6.1. Jerusalem Facts

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March 1, 2003

FORBES.COM rates Yasir Arafat 6th on list of richest “Kings, Queens And Despots”
Source:  http://www.forbes.com/work/compensation/2003/02/24/0224kings.html

Dont be surprised if this URL gets removed! – it was still there on Sat. 1 March 2003

“Of the richest heads of state, only four would make our billionaires list based on their personal fortunes.

 

NAME	COUNTRY	ESTIMATED NET WORTH
King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud	Saudi Arabia	$20 billion
Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah	Brunei	$11 billion
Hans Adams II	Liechtenstein	$2 billion
Saddam Hussein	Iraq	$2 billion
Queen Elizabeth II	United Kingdom	$525 million
Yasir Arafat	Palestinian Authority	$300 million
Queen Beatrix Wilhelmina	Netherlands	$250 million
Fidel Castro	Cuba	$110 million

 

The entire 2003 list of the world’s billionaires, including a special report on Yasir Arafat, will be available on Forbes.com on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 6 P.M. EST.”

Forbes wrote that Arafat has “feasted on all sorts of funds flowing into the PA, including aid money, Israeli tax transfers, and revenue from a casino in Jericho.”

Editor – Israel is constantly blamed for being the cause of the Palestinian’s plight of poverty while Arafat hordes the millions of dollars that are being funneled to the Palestinians monthly from accross the world – including even from Israel!

Note how Arafat rates next to the Monarch of Britain, who follows next on the list to those who make the 400 Richest Americans List!

Refer also on this Web Site, to: Discovering Islam  – “By his fruits, a man shall be known”

 

Myths of the Middle East

by Joseph Farah
Joseph Farah is an Arab-American journalist – Editor and Chief Executive Officer of WorldNetDaily.com
www.worldnetdaily.com

If you believe what you read in most news sources, Palestinians want a homeland and Muslims want control over sites they consider holy.

Simple, right?

Well, as an Arab-American journalist who has spent some time in the Middle East dodging more than my share of rocks and mortar shells, I’ve got to tell you that these are just phony excuses for the rioting, trouble-making and land-grabbing.

Isn’t it interesting that prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was no serious movement for a Palestinian homeland?

“Well, Farah,” you might say, “that was before the Israelis seized the West Bank and Old Jerusalem.”

That’s true. In the Six-Day War, Israel captured Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. But they didn’t capture these territories from Yasser Arafat.  They captured them from Jordan’s King Hussein. I can’t help but wonder why all these Palestinians suddenly discovered their national identity after Israel won the war.

The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. The first time the name was used was in 70 A.D. when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and declared the land of Israel would be no more. From then on, the Romans promised, it would be known as Palestine. The name was derived from the Philistines, a Goliathian people conquered by the Jews centuries earlier. It was a way for the Romans to add insult to injury. They also tried to change the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina,  but that had even less staying power.

Palestine has never existed — before or since — as an autonomous entity.  It was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their homeland.

There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians.  Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the land mass.

But that’s too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today.

Greed. Pride. Envy. Covetousness. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough.

What about Islam’s holy sites? There are none in Jerusalem.

Shocked? You should be. I don’t expect you will ever hear this brutal truth from anyone else in the international media. It’s just not politically correct.

I know what you’re going to say: “Farah, the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem represent Islam’s third most holy sites.”

Not true. In fact, the Koran says nothing about Jerusalem. It mentions Mecca hundreds of times. It mentions Medina countless times. It never mentions Jerusalem. With good reason. There is no historical evidence to suggest that Mohammad ever visited Jerusalem.

So how did Jerusalem become the third holiest site of Islam? Muslims today cite a vague passage in the Koran, the seventeenth Sura, entitled “The Night Journey.” It relates that in a dream or a vision Mohammed was carried by night “from the sacred temple to the temple that is most remote, whose precinct we have blessed, that we might show him our signs. …” In the seventh century, some Muslims identified the two temples mentioned in this verse as being in Mecca and Jerusalem.

And that’s as close as Islam’s connection with Jerusalem gets — myth,  fantasy, wishful thinking. Meanwhile, Jews can trace their roots in Jerusalem back to the days of Abraham.

The latest round of violence in Israel erupted when Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon tried to visit the Temple Mount, the foundation of the Temple built by Solomon. It is the holiest site for Jews. Sharon and his entourage were met with stones and threats. I know what it’s like.

I’ve been there. Can you imagine what it is like for Jews to be threatened, stoned and physically kept out of the holiest site in Judaism?

So what’s the solution to the Middle East mayhem? Well, frankly, I don’t think there is a man-made solution to the violence. But, if there is one,  it needs to begin with truth.

