their leadership engaged in the debate and since they engaged in the system that conducted the debate representing member states, they should be held to abide by the decision! THAT IS JUSTICE. However, failing to obtain the result they wanted in the debate at the UN, the Arab leadership rejected the decision of the UNGA, and continued to resort to violence and war and lost. Making war has consequences, and that, too, is justice. Now, what would have been different at that time if, after some 'trial' where the Jews and Arabs of Palestine had participated, some 'court' had found for the Jews and people of Israel? Would the Arabs have accepted that form of justice? I think not. (And neither would Hammond for that matter!)
Justice was served when the issue was submitted to the UN, all parties had their say and participated, the matter was debated, and a decision was rendered!
Being pragmatic, the Jews of Palestine seized the moment and declared their right to create a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine and this act was recognized by the international community, including the two great powers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. This also, is justice.
Today, the Arab leadership and their advocates continue to complain, demand do-overs, but they had their chance. However, they are not served well by their violent tendencies and 'justice seeking' apologists as history has shown. By any fair and objective standard their governance as a whole is a model for failure and misery. Arab governments are thuggish and their politicians murderous (i.e. Lebanon) promote holocaust denial and Jew hatred. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are nothing but shake down gangsters and haters. They find succor with holocaust denying and Jew hating leaders in Islamic countries (i.e. Iran.) This is not to say that there are no Arabs that would co-exist with Israel and Jews. There are some reasonable, freedom seeking Arabs. But apologists for the thugs, like Hammond and his ilk, don't like them and conspire to eradicate them.
M.R., yes, Arabs must take responsibility for their actions and end the hatred — just as must Jews.
The argument that I argue "for justice based on a majority/minority spectrum" is false. I argued in my essay for justice based on the principle of equal rights, nothing more, nothing less. You say I argue "the Jews were not entitled to a state of their own". What I argue is that the Jews were not entitled to take Arab land by force and expel the native inhabitants to create a Jewish state. See, it's you, not I, who reject the rights of others.
As for your comments regarding 181, it only demonstrated that the idea of a Jewish state was "valid" inasmuch as there was a naive assumption the Arabs would accept the plan. They rightfully rejected it. You say the Arabs "should be held to abide by the decision!" By what decision? What is it you say "IS JUSTICE"?
As for the resort by the Arabs to force, I would remind you that Article 51 of the U.N. Charter recognizes the right of people to use force in self-defense. When Israel declared that Arab land now belonged to the Jews, the Arabs had a right to take up arms to defend their rights and their property. That is self-defense.
As for your hypothetical in which some court found for the Jews, that is unrealistic, since the Jews had no legal claim to the land. Stick to reality, not worthless hypotheticals.
You say: "Justice was served when the issue was submitted to the UN, all parties had their say and participated, the matter was debated, and a decision was rendered!" Yes, the decision was that the partition plan could not and would not be implemented! Perhaps you should try actually reading the article.
Yes, Mr. Hammond, I would require peace without justice rather than your justice without peace for the Jews. Frankly, the Palestinians already have peace, for which they have had to pay nothing. You underestimate severely the value of the peace that Israel has supplied the them. I will state here that one reason that a Palestinian state has not come into existence is because the people and their leaders prefer the status quo, both for the international support which has made them rich and for the quality of life they have attained that is unknown in the general Arab world. The propinquity of a vibrant Israeli society serves them better than any other possible arrangement. Their willingness to govern themselves in the way of other nations is in doubt, at least to those who have considered their current performance, as can be seen in Gaza where the merely radical vie with the severely radical for power and glory on a daily basis.
By the way, your characterization of my remarks as "asininity" is simply a matter of name-calling and transmits no real information. For the sake of the conversation, it might be better to eschew such remarks, don't you agree.
I have by no means proposed "justice without peace for the Jews". I've no interest in debating strawman arguments. If you want to have an honest discussion, let me know.
Justice is not on earth. Justice is in heaven. Nobody got justice for the events of the 1940's. There is no justice for the Chinese after all the Japanese did to them. The hell visited on the Soviet Union could never be balanced. Did Germany get justice for the crimes of the Nazis? The annihilation of the Jews can be redressed somewhat, but there is no justice on earth.
The Arab view of justice requires the elimination of Israel, a cruel injustice. Justice for only one side is not justice. The call for justice is a call to eliminate compromise, it is a call for war, not for peace. The Arabs in the "Refugee" camps can have peace, sovereignty, security, and prosperity, but not in Israel. They may feel that is an injustice.
If you want to fight injustice, let the Arabs in the camps become citizens of the countries they live in, and mostly, were born in; and give them the same emigration rights as all other Arabs, who can move from state to state. The Arab states imprison the camp residents as a way of keeping pressure on the Jews, no matter how hard it is on the "Palestinians".
Why is it that your sense of "justice" explicitly excludes the possibility of Israel/Palestine as a state of all its citizens, not just one that confers special rights to Jews and denies equal rights to Palestinians?
If the "elimination of Israel" as a discriminatory state that treats 20% of its population as second-class citizens is, in your words, "a cruel injustice," then in what way, pray tell, is the maintenance of such an ethnosupremacist state that retains its power through military might, aggressive expansion, brutal occupation, and an apartheid legal system? Is that justice?
Because the Arabs, and especially the Islamists, clearly don't believe in peaceful co-existence. Or equality. They require supremacy. The Arabs have about 20 states, and Jews and Christians are rarely equal, and sometimes excluded entirely. Yet they are outraged by the existence of one Jewish state.
Israel maintains its existence through military might, like all other nations, when it is attacked. The rest of your accusations are just slander.
A one-state plan would put the Jews in the same position as the Christians of Lebanon or the Copts of Egypt. Equality is not available. Except perhaps if the two populations separated, but that has difficulties of its own.
If I follow your logic correctly, Freddy: The Arabs have "about 20 states"; therefore it is okay for Israel to steal land from the Arabs in Palestine. Is that about right?
The UN admitted Israel as a member based upon a finding that it is a "peace-loving" nation, as follows:
Having received the report of the Security Council on the application of Israel for membership in the United Nations,
Noting that, in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter,
Noting that the Security Council has recommended to the General Assembly that it admit Israel to membership in the United Nations,
Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it "unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a Member of the United Nations",
Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representatives of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,
The General Assembly
Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,
1. Decides that Israel is a peace-loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;
2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.
This entirely refutes your statements.
Israeli violations of UNSC Resolutions:
The UN admitted Israel as a member based upon a finding that it is a "peace-loving" nation, as follows:
Having received the report of the Security Council on the application of Israel for membership in the United Nations,
Noting that, in the judgment of the Security Council, Israel is a peace-loving State and is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the Charter,
Noting that the Security Council has recommended to the General Assembly that it admit Israel to membership in the United Nations,
Noting furthermore the declaration by the State of Israel that it "unreservedly accepts the obligations of the United Nations Charter and undertakes to honour them from the day when it becomes a Member of the United Nations",
Recalling its resolutions of 29 November 1947 and 11 December 1948 and taking note of the declarations and explanations made by the representatives of the Government of Israel before the Ad Hoc Political Committee in respect of the implementation of the said resolutions,
The General Assembly
Acting in discharge of its functions under Article 4 of the Charter and rule 125 of its rules of procedure,
1. Decides that Israel is a peace-loving State which accepts the obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those obligations;
2. Decides to admit Israel to membership in the United Nations.
This entirely refutes your statements.
Incorporated into the language is the express reference to UNGAR 181. The Hammond thesis is pure bunk. Further, the express finding that ISRAEL is a PEACE LOVING COUNTRY refutes all expressions to the contrary, including those irregular rulings of the ICJ.
What we see with the Arabs and their anti Semitic and radical Islamic patrons is the perversion of the UN to a specific purpose, that is to disparage a member state. This has ultimately poisoned the UN and rendered it ineffective.
So Hammond want another do-over looking back at the decision his people do not like. I would suggest a change to a forward looking posture in order to achieve some improved results. The UNGA acted in a just fashion based upon the determination that Israel was peace-loving. This determination has not been repealed. This shows that the UN saw no relationship or connection between population numbers and mass of land ownership and to inject that proposition 68 years later as a retrospective measure for so called "justice" seems foolish at best. This measure or standard for fairness has nothing to do with expression of personal rights to collectively organize as a political group for self determination. Remember, revolting peasants and serfs in Russia and France owned hardly any land, if any at all, and the crown and ruling class owned everything.
One more point on 242 and war and acquisition of territory. The rule is not absolute and does not apply to acquisition of territory in a war of self defense. Also, Israel isn't the only country to have gained territory under the present UN regime, and probably won't be the last. Even Hammond seems to concede the validity of military acquisition of territory, since the armistice lines he considers when referencing to 242 exceed the suggested boundaries for Israel in a myriad of partition plans. Remember, these were armistice lines determined at the position of forces at cease fire in the 1948 Israel war of independence.
The fact that Israel was later admitted into the membership of the U.N. does nothing to refute anything I've said, and it certainly doesn't contradict any rulings I cited from the ICJ.
I do not "concede" the point you say I do. Again, the inadmissibility principle under international law is "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." Period. The armistice lines were just that.
So, Freddy, is your "Justice is not on earth. Justice is in heaven" argument a tacit acknowledgment of the injustice perpetrated against the Arab Palestinians?
Again, you simply have your facts wrong. The Arabs proposed a democratic solution with a constitutional government recognizing and protecting the rights of the minority Jews and guaranteeing representation in its legislative body.
As for the right of return, it is non-negotiable. The Jews committed the crime of ethnic cleansing. The way to remedy that injustice is for the universally recognized right of return to be recognized, respected, and implemented. Those who wish not to return may be otherwise compensated. We are in agreement that the states in which the refugees reside should similarly recognize Palestinian rights and offer citizenship for those who so choose.
The "Democratic solution" you describe would be some version of "One person, one vote, one time". Or maybe two times. And it would be as peaceful as Lebanon. That is to say, extremely violent and unstable.
Hamas and other Islamists believe Jews must be dhimmis, and that is a sort of second or third class citizenship that is simply not acceptable, yet could be voted in democratically. Half of Israeli Jews are from the Muslim states, and know exactly what that would mean.
The injustice against the Palestinian Arabs was done by the Arab leaders, far more than by the Israelis. Even the camps in the West Bank under PA control restrict the rights of the residents, and they cannot even vote in PA elections.
Nobody gets justice on earth, not even Arab Palestinians.
And if the right of return is non-negotiable, then the negotiations are going nowhere. This is yet another call for war.
As with others who hold your opinions, you seem incapable of dealing with the need for safety of the Jews. The logical fault is all yours since you expect a solution without accounting for the clear danger to the Jews of any contraction on their part. The Jews will be safe if they just disappear, correct?
I disagree with your opinions, Freddy.
Jerry, it's not a question of opinion, it's a question of fact. The facts are as I've stated them. Your argument here is a non sequitur. And the implication of anti-Semitism on my part is merely a moral and intellectual cowardice on your part.
The democratic solution is a Bolshevik ruse – it was never considered seriously given the violence and threat of violence of the Arab gangs and countries. The serious parties who considered how to wrap up the mandate knew there would be no peace. Communists always favor elections in unstable settings with bombings, assassinations and murder. As a group, the Arabs were a disorganized bunch and had no plan for Palestine except for war, plunder and murder of the Jews. This is their history of the 20th century. Note that the violent intent of the Arabs was taken into account in UNGA Resolution 181 where the Security Council was asked to consider any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisioned by the resolution. In other words, EVERYONE knew of the Arab threat of war and took it seriously. This was no war of self defense, since what dog did Syria or Iraq or Jordan or Egypt have in the fight? This so called democratic solution is pure foolishness, impractical pie in the sky.
I would remind you, M.R., that the first terrorist organizations in Palestine were not Arab but Zionist groups. You can dismiss it all you like, but the fact remains that the Arabs proposed the democratic solution I described above. I disagree with your opinion about the merit of that most just and reasonable solution.
Tell me my dear Hammond, where did the Jews take the land that was "stolen"? Have they hidden it or something? Isn't it just where it always was, there on the ground? How do you steal land? I guess only the Jews can do something like that!
No the land was not stolen. It was vacant and then settled and then developed. The Arabs that had land stayed put. There were no refugees, only welfare rent seekers who wanted to go on the dole and refuse to work, or those who attacked Jews and then ran away, but individual Arabs who owned land stayed put. And they are living in Israel to this very day with full civil rights and they are citizens of Israel.
Also, there is no proof that any Arabs were cleaned or cleansed… how do yo do that anyway?
M.R., taking something and claiming as your own something which is the rightful property of another is "stealing". By definition.
Again, Jews owned 7% of the land, Arabs 85%. The Zionists created Israel by ethnically cleansing over 700,000 Arab Palestinians, stealing their land, and refusing to permit them to return to their homes. This is non-controversial.
Please look in the mirror and repeat your last sentence.
Yours is a one sided view of the events and it bolsters your predetermined perspective. I and many others stand by what we have learned over the years as a truer picture than what you present. You were not there at the time Jeremy, you've only read books by authors that already agree with you. That alone does not constitute the truth. The fact that you can stream together a bunch of words that support your case means nothing. By and large, it is your interpretation of events that you use to support your arguments, but there is another side that has looked at the events and come to different conclusions. And 'fraid to say it, but I feel these other legitimate are more honest than you are. They don't hold that "I am right and the rest of you are wrong" attitude you display while still sounding smarter than you do.
Translation: "Bla bla bla bla. I can't refute a single point of fact or logic you've presented. Bla bla bla bla bla."
Thanks, Barry.
Hammond is wrong about 242 and acquisition of territory. This is part of his faulty analysis about UNGAR 181. UNGAR 181 was never intended to create a state in the first place and was a recommendation only. There was no myth created.
As set forth above, and not refuted by Hammond, the RATIFICATION of 181took place by the admission of Israel to the UN by the UNGA as a "peace-loving" country. Hammond ignores this fact.
Hammond is wrong about UNSC 242. Accretion of lands by war is accepted in the international community. Even in the case of Israel, the state was admitted to the UN, in spite of Hammond's contentions about accretion of lands by war, AFTER expanding territory by war in 1948 beyond the recommended partition boundaries written into UNGAR 181. Accordingly, the UN ENDORSED acquisition of land by war, all to the contrary of Hammond's assertions. If the UN was opposed to acquisition of territory by war the state of Israel would not have been admitted to the UN, since the admission took place AFTER Israeli conquest of lands designated in 181 for the Arab state!
This isn't the only instance that conquest by war of territory was recognized by other sovereign states. Hammond is wrong on this point.
Indeed, Israel
The facts about UNSC res 242 and UNGA res 181 are precisely as I've stated them. The acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible under international law. Period. The fact that Israel was admitted membership in the U.N. doesn't change anything I've stated. The U.N.'s recognition of the reality of the existence of the state of Israel was not an endorsement of the land theft and ethnic cleansing that occurred in order to create it.
Wow! It seems the Zionist shills are coming out of the woodwork on this one. Apparently these threatening facts really ruffle their feathers, eh, Jeremy?
All of these hysterical commenters scrambling to regurgitate the tired arguments of Zionist apologia are embarrassing (though, at least some of them openly admit to the ongoing Israeli contempt for international law and human rights, the explicit disregard for and disinterest in Palestinian self-determination, and the creepy ethnosupremacism explicit in statements like "I prefer for the Jews to win").
The garbage spewed forth (and probably stolen from hacks like Howard Grief) regarding the legality of both the San Remo Resolution and the Palestine Mandate are devoid of validity, for reasons that even go beyond the offensive notion that white colonial superpowers have the legal aegis to carve up the Middle East to their liking and disregard basic elements of self-determination of indigenous people.
By stating that a few European colonial powers were "in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," neither the San Remo Resolution nor the Palestine Mandate supported the creation of a "Jewish State" encompassing all of historic Palestine. "National rights" and a "national home" are two different things.
Nor did these documents guarantee (let alone authorize or encourage) political dominance or governmental control of Jewish inhabitants (or immigrants) over the native Palestinian population.
Not only that, but those concepts were (and have since been) absolutely rejected by the British government – whose Mandate it was – in the 1920's and 1930's, the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations in 1930 and by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine in 1947.
The constant need for these hasbarists to insist that an inherently discriminatory and militarized expansionist ethnocracy (which a "Jewish State" of Israel incontrovertibly is) is a legally legitimate entity – sanctioned no less by international law! – is ridiculous and demonstrably bereft of any shred of evidence. Quite the contrary.
Well said, Nima.
Prove again that the Palestinian population was "native" to the land. What percentage of the Palestinian population immigrated in? 40%, 60%, or 80%. Are they truly and indigenous people? Do you have facts to back up your assertions?
Define "native". After all, native Americans once also immigrated to North America. I'm not interested in semantics debates. The point is that the Arabs had long been living there, and 85% of the land of Palestine was in their possession. Immigration accounted for negligible population growth on the part of the Arabs. As noted in the article, population growth was almost entirely due to natural increase.
Dov Bear
The majority of Arabs were native to the region. Never the less it is completely irrelevant. Under the mandate anyone who immigrated to Palestine was required to become a citizen of Palestine.
BTW 'Real estate' is not territory. Territory belongs to the citizens of an entity, whether they own 'real estate' or not, whether they rent a dwelling or premises or be a landless bum living under a bridge
individuals who owned 'real estate' in Palestine but were not citizens of the entity of Palestine, had no territorial rights in Palestine. Institutions such as the Jewish Colonial Trust, can not be citizens, even if they do own real estate.
BTW How many Jewish immigrants were native. I'm sure you thought you had a point…seems not.
"As for the resort by the Arabs to force, I would remind you that Article 51 of the U.N. Charter recognizes the right of people to use force in self-defense. When Israel declared that Arab land now belonged to the Jews, the Arabs had a right to take up arms to defend their rights and their property. That is self-defense."
1) It wasn't self-defense. It was an attempt at annihilation. That was the stated goal of the Arab League.
2) How were the Lebanese, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Saudis and the rest acting in self-defense?
Look at the text of Article 51:
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations"
a) Self-defense is declared legitimate when under armed attack. The Article doesn't condone genocidal acts in response to a declaration of independence.
b) I don't recall that Palestine existed as a U.N. Member in 1948.
c) I would like to see a more thorough analysis of Article 51. It appears that your understanding would allow it to be invoked under any international dispute. The declaration of independence of Israel was legitimate under the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference, the League of Nations Mandate and the U.N. Partition vote. Whether the UN vote and the rest were illegal under international law is another question. But it's a legal question. How can Article 51 be invoked for a dispute based on a legal controversy? Did the Arab armies make such legal arguments when they began their genocidal campaign?
1) It was self-defense, for the reasons I already explained.
