I am in complete agreement with all Caroline Glick wrote in a JWR opinion piece on "Israel's Path to Victory". http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0911/glick092311.php3 The Arab narrative or canon of Jewish theft of Arab Land and expulsion of Arabs from their land completely dominates the media even though the issue is not property ownership at all but sovereignty. That has become leftist dogma. Maybe that is because journalists never have time to read history to be able to put current events in context, or maybe it is because they are mostly leftists. But Israel has neglected providing a good counterpoint to that canon. The best Israel has provided so far is "Israel's Rights as a Nation State Under International Diplomacy, http://www.jcpa.org/text/israel-rights/israels-rights-full-study.pdf That counterpoint should include at a minimum these points.
1. The Jews already have the political rights to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and have had since 1922 or in any event since 1967. If the grant in 1922 is relied on, after June 1967 the Jews were occupying land over which they already had received political rights. Brand, "Israeli Sovereignty over Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria", http://www.think-israel.org/brand.jewishsovereignty.html and Grief, Legal Foundations and Borders of Israel under International Law. Even if the grant of exclusive political rights to Palestine by the WWI Allies at San Remo, and its confirmation by the League of Nations in the Paelstine Mandate and by the US Congress, including by Treaty in the Anglo-American Convention of 1924 were to be ignored and only the facts commencing in 1948 are relied on, the land is still only disputed, not the "occupied" land of another sovereign, and the Jews had by far the better claim.. Stephen Schwebel, "Justice in International Law, the Selected Writings of Stephen Schwebel", for a pertinent excerpt see: CAMERA, The Debate about Israeli Settlements http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=10&x_article=1331, Julius Stone, INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT, Extracts from "Israel and Palestine - Assault on the Law of Nations" by Julius Stone, Second Edition, www.strateias.org/international_law.pdf www.think-israel.org/shifftan.belligerentoccupation.html Sir Martin Gilbert, "Jewish State - From the Balfour Declaration to the Palestine Mandate" in "Israel's Rights as a National State Under International Diplomacy" http://www.jcpa.org/text/israel-rights/israels-rights-full-study.pdf , See particularly the reference to the foreign office memo written by Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier showing the reason for the mandate trust arrangement. In fact that is not only the International Law but it is also the domestic law of the US and the UK because it is treaty law. Brand and Grief, supra. So there are four alternative bases for Israeli rights to sovereignty over all Palestine if you count the grant from God shown in the Old Testament.
2. The settlers have greatly benefited the Arabs by draining the swamps and ridding Israel of malaria, greatly increasing its capacity to absorb immigrants and returning it to the Biblical Land of Milk and Honey after being destroyed by 400 years of Ottoman Sovereignty. See: Gilder, "The Economics of Settlement" http://spectator.org/archives/2011/06/08/the-economics-of-settlement
3. The occupation since 1967 has not oppressed the Arabs but to the contrary has greatly benefited them. See
Karsh, "What Occupation" http://www.aish.com/jw/me/48898917.html and Gilder, "The Israel Test" http://www.american.com/archive/2009/july/capitalism-jewish-achievement-and-the-israel-test
4. The warfare going on in Palestine has always been motivated by religious obligation or jihad and not a quest for liberation and political self determination by the fake "Palestine Arab People". See: Brand, "Soviet Russia, The Creators of the PLO and the Palestinian People", http://www.think-israel.org/brand.russiatheenemy.html Brand, "The Third Wave" http://www.think-israel.org/brand.thirdwave.html Even Benny Morris the apologist for the Arabs agrees with that. Morris, 1948, A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, Yale University Press), 2008, p. 394. And see
Denis MacEoin, "Dimensions of Jihad: Suicide Bombing as Worship", Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2009 pp. 15-24.