Pretending will only lead to more chaos. Treating a 5,000-year-old birthright backed by overwhelming historical and archaeological evidence equally with illegitimate claims, wishes and wants gives diplomacy and peacekeeping a bad name.

A daily radio broadcast adaptation of Joseph Farah’s commentaries can be
heard on TalkNetDaily, USA

 

9 August, 2002

FROM THE START ISRAEL HAS FACED ARAB GENOCIDE
by Prof. Louis Rene Beres

To fully understand current conflicts in the Middle East, history must be recalled. Acknowledged by the United Nations and the civilized community of nations, Israel became a recognized and sovereign state on May 14, 1948.  Immediately, five armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan (which was renamed Jordan one year later, in 1949), Lebanon and Iraq invaded the fledgling country. Their combined intention, celebrated enthusiastically all over the Arab world, was expressed plainly and publicly by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongoliam massacres and the Crusades.” Hence, scarcely a few years after the Holocaust and resultant codifications of Crimes Against Humanity, the intent of these Arab states toward the tiny new State of Israel was openly genocidal.

On May 15, 1967, Israel’s nineteenth Independence Day, Egyptian troops began moving aggressively into the Sinai, massing purposefully near the Israeli border. By May 18, Syrian troops, too, were preparing for battle along the Golan Heights, almost 3000 feet above the Galilee, from which they had been shelling Israel’s farms and villages for several years.  Egypt’s Nasser ordered the U.N. Emergency Force (UNEF), stationed in the Sinai since 1956, to withdraw. After the withdrawal of UNEF, the VOICE OF THE ARABS proclaimed, on May 18, 1967: “As of today there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain any more to the U.N. about Israel.  The sole method we shall apply against Israel is TOTAL WAR, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence.”

Two days later, a jubilant echo came from Hafez Asad, then the Syrian Defense Minister: “Our forces are now entirely ready…to intitiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland….The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”  President Abdur Rahman Aref of Iraq joined the chorus of genocidal threats: “The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear – to wipe Israel off the map.”

Today, in late summer 2002, this goal remains fixed and unchanged.  Significantly, the goal remains nothing less than another Jewish genocide.  Arab terrorism, as a complementary strategy of attrition, is consciously directed at the very same goal. With particular reference to the Palestinians, the Charter of Hamas – the Islamic Resistance Movement – exclaims proudly: “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad…In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad….We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one to be dealt with on this premise….”I swear by that (sic.) who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad: I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I promise to assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill.”

Arab/Islamic plans for genocidal extermination of Israel have never been kept secret, perhaps because these plans don’t really disturb the rest of the world. With rampant anti-Semitism again in fashion, especially (and ironically) in Europe, few seem to recall that, prior to 1967 – when all Arabs were already screaming for Israel’s “annihilation” and “liquidation” – there were no “Palestinian territories” under Israeli control. Exactly WHAT was the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Arab world in general seeking to “liberate” between 1948 and 1967, when Gaza was held illegally by Egypt and Judea/Samaria (West Bank) by Jordan?

There is no “peace process” with Arab states or authorities today, nor has there ever been such a process. The formal treaties extant between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan are little more than a temporary expedient by the Arab parties to buy time for critical rearmament and doctrinal refinement. Even before Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, on November 28, 1941, met in Berlin with Adolph Hitler (still a great hero in the Arab world). The
subject of Haj Amin’s meeting with Hitler was “…the final solution of the Jewish Question.” Further, this meeting, which followed Haj Amin’s active organization of Muslim SS troops in Bosnia, included the Mufti’s promise to aid Nazi Germany in the War.

Haj Amin did everything possible to ensure Hitler’s success with the Final Solution. He even urged the foreign ministers of the Lesser Axis Powers (Italy; Rumania; Bulgaria) not to permit Jews to leave for Palestine.  It was essential, Haj Amin asserted, that Jews be sent to countries “…where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland, in order to protect oneself from their menace and avoid consequent damage.” The Haj, who was in regular contact with both Himmler and Eichmann, knew exactly what “active control” in Poland meant during the summer of 1943.

Now the Arab world seeks “active control” in Israel itself. Preparing for genocidal war against Israel with weapons of mass destruction, the Arab states – together with the Palestinians – argue repeatedly that the post-Holocaust concentration of Jews in “the Zionist entity” is proof of Allah’s plan to make Jewish annihilation more practicable. Hence, the state created by the Jews to prevent another Holocaust is described by Israel’s genocidal enemies as the literal means to CREATE another Holocaust.  Moreover, unless all people of good will begin to recognize and understand this inversion of Israel’s purpose, Israel could indeed become the Arab/Islamic world’s Final Solution to the Jewish Question. This bitter irony is so overwhelming and terrible that it is almost unutterable, but it cannot be disregarded.