2) They were acting to defend the rights and property of their Arab brethren in Palestine.
a) The closest thing to a genocidal attack that occurred was committed not by the Arabs, but by the Zionists, who ethnically cleansed 700,000 Arabs from their homes, stealing their property for the creation of the "Jewish state". The Arab actions were self-defense against this aggression.
b) Moot point. The U.N. does not grant states the right to self-defense. It recognizes their inherent, inalienable right to self-defense.
c) Neither the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Resolution, nor the League of Nations Mandate conferred any kind of legal legitimacy upon the Zionist leadership to unilaterally declare that Arab property was no part of a "Jewish state". The idea that Party A has a legal right to take land from Party B without consent and give it to Party C is nonsense. No such right exists, or existed, as the International Court of Justice has observed in noting that the establishment of a Mandate under the League of Nations did not involve any cession of territory or transfer of sovereignty. Sovereignty resided in the people, whose right to self-determination was rejected by the Zionists. You simply cannot legitimize this injustice.
":1) It wasn't self-defense. It was an attempt at annihilation. That was the stated goal of the Arab League."
Here is part of the OFFICIAL STATED goal of the Arab States http://wp.me/pDB7k-ki#democracy-equal-rights can you point out where your assertion is stated? thx (the whole is linked to the Jewish Virtual Library BTW)
Perhaps this bit "in accordance with democratic principles, whereby its inhabitants will enjoy complete equality before the law, [and whereby] minorities will be assured of all the guarantees recognised in democratic constitutional countries, and [whereby] the holy places will be preserved and the right of access thereto guaranteed. "
Democracy!! Equal rights!! How dare they!
"2) How were the Lebanese, Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Saudis and the rest acting in self-defense?"
The Arab States were defending what remained of Palestine from Jewish forces, according to the UN Charter Chapt XI and arguably Article 51. It was their ward and they were and still are, Regional Powers
The two official parties were the Zionist Federation and the Arab States. The Arab States officially represented Palestine. The Arab states, with the exception of Jordan, were UN Member States. Iraqi forces were deployed under Jordanian control, quite a legitimate coalition under the UN Charter. The Arab forces were all from UN Member States
Israel was not a UN Member state until 1949. It was never the less obliged to uphold the principles of the UN Charter, as described in the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel. "it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. "
Under the UN Charter, the moment the Israeli declaration came into effect, the Arab States, as Regional Powers, had a right to attempt to expel foreign forces from the territory of their ward, what remained of Palestine once Israel Declared itself independent of Palestine.
Jewish forces, under the preemptive, pre-State, pre-declaration Plan Dalet, were already outside of the extent of Israeli Sovereignty even as it was being declared.
The moment the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel.came into effect, "at one minute after six o'clock on the evening of 14 May 1948, Washington time." http://wp.me/pDB7k-KL what was a civil war, became a war waged by the State of Israel on Palestine, in Palestinian territory. NOT IN Israel.
"The declaration of independence of Israel was legitimate under the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Conference, the League of Nations Mandate "
A) None mentioned a separate Jewish State. http://wp.me/PDB7k-Q#jews-can-live-anywhere
B) The Balfour Declaration was not law, it was a declaration by a politician ONE country.
C) Re the Mandate,/San Remo…. Have you ever read the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel, FIRST LINE? Check it out http://wp.me/PDB7k-Y#ignorance …. You have a feature spot
". How can Article 51 be invoked for a dispute based on a legal controversy?"
Article 51 depends on the legality of entities actions.
"Did the Arab armies make such legal arguments when they began their genocidal campaign?"
A) there was no 'genocidal campaign' There is no official Arab States declaration advocating genocide.
B) Read the Arab States Declaration on the Invasion of Palestine it is in it's entirety the legal argument for Invading Palestine, not Israel.
Israel was independent of Palestine by it's own Declaration as of "..one minute after six o'clock on the evening of 14 May 1948, Washington time" according to the notification the Israeli Provisional Government issued of the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel.
AFIK The Arab states declaration was the last legitimate declaration of war ever lodged with the UNSC. The UNSC issued no condemnation as is customary when a UN Member state attacks another state (See UNSC Resolution 660 on the invasion of Kuwait for an example. )
You're repeating Hasbara bullsh*te. Easily dis-proven by carefully reading the UNSC resolutions. None say Peace in Israel. They say "peace in Palestine". http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions.html
Israel has never been a part of Palestine. Israel didn't exist until May 15th 1948, when it's Declaration became effective. Independent states are not a part of any other entity.
Furthermore Israel was not a democratic state until it held it's first election. No law passed in Israel before 25 January 1949 was passed by a democratically elected Government. No Israeli Government has been elected per the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel. Israel has not yet fulfilled the requirements of statehood it agreed to undertake, elections per a constitution. It has none.
Israel is illegitimate according to the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel. // "WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel". " // Israeli election on 25 January 1949
Jeremy Hammond is a careful scholar who is correct in everything he says about the Zionist theft of Palestine. Truth always outrages the criminals that it exposes, and we see that in the Zionist screams of pain at the sight of the truth that Hammond has presented.
Hammond, a careful scholar is correct in his every point. Any time criminals are
exposed, they scream accusations, and that is what we have seen from the Zionist responses to Hammond's correct scholarship
I have asked you to respond to my comments. Please respond to what I wrote:
Here is an error. You say: " while growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase."
Prove it! Prove that growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase. You know that you cannot prove it, but you offer it up as a given. I know for a fact that the most common last name in Gaza is Masri, which means Egyptian. I know that the British officially ignored Arab immigration from Syria and Egypt because they had no political reason to keep track of it. The borders were very porous during the time of the Ottomans and the British Mandate. The Arabs came for obvious reasons: good paying jobs that came along with the Jewish immigration to the region. You cannot disprove this, and you know it.
Secondly Jews outnumbered Arabs in Jerusalem since 1840. This is a known statistical fact.
Here are just two "mistakes" in your article out of a whole bunch of others. Yet, I am sure these are not simple mistakes. Israel is the only country in human history that has to defend its existence after sixty years of independence.
Dov, you are welcome to check my sources. The facts are as I stated them.
By the way, Dov Bear, the common propaganda bullet-point that "Jews outnumbered Arabs in Jerusalem since 1840…is a known statistical fact," is false. Did you get that line from the "Freeman Center for Strategic Studies" or the aptly-named "Israel Hasbara Committee"?
You should grab a calculator and do some simple math. The charts those "organizations" present alongside their own claims don't even match up – quite embarrassing, really.
Let's take a quick look:
According to the Mendon Association's 1824 census estimate, published in "The Christian Magazine," Jewish residents of Jerusalem numbered about 6,000, whereas Arabs (Muslims and Christians combined) numbered about 14,000.
Twenty years later in 1844 (note, this is after 1840), Jews numbered approximately 7,120 and Arabs numbered 8,390. These demographics are taken from Manashe Harrel's 1974 article "The Jewish Presence in Jerusalem through the Ages," which are cited repeatedly on Zionist websites.
According to a 1980 population study by Yigal Shiloh, it was found that in 1850 (ten years after 1840) the city of Jerusalem contained a total of 2,393 people, 1,763 of whom were Arab (1,025 Muslims and 738 Christians) and 630 of whom were Jewish. In the countryside surrounding Jerusalem of 116 towns and villages (and part of the greater Jerusalem district) lived 7,320 Arabs, 6,118 of whom were Muslim and 1,202 were Christian. No Jewish residents were reported.
Twenty-five years later (and almost three decades after 1840), according to a 1870 travel guide, the populations of Jews and Arabs were about even at around 9,000 each.
Seven years after that, in 1876 (36 years after 1840), according to Harrel, the Jewish population was about 12,000 in contrast to an Arab population of just over 13,000.
The Ottoman census of 1878 found that the total population of the Jerusalem, Nablus, and Acre districts was 472,455. Only 5.3% of the residents were Jewish (15,000 native-born Jews and about 10,000 foreign-born Jewish immigrants), as opposed to 94.7% of the residents who were Muslim and Christian Arabs (403,795 Muslims and 43,659 Christians).
Harrel then reports that in 1896, after years of massive Jewish immigration from Europe, 28,112 Jews lived in Jerusalem, along with 17,308 Arabs (8,560 Muslims and 8,748 Christians). This marked the first time – backed up by available records and reliable estimates – that Jews actually outnumbered Arabs in Jerusalem.
As for your hysterical assertion that there was massive Arab immigration shortly before Israel's unilateral declaration of independence and the ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Palestinians from their native homeland, you should read the scholarship of American historian Justin McCarthy and Israeli historian Yehoshua Porath (by the way, he's a right-wing supporter of Likud).
All in all, you're suggestion is bogus and unsupported by facts that even your fellow apologists acknowledge and use.
Still, your point is meaningless. The demographics of Jerusalem do not reflect the broader population statistics of Palestine as a whole, nor does any statistic by anyone at anytime ever excuse ethnic cleansing or the denial of self-determination. I merely thought your lies needed exposing, but your core argument is built on an absolutely racist and exceptionalist foundation that seems to suggest that one group of people has the right to subjugate another group of people.
Neither Jeremy nor myself has ever suggested that Palestinians should control Jews in Palestine because of their status on the land or because of any sort of superiority/inferiority inherent in their cultural or ethnic group. A democratic, representative government – that respect international law, human rights, and the self-determination of the entire resident population – is the moral, legal, and necessary answer.
Any suggestion to the contrary – especially one that suggests that Jews have/had a "right" to displace, dispossession, and disenfranchise Arabs or vice versa – is offensive, immoral, illegal, and racist.
Even by your figures, which can be disputed, sounds like a largely barren area. I have a feeling that you don't have the same outrage when it comes to 800,000 Jews who were displaced from Arab lands. Call it a hunch.
They aren't Nima's figures. He named the sources.
I assure you that your "hunch" that Nima Shirazi is a bigoted hypocrite is a gravely mistaken one.
Please stick to the facts and spare us your ignorant "hunches" intended to slander others' character in lieu of substantively addressing their arguments. This is a violation of the terms of use of the comments, and a repeat offense will result in your privilege being revoked.
Jeremy your a liar and a Pallywood propagandist.
This article rebukes all your lies.
The Myth Of The Palestinian People
Yehezkel Bin-Nun
26 December 2001
Please quote me where I wrote a single lie. Thanks.
Great job Jeremy. Thank you for your thoughtful research which brings clarity to a situation muddied by propaganda on both sides.
You're welcome! Stay tuned for my forthcoming book, Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Subscribe to my free newsletter at http://www.jeremyrhammond.com to keep updated.
Please stick with this issue to the bitter end! Israel is only going to launch more frequent and aggressive attacks in the future behind "the war on terror" which in this case is actually a war on the Palestinian people. Thnx!
I certainly will!
Quick question: I'm running into a question of Jordan being the Palestinian State drawn from the Palestinian Mandate: Edward B. Hausman · Follow · Top Commenter
Like Jordan! Three-quarters of the British Mandate for Palestine was established as an Arab state. The rest was left as a Jewish State, then the UN insisted Israel share some of that, too. Treacherous UN … Jews won the wars of extermination the Arabs started anyway. Should have transferred the Arabs back across the Jordan and held that line.
Reply · Like · 1 · 4 hours ago
Now I looked at the resolution, but haven't studied the mandate, I suspect this is just the latest rewriting of history by Israeli trolls, but did you come across anything like this in your research?
a question of Jordan being the Palestinian State drawn from the Palestinian Mandate
Yes, this is common Zionist hasbara. Also complete nonsense warranting no further comment than to point out it is complete nonsense.
I found this piece but it's sourcebook is not completely digitized. http://www.danielpipes.org/298/is-jordan-palestine
I hadn't, no, thanks.
Another fallacious "academic"? using SSRN to plug his agenda. Says Mallison ignored that all of Palestine west of the Jordan River was recognized by some 53 states in 1922 as being owned by the Jews…
I'm not sure what "source" he's referring to, maybe you've seen his work on the database. More than one person has directed me to it. No mention of Hussein Letter. What is the appropriate gauge of academic "rigor" to publish on SSRN verses say in Foreign Policy Journal. Lot of muddied waters and my academic credentials in this field are weak. Anyway….do you know what he is talking about?
Anyway, this non-published scholar is akin to God-head in certain circles. Heard of him:
One need only read his title declaring that Arab Palestinians have no right to self-determination in Palestine to recognize his arguments' absurdity and to deduce that the guy is a racist.
Are you keeping up with this, Jeremy. I'm trying but I don't speak french. First English speaker is about 40 minutes in. Tomorrow Day 2 will be live streamed, I am supposing from this same site. http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/extraordinary-session-brussels
No, unfortunately. No time.
Has Alan M. Derchowitz told you your book is wrong yet? When he does you can use the quote on the jacket. My copy just arrived and very excited to read it. Two things:
1. Is a democratic Palestine even possible after the unequivocal rejection of Hamas' by the western powers. For legitimacy he/she/it must have USA-approval. That also inherently causes a credibility problem. How's about that Pelel(?) guy? The son of a celebrated IDFer? I think his daughter speaks on the Russell Tribunal.
2. Gas? I am curious to see if the coastal gas fields are brought up. Is there truth to those claims. I have a report that seems to indicate but I can't speak to its authenticity.
Would the Pallies accept de-militarization with a covenant and swearing to peace, like Japan, and flooding with Israeli and US cash to preserve its healthy fishing industry/income and create new industry around the gas industry, would be a worthwhile compromise for sovereignty? Israel must swear also by convenient to be her sworn protector militarily. Palestinians will never disarm with they? Ending the occupation and blockade and clearing the checkpoints. All troops removed in 3 years. Keep established (more than 2 years? settlements. Return last 1000 acres. Provide continuity between West Bank Palestinians and Gaza Strip. Access to holy sites restored. Israel provides the infrastructure pipe and sell the gas and PLO/(hopefully not)Hamas take 75% Israel gets the rest. All crimes of violence and otherwise handled by the system where crime committed, though laws must be fair. Hey, how could anyone say no to that?lol
Nope, haven't heard from the Dersh about it. Yes, I think a democratic Palestine is possible. I'll discuss this in the conclusion to my forthcoming book. Incidentally, I just posted this talk by Miko Peled (the general's son) at my blog:
Dear Contributor
You made no mention of international law and
specifically the ruling of the International Court of Justice or UN Security Council Resolutions 476 and 478 concerning the illegal occupation of the
Palestinian Territories. There are over 150 UN Resolutions plus the ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Hague with respect to the 421 mile
illegal "wall" which the EU and UN both condemned.
Likud reject the right of Palestine to exist and
reject the international status of Jerusalem (as per UN Security Council Resolutions 476 and 478).
What about the charters of Nafatali Bennett's Home
Party? This gentleman is part of the coalition that supports Mr Netanyahu.
Members of the Knesset advocated sustained massacres
against the Palestine people – inflammatory comments by Ayelet Shaked are brought to mind. We should not forget – Moshe Feiglin, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, who had published a plan for the total
destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Baruck Goldstein who had sprayed Palestinian people with his automatic Galil rifle in the Palestinian city of Hebron. Goldstein is revered by settlers.
West Bank mosque torched in suspected settler attack. Eyewitnesses said Israeli settlers arrived at the Nablus-area mosque after midnight and carried out attack.
Also see: http://www.btselem.org/topic/settler_violence
Israeli Supreme Court upholds law allowing housing discrimination against Palestinians:
Palestine is occupied and has Israel has not
complied with the International Court of Justice or over 150 UN Resolutions. Palestine was recognised again in 2012 by a massive 138 countries.
The new Palestinian Government is made up of
technocrats and has been acknowledged by the EU and US.
Incidentally the EU have implement Settlement Guidelines warning EU citizens of trading with illegal colonial settlements built on stolen indigenous Palestinian Christian and Muslim lands.
Thank you.
And your sources proving this claim, Dov Bear?
Here is an error. You say: " while growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase." Prove it!
No, that is not an error.
I stated the source of the quote that the growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase in the article. I don't see any reason for skepticism of this, unless one is prone to take hoaxes like Joan Peters' "From Time Immemorial" seriously.
It's instructive that you place the burden for me to prove a negative, which is a logical impossibility, and declare my above statement false while yourself offering nothing in the way of proof to support your implied argument that the increase in the Arab population was mostly due to anything else but natural increase.
Secondly Jews outnumbered Arabs in Jerusalem since 1840. This is a known statistical fact. Here are just two "mistakes" in your article out of a whole bunch of others.
You are welcome to quote me where I made any factual errors in this regard.
The "mistakes" you attribute to me are figments of your own imagination.
Dear Contributor,
Thank you for your point of view.
There are no UN Resolutions (of which there are over 150) or the ruling of the International Court of Justice concerning the illegal 421 mile which talk about Arab people coming to Palestine for good paying jobs. It is not part of international law and not recognised. East Jerusalem is occupied under international law and under international law Israel's claim to the whole of the city is NULL and VOID.
Instead please see below.
Thank you.
Best wishes
The UN view of the Palestinian Territories can be seen at the following URL: http://unispal.un.org/pdfs/OCHA_IsrSettlementPolicies.pdf.
The West Bank and East Jerusalem is occupied
Palestine (recognised by 138 nations in the world including India, China,
Russia, Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia, France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Denmark, Norway, Belgium Greece, Japan, Serbia, New Zealand, Thailand and Iceland) in 2012. Palestine is still illegally held and sadly Israel has ignored the ruling of the International Court of Justice (subsequently supported by the UN and EU) with respect to the "separation barrier". This "wall" is over 3 times the length of the Berlin Wall (in fact the "wall" is 421 miles long).
UNESCO's recognition of Palestine in 2011 was supported by France, Spain, Ireland, Belgium. Norway, Greece and other European nations.
International law and UN Resolutions (over which there are over 150) are ignored by Israel.
*** UN Security Council Resolution 478 (1980) of 20 August 1980 – BINDING
The Security
Council, recalling its resolution 476 (1980); reaffirming again that the
acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible; deeply concerned over the enactment of a "basic law" in the Israeli Knesset proclaiming a
change in the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, with its
implications for peace and security; noting that Israel has not complied with resolution 476 (1980); reaffirming its determination to examine practical ways and means, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, to secure the full implementation of its resolution 476 (1980), in the event of non-compliance by Israel ; Censures in the strongest terms the enactment by Israel of the "basic law" on Jerusalem and the refusal to comply with relevant Security Council resolutions;
*** Resolution 694 (1991) – BINDING
Adopted by the Security Council at its 2989th meeting on
24 May 1991
The Security Council,
Reaffirming its resolution 681 (1990),
Having learned with deep concern and consternation that Israel has, in violation of its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and acting in opposition to relevant Security Council resolutions, and to the detriment of efforts to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, deported four Palestinian civilians on 18 May 1991,
1. Declares that the action of the Israeli authorities of deporting four Palestinians on 18 May is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which is applicable to all the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem;
2. Deplores this action and reiterates that Israel, the occupying Power, refrain from deporting any Palestinian civilian from the occupied territories and ensure the save and immediate return
of all those deported;
3. Decides to keep the situation under review.
*** Resolution 672 (1990) – BINDING
Adopted by the Security Council at its 2948th meeting on
12 October 1990
The Security Council,
Recalling its resolutions 476 (1980) and 478 (1980),
Reaffirming that a just and lasting solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict must be based on its resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) through an active negotiating process which takes into account the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel, as well as the legitimate political rights of the Palestinian people, Taking into consideration the
statement of the Secretary-General relative to the purpose of the mission he is sending to the region and conveyed to the Council by the President on 12 October 1990,
1. Expresses alarm at the violence which took place on 8 October at the Al Haram al Shareef and other Holy Places of Jerusalem resulting in over twenty Palestinian deaths and to the injury of more than one hundred and fifty people, including Palestinian civilians and innocent worshippers;
2. Condemns especially the acts of violence committed by the Israeli security forces resulting in injuries and loss of human life;
3. Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention, which is applicable to all the territories occupied by Israel since 1967;
4. Requests, in connection with the decision of the Secretary-General to send a mission to the region, which the Council welcomes, that he submit a report to it before the end of October 1990 containing his findings and conclusions and that he use as appropriate all the
resources of the United Nations in the region in carrying out the mission.