5. The Peace Process is a charade that commenced when Brezhnev persuaded Arafat that they could fool Jimmy Carter by the PLO pretending to renounce violence and pretending to seek a peace agreement. See: Brand, "Soviet Russia, etc. supra
6. Almost all the 450,000-- 700,000 Arab refugees left Palestine either voluntarily before seeing a single Israeli soldier, or at the insistence of the Arab Higher Committee, persuading and ordering the Arabs local to Palestine to leave so the invading armies of the adjacent states can come in and wipe out the Jews, letting the Arabs return home in a few weeks to enjoy not only their own property but that of the Jews. Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), from the official journal of the PLO, Falastin el-Thawra ("What We Have Learned and What We Should Do"), Beirut, March 1976, David Meir-Levi, "Big Lies"
7. Extortion. There had been violence by Arabs against Jews in Palestine in the 1920s even before the Hebron Massacre of 69 Jews in 1929 which also occasioned the death of some Arabs. Still more violence took place in 1936-1939. By threatening even more violence in the 1947 UNSCOP hearings, the Arabs obtained a partition recommendation from the UN It was a recommendation, not a grant. It could not be a grant because a beneficial interest in the national or political rights to all of Palestine had already been granted to the Jews in 1920 with England as the trustee, and that grant had been preserved by Article 80 of the UN Charter. The Jews were reluctant to give up part of their rights, but finally agreed to it. Reluctant because 78% of Palestine had already been already been awarded to the Hashemite Arab Tribe East of the Jordan by their British Trustees for purely British political reasons. The current partition would leave the Jews with less than 10% of Palestine. Agreeable because they wanted peace more than land. Ben-Gurion as the representative of the Jews, said that he would agree to a partition just so long as the Jews received enough land to get their Jewish state started. But the recommendation that the Jews give up a major part of Palestine West of the Jordan River to the Arabs was not satisfactory to the Arabs who didn't want the Jews with their Western values there in the Middle East at all.
When someone obtains something they are not entitled to by threats of violence here in the US, we call it "extortion".
The threat to use violence when the British abandoned their trusteeship produced a recommendation that the Arabs increase their percentage of Palestine from 78%, all the land East of the Jordan, to less than half of the remaining 22%. That was extortion. As a product of more such extortion, in 1993, Israel agreed at Oslo to negotiate a state with the Arabs local to Palestine if they were to renounce violence and negotiate a solution to the differences. Another successful attempt at extortion.
Of course there are many other Arab canards contributing to their canon of the evils of Zionism. With not very much research the underlying facts can be determine, and the truth obtained. One such canard was recently referred to by Abbas in his recent speech at the UN when he claimed he was forced to leave his home in Palestine in 1948, with the implication that the Jews were responsible.
MAHMOUD ABBAS’ REQUEST TO THE UN ON SEPTEMBER 23RD AND PM NETANYAHU’S REPLY
Today, with the miracle of television, I watched Abu Mazen deliver his motion for statehood and a speech in support to the United Nations. I also watched PM Netanyahu's rebuttal. Mazen gave a rousing good talk. So did Netanyahu. But Netanyahu did not traverse Mazen's basic claim of the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian People". Here it is:
"The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine.
"Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails. This policy, which constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the failure of the peace process...and the burial of the great hopes that arose from the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993..."
In law, to "traverse" is to deny formally an alleged fact raised by the opposing party. As PM Netanyahu did not traverse Mazen's claim, they did not join issue.
Mazen's key point was "the inalienable national right of the Palestinian People" and how they had been kept from the Arabs local to Palestine since the Nabka or diaster of 1967. (Perhaps he meant 1948. It is hard to be sure and he did not specify). Netanyahu's main point in rebuttal was the rise of militant Islam from its quietude for several centuries following a millenium of Islamic Imperialism and Israel's need to protect itself, or as Dr. Andrew Bostom put it, in "Doctors of Death" http://www.aina.org/news/2007079124647.htm the fulminant recrudescence" of jihadism" .
JOINDER OF ISSUE
What could Netanyahu have done to join issue? He could have said "There never has been a "Palestinian Arab People". It is a made up concept, conceived by the Soviet Union dissimulators to disguise warfare motivated by a religious obligation or jihad, as a secular war of liberation with political self determination as their incentive . Even if there were, the Arabs local to Palestine have never had "inalienable national rights". They have never had any "national rights", inalienable or not.
What are "national rights". These are sometimes called "political rights". They are the right to have political self determination or self government. Are they the same as civil rights? No. Civil rights include the right to own property, and to have an equal vote in government established by others. The Arabs inside the Green line have a right to vote equal to that of the Jews. Political rights or national rights are the rights of a group or people to establish its own government as the Basques and Kurds have been trying to do for many years.
The Arabs local to Palestine have never ruled themselves. For the 400 years before 1920 they were ruled by the Turks from Constantinople. Before that they were ruled by Arabs in other areas, by Mongols, by the Crusaders for a time, by the Romans. The indigenous people of Palestine were the Jews. They ruled themselves 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.
The Arabs local to Palestine never have ruled themselves. Apparently they never wanted to. The Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula did want to and made this known at the time of WWI. The British offered to all Arabs "You fight on our side against the Ottomans and the Germans and after the war we will give you the right to political self determination. The Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula, with Lawrence, did this and got self rule. But as noted by Winston Churchill in the debates on the 1939 White Paper, the Arabs local to Palestine during WWI fought on the side of the Ottomans, their ruler.