Let us all listen to the following: For all believing Muslims, according to both Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority, “…peace with Israel was and still remains nothing less than a poison threatening the life-blood of Islam….The Prophet is said to have predicted a final war to annihilate the Jews. Muhammad had stated: “The hour (i.e., salvation) will not come until you fight against the Jews; and the stone would say, `O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.'”

History must be recalled.

The author, LOUIS RENE BERES, was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is author of many books and articles.

Professor of International Law
Department of Political Science
Purdue University
West Lafayette IN  47907
USA
e-mail beres@polsclpurdue.edu

 

January 16, 2002

Facing Unpleasant Facts in the Middle East
By Steven Plaut

The world is now well into the Post-Oslo era, in which the delusions and denials of reality that were the foundations of the “Oslo peace process” are at last being acknowledged for what they were.   For those returning to the planet Earth from Fantasyland in the “Oslo” parallel universe, it behooves them and us all to bear in mind some of the unpleasant facts of life about the Middle East.

1. The Arab world has never come to terms with Israel’s existence within ANY set of borders whatsoever and is still seeking the destruction of Israel and its population.
2. ANY Palestinian state, regardless of who rules it, will produce escalated violence, terror and warfare in the Middle East, and not stability nor peaceful relations.  It will seek warfare with Israel and not solutions to the economic and social problems of its citizens.
3. The only reason Arafat and the PLO ever wanted control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was to use them as bases for attacks on Israel.  This is the only real use to which they will be put by any future Palestinian state.
4. There is no alternative that will stop the bloodshed and war in the Middle East other than the adoption by Israel of an unambiguous policy of R&D, that is, of Re-Occupation and Denazification of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.   Every other alternative proposal for stabilization and pacification is delusional.
5. Denazification of the West Bank and Gaza Strip must be based partly on the programs of Denazification imposed on Germany and Japan by the Allies after World War II, but in part must be different.  Such Denazification policies will have to stay in place for decades.  There is no other way in which Israel can prevent the daily massacre of its civilians by the Palestinian terrorists.
6. The bulk of Palestinians have lived outside Israeli “occupation” for years, and their “liberation” from Israeli “occupation” only produced Nazification, terrorism, mass murders, and radicalization.  Their pacification requires reimposing of martial rule by Israel.
7. The instability of the Middle East is not caused by Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands but by PLO occupation of Israeli lands.
8. There was never in history an Arab Palestinian state.
9. The Palestinians have no legitimate claim to the right to set up their own state.   It is doubtful whether they ever did have such a right, but even if they did – they forfeited it thanks to decades of terrorism, savagery, mass murders and barbarism.
10. Palestinians are Arabs. The Arabs already rule 22 states.   There is no reason why they should be entitled to a 23rd, and creation of such a 23rd Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza will escalate Middle East violence and world terrorism.
11. The Palestinians are not and never were a “nation”.   They are not even a tribe. They are a branch of Arabs with only minor secondary cultural differences that distinguish them from Syrians, Lebanese or Jordanians.
12. The Middle East conflict cannot be resolved through endless exhibitions of niceness and restraint by Israel.   Israeli niceness, restraint, and goodwill gestures are interpreted by the Arab world as weakness and as signs that the Jews, like Paul McCartney’s Band, are on the run.
13. The Palestinians are not “mistreated” by Israel, but ARE poorly treated by the PLO.
14. The only Arabs in the Middle East with any semblance of civil rights are those who live under Israeli rule.
15. Israeli Arabs are the best-treated minority in the Middle East and are treated far better than are Arabs living in Arab states.  If the intifada “uprising” were in fact a product of oppression and mistreatment of Arabs by a government, then Israel should be the only country in the Middle East that does NOT have an intifada.
16. Oslo has radicalized and Nazified most Israeli Arabs, who now identify with and openly support Arab parties and politicians who call openly for violence against Jews and the destruction of Israel.
17. There exists no set of concessions by Israel that would result in the Arab states coming to terms with Israel’s existence.
18. There are no Arab democracies and no support for democracy among significant minorities within the Arab world.
19. Israeli assassination of Palestinian terrorists is in fact a substitute for retaliation in kind against the Palestinians for bombings of Israeli children and other civilians. The alternative to such assassinations is bombings of Palestinian civilians.
20. Israeli settlements are the “mine canaries” of the Arab world. There is no reason why Jewish civilians should not be free to live in peace within Arab countries truly seeking peace with Israel, just as Arabs live at peace within Israel and within the United States.  The attitude of the Arab world in general and of the PLO in particular towards such “settlements” is indicative of their attitudes towards Israel and Jews in general.  If the Palestinians are NOT seeking peace with the Jews, and they are not, then the real problem is that Israel has built too few settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
21. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that does NOT deal with Islamist terror through wholesale massacres of the people in whose midst the terrorists operate.
22. There is an inverse relationship between the material comfort of Arabs living under Israeli rule and political moderation.  The better off they are in a material sense, the more violent and radical they are.  More generally, Arab radicalism and terror are positively correlated with comfort and education and wealth.  Bin Laden and his people are filthy rich.   There have been no undernourished Palestinian suicide bombers.
23. Palestinians endorse terrorism and violence against Jews by near-universal majorities.
24. Israeli Arabs endorse terror and violence against Jews by large majorities.  They also support bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
25. There are no visible Palestinian public figures who oppose violence, terror and Islamist fascism.
26. There is not and never has been a Palestinian “peace movement”.
27. The Hamas and Jihad are for all intents and purposes wings of the PLO, regardless of who actually serve as their day-to-day commanders.
28. The PLO is itself very much a manifestation of Islamist fascism and was founded by Islamist fundamentalists.
29. Asking Arafat to arrest the terrorists is a bit like asking Osama bin Laden to arrest those responsible for September 11 or asking Libya’s Khaddafi to arrest those responsible for the Lockerbie downing of the Pan Am flight or asking Hitler to take steps against those who invaded Poland. It is all part of the Oslo era of delusion.
30. Peace cannot be achieved through pretending that war does not exist.
31. The Israeli Left is responsible for the bloodshed in Israel.  The
    Israeli Left rescued the PLO from oblivion in the early 1990s, armed it, and allowed it to become entrenched in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.   The Israeli Left is as wacky as is the pro-Taliban campus Left in the United States.
32. Ariel Sharon has yet to detach himself fully, at least in public, from the pipe dreams and denials of reality imposed on the country by the Israeli Left, those that produced the Oslo debacle.
33. The only peaceful terrorist is a dead terrorist.
34. Israel cannot restore the credibility of its military prowess through “signaling,” but rather only through using that prowess and putting its military might to actual use.