24th April 2012 – UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said:
"I strongly condemn the Israeli government's decision yesterday to turn three illegal outposts in the West Bank into settlements. I urged the Israeli government in my statement on 5 April to remove – not legalise – outposts across the West Bank. "
Furthermore, I would like to refer you to specific serious concerns raised by the International Court of Justice (2004) – with relevance to the 'security barrier' – which was viewed with alarm by the international community. Incidentally the reference to the illegality of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was also reinforced when the International Court of Justice also found the following (indeed the EU supported the UN vote pertaining to the 'security barrier'):
That the separation barrier is intended to assist the settlements, the
establishment of which violates Article 49 of the Convention. Also, the court pointed out that the restrictions placed on the local population located between the barrier and the Green Line are liable to lead to abandonment of the land, which also constitutes a violation of Article 49. In addition, the opinion stated that taking control of private land to build the barrier injured private property owners, and thus violated Articles 46 and 52 of the Hague Regulations of 1907 and of Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The illegality of the barrier under international human rights law. In this
context, the court stated unequivocally, and contrary to the position held by Israel, that international human rights law applies in its entirety in occupied territory, along with humanitarian law. The court ruled that the separation barrier violates rights set forth in conventions to which Israel is party. The court mentioned the rights to freedom of movement and the right against invasion of privacy of home and family, which are enshrined in Articles 12 and 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the right to work, to an adequate standard of living, health, and education, which are enshrined in Articles 6, 11, 12, and 13 of the International covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights.
I forgot to ask. Why was the definition of "refugee" changed for the benefit of the Palestinians to someone who had resided in the Land for at least two years before 1948? Surely if they were as indigenous as you claim, they would not need such a redefinition. The previous definition of who is a refugee includes only those people who were forced to leave permanent or habitual homes. Yet the Palestinians just needed to reside in the Holy Land for only two years to be considered refugees. Why is that oh fairminded and self-proclaimed promoter of facts?
What definition are you referring to?
The argument that the Arabs were not indigenous warrants no response. If you'd like to have a serious discussion, let me know. But it's a moot point. The fact remains that Arabs were in possession of 85% of the land of Palestine. Whether they'd lived on that land for two generations or two-hundred, it was their land, and the Jews had no right to take it from them. You simply cannot justify the act of ethnic cleansing and land theft by which the state of Israel came into existence. That's the bottom line.
Dov Bear
"I forgot to ask. Why was the definition of "refugee" changed for the benefit of the Palestinians to someone who had resided in the Land for at least two years before 1948?"
It is the standard definition of a refugee under the UNHCR statute. Although th Palestine refugees receive assistance form UNRWA, they are never the less still refugees
"Surely if they were as indigenous as you claim, they would not need such a redefinition. The previous definition of who is a refugee includes only those people who were forced to leave permanent or habitual homes."
No it isn't.. Read the UNHCR Statute.
" Yet the Palestinians just needed to reside in the Holy Land for only two years to be considered refugees."
So what? The same definition applies to Jewish folk who have not taken citizenship in a country other than that of return thereby forgoing refugee status.
" Why is that oh fairminded and self-proclaimed promoter of facts?"
Perhaps because your notions are complete bullsh*te !
The UNRWA definition is only to determine who qualifies for assistance whilst they are refugee. UNRWA's mandate does not extend to final status, RoR. http://wp.me/pDB7k-jS
JRH wrote:
As for the '48 war, the Arabs didn't invade. One can't "invade" one's own land. It was the Zionists who invaded the Arabs' land, and who ethnically cleansed Palestine.
…The Jews committed the crime of ethnic cleansing…
In 1948 five countries attacked Israel. Was that the land of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq? What right they have to fight against Israel? Arab solidarity? So, any country (A) has the right to invade into another country (B) just because the people of the same nationality live there, and somebody in A supposes that in B this people would be oppressed?
Let suppose that JH does know nothing about how Jews have settled in Palestine before 1948; that they did not drive Arabs out from their homes and did not grab their fields but bought the land, and not the best one was sold to them. Jews dried swamps and irrigated deserts. Jewish farms and factories gave jobs to Arabs also.
Also, let suppose that JH does not know that in the Israel Declaration of Independence the equal rights of all citizens of all nationalities were proclaimed. And this is the low and the custom of Israel from her birthday until now. He does not know that during the 11948-49 war majority of Arabs left they homes because of Arab states propaganda, promised them the fast return not in their homes but in Jewish ones as well. He does not know that about 700,000 Jews, lived in Arab countries, had escaped in Israel in those years, leaving their properties.
Almost 20 years so called Palestine was occupied by Egypt and Jordan, and i PLO, which was recognized as one only legal representative of Palestinian Arabs, did not claim for an independent Arab state. All that they proclaimed was: to throw Jews down in the Sea.
JRH wrote:
The Arabs proposed a democratic solution with a constitutional government recognizing and protecting the rights of the minority Jews and guaranteeing representation in its legislative body.
Where JRH took this from? Mayby from Saudi Arabia rules, forbiding Jews even to intersect the state border?
JRH wrote:
The war of '48 was a war of self-defense, yes. But not for the Jews…
Sure, Jews have no right to defend themself, because they are strangers everywhere. Thay should go by colons in gas cameras.
By the way, maybe JRH knows the correct interpretation of the term "Anti-Zionist"? I suppose he does.
AK, most of your claims are baseless propaganda, trotted out time and again, and debunked time and again. As such, your bogus allegations should be addressed one by one.
1) "In 1948 five countries attacked Israel…"
Snore. Zionist militias had already been engaged in massacring and ethnically cleansing Palestinian villages (learn about Plan Dalet) before a single Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, or Lebanese soldier invaded Palestine in mid-May 1948. The Arab armies entered the conflict – only after Israel had unilaterally declared independence and abrogated the inalienable Palestinian right to self-determination – primarily to stem the number of Palestinian refugees who had been violently driven from their homes by Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and other groups and were flooding into the neighboring countries.
2) "[Jews] did not drive Arabs out from their homes and did not grab their fields but bought the land, and not the best one was sold to them…"
Everything you write above is the opposite of true. Without going into depth here, you should read the scholarship of Israeli historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, as well as the documentation of Palestinian historian Nur Masalha.
3) "In the Israel Declaration of Independence the equal rights of all citizens of all nationalities were proclaimed. And this is the [law] and the custom of Israel from her birthday until now…"
The first half is correct, the second is dead wrong. As I have written previously, whereas the Israeli Proclamation of Independence (unilaterally declared on May 14, 1948, in defiance of the international community and the "universal right" of Palestinian self-determination) declared that the new state would "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex" and "guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture," the Israeli Supreme Court has repeatedly stated, in a series of decisions, that "the proclamation does not have constitutional validity, and that it is not a supreme law which may be used to invalidate laws and regulations that contradict it." Furthermore, the Israeli "Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty," enacted in 1992 and which carries with it the ostensible force of a bill of rights (as Israel has no Constitution), tellingly makes absolutely no mention of "equality," and affirms "State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state," a concept which explicitly grants legal and collective superiority upon Jewish nationals to the implicit detriment of other Israeli citizens.
If you actually knew anything about the two-tiered legal system and its institutionalized apartheid, you would be aware of how incorrect your statement actually is.
4) "During the 1948-49 war [the] majority of Arabs left the[ir] homes because of Arab states['] propaganda, promised them the fast return not in their homes but in Jewish ones as well…"
This is one of the most pervasive and ridiculous Zionist myths that refuses to die. The truth is that, as professor John Mearsheimer has pointed out, "most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay at home, but fear of violent death at the hands of the Zionist forces led most of them to flee. This is not to deny that some Arab commanders did instruct Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes during the fighting, either to make sure that they did not get caught in a firefight or to ensure that they were not killed by the Zionist forces engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians."
5) "700,000 Jews, lived in Arab countries, [and] had escaped [to] Israel in those years, leaving their properties…"
The "exodus" of Jewish populations from Middle Eastern countries occurred in response to the creation of a "Jewish State" of Israel. Massive financial incentives were offered (and still are) for Jews to emigrate to Israel. Other more sinister methods were also employed. In the case of Iraq, for example, former CIA officer Wilbur Eveland has written, "In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues [in Iraq]. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel."
That said, it should absolutely be noted that Jews should never have been expelled from Arab countries and forced to abandon their property as a result of the war crimes of Israel. This, too, is a form of ethnic cleansing and should be condemned. Jews who either left or fled their native countries have the inalienable right to return or be compensated for their losses, just as Palestinians do. But the reactions of Arab governments do not in any way excuse or justify the previous ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from their homeland by Zionists.
6) "All that [the PLO] proclaimed was: to throw Jews down in the Sea…"
As professor William James Martin has repeatedly pointed out, the actual origin of that oft-parroted phrase (which serves as the "gotcha" Zionist proof that Arabs have explicit antisemitic and genocidal tendencies regarding Jews, just Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's endlessly repeated "wipe Israel off the map" deliberate mistranslation is supposed to provide evidence of Iranian intentions) comes from a 1961 Knesset speech by none other than Zionist fan favorite David Ben-Gurion! In the speech, he declared:
"The Arabs' exit from Palestine…began immediately after the UN resolution, from the areas earmarked for the Jewish state. And we have explicit documents testifying that they left Palestine following instructions by the Arab leaders, with the Mufti at their head, under the assumption that the invasion of the Arab armies at the expiration of the Mandate will destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive."
In this one short paragraph, Ben-Gurion unleashed three notable falsehoods (two of which – Palestinian ethnic cleansing and Arab calls for flight – have already been addressed above). The phrase "push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive" was first used in this speech and is therefore of Jewish, not Arab, origin. Attempts to associate it with Yasser Arafat are similarly bogus considering that he didn't ascend to the head of the PLO until 1968, seven years after Ben-Gurion came up with this phrase.
7) "The Arabs proposed a democratic solution with a constitutional government recognizing and protecting the rights of the minority Jews and guaranteeing representation in its legislative body…Where JRH took this from?"
Mr. Hammond "took this from" the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSOP) report to the General Assembly from September 3, 1947 (Volume 1, Supplement No. 11), which stated:
"The representatives of the Arab States at Beirut put forward much the same constitutional proposals for the future government of Palestine as those advanced by the Arab States' delegations to the Palestine Conference at London in September 1946. In summary, those recommendations were:
"(a) That Palestine should be a unitary State, with a democratic constitution and an elected legislative assembly,
"(b) That the constitution should provide, inter alia, guarantees for (i) the sanctity of the Holy Places and, subject to suitable safeguards, freedom of religious practice in accordance with the status quo; (ii) full civil rights for all Palestine citizens, the naturalization requirement being ten years' continuous residence in the country; (iii) protection of religious and cultural rights of the Jewish community, such safe-guards to be altered only with the consent of the majority of the Jewish members in the legislative assembly…"
It's true that the Arab suggestion also included "the strict prohibition of Jewish immigration and the continuation of the existing restrictions on land transfer," but this is quite understandable considering the actual intentions (and subsequent historical facts) of the Zionist movement. As the beloved Ben-Gurion noted, "Were I an Arab, I would rebel even more vigorously, bitterly, and desperately against the immigration that will one day turn Palestine and all its Arab residents over to Jewish rule."
Clearly, he knew what he was talking about.
It may also surprise you that not all Jewish organizations in Palestine (or the US, for that mater) supported the creation of Israel as a "Jewish State" or even of Partition, as the UN recommended. The UNSOP report states:
"In Palestine, the Ihud (Union) Association and the Hashomer Hatzair Workers' Party are in favour of a "binational" State in which the two communities [Jewish and Arab] would have equal status and political parity. The Communist Party proposes a democratic Arab-Jewish State which might be binational or federative. In the United States, opposition to Zionism is voiced by the American Council for Judaism, which opposes proposals to establish a Jewish State. In its view, such proposals are a threat to the peace and security of Palestine and its surrounding area, are harmful to the Jews in Palestine and throughout the world, and are also undemocratic."
8) "Saudi Arabia rules, forbidding Jews even to intersect the state border…"
Even in your attempt to be snide and/or clever, you've gotten this one wrong. True, foreigners wishing to acquire a visa to visit Saudi Arabia must fill out a form which identifies their religion. But the choices are only "Muslim" or "Non-Muslim." Non-Muslims, including Christians and Jews, are often given visas, but cannot visit holy sites (obviously, this is ridiculous and offensive). However, Saudi Arabia will not allow an Israeli passport holder or one who has a passport that has an Israeli arrival/departure stamp in it to enter the country. This is not about the Jewish religion, but about not recognizing the State of Israel as a legitimate national entity. This has everything to do with Zionism, rather than Judaism.
Incidentally, back in 2008, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that "Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has sent an invitation to the World Jewish Congress for an interfaith dialogue with Muslim and Christian leaders" to be held in Saudi Arabia. I don't believe the meeting ever took place, though Abdullah did hold similar meetings in Madrid, Geneva, and New York.
9) "Sure, Jews have no right to defend themsel[ves]…"
Mr. Hammond never wrote that. He only stated the fact that the so-called Israeli War of Independence was born out of an aggressive Zionist assault on the native Palestinian population.
As I myself have pointed out elsewhere:
Despite the mythology perpetuated about Israel's miraculous birth, Zionist fighters were not struggling against devastating odds for the survival of their nascent state. Not only had the Palestinian fighting forces been "decimated by the British in the 1936-1939 revolt," during which over 10% of the Palestinian population had been killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled, but the violent British repression also affected the Palestinians' ability to resist further assaults in the future as Rashid Khalidi explains, a "high proportion of the Arab casualties included the most experienced military cadres and enterprising fighters."
Scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have also pointed out that, "Israel is often portrayed as weak and besieged, a Jewish David surrounded by a hostile Arab Goliath. This image has been carefully nurtured by Israeli leaders and sympathetic writers, but the opposite image is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better‐equipped, and better‐led forces" than their Arab opponents. In fact, "the Zionist/Israeli fighting forces outnumbered the Palestinians between December 1947 and May 1948, and they outnumbered the Arab armies from May 1948 to January 1949, when the fighting stopped." As Israeli historian Benny Morris put it, "it was superior Jewish firepower, manpower, organization, and command and control that determined the outcome of battle."
10) "Maybe JRH knows the correct interpretation of the term "Anti-Zionist"? I suppose he does."
Suggesting that "anti-Zionism" is the same as "anti-Semitism," as I can only assume is your intent, is a disingenuous, cowardly, and intellectually feeble argument to make. Does opposing the war crimes, torture, invasions, occupations, and lawless imprisonment of the United States make one "anti-American"? Were South Africans who opposed and fought against Apartheid actually just "anti-white people"? Does being offended by rampant child molestation make one "anti-Catholic"? Does opposing the religious and political ideology of the Taliban or of Wahhabist Saudi Arabia make one inherently "anti-Muslim"? No, of course not.
Anti-Zionists advocate for the rights of an oppressed people and against a state founded on the principles of ethnic cleansing and ethnic supremacy. A "Jewish" state can not also be a "democratic" state, as the non-Jewish inhabitants are automatically considered to been an un-priviledged part of the population and are therefore not legal equals within the state itself. This is what anti-Zionists attempt to rectify through their myriad and wide-ranging efforts.
AK, you clearly fail to understand even the most basic aspects of what anti-Zionists fight against – believing the legitimacy of a Jewish state to be an untouchable given (it's not), while ignoring history (again, read Israeli historians Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhart, Tom Segev, Shlomo Sand, Avi Shlaim, and Benny Morris), the rights of all people as enshrined in modern (not colonial or Biblical) law, and the deliberately abrogated lives and liberties of an indigenous people, who have been violently expelled, viciously exterminated, politically marginalized, economically strangled, and personally demonized and dehumanized for over a century.
I sincerely hope you do some homework before commenting next time.
By far the best thing in my above post is that the number 8 and half-parenthesis automatically turned into a smiley face emoticon with shades on.
Nima Shirazi
"I sincerely hope you do some homework before commenting next time."
Odds are against…. It would not serve the required purpose.
Fortunately other folk might be inclined to think twice and/or check before blindly repeating ignorant twaddle promoted on behalf of justifying Israel's illegal actions.
Stop with your Pallywood lies.
Here is the truth.
Research reported by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, stated "the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, but that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier."
"The Arab exodus from the villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews"
– Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953
The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.
– Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
– Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949
"Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees… while it is we who made them to leave… We brought disaster upon Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave… We have rendered them dispossessed… We have accustomed them to begging… We have participated in lowering their moral and social level… Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon… men, women and children – all this in service of political purposes…"
– Khaled al Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war
"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
– Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948
"The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."
amal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, speaking to the United Nations Security Council. Quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23,1948,p.14
"As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the [Arab Palestinian] people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property." – bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957
"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."
– Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183
"The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city…By withdrawing Arab workers, their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.".
– Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, p. 25
"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem,
– Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948
"The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
– from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954
"The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war."
– General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948
"[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."
– Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
"Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] …A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. …[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns… [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.""
– Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz
"the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision"
– The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
"The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea."
– Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31
"We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."
– Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah ("The Secret Behind the Disaster") by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952
"The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade… He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down."
– Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha's successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951
"Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals . . . declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations…. It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise."
– Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
"…our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents … Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families."
The Haifa Workers' Council bulletin, 28 April 1948
"…the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country."
The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48
"The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States' opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs."
…The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families."
– Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948
"One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC's threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go."
"The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
– London Times, May 5, 1948
"Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.
"We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East."
– David Ben-Gurion, in Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on May 14, 1948, moments before the 6 surrounding Arab armies, trained and armed by the British, invaded the day-old Jewish micro-state, with the stated goal of extermination.
"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones. The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable".
– by Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976
"The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle."
– Ash Shalab (Jaffa newspaper), January 30, 1948
"The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa."
– London Times, May 5, 1948
"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
– The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948
Jim Chance
8 Votes
Just as Benny Morris mentions
According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948?