Was the situation any different in 1948 after rule by the Ottoman's was no longer available? No. In 1947 the British, who were trustees of the Palestine Mandate, found it was too expensive to continue in the role and announced their intention to leave. The UN hired Count Folke Bernadotte to be one of their investigators for the UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) hearings. Count Bernadotte noted in his diary that there was no desire for nationalism among the Arabs in Palestine and never had been. In effect, he said there was no "Palestinian People". They were simply Arabs in one territory no different than Arabs all around them in other areas. There was no motivation for self government.
One historian, a Professor Yehoshua Porath wrote a book entitled "The Emergence of the Palestinan-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929. Did that document the emergence of a movement for political self government? No it documented a national anti-Zionist movement. There was some motivation for a pan Syria-Palestine group for self government when the Ottoman rule was no longer available, but it too was principally motivated by anti-Zionism. The Palestinian group broke off when they concluded that the Syrian part of the group was too soft on Zionism and they would be more effective anti-Zionists without it. He was a member of the left wing when he wrote it. Perhaps he thinks differently now. His student, Professor Efraim Karsh found no such motivation in 1948. See, "Palestine Betrayed" pp. 239-241
When Israel declared its independence in 1948, The Arab Legion, acting as the army of Jordan, supplied and officered by the British invaded the mandate territory and was successful in capturing Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. This area was renamed "The West Bank" by the Arabs. It was ruled by Jordan for 19 years, from 1948 to 1967. There was no movement for self rule among the Arabs local to Palestine.
In 1973 Zahir Muhsein who was on the Executive Board of the PLO, in an interview by the Dutch Newspaper Trouw, said there was no such thing as the Palestinian People. He said it was used as a political ploy. And he said that just as soon as they PLO had wiped out the Jews in Palestine, they would merge with Jordan.
How then is it one hears everywhere about the "Palestinian Arab People". The term first appears in the preamble of the 1964 Charter of the PLO, drafted in Moscow and affirmed by 422 members of the contemporaneously formed Palestinian National Council, each hand picked by the KGB. We know this though the revelations of the highest ranking defector from the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, a Major General Ion Pacepa. He was in charge, for the Soviet Union, of Arab affairs in the MIddle East even though he was a Rumanian, the head of Intelligence for the dictator of Rumania, Ceaucescu.
Golda Meir said there had never been a "Palestinian". She said that the term "Palestinian" had been used for the soldiers in the Jewish Brigade that fought on the side of the British during WWI. Hafez Assad also said there were no Palestinians. He said those people claimed to be "citizens of greater Syria."
In the preamble of the PLO Charter , the alleged "Palestinians" claimed to be motivated by the desire for political self determination.
Now lets go back to the 1920s. In 1917 the British had published "The Balfour Declaration" as its policy, hoping to influence Jews in Russia to get Russia to stay in the war against Germany. There were other reasons as well. Many British wanted to help the Jews who were suffering from pogroms in Russia and Poland. They did not want Jews immigrating en masse to Great Britain to compete with British working men so they had passed a law in 1909 that limited such immigration. But they felt they should do something. Furthermore, an industrial chemist named Chaim Weitzman has donated to Great Britain the right to use his intellection property without charge, patents that permitted an inexpensive way to obtain material needed for munitions.
The Balfour Declaration was to be British Policy on a new land of Jews in Palestine. It gave the Jews exclusive political rights to Palestine but was careful to preserve the civil and religious rights of the Arabs. That declaration was only British policy, but in 1920 at a conference at San Remo, it was agreed by the WWI Allies to apply it to Palestine that had been captured from the Ottoman Empire. The Allies had captured all the Ottoman land in the Middle East and the Maghreb (North Africa). The national or political rights to 99% of it was granted to Muslims and Arabs living in those areas. But in Palestine, the Allies decided to apply the policy of the Balfour Declaration in recognition of the historic association of the Jews with that land. It was reasonable for them to do so. The Jews were its indigenous people except for those ethnic groups that had disappeared such as the Philistines. Even after the Romans caused the Diaspora, the were still some Jews living in Palestine. Jews were present in Palestine continuously for some 4000 years, at least 2500 years before Islam was invented. The Jews were given exclusive political rights to Palestine in trust until they could reasonably exercise sovereignty. In Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres, the British, as trustees or the mandatory power, got the sovereignty of the Ottomans by cession -- in trust for the Jews.
Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's biographer recently explained how this had come about:
"In the discussions on the eve of the Balfour Declaration, the British War Cabinet, desperate to persuade the Jews of Russia to urge their government to renew Russia’s war effort, saw Palestine as a Jewish rallying cry. To this end, those advising the War Cabinet, and the Foreign Secretary himself, A.J. Balfour, encouraged at least the possibility of an eventual Jewish majority, even if it might – with the settled population of Palestine then being some 600,000 Arabs and 60,000 Jews – be many years before such a majority emerged. On 31 October 1917, Balfour had told the War Cabinet that while the words ‘national home…did not necessarily involve the early establishment of an independent Jewish State’, such a State ‘was a matter for gradual development in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution’.2"24
How these laws were to be regarded was explained in a Foreign Office memorandum of 19 December 1917 by Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier, the latter a Galician-born Jew, who wrote jointly:
‘The objection raised against the Jews being given exclusive political rights in Palestine on a basis that would be undemocratic with regard to the local Christian and Mohammedan population,’ they wrote, ‘is certainly the most important which the anti-Zionists have hitherto raised, but the difficulty is imaginary. Palestine might be held in trust by Great Britain or America until there was a sufficient population in the country fit to govern it on European lines. Then no undemocratic restrictions of the kind indicated in the memorandum would be required any longer.’3 Toynbee, in the period 1918 to 1920 became a consultant to the British Government on international affairs, particularly with regard to the Middle East. Still later he became a famous historian who wrote a 12 volume analysis on the rise and fall of civilizations.
The League of Nations approved the agreement in accordance with this British Policy, putting the exclusive grant to the Jews of political rights in a trust they called a “mandate”.
The French wanted to be sure they were not depriving the Arabs of any of their rights so they attached a process verbal indicating that they understood the mandate not to deprive the Arabs of any of their rights. The Mandate expressly preserved the Arabs civil rights and their religious rights but did not preserve their political rights because there weren't any to preserve -- they never had exercised sovereignty.
The US was not a member of the League of Nations. President Wilson did not approve of granting exclusive national or political rights to the Jews. That was inconsistent with his famous 14 points. But the US Congress approved the mandate nonetheless, over his objection and a later administration incorporated it in the 1924 Anglo American Convention, a Treaty. That made it treaty law. The San Remo Agreement was International Law, the the Treaty made it the domestic law of the US and the UK as well. This is well known to the Arabs. Their former spokesman, Professor Rashid Khalidi said in his book "The Iron Cage" that the Arabs were ignored when it came to the League of Nations grant of political rights to Palestine
What is extortion? It is the extracting of money, property or services to which you are not entitled by use of the threat of unlawful violence. In 1948 in the UNSCOP hearings, the Arabs threatened violence if the Jews were to be given statehood in any part of the Middle East. The UN tried to avoid this by recommending that the Jews give up some of their granted exclusive political rights to the Arabs. The Jews, under Ben-Gurion agreed – so long as they had sufficient land to start their own state. In response to this extortion, the UN partitioned what was left of Palestine after they have chopped off 78% of it east of the Jordan River and awarded it to the Hashemite Tribe of Arabs. Some was given to the Jews, some to the Arabs, some put under international control. The Arabs local to Palestine as well as the Arabs in surrounding states disagreed and went to war.
In 1948 when the British abandoned their trusteeship, the legal political or national rights the British had held in trust naturally devolved to their beneficial owners, the Jews or to Israel, their representative. The logical conclusion is that the Jews are in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem as a matter of right, and not by occupying the land of some other sovereign state.
From 1920 to the present, the Arabs in Palestine and in surrounding states have been attempting extortion to get what they want – to get rid of Jews in the Dar al Islam, the Domain of Islam that includes all land over which Islam has ever been in control. They went to war three times and in between sent in fedayeen to kill and they incited intifadas. In a particularly atrocious murder recently, two young Arabs near Itamar murdered the husband and wife of the Fogel family, two of the young children, and slit the throat of a three month old infant. Two boys survived -- they slept though it all and weren't found by the Arabs. The Fogel's 12 year old girl came home to discover the bodies.
By their clever dissimulation, the Soviets changed this jihad as a religious obligation to secular warfare for the liberation of the Arabs in Palestine.
PM Netanyahu did not tell this story. He did not traverse or rebut Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas also claimed he was forced to leave Palestine in 1948. But he did not say who forced him to leave. In an article in the official journal of the PLO, Falastin el-Thawra ("What We Have Learned and What We Should Do"), Beirut, March 1976 Abu Abbas wrote that the Arab Higher Committee persuaded (some say "ordered") the Arabs local to Palestine to leave temporarily so that the armies of the surrounding Arab States could come in and wipe out the Jews, telling them that they would be back in Palestine in a few weeks, to enjoy their property and the property of the Jews as well. So Mahmoud Abbas, in his excellent speech, turned truth on its head. Instead of the Jews stealing Arab land, he was again using extortion to steal the land of the Jews – Judea as well as Samaria and Jerusalem that had had a plurality of Jews as long ago as 1845. In the CNN program showing the Mazen deception at the UN half the screen was dominated by the fulminating Arab crowd.