"About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg."
According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?
"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field – they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village – she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.
The denial that ethic cleansing occurred in Palestine cannot be taken seriously. The claim that the Arabs left willingly of their own accord is old Zionist propaganda that scholars have thoroughly debunked.
Take one of Ken Kelso's own sources, Israeli historian Benny Morris. Here he is commenting in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz on January 8, 2004:
Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here…. There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre.
Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an
omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands…. There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing…. That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into
being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population….
Ken's list may look impressive at first to anyone ignorant of the ethnic cleansing Benny Morris felt was justified. But it is just a lot of smoke and mirrors. Take just his first example:
Research reported by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, stated "the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, but that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier."
This is a fabrication. Ken claims this is a direct quote from the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS). It's not. The only words in this sentence that are actually taken from the IPS source are "the majority" and "68%". The key part of it, "the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled", is a fabrication falsely attributed to the IPS source. Here is the context from the actual source from which "the majority" and "68%" were taken:
They observed the occupying forces arrie, and then decided to leave their homes. The old and new refugees differ in this respect. The majority of the old refugees (68%) left without seeing the Israelis. By contrast, 42% of the new refugees did so.
(Peter Dodd and Halim Isber Barakat. River without bridges: a study of the exodus of the 1967, Palestinian Arab refugees. Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968.)
The authors here are simply noting that those who fled earlier on during the conflict never actually saw Israeli soldiers. They fled out of fear of massacres like that at Deir Yassin. By contrast, he notes, 42% of later refugees fled without seeing Israelis. That is, most who fled later did do so having seen Israeli forces.
To go through and examine each of Ken's quotes in like manner would be superfluous.
750,000 Arabs were forcibly expelled or fled from their villages out of fear of the Zionist forces and were never allowed to return again because they were not Jews.
That is ethnic cleansing.
Great rebuke to Pallywood liar Jeremy Hammond.
The Lie of Palestine
Palestine is a Geographical Area, Not a Nationality
January 6, 2008
The Arabs invented a special national entity in the 1960s (rather than a geographic delineation) called the Palestinians, specifically for political gain. They brand Israelis as invaders and claim the geographic area called Palestine belongs exclusively to the Arabs.
The word Palestine is not even Arabic. It is a word coined by the Romans around 135 CE from the name of a seagoing Aegean people who settled on the coast of Canaan in antiquity – the Philistines. The name was chosen to replace Judea, as a sign that Jewish sovereignty had been eradicated following the Jewish Revolts against Rome.
In the course of time, the Latin name Philistia was further bastardized into Palistina or Palestine. During the next 2,000 years, Palestine was never an independent state belonging to any people, nor did a Palestinian people, distinct from other Arabs, appear during 1,300 years of Muslim hegemony in Palestine under Arab and Ottoman rule.
Palestine was and is solely a geographic name. Therefore, it is not surprising that in modern times the name 'Palestine' or 'Palestinian' was applied as an adjective to all inhabitants of the geographical area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River – Palestine Jews and Palestine Arabs alike. In fact, until the 1960s, most Arabs in Palestine preferred to identify themselves merely as part of the great Arab nation or citizens of "southern Syria."
The term 'Palestinian' as a noun was usurped and co-opted by the Arabs in the 1960s as a tactic initiated by Yasser Arafat to brand Jews as intruders on someone else's turf. He presents Arab residents of Israel and the Territories as indigenous inhabitants since time immemorial. This fabrication of peoplehood allowed Palestinian Arabs to gain parity with the Jewish people as a nation deserving of an independent state.
In a March 1977 interview in the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Zahir Muhsein, a member of the PLO executive committee, admitted:
"Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."
Historically, Before the Arabs Fabricated the Palestinian People as an Exclusively Arab Phenomenon, No Such Group Existed
Countless official British Mandate-vintage documents speak of 'the Jews' and 'the Arabs' of Palestine – not 'Jews and Palestinians.'
Ironically, before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (the name 'Israel' was chosen for the newly-established Jewish state), the term 'Palestine' applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before independence. Some examples include:
· The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called the Palestine Post until 1948.
· Bank Leumi L'Israel was called the "Anglo-Palestine Bank, a Jewish Company."
· The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 – was called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
· The house organ of American Zionism in the 1930s was called New Palestine.
· Today's Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was called the "Palestine Symphony Orchestra, composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews."
· The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.
If you watch the blockbuster 1960 hit movie "Exodus," based on the novel by Leon Uris, you will see how recent this appellation is. The hero, a native-born Jewish pioneer called Ari ben Canaan, talks of his love for Palestine.
Encouraged by their success at historical revisionism and brainwashing the world with the 'Big Lie' of a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arabs have more recently begun to claim they are the descendants of the Philistines and even the Stone Age Canaanites. Based on that myth, they can claim to have been 'victimized' twice by the Jews: in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and by the Israelis in modern times – a total fabrication. Archeologists explain that the Philistines were a Mediterranean people who settled along the coast of Canaan in 1100 BCE. They have no connection to the Arab nation, a desert people who emerged from the Arabian Peninsula.
As if that myth were not enough, Arafat has also claimed "Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the Jebusites" displaced when King David conquered Jerusalem. Arafat has also argued that "Abraham was an Iraqi." One Christmas Eve, Arafat declared that "Jesus was a Palestinian," a preposterous claim that echoes the words of Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian Arab, who in an interview during the 1991 Madrid Conference said: "Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land," claiming she was "the descendant of the first Christians" – disciples who spread the gospel around Bethlehem some 600 years before the Arab conquest. If her claim were true, it would be tantamount to confessing that she is a Jew!
Contradictions abound, Palestinian Arab leaders claim to be descended from the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jebusites and the first Christians. They also co-opt Jesus and ignore his Jewishness, at the same time claiming the Jews never were a people and never built the Holy Temples in Jerusalem.
There has Never Been a Sovereign Arab State in Palestine
The artificiality of a Palestinian identity is reflected in the attitudes and actions of neighboring Arabs nations who never established a Palestinian state. It also is expressed in the utterances and loyalties of so-called Palestinians.
Only twice in Jerusalem's history has it served as a national capital. The first time was as the capital of the two Jewish Commonwealths during the First and Second Temple periods, as described in the Bible, reinforced by archaeological evidence and numerous ancient documents. The second time is in modern times as the capital of the State of Israel. It has never served as an Arab capital for the simple reason that there has never been a Palestinian Arab state.
The rhetoric by Arab leaders on behalf of the Palestinians rings hollow, for the Arabs in neighboring lands, who control 99.9 percent of the Middle East land, have never recognized a Palestinian entity. They have always considered Palestine and its inhabitants part of the great 'Arab nation,' historically and politically as an integral part of Greater Syria – Suriyya al-Kubra – a designation that covered both sides of the Jordan River. In the 1950s, Jordan simply annexed the West Bank, since its population was viewed as brethren of the Jordanians. Jordan's official narrative of "Jordanian state-building" attests to this fact:
"Jordanian identity underlies the significant and fundamental common denominator that makes it inclusive of Palestinian identity, particularly in view of the shared historic social and political development of the people on both sides of the Jordan…. The Jordan government, in view of the historical and political relationship with the West Bank … granted all Palestinian refugees on its territory full citizenship rights while protecting and upholding their political rights as Palestinians (Right of Return or compensation)."
The Arabs never established a Palestinian state when the UN offered a partition plan in 1947 to establish "an Arab and a Jewish state" (not a Palestinian state, it should be noted). Nor did the Arabs recognize or establish a Palestinian state during the two decades prior to the Six-Day War when the West Bank was under Jordanian control and the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control; nor did the Palestinians clamor for autonomy or independence during those years under Jordanian and Egyptian rule.
Well before the 1967 decision to create a new Arab people called 'Palestinians,' when the word 'Palestinian' was associated with Jewish endeavors, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, testified in 1937 before a British investigative body – the Peel Commission – saying: "There is no such country ! Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries, part of Syria."
In a 1946 appearance before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, also acting as an investigative body, the Arab historian Philip Hitti stated: "There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not." According to investigative journalist Joan Peters, who spent seven years researching the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine (From Time Immemorial, 2001) the one identity that was never considered by local inhabitants prior to the 1967 war was 'Arab Palestinian.'
Eli E. Hertz
Myths and Facts
Read the first paragraph, which is all I needed to read to see that this is complete nonsense unworthy of my time.
If you think there is any error in fact or logic in my article, I welcome you to point it out and actually make an argument.
Calling me a "liar" and pasting an article that begins with the absurd lie that Palestinian nationalism didn't exist until the 1960s in lieu of producing an actual argument certainly isn't sufficient to demonstrate any error on my part.
You are welcome to point out any error in fact or logic in the article.
AK, in 1948, five countries rose up in arms to defend the rights and property of the Palestinian Arabs. Your assertion that the Arab states "attacked Israel" is based on the fact that the Zionists declared Palestine as their own, but Jews legally owned only 7% of the land at the time. The Zionists had no legal claim to any more than that 7% of land. Again, one can't "invade" one's own land.
Jeremy R. Hammond
"Jews legally owned only 7% of the land at the time. The Zionists had no legal claim to any more than that 7% of land. Again, one can't "invade" one's own land."
Correction 'Real estate' is not 'territory'.
'territory' belongs to the citizens of a region, whether they own 'real estate' or rent 'real estate' or live under a bridge in the territory.
For example, see the legal annexation of Texas to the US. A referendum was held of the citizens in the territory to be annexed, be they owners of 'real estate' or renters of 'real estate' or landless bums living under a sombrero.
Israel had no right to any 'territory' through the ownership of 'real estate'. The ownership of 'real estate' was taken into account only to determine where there were pockets of Jewish population….
It was somewhat skewed. Territory belongs only to the citizens in it. Institutions such as the Palestinian Jewish Colonization Association (PJCA), Palestine Land Development Co. and the Jewish National Fund were not, nor could they possibly have been citizens.
Agreed. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
The failed War of Extermination of 1948, began with mass attacks on every single Jewish community in the country by the Arabs
Jeremy Hammond is merely whining because the Arabs lost.
The West Bank is really Judea-Samaria.
Jerusalem has been a unified city except for a few decades of the past 3,000 years, capital of 3 natives states, all Jewish, and with a renewed Jewish majority since the 1800's.
Jordan's 1948-67 seizure of the Old City and City of David, with their Jewish and Christian historic and holy places, and nearby neighborhoods didn't create a new city. Jews are not "settlers' in a land in which Jews have lived for 3 millennia,
The amount of land privately owned in the Western sense by Palestinian Arabs was just over 2% of the land in 48.
It is very easy to prove the falsehood of your claims. The Negev, which alone constitutes about 40% of the land was virtually all State land owned by the British.
The overwhelming ownership of the land was by the British.
1) Israel has equality under law regardless of race, religion or gender. Arabic and Hebrew are dual official languages.
2) The PA has a law giving the death penalty for selling land to Jews
3) The PA and Hamas both say no Jews are allowed to be in "their" nation
4) Christians are fleeing Muslim persecution under both PA and Hamas rule
5) Jordan says it's illegal for Jews to be citizens
6) Saudi Arabia says non-Muslims are barred from citizenship
7) Every Muslim nation has at least partial Sharia law, implementing discrimination against non-Muslims.
8) Copts in Egypt, Maronites and other Christians, animists, Berbers, Chaldeans and other non-Muslims, regularly document religious discrimination in their countries.
9) The fifty-seven member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conferences openly reject the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights because equality is against the core tenants of Islam.
Great Britain owned not one inch of the Negev.
The British were a foreign power exercising a military occupation of Palestine, a status that afforded them "ownership" of precisely zero of Palestine's land.
Here's a relevant excerpt from my forthcoming book on the conflict:
On September 3, UNSCOP issued its report to the General Assembly, stating its majority recommendation that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states. The report noted that the population of Palestine at the end of 1946 was estimated to be almost 1,846,000, with 1,203,000 Arabs (65 percent) and 608,000 Jews (33 percent). Growth of the Jewish population had been mainly the result of immigration, while growth of the Arab population had been "almost entirely" due to natural increase. It observed that there was "no clear territorial separation of Jews and Arabs by large contiguous areas", and even in the Jaffa district, which included Tel Aviv, Arabs constituted a majority.[i]
Moreover, the Jewish population in the area of the proposed Jewish state was 498,000, while the number of Arabs was 407,000, plus an estimated 105,000 Bedouins, bringing the total Arab population to approximately 512,000. "In other words," noted the report of a subcommittee established by the General Assembly to follow up on the UNSCOP's recommendation, "at theoutset, the Arabs will have a majority in the proposed Jewish State." The subcommittee also noted that population distribution was closely connected with "the factor of land ownership in the proposed Jewish State"—meaning that Arabs would also own more land than Jews within the "Jewish State".[ii]
An UNSCOP survey of land ownership cited 1943 statistics showing that of Palestine's total land area (26,320,505 dunams), Arabs and other non-Jews owned nearly 94 percent (24,670,455 dunams). By contrast, the Jews owned only 5.8 percent (1,514,247 dunams).[iii] Land ownership statistics for 1945 likewise showed that Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district in Palestine. The district with the highest
percentage of Jewish ownership was Jaffa, where 39 percent of the land was owned by Jews, compared to 47 percent owned by Arabs. Jews owned less than 5 percent of the land in eight out of the sixteen districts.[iv] Even by the end of the Mandate in 1948, according to the Jewish National Fund (a quasi-governmental organization founded in 1901 to purchase land for Jewish settlement), the Jewish community had acquired only about 6.9 percent (1,820,000 dunams) of the total land area of Palestine.[v]
As the UNSCOP report noted, "The Arab population, despite the strenuous efforts of Jews to acquire land in Palestine, at present remains in possession of approximately 85 percent of the land."[vi] And as the subcommittee report observed, "The bulk of the land in the Arab
State, as well as in the proposed Jewish State, is owned and possessed by Arabs" (emphasis added).[vii]
[i] UN General Assembly, United Nations Special Committee on Palestine Report to the General Assembly, Volume 1, A/364 (September 3, 1947), http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/07175DE9FA2DE563852568D3006E10F3. Hereafter "UNSCOP Report."
[ii] UN General Assembly, Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question: Report of Sub-Committee 2, A/AC.14/32 (November 11, 1947), 41, 43, http://ndocs.org/A/AC.14/32. Hereafter "Report of Sub-Committee 2."
[iii] A Survey of Palestine: Prepared in December 1945 and January 1946 for the information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991), 566. The entire three-volume Survey of Palestine is available for purchase at http://www.palestine-studies.org and can also be viewed online at http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Books/Story831.html. A dunam is 1,000 square meters, or about a quarter acre.
[iv] Report of Sub-Committee 2, 43-44, Appendix 5, "Palestine Land Ownership by Sub-Districts (1945)." A higher quality image of the map is available at http://domino.un.org/maps/m0094.jpg. Statistics were as follows (Arab/Jewish land ownership in percentages): Safad: 68/18; Acre: 87/3; Tiberias: 51/38; Haifa: 42/35; Nazareth: 52/28; Beisan: 44/34; Jenin: 84/1, Tulkarm: 78/17; Nablus: 87/1; Jaffa: 47/39; Ramle: 77/14;
Ramallah: 99/less than 1; Jerusalem: 84/2; Gaza: 75/4; Hebron: 96/less than 1; Beersheeba: 15/less than 1.
[v] Walid Khalidi, "Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution," Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume XXVII, No. 1 (Autumn 1997), http://www.palestine-studies.org/enakba/diplomacy/Khalidi,%20Revisiting%20the%201947%20UN%20Partition%20Resolution.pdf.
Khalidi writes that "Jewish-owned land on the eve of the partition resolution amounted, according to Jewish sources, to 1,820,000 dunams, or less than 7 percent of the total land area of the country" (13). This would be 6.9 percent, although Khalidi puts the total area of Palestine at the higher figure of 27 million dunams, which would put it at about 6.7 percent. His source cited was: Jewish National Fund, "Jewish Settlements in Palestine" (Jewish National Fund, Jerusalem, March 1948, Mimeographed), p. ii. See also Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1992), 98. Said writes that, by the end of 1947, the Jewish community had legally acquired 1,734,000 dunams, or about 6.6 percent of the territory of Palestine. He cites a slightly different number of 26,323,000 dunams for the total land area of Palestine, which still rounds to 6.6 percent. Said also notes, "After 1940, when the mandatory authority restricted Jewish land ownership to specific zones inside Palestine, there continued to be illegal buying (and selling) within the 65 percent of the total area restricted to Arabs." According to Abraham Granott, "The total area of land in Jewish possession at the end of June 1947 amounted to 1,850,000 dunams…." See: Abraham Granott, The Land System in Palestine (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 1952), 278. This number would put the amount of land in Jewish possession at 7 percent. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe puts the figure lower, writing, "By the end of the Mandate in 1948, the Jewish community owned around 5.8% of the land in Palestine." Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld Publications,
2006), Kindle Edition, Location 655. However, this is evidently an error; Pappe seems to have cited the statistic from 1943, which was no longer accurate by the end of the Mandate.
[vi] UNSCOP Report.
[vii] Report of Sub-Committee 2, 43.
It's unnecessary to reply to the rest of the numbered points Ken makes. Just how any of them are supposed to demonstrate that I've lied about anything is not exactly clear. He is welcome to quote a single error in fact I made in the article, if he can find any.
I've just shown him how that's done.
Anyone who'd like to be updated on when my book will be published can subscribe to my free newsletter at http://www.jeremyrhammond.com.
The Jews were going to be the majority if the British did not give out a White paper in 39 to appease the Arabs.
Lets remember your the same fool who thinks Mahmoud Zahar is a man of peace.
Go on Youtube and search for,
Mahmoud Al Zahar reveals Hamas' genocidal agenda – shocking!
2 other statements from Zahar in articles i'v read.
Hamas Foreign Minister "Zahar:"After we defeat the Zionists we will persecute them… we will persecute them to eternity"
May 14, 08
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said Wednesday that a Palestinian state will be established on all of the land of Palestine and not only on parts of it, and that it will include "Jaffa, Lod and Haifa."
Mahmoud Zahar, A top Hamas leader said this.
April 26, 2004
Hamas would continue to struggle for the elimination of the State of Israel. "We are not willing to accept Israel as a legitimate state in this area. This is not our political attitude. This is a standing contradiction with Islam," he said.
The Jews were going to be the majority if the British did not give out a White paper in 39 to appease the Arabs.
So? Is there a conclusion you think we should draw from this hypothetical?
Tell me how did the Arabs get all of North Africa from the Berbers in the 7th century.
I'm talking about is today Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya.
Tell me how your question is relevant to the article.
Lets remember Jeremy your the same fool who thinks Mahmoud Zahar is a man of peace.
Go on Youtube and search for,
Mahmoud Al Zahar reveals Hamas' genocidal agenda – shocking!
2 more articles detailing the Islamo fascist Zahar is.
Hamas official: "After we defeat the Zionists we will persecute them… we will persecute them to eternity"
Marisol Seibold
May 15, 2008
Land for what, now? "Zahar: 'We will persecute the Zionists'," from the Jerusalem Post, May 14:
Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said Wednesday that a Palestinian state will be established on all of the land of Palestine and not only on parts of it, and that it will include "Jaffa, Lod and Haifa."
Zahar also reiterated Hamas' unwillingness to recognize the State of Israel and said that the group "will continue to persecute the Zionists wherever they are, after we prove that the Zionist army can be defeated – contrary to what was believed in the past, that it is impossible to beat the Zionists."
Speaking in the Gaza Strip, he went on to affirm Palestinian right of return, claiming that the "right of return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is closer than ever."
"After we defeat the Zionists we will persecute them"¦ we will persecute them to eternity, and the sun of the freedom and independence of the Palestinians will burn all of the Zionists," he continued.
"I think there's no doubt in anyone's mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process." – Dhimmi Carter, April 13.
How Long Will New Hamas Leader Last?
(Toronto Globe and Mail) – Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, 58, gave up his medical practice a long time ago to devote himself full-time to the pursuit of death. Last week, the Shura consultative council of Hamas met in secret and appointed Zahar their third leader in less than a month. Zahar said Hamas would continue to struggle for the elimination of the State of Israel. "We are not willing to accept Israel as a legitimate state in this area. This is not our political attitude. This is a standing contradiction with Islam," he said.
Lets remember Jeremy your the same fool who thinks Mahmoud Zahar is a man of peace.
That is news to me.
'Peoplehood' Based on a Big Lie
Eli E. Hertz
March 31, 2008
The Palestinians claim that they are an ancient and indigenous people fails to stand up to historic scrutiny. Most Palestinian Arabs were newcomers to British Mandate Palestine. Until the 1967 Six-Day War made it expedient for Arabs to create a Palestinian peoplehood, local Arabs simply considered themselves part of the 'great Arab nation' or 'southern Syrians.'
"Repeat a lie often enough and people will begin to believe it."
Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels
"All [that Palestinians] can agree on as a community is what they
want to destroy, not what they want to build."
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
There is no age-old Palestinian people. Most so-called Palestinians are relative newcomers to the Land of Israel
Like a mantra, Arabs repeatedly claim that the Palestinians are a native people. The concept of a 'Stateless Palestinian people' is not based on fact. It is a fabrication.
Palestinian Arabs cast themselves as a native people in "Palestine" – like the Aborigines in Australia or Native Americans in America. They portray the Jews as European imperialists and colonizers. This is simply untrue.
Until the Jews began returning to the Land of Israel in increasing numbers from the late 19th century to the turn of the 20th, the area called Palestine was a God-forsaken backwash that belonged to the Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey.
The land's fragile ecology had been laid waste in the wake of the Arabs' 7th-century conquest. In 1799, the population was at it lowest and estimated to be no more than 250,000 to 300,000 inhabitants in all the land.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Arab population west of the Jordan River (today, Israel and the West Bank) was about half a million inhabitants and east of the Jordan River perhaps 200,000.
The collapse of the agricultural system with the influx of nomadic tribes after the Arab conquest that created malarial swamps and denuded the ancient terrace system eroding the soil, was coupled by a tyrannous regime, a crippling tax system and absentee landowners that further decimated the population. Much of the indigenous population had long since migrated or disappeared. Very few Jews or Arabs lived in the region before the arrival of the first Zionists in the 1880s and most of those that did lived in abject poverty.
Most Arabs living west of the Jordan River in Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza are newcomers who came from surrounding Arab lands after the turn of the 20th century because they were attracted to the relative economic prosperity brought about by the Zionist Movement and the British in the 1920s and 1930s.
This is substantiated by eyewitness reports of a deserted country – including 18th-century reports from the British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, French author and historian Count Constantine Volney (Travels through Syria and Egypt, 1798); the mid-19th-century writings of Alphonse de Lamartine (Recollections of the East, 1835); Mark Twain (Innocents Abroad, 1867); and reports from the British Consul in Jerusalem (1857) that were sent back to London.
The Ottoman Turks' census (1882) recorded only 141,000 Muslims in the Land of Israel. The real number is probably closer to 350,000 to 425,000, since many hid to avoid taxes. The British census in 1922 reported 650,000 Muslims.
Aerial photographs taken by German aviators during World War I show an underdeveloped country composed mainly of primitive hamlets. Ashdod, for instance, was a cluster of mud dwellings, Haifa a fishing village. In 1934 alone, 30,000 Syrian Arabs from the Hauran moved across the northern frontier into Mandate Palestine, attracted by work in and around the newly built British port and the construction of other infrastructure projects. They even dubbed Haifa Um el-Amal ('the city of work').
The fallacy of Arab claims that most Palestinians were indigenous to Palestine – not newcomers – is also bolstered by a 1909 vintage photograph of Nablus, today an Arab city on the West Bank with over 121,000 residents. Based on the number of buildings in the photo taken from the base of Mount Gerizim, the population in 1909 – Muslim Arabs and Jewish Samaritans – could not have been greater than 2,000 residents.
Family names of many Palestinians attest to their non-Palestinian origins. Just as Jews bear names like Berliner, Warsaw and Toledano, modern phone books in the Territories are filled with families named Elmisri (Egyptian), Chalabi (Syrian), Mugrabi (North Africa). Even George Habash – the arch-terrorist and head of Black September – bears a name with origins in Abyssinia or Ethiopia, Habash in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Palestinian nationality is an entity defined by its opposition to Zionism, and not its national aspirations.
What unites Palestinians has been their opposition to Jewish nationalism and the desire to stamp it out, not aspirations for their own state. Local patriotic feelings are generated only when a non-Islamic entity takes charge – such as Israel did after the 1967 Six-Day War. It dissipates under Arab rule, no matter how distant or despotic.
A Palestinian identity did not exist until an opposing force created it – primarily anti-Zionism. Opposition to a non-Muslim nationalism on what local Arabs, and the entire Arab world, view as their own turf, was the only expression of 'Palestinian peoplehood.'
The Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a charismatic religious leader and radical anti-Zionist was the moving force behind opposition to Jewish immigration in the 1920s and 1930s. The two-pronged approach of the "Diplomacy of Rejection" (of Zionism) and the violence the Mufti incited occurred at the same time Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq became countries in the post-Ottoman reshuffling of territories established by the British and the French under the League of Nation's mandate system.
The tiny educated class among the Arabs of Palestine was more politically aware than the rest of Arab society, with the inklings of a separate national identity. However, for decades, the primary frame of reference for most local Arabs was the clan or tribe, religion and sect, and village of origin. If Arabs in Palestine defined themselves politically, it was as "southern Syrians." Under Ottoman rule, Syria referred to a region much larger than the Syrian Arab Republic of today, with borders established by France and England in 1920.
In his book Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition, Daniel Pipes explains:
"Syria was a region that stretched from the borders of Anatolia to those of Egypt, from the edge of Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea. In terms of today's states, the Syria of old comprised Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, plus the Gaza Strip and Alexandria."
Syrian maps in the 21st century still co-opt most of Greater Syria, including Israel.
The Grand Mufti Al-Husseini's aspirations slowly shifted from pan-Arabism – the dream of uniting all Arabs into one polity, whereby Arabs in Palestine would unite with their brethren in Syria – to winning a separate Palestinian entity, with himself at the helm. Al-Husseini was the moving force behind the 1929 riots against the Jews and the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt against two non-Muslim entities in Palestine – the British and the Jews. He gathered a large following by playing on fears that the Jews had come to dispossess, or at least dominate the Arabs.
Much like Yasser Arafat, the Grand Mufti's ingrained all-or-nothing extremism, fanaticism and even an inability to cooperate with his own compatriots made him totally ineffective. He led the Palestinian Arabs nowhere.
The 'Palestinian' cause became a key rallying point for Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East, according to Oxford historian Avi Shlaim. The countries the British and French created in 1918-1922 were based largely on meridians on the map, as is evident in the borders that delineate the Arab states today. Because these states lack ethnic logic or a sense of community, their opposition to the national aspirations of the Jews has come to fuel that fires Arab nationalism as the 'glue' of national identity. (see details on the ramifications of British and French policy, which plague the Middle East to this day in the chapter "The European Union.")
From the 1920s, rejection of Jewish nationalism, attempts to prevent the establishment of a Jewish homeland by violence, and rejection of any form of Jewish political power, including any plans to share stewardship with Arabs, crystallized into the expression of Palestinianism. No other positive definition of an Arab-Palestinian people has surfaced. This point is admirably illustrated in the following historic incident:
"In 1926, Lord Plumer was appointed as the second High Commissioner of Palestine. The Arabs within the Mandate were infuriated when Plumer stood up for the Zionists' national anthem Hatikva during ceremonies held in his honor when Plumer first visited Tel Aviv. When a delegation of Palestinian Arabs protested Plumer's 'Zionist bias,' the High Commissioner asked the Arabs if he remained seated when their national anthem was played, 'wouldn't you regard my behavior as most unmannerly?' Met by silence, Plumer asked: 'By the way, have you got a national anthem?' When the delegation replied with chagrin that they did not, he snapped back, "I think you had better get one as soon as possible."
But it took the Palestinians more than 60 years to heed Plumer's advice, adopting Anthem of the Intifada two decades after Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 – at the beginning of the 1987 Intifada.
Under the Mandate, local Arabs also refused to establish an 'Arab Agency' to develop the Arab sector, parallel to the Jewish Agency that directed development of the Jewish sector (see the Chapter "Rejectionism").
In fact, the so-called patriotism of indigenous Muslims has flourished only when non-Muslim entities (the Crusaders, the British, the Jews) have taken charge of the Holy Land. When political control returns to Muslim hands, the ardent patriotism of the Arabs of Palestine magically wanes, no matter how distant or how despotic the government. One Turkish pasha who ruled Acco (Acre) between 1775 and 1804 was labeled Al Jazzar, The Butcher, by locals.
Why hasn't Arab representative government ever been established in Palestine, either in 1948 or during the next 19 years of Arab rule? Because other Arabs co-opted the Palestinian cause as a rallying point that would advance the concept that the territory was up for grabs. "The Arab invasion of Palestine was not a means for achieving an independent Palestine, but rather the result of a lack of consensus on the part of the Arab states regarding such independence," summed up one historian. Adherents to a separate Palestinian identity were a mute minority on the West Bank and Gaza during the 19 years of Jordanian and Egyptian rule – until Israel took control from the Jordanians and the Egyptians in 1967. Suddenly a separate Palestinian peoplehood appeared and claimed it deserved nationhood – and 21 other Arab states went along with it.
Palestinianism in and of itself lacks any substance of its own. Arab society on the West Bank and Gaza suffers from deep social cleavages created by a host of rivalries based on divergent geographic, historical, geographical, sociological and familial allegiances. What glues Palestinians together is a carefully nurtured hatred of Israel and the rejection of Jewish nationhood.
Read to the second sentence, which is a ridiculous lie. Please try to be serious. Ive no time for such yet nonsense. Again, if you wish to challenge any point of fact or logic in my article, you are welcome to make an argument.
Most Palestinian Arabs were newcomers to British Mandate Palestine.
You don't actually believe this nonsense, do you Ken?
The facts are as I've stated them in the article.
There's a reason the Palestinians were called Greater Syrians before 1964. The majority of them were from Syria and came to the land late in the Ottoman Empire and during the British Mandate.
Palestine is the name of a Region.
Its not named after the Arabs or Muslims.
Arafat the Egyptian in 1964 took the name Palestinians from the ancient Philistines.
The Palestinians need to stop taking other's people's names and go back to being called Greater Syrians.
I call on Jeremy to demand the Palestinians stop with their identity theft of the Philistines name.
There's a reason Palestinians were called Palestinians before 1964.
Please try to be serious.
Palestinians were called Greater Syrians before 1964.
Jeremy Hammond knows this 100%
The Term Palestinians came into play by Arafat in 1964.
Strange, then, how, e.g., Ben-Gurion described the Arab revolt of 1936 as "an active resistance by the Palestinians".
Spare us your idiocy.
Great maps which tell the Truth.
Its not looking good for Jeremy
Countering the 'shrinking Palestine Maps' scam
One of the most pernicious and common scams propagated by anti-Israel activists
Yes, the reality can be found at that link. Here it is:
"In 1948 five countries attacked Israel."
Which territories, actually SOVEREIGN to Israel, did they attack?
The Israeli Government confirmed the extent of Israeli Sovereignty on May 22nd 1948 and on June 15th 1949 in it;s statements to the UNSC. http://wp.me/pDB7k-KL
On the same page, you will find a very exacting overlay map for Google Earth. It follows the ".. frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947″
They are the frontiers accepted and declared as the Jewish people's homeland State of Israel according to the ISRAELI GOVERNMENT of 1948 -1949
The statements were made BEFORE Israel laid claim to any territories outside of Israel….http://wp.me/pDB7k-l5
Cracking article. And frustrating :)
I was double checking a reference for an article on the same subject for my website, dismayed to find such a good one posted a few days ago – such is life.
A couple of things I think I would have added to the article, and will do so in mine:
– According to the figures provided by UNSCOP, in the proposed Jewish state, there would have been 498,000 Jews and 407,000 Arabs. Critically, UNSCOP did not include the Bedouin population in their figures. Including the Bedouin figures, the British gave a more accurate estimate of 509,780 Arabs, and 499,020 Jews in the Jewish state. So there would have been an Arab majority in the Jewish state, further illustrating the contempt for Arab self-determination.
– The Negev was home to 1,020 Jews and 103,820 Arabs, and was to be given entirely to the Jewish state.
– The Jewish state was to incorporate 84% of the agricultural land, which would have devastated the Palestinian citrus industry.
There's also a wonderful couple telegrams sent by the British.
On the 14th of May 1948, the British Foreign Office legal advisers sent the following to the British delegation at UN headquarters:
"The decision of November 29th instructed the United Nations Commission to take various steps in Palestine culminating in the establishment of Jewish and Arab states with economic union, e.g. in particular, each state had to draft a constitution and to make a declaration about the Holy Places, minority rights, citizenship, etc. Most of these steps have not been taken and if a Jewish state is proclaimed it will be setting itself up BY ITS OWN EFFORTS AND NOT THROUGH ACTS OF THE UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION."
Emphasis mine.
5 days later, the Foreign office sent another telegram to the Brits at the UN:
"The present juridical situation as regards Palestine is obscure and we cannot be sure whether other governments besides that of the Jewish state will emerge. It would be unfair and LEGALLY WRONG in these circumstances to admit the Jewish State to the United Nations at this early stage and thus to give it international recognition, while not taking any similar steps for the rest of Palestine"
Emphasis mine.
The Mandatory Power (Britain) seemed pretty clear that Israel wasn't created with any legal power granted by the British Mandate OR the UN.
Thanks again for a cracking article.
Thanks for the info, Tim. If you're working on an article on the topic, please notify me once its completed. I'd like to have a look.
"I would remind you, M.R., that the first terrorist organizations in Palestine were not Arab but Zionist groups. "
1) You're conflating the term "terrorist group". In those early years, the term essentially meant guerrillas. The extremists attacked the British rulers but didn't go after civilians. The Arabs weren't so discriminating.
2) The Haganah was founded (and was preceded by other defense groups) in the aftermath of Arab riots. The rightist Irgun splintered from the group a decade later in response to the 1929 Arab riots.
3) Jewish defense organizations were founded due to Arab violence. Even in the pre-Zionist era, Jewish communities (and Druse as well) were subject to frequent Bedouin raids.
The Zionist terrorist organizations most certainly did target civilians. Hence the adjective "terrorist".
I've already discussed at some length the fact that prior to Zionism, the Jews and Arabs of Palestine lived in relative harmony as neighbors. The Arabs were not opposed to Jews, but to Zionism. See previous comments.
Jeremy doesn't want you to know this.
Watch this video.
Hitler's pet dog and Palestinian NAZI leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
I have know problem with my readers knowing that the Grand Mufti sought an alliance with Nazi Germany. Actually, it's funny you mention it because I just happened to mention that fact in a blog post I wrote this morning:
Now, do you have anything relevant to my above article to say?
P.S. – Shall we also mention how the Jewish terrorist Lehi likewise appealed to Hitler to form an alliance? Or don't you want our readers to know that?
Dear Sir
That is correct. The Zionist terror groups were outlawed by the UK Government and made overtures to the Axis Powers.
Also, Israel did have relations with apartheid South Africa.
Thank you.
That's why they (Arab leaders) requested an international court review of the partition plan (ignored). And posited a one state solution with equal rights guaranteed for al. The zionists want all of it. Still do. See continued illegal settlement activity.
Yes, I discuss that actually in my forthcoming book.
"1) You're conflating the term "terrorist group". In those early years, the term essentially meant guerrillas. "
MI5 called 'em TERRORISTS https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/files-of-jewish-interest.html
Another interesting read at
Having read through most of the posts I have come to my own conclusion.
Jeremy Hammond is very smart, even clever, BUT … he lacks wisdom.
In what way do you think I "lack wisdom", Barry? Please do tell!
By lack of wisdom, he meant you did not subscribe to Jewish dominance of righteousness. They are always right. Everyone elso is stupid and wrong.
Barry Lubotta "Jeremy Hammond is very smart, even clever, BUT … he lacks wisdom."
For a guy who hasn't read the FIRST LINE of the Declaration for the Establishment of the State of Israel OR the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, your chutzpa surely overfloweth…
"On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over a Palestine expired, " http://wp.me/PDB7k-Y#ignorance
"Article 7 The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine. " http://wp.me/PDB7k-Q#Mandate
" Israel fought a defensive war even though it launched a pre-emptive strike (yes, that can happen and does) "
The preemptor starts it's preemptive war. No preemptive war has ever been recognized as legitimate by the UN/UNSC/ICJ.
http://www.mojolaw.com/defs/wa015 // Bouvier 4. War is not only an act, but a state or condition, for nations are said to be at war not only when their armies are engaged, so as to be in the very act of contention, but also when, they have any matter of controversy or dispute subsisting between them which they are determined to decide by the use of force, and have declared publicly, or by their acts, their determination so to decide it.
5. National wars are said to be offensive or defensive. War is offensive on the part of that government which commits the first act of violence; it is defensive on the part of that government which receives such act; but it is very difficult to say what is the first act of violence. If a nation sees itself menaced with an attack, its first act of violence to prevent such attack, will be considered as defensive.//
At "at one minute after six o'clock on the evening of 14 May 1948, Washington time" the preemptive Plan Dalet which escalated the civil war in Palestine pre-declaration, PRE-The State of Israel or any Israeli Government, became a war between the state of Israel and Palestine, from which Israel had been declared independent.
Jewish force were already OUTSIDE the extent of Israel's declared Sovereignty at one minute after six o'clock on the evening of 14 May 1948, Washington time. It was not declared, nor had any state declared war against Israel. In fact no state has ever officially declared war against Israel or threatened genocide on Jews.
The Arab leagues Declaration on the Invasion of Palestine (note it does not say Israel) was submitted to the UNSC May 15th 1948, AFTER the Israeli Declaration came into effect (with Jewish forces OUTSIDE of Israel)
There is no UNSC condemnation of the Arab states invasion of Palestine. They had a right as Regional Powers under the UN Charter, to attempt to expel Israeli forces from the territories of the Arab States ward, Palestine
In respect to a defensive war justifying the 'acquisition' of territory.. NB: the word is 'acquire' http://wp.me/PDB7k-Y#Schwebel
// Stephen M. Schwebel – Judge of International Court of Justice The state of the law has been correctly summarized by Elihu Lauterpacht, who points out that:
territorial change cannot properly take place as a result of the unlawful use of force. But to omit the word "unlawful" is to change the substantive content of the rule and to turn an important safeguard of legal principle into an aggressor's charter. For if force can never be used to effect lawful territory change, then, if territory has once changed hands as a result of the unlawful use of force, the illegitimacy of the position thus established is sterilized by the prohibition upon the use of force to restore the lawful sovereign. This cannot be regarded as reasonable or correct //
NB: restore the lawful sovereign.
A) It is inadmissible to 'acquire' territory by war, aggressive/illegal OR defensive/legal. The reason the phrase does not include an 'aggressive/illegal' or 'defensive/legal' qualification is because it means ANY war.
The inhabitants might not have voted for or even been able to vote for the regime in power at the start of the conflict. The UN Charter stipulates 'self determination'. Not the determination of a conquering power.
B) If it is one's sovereign territory already, one is not 'acquiring' it, one is 'restoring it.
More than a century before Israel was declared, it was Customary International Law that territory be 'acquired' by legal annexation. Legal annexation requires a referendum by the citizens of the territory to be annexed (see the LEGAL annexation of Mexican territories by the US) Israel had/has never legally annexed ANY territories to th extent of it's declared and recognized sovereignty.
Even had the Arab States started the '67 war, for 19 years a peaceful (pacific) solution under Chapter VI had not been reached. Israel had ignored all UNSC resolutions demanding it adhere to the law. The Arab States had a right under Chapter VII to attempt to expel Israeli forces from territories outside the extent of Israeli Sovereignty.
Yom Kippur
Israel was occupying the Sovereign territories of Syria, the Golan. Same Customary International Law, UN Charter et al apply
The above is born out by the numerous UNSC Resolutions against Israel from the moment it became a UN Member State.
In order to have peace Israel must withdraw from other folks territory BEFORE peaceful relations resume. Read the Egypt/Israeli Peace Agreement carefully. http://wp.me/PDB7k-Y#Peace-Egypt-Israel
In respect to Palestine, Israel has ALWAYS been bound by the UN Charter Chapter XI http://wp.me/pDB7k-Gb
I see the holey old Hasbara peddled here as elsewhere.
That folk'll ignore irrefutable evidence via documents with impeccable provenance, only shows them to be propagandistas for Israel's ongoing illegal acquisition of territory outside the extent of it's actual sovereignty.
Admirable stuff J R H
Like talking to a wall.
M.R. – there must come a point at which Zionists know they're talking rubbish. Hammond seems to make a very good case on UNGAR 181 and UNSC 242.
>>>> "As set forth above, and not refuted by Hammond, the RATIFICATION of 181 took place by the admission of Israel to the UN by the UNGA as a "peace-loving" country. Hammond ignores this fact." <<<<>>> Accretion of lands by war is accepted in the international community. … This isn't the only instance that conquest by war of territory was recognized by other sovereign states. <<<<
Prove it. Over and over I'm seeing these statements from Israeli-firsters which both seem unlikely and they make no effort to prove. Even if you were right about Tibet and Chechnya, the argument you make for being as good as China and Russia is laughable. Are we not told that Israel has "our values"?
It's hard for me not to have refuted the above assertion before ever having heard it. Now that I've seen this: "the RATIFICATION of 181 took place by the admission of Israel to the UN by the UNGA as a "peace-loving" country." Yes, I refute it. I refute it as having nonsense as its premise. Whoever's argument this is, they clearly have little to know understanding of how the U.N. works. They don't "ratify" UN resolutions, for starters. This assertion is out and out nonsense.
I'm back! One instance of acquisiton of territory by war is the Indian invasion of East Pakistan and setting up a puppet state called Bangla Desh. Probably the most famous would be the invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnam. This was in brazen violation of the peace treaty the V.C. and the North Signed with the South and the U.S. But I would expect this would be acceptable to the Bolsheviks in the Arab-Palestinian crowd. Objectively speaking, in terms of numbers of square miles conquered and people enslaved and transferred, the North Vietnam example makes what Israel did seem like near nothingness.
But being objective is not part of the rules of discourse when the subject is Israel and the Arabs. An objective person would view Israel as a successful state, while the surrounding Arab polities are failed states. Objectively speaking, the standard of living for all Israeli citizens, whether Jewish or Arab or otherwise is much better than that in the Arab states. And the standard of living in the administered territories is higher than in the other neighboring Arab states.
While most Israelis consider a means to make an accommodation with those they live with, the Arab side spews agony about injustice because they want to go back in time. That isn't going to happen, and the sooner the Arabs learn to make do with what they have the better things will be for them.
So, now, Billy boy, tell me that North Vietnam didn't invade and annex South Vietnam through war and violence and murder.
Hammond my boy, don't pretend like a fool. The U.N. ratified the legitimacy of the establishment of the State of Israel by admitting the country as a peace loving member state. Alas, if the straw dog you offer up was correct, Israel would never have been confirmed as a member state of the U.N. It is true that Israel was admitted to the U.N. as a "peace loving state" (the terms of the resolution of admission) isn't it? And this admission to the U.N. took place AFTER the passage of UNGAR 181, n'est pas? This is RATIFICATION in spite of what you think about it.
Thank you Mr. Hammond for exposing Israel for the criminal state it is. For years I supported Israel because I did not know the truth. The only information available to me was the main stream media which unbeknown to me is entirely controlled by Zionists. My prayer is that enough people will learn the truth about Israel before the Zionists in America are successful in censoring net content or passing hate crime legislation that will make it illegal to tell the truth whenever it shines light on the filthy scoundrels that are the masters of organized crime and the murderers of innocent civilians.
Dear readers
What most of the comments miss are two single facts: the land was given by All Mighty to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Palestine never existed. Its "creation" was due to a sadist roman emperor that hated the Jews so much, that he ordered the removal of the name of ISRAEL from all roman temples and documents, to be substituted with Palestina, a reference to Israel's mortal enemies: the Phelistinians.
And now you know the rest of the story ( Thanks Paul ) …make good use of this information.
Dear George, if you've ever actually read the Bible, you would know that the Hebrews violated their covenant with Yahweh, who warned them time and again that he would expel them from the land and give it to their enemies if they didn't heed his word. http://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2010/07/08/woe-to-you-christian-zionists-hypocrites/
The Bible isn't just Numbers. It is also Isaiah, where God says that a time will come and He will forget their wrongdoings and give the land back to them after 70 years later, which did happen.
Now, you may say that Judeans (not Hebrews anymore, this is too inclusive for the inhabitants of Judea under the Second Temple) violated the covenant again after the Second Temple was destroyed. But the Talmud teaches that God will forgive just like the first time.
Why would God not respond through the Bible again? According to the Talmud, prophecy ended together with miracles when the Second Temple was built, because the Sages demanded that idolatry be less powerful, so this was the counterpart.
So, where is my proof? This is religion, there is no proof, only postulates. Why do you talk about the Bible if you do not believe it, and yet would refuse to talk about the Talmud?
Note: I apologize for using "God" instead of the word you used, but I cannot write this word according to my religion…
It is also Isaiah, where God says that a time will come and He will forget their wrongdoings and give the land back to them after 70 years later, which did happen.
Why do you talk about the Bible if you do not believe it, and yet would refuse to talk about the Talmud?
I can't talk about the Talmud because I am not familiar with it. I am familiar with the Bible, however, and I talk about it because whether one believes it or not, the fact is that it is the story of how the Hebrews continuously violated their covenant with Yahweh and were expelled from the land as a consequences of their sinfulness. I talk about it in order to illustrate how Christian Zionists are either ignorant about what their own religious text says or dishonest.
Oh that's right, it says so right there in the bible, the book of Century 21 I think it is that the "thou shall not steal" part doesn't apply to Jews that have no historical connection to Palestine. And what does a fairytale have to do with theft, murder, ethnic cleansing and on and on and on anyway? I prefer Mother Goose myself because there's no Century 21 book in it. I do hope I live to see the day that demographics alone end the 'shitty little country' as a French guy put it and the 'whine heard round the world' won't be sufficient to reinstate the criminal enterprise now called Israel.
So, thah mean that Israel HAVE the RIGTH to treat Palestinians in
the same way and fashion that Adolf Hitler with his S.S. Nazis went around hunting the jews like their were not humans? Because to me
there is not a different point of view,with the only exeption that thanks to Israel be take more land that the ones were awarded we the whole human race have lost for good something name PEACE.
Its like the old tell me tales of the rotten potato put back in the sack,with the only diferential that instead a sack we are talking about our world.
And to complete the scheme USA have became the Israel s popet.
I'm thinking that the tween tower of Manhattan fell down with a specific mission.
The road to the goals its full of deceives tramps n tricks.
How can you even compare the fate of the innocent Jewish people that died during WW2 and this of the Palestinians for the last 60 years?
Its still happening now, and will continue to do so. WW2 has finished, The soviet Union ended that, and took unbelievable casualties as a result. There is no state called Israel, it is illegal and seized by force. The land needed to be returned.
How old are you, 9?
Israel is like the Nazis? I think you'll find populations under the SS had a nasty habit of dropping rather substantially – millions were systematically slaughtered and not only Jews, so maybe time to take note.
The Palestinians' population has grown considerably since 1948.
Also, have you noticed that sometimes Arabs are a bit nasty to each other? They get very annoyed and kill people in very large numbers.
It's because of twats like you that Israel needs to exist..
Source the "Chapter & verse" for your claim:
Whereof, there is no such precept as "Eretz Israel" [Land of Israel] in any of the Texts of the Semitic Prophets.
1 1st documented utterance of the word "Pelesheth [Hebrew for 'Palestine'] : Exodus 15:14 by Moses upon crossing the Red Sea at Aqaba.
2 Holy Quran 17:104 "…We told the Children of Israel, "Live in the land, and when the promise of the Hereafter is fulfilled, We shall bring you into the assembly of all people'" :
2.1 Does not reference a "land of Israel"
2.2 It does reference the the inclusion into a body politic:
2.2.1 It could be argued that it is fulfilled with UNGA 181 of November 29th 1947
2.2.2 Or it could be argued that it means inclusion into a body politic of the Arab League or similar Regional International Organization
3 Sionsits premise that Genesis 15:18 Covenant is the authority for the State of Israel's claim to the territory "from the river of Egypt to the river, great river Euphrates" is an ABSURDITY
3.1 Genesis 15;18 is a Semitic Covenant : Whereof, Ashkenazi are NON-Semitic Japhetites [Genesis 10:3]
3.1.1 Sionist premise that Japhetite spermatozoa morphs into Semitic spermatozoa is an ABSURDITY
3.2 Tribe of Judah is sole inheritor/possessor of Shem's Sceptre [Genesis 49:8-12];
3.2.1 ABSURD premise that non-Semitic Ashkenazi could inherit Shem's Sceptre when the other eleven Semitic Hebrew Abramite Jacobite Tribes cannot.
4 Semitic Hebrew Arabs fulfill Genesis 15:18 "thy seed" Covenant; Whereof, their present habitation is this geographical "from river Egypt to the river, great rive Euphrates"
5 Japhet's blessing of Genesis 9:27 "Japhet shall dwell within the tents of Shem" is fulfilled with UNGA 181 of November 29th 1947
5.1 However that blessing is within the context of the territory limited to UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries., B., Jewish State:
5.2 & NOT the the State of Palestine's territory as defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries A., Arab State
6 Netanyahu Sionists fit the description of Tribe of Judah's Jesus the Nazarene of Revelations 2:9 "They say they are Jews, and are not but lie; they are the synagogue of Satan"
7 Deuteronomy 19:14-21 define the moving of territorial [UNGA181/1949 Armistice Agreement aka Greenline] boundarymarks; dishonoring of one';s ancestors [UNGA 273 & LOAC] agreements; & baring false witness as capital punishment crimes to put away this evil from our people.
7.1 Judaism: Deuteronomy 16:20 "Justice & only justice shall you do in the land your God is giving you to possess"
8 Sionists do not practice Judaism nor are they Semites.
Israel; America's Biggest Problem
Israel's intransigence, ingratitude, atrocities and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands is based on a ridiculous statement in the bible of a couple hundred years ago that the mythical God promised a homeland called Israel, to the descendant of Jacob, called Israelites. This like other statements in that unenlightened book, is total nonsense, The name Israel was given to Jacob who the superstitious bible tells us was given to him after he wrestled all night with an angel of God. The descendants of Jacob were therefore called Israelites and later on Jews. Prior to 1948, there was no land called Israel. The Jews continued to be a Middle Eastern nomadic tribe migrating around the world. They have faced persecution in several countries due to their tenacity in infiltrating the political systems in their host countries. It was just recently in 1948 that America and England manipulated Palestine into giving its western strip as a homeland to the persecuted Jews in the diaspora. The name Israel was given to that western strip of Palestine. The atrocities, illegality and injustices of Israel against the Palestinians reflect the utmost ingratitude to a people who gave them a homeland. America continues to support the atrocities of Israel against the Palestinian people, flaunting the UN and international condemnation of its illegality. This support is rooted in the fact that the Jewish lobby has its finger on America's economic and political pulse. On the basis of this strategic lobby, Israel is now showing hostility towards any peace initiative by the US administration. In such a situation America has forfeited its moral credibility in world affairs. So long as America continues on this course, it will not be regarded as an impartial voice in world affairs; the distrust of the Arab world and the third world is a reflection of their indignation against America's arrogant policies. The Palestines have no comparable military strength to Israel. America supplies Israel with the deadliest and most sophisticated military arsenal used against the Palestines. Israel's value to America is solely as its spying eyes in the middle east; for this America will continue to pay a high price to its prestige in world affairs.
Cephas Keith Reyes, PhD.
Not all Christians support Israel and you can still believe the Bible in its entirity and not detrimentally twist it in the manner Zionists do so please don't stigmatize the Bible Christianity; many Palestinian victims were Christian.
My views regarding Israel gradually developed as I delved
into research about the forces directing Israel's government and Israel's
current geopolitical role in the grand scheme of world events. Israel, along
with Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and other western countries are under the influence
of a documented network of corporate-financier interests, called globalists,
who direct the affairs of the respective countries according to their on-record
designs of regional and global hegemony. Israel is part of their strategy of
tension in the Middle East which they use to stir up destabilization which
creates the waves of tension that their plans ride upon. All of this is
discernible simply from research of things out in the open that shed light on
the truth behind Israel and world affairs.
The specific corporate-financier interests I refer to can be
found here. Understanding their role is important to understanding world
Consider Israel's role in Syria's conflict:
Furthermore, simply know that the Muslim Brotherhood was
literally created by criminal elements in western governments for their
geopolitical, imperialist designs in the Middle East. This goes back to the
1950s with the former leader of the Brotherhood, Said Ramadan, consorting with
the CIA and even meeting with President Eisenhower with rare photos of this
available. This was even in the Wall Street Journal, once. The establishment
plays on the delicate political and religious lines in the Middle East in order
to target countries according to their interests. Begin here regarding the
Brotherhood: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/05/muslim-brotherhood-are-western-proxies.html
Also, consider Israel's geopolitical role in the Middle
East, I recommend this specifically:
Now as a Christian, I also have a unique interpretation of
this evidentially-based reality of Israel, and the even greater, over-arching
role of the globalists, as it appears to flow in smoothly with Biblical
prophecy. The Bible indicates that in the end-times, there will be a global order
headed by a central authority and figure, the anti-Christ. This authority will
run the world politically and economically through its networks and
administrations of control. Looking at how globalist networks are openly acting
on the world stage today, I see their actions as paving the way for the order
of the anti-Christ. Israel, we know through the above links, is serving
globalist designs in the Middle East. While the average evangelical Christian
views Israel in a positive light and the victim of "terrorist aggression", the
plain facts demonstrate this to be a ploy of the establishment to keep people
perpetually-divided in fake political camps while both Israelis and Americans
are exploited for the designs of the global elite. Israel, along with the U.S.
through their ties to the Saudis, are directing Islamic extremism as their
"Swiss army knife" of destabilization against target nations like Syria.
Through the Bible, it is known that the children of Israel
are in apostasy and that the Messiah will restore Israel in his reign which
will come from above. However, the current state of Israel came not from above
but from the interests of the globalists laying the stepping stones for the
anti-Christ. It is through that I can say that the current Israel is a
pseudo-Israel, a counterfeit of the true Kingdom that will be set up by Christ.
Many Bible verses back up this understanding.
Romans 9:6:" Not as though the word of God hath taken none
effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:"
Revelations 2:9:" "I know your suffering and your poverty
(but you are rich ) and the blasphemy of those who call themselves Jews of the
Judeans, when they are not, but are the synagogue of Satan."
Or one can look at Galatians 3 which exalts Christ as the
true Israel, the real kingdom of God. Revelations, when it speaks of Israel,
refers to the pure, holy Israel that will be established by the Messiah, not
the current pseudo-Israel founded through depravity and perpetuating the
anti-Christ's agenda. The beast will rise and Israel is fanning the flames of
hell upon all of humanity along with the globalists
We can see that the facts demonstrate Israel's insidious
role in world affairs and the Bible complies quite easily with the current
reality even though some have twisted Scripture to justify the current state as
opposed to exposing it as a counterfeit of the true Israel in the same way that
the anti-Christ shall be a counterfeit of Christ.
Even if one does not believe in Biblical prophecy or
religion, there is no doubt that Israel is serving the agenda of degenerate
figures who only seek their global hegemony and subversion of any opposition to
their rackets of control. This isn't a "Zionist empire" in any way as Israel is
simply a pawn, just like the Saudis, for the corporate-financier interests.
Understanding this, and working locally to build strong, self-sufficient
communities outside of the rackets of big government and its twin of
big-business is crucial to undermining their agenda and empowering people to go
forward into an era of independence and mutual prosperity for humanity. The
world may not be a perfect place, but we must realize that we have the ability
in our minds, hearts, and heads to prevail in any noble pursuit that "we the
people" choose and work to build the world we all seek to live
Also, truth behind Iran for those who defer to it as a
threat: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/09/3-reasons-us-and-israel-are-lying-about.html
Please consider thoroughly what I have presented as the
magnitude of it, especially for Christians, cannot be understated.
Much of this isn't about the people lying or being dishonest. It is about the misuse of religion, states and churches leadership intervening in the rights of man to have a direct access to our God/Allah/Yahweh or whatever you know Him to be. Instead it is to place nationalism ideals or religious divisionism means on common man (see: Law of dirt!) to participate directly with God and to usurp this relationship with conduits of illicit power to control. IE: The battle between the dark and light forces which are created by men out of this disconnected relationship with our natural born God. Not some "supernatural" unattainable entity only churches and governments have access to.
Please learn about what Law really is in its simplest terms. Common Law (God's law or the law of dirt) vs. Admiralty Law (The law of commerce and defacto jurisdictions) and what your citizen/ship jurisdiction means when it comes to money/debt and the use of your God given rights and the usury of your all caps corporate fiction identity. You should be a child of God. Not valued as all caps fictional human capital in an IMF system of Fractional Banking with your countries sell out of your soul as voiceless human capital to the Federal Reserve System of silent steady conquest through worthless paper and ink debt..
Are either of you guys knowledgeable about the creation of the Scofeild Bible with relation to the creation of Israel and Western Christianity? Israel was a man. The "Nation of Israel" are all the people that have been misled to believe own land. When God promised Abraham "A Nation of His People" refers to the people not a land. Not a place called "Israel". At the time God promised Abraham "His Nation" the man Israel had not been born yet. The idea of a State of Israel was a Zionist fabrication added to the New Testament Biblical footnotes and injected into the belief system of the Baptist League founded in Fort Worth Texas by Cyrus Scofield himself. It propagated the idea that Christians had a special obligation to their Jewish brothers, but this was not the case. This was propaganda! We all have an obligation to our fellow man. Period! Cyrus Scofield was not only a fraud and a known crook, but he was hired by Zionists in Switzerland before the end of WWII and was instrumental in bringing Western Christians into solidarity with two fundamental ideas. One the creation of the Israeli State in Palestine and two the Freemason's non-gnostic (see: lucifarian trust or references to the Evil Eye and Freemasonary sects of the One World Order using Armageddon and the populations acceptance of war and strife perpetrated by through the financing of adversity and wars going back well before 500 A.D. and the first Freemason Priam Priests disclosure of such an idea in Bavaria around this time involving conquest through the fractional banking system and the control and conquest of world governments by these secret societies using various minorities and religions to front their means. Revelations being one of the oldest propaganda tools of this campaign added book of the New testament bible. Revelations was a government propaganda for the fulfillment of mass ideology based on Freemason's truth in the open which is actually a lie based on fear and terror. Not of God and obviously not written by the gospel writer of John the supposed author of Revelations, but created at the First Council of Nicaea a council of diverse Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I an Atheist in AD 325. Like the Cossacks of the Gog Revelations these non-gnostic non-Semitic Marxists that converted to Judaism out of expedience to usurp the rights of Semitic Jews and their heritage just as the Talmud belief system over the Torah which originated out of Gnosticism. The sole purpose was to use Semetic Jews as a buffer for their purposes. I am not speaking of the people that unknowingly converted out of sincerity, but rather those that were unbeleivers that converted out of expedience for the purpose of conformity and power to conquer through the use of paper money and the debt of nations. nation builders rather than worshiping followers of God and particularly the leaders of these in church and government. These Cabalists or mystic followers of these sects and particularly their mystic leadership were the ones Christ told of in the Bible "You do not know Me because you do not know God" (The Word) IE: God and the Word were One and since Sadducees and Pharisees had become non-gnostic and mystics and concerned with their "tassels" Christ claimed they didn't know the prophesy of the Word or they would have recognized who He was. That was the story. Your salvation depends on you knowing who and what you are. None of you seem to. Instead the masses flounder in dispute. We are nothing more than human capital to the real forces in power unless we learn what we need to know about what God and the law which all of us are accountable for including these forces that use it against us. All of us have been misled. Here are two good video references to help you all in your quest and please remember we are all in this and God knows our hearts. We all must struggle to know the truth and God has a plan for all of us, but we must seek Him out and be able know the difference between a lie and the truth and not depend strictly on traditions and be misled by hate, fear and divisionism:
Jack Otto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cke_vX–Ks
Cyrus Scofield Bible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agFikke6lhk
1 If not from UNGA 181, then from where?
2 If the premise is what Sionists propose that entire Mandate of Palestine is State of Israel: All the inhabitants would be State of Israel citizens.
2.1 Why are the persons from the UNGA 181 Palestine territories of West Bank & Gaza then not accorded Israeli citizenship equal to the Israeli-Arabs, example of voting rights?
1 People incorporate themselves into Agency of Governance aka Government to administrate the commonwealth OF the People
2 Sovereign powers are held in trust by the Agency of Governance FOR the People.
3 Under the International Law premise of nation-states, sovereignty aka territorial integrity is held BY the People of the respective Nation-State.
4 Under the Monarchial systems the premise was taht sovereign powers were held by the Monarch & the sovereignty of the Monarch rested upon the premise that the people were property aka subjects of the Monarch.
4.1 Under the premise that persons enter into political compacts by free-will:They establish a Trust, an Agency of Government, to administrate their corporate territory & commonwealth as individuals and as collective corporate body politic.
5 The confusion stems from this transition from monarchial systems to free-agency systems of Government.
1 Pre-WWI: Sovereign of the Ottoman Empire
2 Post-WWII: Peoples of the respective Nation-states of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, & Turkey
3 LEAGUE OF NATIONS Administrator for the Trusteeship State- Mandate of Palestine 1922 to November 28th 1947: United Kingdom.
4 UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZATION; UN Charter authority:
4.1 Article 20, Convokation by request of United Kingdom: "Question of Palestine"
4.2 Article 77, (c) Territories held under mandate
4.3 Article 80 Terms of UN Trusteeship is Partition of Mandate State of Palestine:
4.3.1 November 29th, 1947 UNGA 181 Partition of Mandate of Palestine is NON-Modifiable
4.4 Article 81. Organization, itself, is Trusteeship Administrator : UNGA does have the international law authority to contract for the people of the State of Palestine.
5 TRANSITIONAL PERIOD: UNGA 181 Part I A. Termination of Mandate, Partition, & Independence, [PH] 4. "The period between the adoption by the General Assembly of its recommendation on the question of Palestine and the establishment of the independence of Arab & Jewish States shall be a transitional Period.
5.1 STATE OF ISRAEL TERRITORY/SOVEREIGNTY is defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries B., Jewish State
5.1.1 Jewish Proclamation of Establishment of Government of May 14-15th 1949 references State of Palestine & its UNGA 181 PARTITION as source for State of Israel sovereignty
5.1.3 TRANSITIONAL PERIOD TERMINATED FOR STATE OF ISRAEL: UNGA 273 of May 11th 1948; State of Israel Accession to UN Charter "unreservedly" accepts UN Charter obligations stipulating UNGA 184 & UNGA 194
5.2.STATE OF PALESTINE TERRITORY/SOVEREIGNTY is defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries, A., Arab State
5.2.2 A/RES/67/19 State of Palestine admitted into UN Agencies as non-member UN Observer State
5.2.1 Transitional period is not terminated until State of Palestine is free from foreign occupation
188.8.131.52 UNSC 242 : Breach of 1949 Armistice Agreements
6 JERUSALEM: UNGA 181 Part III Jerusalem is UN sovereignty.
I. If the Sionist premise is that the Government of the State of Israel came into being through civil war within the Mandate of Palestine:
1 All the inhabitants would still be State of Israel citizens:
1.1 It would mean that all the refugees in 3rd Arab States from the 1949 War are State of Israel citizens
1.1.1 State of Israel citizens are the refugees who originate from the territory defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries B., Jewish State of being Israel-Arabs & NOT Palestinian citizens.
2 Palestinian Citizens are those refugees whom originate from the territory defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries A., Arab State [of Palestine]
3 It would also meant that all the illegal Jewish immigrants into the Mandate of Palestine do NOT have a right to State of Israel citizenship and could be repatriated to their nation-states of origin.
3.1 Jewish State citizenship was conferred upon these 1922 to November 28th 1947 illegal Jewish immigrants through UNGA 181.
II. If the West Bank & Gaza are State of Israel territory under the Sionist premise that all of the Mandate of Palestine is the State of Israel territory:
1 It would mean that all the inhabitants of the Gaza & West Bank are State of Israel Citizens.
1.1 It would also mean that the Arab States could repatriate 100% of all persons that are commonly called "Palestinians' to the State of Israel upon concluding respective Israel-Arab State bi-lateral Peace Agreements.
III 3rd Arab State rejection of UNGA 181 vacates State of Israel's UNGA 273 obligations to UN Charter vis-a-vis UNGA 181:
1 It would mean that the State of Israel is rejecting its own International Law legitimacy which originates from UNGA 181 Partition of Mandate State of Palestine.
Did you not read the above paper? Israel derives no legitimacy under international law from UNGAR 181.
Israel existed 1500 years before Mohammad was born.
The name Palestine is named after the Philistines, not the Palestinians or any Arab group.
It was certainly not directed or bestowed to the Arabs in this area.
The Philistines were from Crete in Europe and came to Israel 3000 years ago and were not Arabs or Muslims. Delilah and Goliath were Philistines. (Philistines died out.) Philistine is the name the Romans renamed Israel as a chagrin against the Jews.
Yassir Arafat was not a Philistine, but an ARAB born in Egypt. Philistine originates from the Hebrew verb Palash, which means to invade. So the Arabs who started to call themselves Palestinians in the late 60′s are invaders and they want to create an Invadia state.
There was never in history any state called Palestine governed by Palestinians.
Tell us when did it ever belong to Palestinians? Answer Never. It was never a Pal land to begin with, so your question is invalid. The Palestinians never governed or controlled any land before 1993. To make it simple, please tell me one Palestinian President before 1948? Keep thinking.Jeremy.
The Palestinians want a capital, which they never had, in a country that never existed.
What does Mohammad have to do with anything?
What does the origin of the word "Palestine" have to do with anything?
What does the fact that in the past there wasn't a state called Palestine have to do with anything?
You asked when the territory known as Palestine belonged to the Palestinians. You answered "Never". False. I'll just paste an excerpt from my forthcoming book on the conflict:
"An UNSCOP survey of land ownership cited 1943 statistics showing that of Palestine's total land area (26,320,505 dunams), Arabs and other non-Jews owned nearly 94 percent (24,670,455 dunams). By contrast, the Jews owned only 5.8 percent (1,514,247 dunams). Land ownership statistics for 1945 likewise showed that Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district in Palestine. The district with the highest percentage of Jewish ownership was Jaffa, where 39 percent of the land was owned by Jews, compared to 47 percent owned by Arabs. Jews owned less than 5 percent of the land in eight out of the sixteen districts. Even by the end of the Mandate in 1948, according to the Jewish National Fund (a quasi-governmental organization founded in 1901 to purchase land for Jewish settlement), the Jewish community had acquired only about 6.9 percent (1,820,000 dunams) of the total land area of Palestine."
Other readers may wish to subscribe to my free newsletter for updates about the book at http://www.jeremyrhammond.com
Utter nonsense. The amount of land privately owned in the Western sense by Palestinian Arabs was just over 2% of the land.
It is very easy to prove the falsehood of your claims. The Negev, which alone constitutes about 40% of the land, was virtually all State land by the British
The facts are as I've stated them.
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. A state for Jews is racist, a state for Arabs is perfectly OK.
According to whom?
The facts remain as I've stated them.
A Tour and Census of Palestine Year 1695: No sign of Arabian names or Palestinians
April 27, 2014
If you have an argument relevant to the article, make it.
The facts are you want Israel to be eliminated and Jews to be enslaved by Arabs.
As the Yazidis, Coptics, Kurds, Berbers, Chaldeans and Black Christians of Sudan whats its like to live under Muslim Arabs.
The facts are…
No. Those are not the facts. The facts are as I've stated them.
You are banned for trolling.
Jeremy like his Arabs friends have been under the impression that Israel is temporary and that eventually Israel will be destroyed.
Israel shown on map during "Arab Idol," Arabs freak out
September 12, 2014
During an episode of the popular "Arab Idol" singing competition shown on Saudi Arabia's MBC, this shocking graphic was briefly shown:
Please keep your comments relevant to the article. If you think there is any error in fact or logic therein, you are welcome to point it out.
Do you have a point?
Roque, the UN did not create Israel. Nor did it have any authority to do so. Please take the time to actually read the article before trying to comment.
Your comment is incoherent and presents no argument, as far as I can see. Once again, the UN neither created Israel nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority for its unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel.
The state of Israel acquired its "sovereignty" over the territory by ethnically cleansing 750,000 Arabs from Palestine.
Jeremy, International Law is contractual law between nation-states & NOT governments.
You're confusing sovereign powers with sovereignty:
1 Sovereignty is a specific territory held in possession by its Citizenry incorporated as a body politic aka nation-state.
2 Sovereign powers are a Trust of political administration by the agency of governance of that body politic.
3 ABSURD PREMISE that the military conquest of a territory by a foreign power could confer territorial ownership to the foreign power while simultaneously dispossessing the native inhabitants of their national rights to that territory/sovereignty.
3.2 Furthermore, it's IDIOCY to premise that a foreign government could have the legal authority to dispossess a citizen of their National Rights of sovereignty when it would be illegitimate any domestic government of those respective citizens to attempt the same : Legitimate political authority is consent of the governed- John Locke.
1 Ethnically cleansing the territory defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries B., Jewish State of its native inhabitants did NOT in 1947 grant sovereignty to the People of the "Jewish State" in 1947;
1.1 UNGA 181 enfranchised the Jewish resident aliens & illegal Jewish aliens that had entered the Mandate State of Palestine between 1992 to November 28th 1947 within that territory defined in UNGA 181 Part II B., Jewish State with CITIZENSHIP equal to the Arab Citizens of native inhabitants
1.2 The native inhabitants of Arabs & their descendants that originate from the territory defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries B., Jewish State are State of Israel citizens:
1.2.1 Regardless that they have been refugees in 3rd Arab States 1947
2 Neither could State of Israel ethnically cleansing the territory defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries A,, Arab State grant sovereignty to the State of Israel over the UNGA 181 State of Palestine territories of Negev, North Gaza, Beersheba, & Galilee occupied by the State of Israel in 1949;
3 Nor 2 Neither could State of Israel ethnically cleansing the territory defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries A,, Arab State grant sovereignty to the State of Israel over the UNGA 181 State of Palestine territories of Gaza & West Bank occupied by the State of Israel in 1967.
4 Sovereignty of the territory aka ownership of that territory is held by the People of that nation-state individually & collectively;
4.1 Regardless, that it is under occupation: Whereof, Laws of Armed Conflict provision for the maintenance of the sovereignty of the occupied nation-state through the protections accorded the occupied people.
4.1 Occupying powers assume the Trust of Governance for that occupied people through acquisition of provisional sovereign powers aka political administration of the International Law obligations;
4.1.1 However, LOAC specifically does NOT grant domestic governance which is the domain of LOAC Civil Defense Agencies of the occupied nation-state.
5 UN Charter, Chapter I, Article 2 articulates the "equality of nation-states" which is the foundation for UNSC 242 "inadmissibility of acquisition territory by war"
5.1 LOAC does not distinguish between "offensive" nor "defensive" war which is immaterial to the regulation of wafare
6 REITERATE, UNGA 273 of May 11th 1949 Accession to the UN Charter by the State of Israel which specifically stipulates UNGA 181 & UNGA 194:
6.1 Establishes the International Law context for the State of Israel of being UNGA 181 of November 29th 1947
6.2 Binds all subsequent State of Israel governments to UN Charter obligations through the contractual nature of International Law.
6.2.1 Regardless of all other premises of how State of Israel came into existence.
UNGA 181 neither created Israel nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority for their unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel. See the above article.
Proclamation of May14-15th 1947 was Declaration of Establishment of Government of the State of Israel & NOT Declaration of Statehood:
1 It referenced the UNGA 181 of November 29th 1947 & Its Partion of the Mandate of State of Palestine as the source for State of Israel sovereignty
2 IMMATERIAL how the Proclamation of May 14-15th is viewed: Government of the State of Israel with its May 11th 1949 UNGA 273 Accession to UN Charter "unreservedly accepted" the UNGA 181 & UNGA 194 stipulations for the context of the State of Israel
3 UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries B Jewish State defines the sovereignty/territory of the State of Israel.
3.1 ABSURD premise that the State of Israel was admitted to UN without defined borders.
It is perfectly silly to argue that The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel of May 14, 1948 was not a declaration of statehood.
Beyond that, I defer to my previous comment.
What's silly:
1 Your entire article is premised that that the UN did not carve out the State of Israel from the Mandate State of Palestine with UNGA 181.
2 Proclamation of Establishment of Government of May 14th specifically references the State of Palestine & its UNGA 181 Partition of November 29th 1947 as the source for State of Israel sovereignty: References it TWICE.
2.1 Is there another UNGAR that was passed on November 29th 1947 vis-a-vis the Question of Mandate of Palestine?
3 Proclamation is a UNGA 181 Part II C., Declaration.
4 ABSURD PREMISES that State of Israel was admitted to UN without defined borders or as the entire Mandate of Palestine territory when UNGA 273 stipulates UNGA & UNGA 194 is INTERNATIONAL LAW CONTEXT; Whereof, the Government of the State of Israel "unreservedly agreed" to this UNGA 181 International Law Context.
4.1 State of Israel territory/sovereignty is LIMITED to UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries B. Jewish State
4.2 State of Palestine territory/sovereignty is LIMITED to UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries A., Arab State
4.3 Jerusalem is UN Sovereignty: UNGA 181 Part III.
5 What UNGA 181 did: Was to provision Citizenship to the legal Jewish residents & illegal Jewish aliens living in Mandate State of Palestine through the various Aliyah cycles.
6 If your premise is that the State of Israel was a secessionist insurgency, From what nation-state did it secede from?
6.1 What nation-state does the Proclamation of Establishment reference if not the State of Palestine?
6.1.1 Sucessful Secessionist Movements establish boundaries through bi-lateral contracted Peace Agreement: Where is your Israeli Peace Agreement of May 14th 1948 vis-a-vis the Palestinians that concluded the insurgency?
7 Its an Absurdity to premise that it was an insurgency to secede from the UN just because the Jewish Irgun/LEHI assassinated UN Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte.
8 ABSURD PREMISE that the present conflict is a Palestinian Insurgency of secessionist object vis-a-vis the State of Israel: Whereof, border are to be negotiated.
8.1 A/RES/67/19 of December 4th 2012 recognized the UNGA 181 State of Palestine with its territory/sovereignty defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries A., Arab State.
The argument that since that declaration cited 181, therefore 181 conferred such legal authority is a non sequitur.
The argument that since Israel was admitted into the UN, therefor 181 conferred such legal authority is a non sequitur.
The fact is that UNGA 181 neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority for the unilateral declaration of May 14.
Mr Hammond, you missed the most important point.
The British always supported the Arabs over Israel during the Mandate years.
This is a must read how pro Arab the British were.
Uncovered: U.K. intel encouraged Arab armies to invade Israel in 1948
Intelligence obtained by the French secret services in the Middle East sheds new light on Britain's role in the Arab-Israeli War of Independence.
By Meir Zamir
Sep 14, 2014
On the contrary, the most important point to be made here relevant to the above essay is that UNGA 181 neither created Israel nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority for their unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel. I could stipulate that the British were "pro Arab" and this fact would remain the same.
Barry, please stop. You make not sense. You make "nonsense" – stop using Haaretz to support your cuckoo theories. Primary sources please.
Regardless of how any premises the establishment of the State of Israel: Government of the State of Israel in its UNGA 273 of May 11th 1949 Accession to UN Charter; State of Israel "unreservedly agreed" to the International Law Context of UNGA 181 & UNGA 194.
1 UNSC 46 PH 4., SubPH 2., (d) "pending further [UNSC 44 Request] consideration …by the General Assembly"
1.1 UNGA 194 of December 11 1948
I don't know what you are trying to say. Your comment is again incoherent, so I will just reemphasize once again that the UN neither created Israel nor conferred upon the Zionist leadership any legal authority for its unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel.
Whats' the International Law Context: The State of Israel vis-a-vis the State of Palestine?
UNGA 273 established the International Law Context as being UNGA 181, A UN Charter Chapter XII Article 80 Terms of UN Trusteeship: Partition of the Mandate State of Palestine.
1 Authority to Partition:
1.1 UN Charter Article 83 UN Administering Authority
1.2 UN Charter Article 10 UNGA "scope of powers"
No, Roque, UNGA 181 did not partition Palestine. See the article.
UN Resolution 181 neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority upon the Zionist leadership for its unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel. What part of this do you not comprehend?
What unilateral declaration? : There is such declaration in existence.
The Proclamation of Establishment of Government of May 14th 1948 references the State of Palestine & Its [UNGA 181] November 29th 1947 Partition as the source for "Land of Israel" sovereignty.
1 UNGA of November 29th 1947: "Land of Israel;" is the territory/sovereignty defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries B, Jewish State.
1.1 Proclamation PH 9 : "On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable."
2 Request of Recognition of Government to USA POTUS Truman: The words "Jewish State" are crossed out & the words "State of Israel" handwritten
2.1 Abstract digital copy: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/photos/isyael.jpg
2.2 Self-evident there is no nation-state named "Jewish State" in existence
3 International Law Context: UNGA 181 carved the sovereignty of the State of Israel from the Mandate State of Palestine.
3.1 ABSURD PREMISE that a nation-state could be unilaterally declared without a bi-lateral agreement of partitioning a pre-existence nation-state sovereignty through insurgency.
3.1 ABSURD PREMISE that crosses the threshold from idiocy to lunacy that Jewish illegal aliens & legal residents could claim the entire Mandate State of Palestine territory with the mere utterance that Mandate State of Palestine sovereignty is now called "State of Israel"
4 Jewish State Context: The May 14th 1948 Proclamation is on the establishment of Government aka political administration or sovereign powers.
5 Historical context : The Jewish State sovereignty came into existence on November 29th 1947:
5.1 ABSURD PREMISE that the May 14th 1948 Proclamation could unilaterally establish a nation-state that was already in existence since November 29th 1947
5.1.1 ABSURD PREMISE that crossed the threshold from idiocy to lunacy to pretend that PH 9 does not specifically reference UNGA 181
6 If the premise that the Mandate of Palestine territory is equal to the State of Israel sovereignty is to be believed through May 14th Proclamation:
6.1 100% of Arab refugees in 3rd neighboring states are Citizens of the State of Israel : UNGA 194 Mandates their return.
6.1.1 ABSURD PREMISE that a nation-state government can vacate the citizenship of its citizens: Sovereignty resides in the Individual & collective hands of its citizen- Trust of sovereignty.
6.2 Why are the native citizens of the West Bank & Gaza called "Palestinians" & NOT accorded State of Israel citizenship of voting & representation in the State of Israel institutions comparable to the Israel-Arabs who are Citizens of the State of Israel?
7 Sovereignty: Self-evident that State of Israel territory is NOT equal to the Mandate State of Palestine territory.
7.1 Sovereign powers are trusteeship of political administration aka agency of governance vis-a-vis other nation-states
7.2 UNGA 181 State of Palestine Sovereign powers are being held in Trust by the UN Organization
8 UN Organization with UNGA 3236 in accordance with its UN Charter Article 83 Trust assigned Artice 84 provisional sovereign powers to the Palestine Liberation Organization "in carrying out the [UNSC 44, UNSC 56, UNSC 242, UNSC 1397] obligations towards the Security Council"
8 Why would the UN contract with the PLO towards UNSC 44 PH 2 "Having received onNovember 9th December 1947, General Assembly resolution UNGA 181 (II) concerning Palestine dated November 29th 1947″ , UNSC 56, UNSC 242, UNSC 1397 fulfillment of International law if the UNGA 181 State of Palestine sovereignty as defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries A., Arab State had been incorporated into the State of Israel?
8.2 ABSURD PREMISE that the present Israel-Palestine context could be of domestic Civil War.
8.2.1 Respective territories of Israel & Palestine are defined in UNGA 181 Part II Boundaries.
Dude, UNGA 181 did not create the state of Israel.
Dear Contributor
Security Council Resolutions are binding NOT General Assembly Resolutions.
There are over 150 UN Resolutions which Israel has not complied with. Nor has Israel complied with ruling of the International Court of Justice, regarding the 421 illegal wall where most of it is actually built inside the Palestinian Territories.
Thank you.
Once again, UN Resolution 181 neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority upon the Zionist leadership for its unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel.
Ah, another crackpot attempt to de-legitimze the State of Israel. Tell you what "Jeremy," better not use a computer with an Intel microprocessor lest you give credence to those Jewish devils occcupying Palestine. I know, it's all the Jews fault.
If you think there is any error in fact or logic in this paper, you are welcome to point it out. From the fact that you didn't, I deduce that you can't.
The author is an anti-semite who completely ignores the killing of six million Jews by the Germans in the 1940ties. That might have made a difference to some of the numbers he so readily supplies.
Nothing worse than an anti-semite unless you have an anti-semite who thinks they are smart.
If you think the Holocaust has some relevancy such that discussion of it would somehow lead to different conclusions from those I've drawn, you are welcome to present your argument.
Just ordered your book Jeremy and I look forward to reading it. My quick question to you is, given the levels of Islamic extremism currently taking siege of our news cycle and Congress, would it be a fair assessment to note Israel as the "first" – maybe only – geopolitical state based on one singular religion. I see the efforts of these terror groups, and certainly more diplomatic efforts before them, as means of asserting Islamic statehood and implementing Sharia Law. Can we really consider Israel — the world's only 'Jewish State' any different from the the "Islamic States" that are now sought after in the middle east by ISIS, the Talban before? That's an open question and I will save your time and leave it there. Thnx for your time.
Thanks, Murlin. While there are certainly religious Jews who are Zionists, there are also Zionists who are not religious. The Zionist project of a "Jewish state" in Palestine is a secular political movement founded more on racism than religion.
Even if all this is true, and certainly it can be thoroughly disputed, it ignores the fact that Arabs kicked more Jews out of Arab lands, as well as the religious right to the land for Jews, which is even acknowledged in the Koran and Christian Bible. I know many a liberal has now turned atheist, except when it comes to Muslim barbarism, but there are some believers left. No amount of liberal spin will make me or any sane person feel sorry for 1.7 billion Muslims at the expense of 6 million Jews. There are 22 Muslim Arab countries and Israel is a tiny dot. There is no need to carve yet another Arab Muslim state out of the sole Jewish one. Liberals practice selective moral outrage and double standard hypocrisy. It's a trademark for them. Jews and Israelis don't need to constantly be singled out by European leftists in ivory towers who take a very narrow minded view of history, and ignore the very colonialist natures of their own countries. It's time to give it a rest. Israel's not going away. The Muslim takeover of Europe and potentially the West is disgusting, but perhaps the only silver lining is that delusional leftist liberals almost deserve what they have coming to them thanks to their ludicrous world view and policy positions. They've lost the meaning of the difference between right and wrong.
Even if all this is true, and certainly it can be thoroughly disputed…
I challenge you to dispute a single point of fact in the essay.
…it ignores the fact that Arabs kicked more Jews out of Arab lands…
Which is completely irrelevant to the thesis.
…as well as the religious right to the land for Jews,
The Jews had no right to the land they stole from the Arabs.
Buying land is "stealing" now? even before the Mandate they developed lands and built towns legally.
I see you did not bother to read the article or otherwise familiarize yourself with the facts before commenting. I advise in the future before participating in a discussion that you do so.
When the Zionist leadership declared the state of Israel, the Jewish community owned less than 7% of the land in Palestine. Arabs owned most of the rest.
The rest of the land that came to become part of the Jewish state, beyond that ~7%, was not acquired through legal purchase but taken by force.
750,000 Arab Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. Their homes were destroyed, their villages wiped off the map. And they were never allowed to return.
It was land theft on a massive scale.
Local Arabs did not own 93% of the land, that's for sure (half of the Mandate territory was the Negev desert), and 7% or not, these lands were purchased legally during the British and Ottoman eras.
Also, the 20th century is full of tens of millions of refugees from war. They all moved on, time for the Palestinian ones to give up their "honor" issue in accepting the 1948 loss, and move on.
Local Arabs did not own 93% of the land, that's for sure…
Local Arabs were indeed in possession of most of the land. For precise figures and sources, see the article.
and 7% or not, these lands were purchased legally during the British and Ottoman eras.
I'm not sure what you mean. The only land legally purchased by the Jewish community amounted to less than 7% of the land of Palestine. The rest was taken by force. The Arab population was ethnically cleansed, their villages destroyed, and their land stolen from them.
…time for the Palestinian ones to give up their "honour" issue in accepting the 1948 loss, and also move on…
What a curious and bigoted attitude, to tell a people who were made refugees by being ethnically cleansed from their homeland and who continue to suffer under an oppressive foreign military occupation that they should "move on".
You ignore the many threats the Jewish community faced at the time, even years before 1948. They were in a real annihilation threat, that's no propaganda. The violent revolts, rejection of any, no matter how small, forms of partiton to the land, or the Arab leaders who stated to the world that Israel will be destroyed if created. So maybe the aggression of Arab countries and leaders and all the fighting have something to do with the Palestinians refugees, and it's not always Israel who's guilty.
You ignore the many threats the Jewish community faced at the time…
No, I don't "ignore" threats against the Jewish community. Such threats simply do not change any of the facts I've stated or any conclusions drawn from them.
So maybe the aggression of Arab countries…
Again, the Arab states were not the aggressors in 1948. By the time they managed to muster a military response to the Zionists' aggression, a quarter of a million Arabs had already been ethnically cleansed to make way for the establishment of the "Jewish state".
…it's not always Israel who's guilty.
Nobody else is guilty for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and massive theft of Arab land but the parties who perpetrated it.
Is there a war which doesn't include refugees? Again, the Palestinians as a people were no angels, there were threats and volence by them and their leaders (such as Al-Husseini) before 1948, not just by the Zionists, even if the Arab states did not officialy invade before 1948.
Yet the facts remain as I have stated them.
"it ignores the fact that Arabs kicked more Jews out of Arab lands…"
"Which is completely irrelevant to the thesis"
So only arabs have the right to return and not jews?
No, this does not follow. Clearly, you struggle with logic.
Both events occurred as a result of the same conflict.
Clearly you struggle with history.
Clearly, you are still struggling with logic, as your conclusion still does not follow.
Okay….then please answer me 2 questions before we continue….
1. Do you believe Israel/Mossad were responsible for 9/11 ??
2. Do you believe there is a Zionist "puppet master" that controls western media and world banking ??
If you wish to ask serious questions relevant to the article's topic, I'll be happy to answer. If you persist in trolling, however, which is a violation of the terms of use of the comments section on this site, I'll oblige myself to revoke your privileges.
Thanks for the threat (trolling?) – I think I already know the answer to my questions as I have seen your postings on other discussions.
No need to ban me – I won't be posting here again….
You've swung from thinking not at all to thinking far too much.
I'm relieved I won't need to ban you.
Forgive me….for a short while I thought you were a serious journalist – but all you are is a propagandist – and a piss poor one at that.
You have been welcomed to present an actual argument to support such words. Inasmuch as you've clearly no interest in doing so, for the obvious reason that you are incapable, and inasmuch as you've nothing of value to add to the discussion and insist on violating the terms of use of the comments section,* your privileges are revoked.
* "All visitors are welcome to post comments to articles, and no registration is required to do so. Comments must be of reasonable length, relevant to the topic of the article, and respectful to the author(s) and other visitors. Substantive criticisms are welcome, but those consisting solely of ad hominem argumentation or insults are not. Comments containing racist or hateful remarks or personal attacks will be treated as spam and deleted. Severe or repeat offenses will result in the revocation of the offender's commenting privileges."
This is what co-existence looks like Jeremy – your article and statements are meaningless now since Israel is here to stay and you only cause hate and incitement. If only the Arabs living in the area west of the jordan river would learn to respect the life of human beings and learn to live next to their neighbors peacefully there would be no need for violence. It is a clash of idealogy, a clash of humanity vs the glorification of death. Tell me, how many arabs want to live in syria, lebanon, iraq ? Israel is the only country where all its citizens are respected and protected NO MATTER what their religion or personal beliefs are. Maybe you should take a close look at all the GOOD that comes out of the Israel.
If you wish to make an actual argument to challenge any point(s) of fact or logic in the essay, you are welcome to do so.
God has His way in spite of men, doesn't He, Mr. Hammond.
Ezekiel 36: 24-36
Not forgetting that the deal to set up the state of Israel and displace the Palestinians was brokered by Lord Rothschild in 1917 when with the Balfour Declaration the UK agreed to the setting up of Israel in return for Rothschild and his Zionist friends (from Germany) using their influence to bring the USA into WWI.
To clarify, the UK's policy as expressed in the Balfour Declaration was not to support the establishment of a Jewish state, but to support a "Jewish national home in Palestine", without prejudice to the rights of the majority Arab population (emphasis added). The meaning of this, as later clarified in the Churchill White Paper, was autonomous Jewish communities within Palestine. Of course, the UK had no authority to declare that Arabs' land be taken from them and handed over to Jews for their "Jewish state".
Excellent. So why not mention that?
How much Author get paid by terrorists to deny Jewish right to exist on their own homeland?
Dear Contributor
The Zionists took territory also in excess of the Partition Plan.
All UN members also have to abide by UN Security Resolutions 476 and 478 concerning Jerusalem. The UN Security Council deemed Israel's claim to be NULL and VOID.
Thank you.
There is periodically news of a work of art that was seized by the original Nazis being returned to the Jewish descendants and heirs of the original owner.
But we hear nothing of the property rights of Palestinians who fled their homes in huge numbers to escape Jewish terrorists intent on genocide.
They live in refugee camps but they inalienably own most of the land under the State of Israel. They are expelled from farmland so the (new) Nazis can built settlements, left to survive in poverty, but they have inalienable right of ownership to the land and buildings of the settlements.
For this reason it is after all necessary to expel the occupants of the settlements to resolve this issue.
Art works do not carry more sacred property rights than houses and land. And I don't think property rights exist only for whites (Jews) and not for Arabs.
John Pilger mentions that in the 2002 attack on Ramulla the Israeli army destroyed land title registers. Perhaps there is a role for the International Court to hear claims and create a property register for Palestine.
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There are plenty of countries that one could delegitimise if one chose to….
USA & Australia for a start – what right do these countries have to exist? And yet they do.
And wasn't Jordan also given away by the British ?
What does the author have to say about that I wonder?
As I said, no country has a "right to exist". That includes the USA and Australia, naturally, since they are countries.
I don't know what you mean about Jordan being "given away by the British". Like Palestine, it wasn't Britain's to give.
So would you say that Israel has as much a right to exist as USA & Australia ?
Looking forward to reading your 10,000 word essay on the "illegal" state of Jordan.
So would you say that Israel has as much a right to exist as USA & Australia ?
That's one way of putting it.
Looking forward to reading your 10,000 word essay on the "illegal" state of Jordan.
Why would I do that? Jordan doesn't proclaim a "right to exist" for itself in order to deny another people its right to self-determination or to try to legitimize the fact that it was created by ethnically cleansing the land of most of its Arab population.
Well Jordan was created by the British was it not – and on "Palestinian" land too ?? For some strange reason you seem to be okay with that? Is it just land given to jews you have a problem with ??
Jordan also has denied citizenship to thousands of Palestinians for decades – and let's not forget the thousands of Palestinians they have butchered over the years.
And weren't Jordan the original "occupiers" of the West Bank ??
You seem not to be paying much attention. Again, the British didn't give any land to the Jews. Again, none of the land included in the Mandate, either in Palestine or Transjordan (the independence of which was later recognized and name changed to Jordan), was Britain's to give.
Jordan's treatment of the Palestinians certainly has been condemnable, but this has no bearing on the point that no country has a "right to exist".
If you wish to challenge me on points of fact, you are welcome to try. I would merely observe that you haven't.
The facts are as I've stated them.
If you wish to challenge me on any point(s) of fact, you are welcome to do so.
I would merely observe for a second time that you haven't done so.
Consult a dictionary.
I'll get right on the phone with him.
Your article is a scam of legal opinion! So many errors spitted out with such nonchalance it makes you think Foreign Policy Journal hires scamateurs to write articles.
Britain occupied the Ottoman province of the Sanjak of Beirut, which included the lands Romans called Syria Palestina with the express mandate form the League of Nations to
1. facilitate the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine
2. facilitate extensive Jewish immigration for a close settlement of the land.
That was BEFORE
McMahon would negotiate Arab support for Britain against Ottoman – which anyway left out Palestine from the proposed Arab nation state
Sykes-Picot agreement that carved out the Middle East between the English and the French.
Let me also mention the Feisal – Weizman correspondence that spelled out the Arab welcome of the Zionist movement take over of Palestine and it's correct understanding as a nationalistic movement and expressly not imperialistic.
And I see below comments regarding other unsupported claims you foolishly make.
Really what a serious writer would disgrace himself like this?
You go back to your books and stop pretending you know anything not until before long!
Your article is a scam of legal opinion! So many errors spitted out with such nonchalance it makes you think Foreign Policy Journal hires scamateurs to write articles….
And I see below comments regarding other unsupported claims you foolishly make. Really what a serious writer would disgrace himself like this? You go back to your books and stop pretending you know anything not until before long!
If you think I've erred on any point of fact or logic, you are welcome to point it out. I would merely observe that despite the length of your comment, you haven't done so.
What a great reocsure this text is.
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