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Challenging the misused concept of “Israeli occupation”
by Boris Shusteff
“We simply do not support the deception of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 War as occupied Palestinian territory.”
(Madeleine Albright, US Ambassador to the UN,  March 1994)

In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa on the 1st and 2nd of December 2001, Dr. Dore Gold, one of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s advisors,  was interviewed by a CNN correspondent a few minutes before Ariel Sharon emerged from his meeting with President George W. Bush.

Dr. Gold was asked something about the “occupation of the West Bank” and the “expansion of settlements.”  Actually it does not matter much what the question was.  What matters is the response, in which Dr. Gold sidestepped the issue of Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Yesha) and Jewish settlement in it altogether, and limited his answer to a general declaration about Arafat not fighting terror.  And it is that response that made it obvious that Israel is not ready for Peace.  It is important to note that Dore Gold is extremely well-versed in the topic he was asked about.   He has written abundantly on the subject of the legitimacy of Jewish settlement in Yesha.  He obviously knows that from a legal standpoint the term “occupied territories” pertaining to these areas of Israel is inapplicable when used to describe those primordial Jewish lands.  Therefore one could have expected a lesson in history and jurisprudence from him in response to the “loaded” question.  However, he preferred to be politically correct and did not even try to challenge the ignorance of the CNN correspondent.

It is time to stop pretending that we do not know what the quarrel is between the Jews and the Arabs.  It is about The Land.  Certainly it is about Israel’s existence and security too.  But if Israel does not have the Land, there is no reason to talk about her existence at all.  Without the Land the Jewish state vanishes, disappears.  This is why the Arab world is putting so much pressure on the issue of another Palestinian state.  If it succeeds in creating it, it takes away more land from the Jewish State.   The smaller the Jewish state is, the more easily it can be destroyed.

The Arab world does not care about the so called “Palestinian people.” To the leaders of the Arab world, Yasser Arafat, Hamas, Hizbullah, the “Palestinian people,” etc. are nothing more than a weapon that they use in their war against the Jewish state.  They do not need and do not want the presence of the Jewish State in the Middle East.  Perhaps they are ready to tolerate the presence of some Jews as dhimmi (the term for a  second-class “nonbeliever”), but not the state itself.  They see the Jewish State as a “dagger in the heart of the Arab nation.”  In their minds Israel has stolen a piece of Arab property.  Therefore not even a thousand “peace processes” will change their perception.

This is precisely the reason why all Arab leaders or spokesmen during the course of any interview, meeting, or conversation use the words “occupation,” “occupied lands” and their derivatives in conjunction with Israel as much as possible.  They are not afraid to abuse these words.  On the contrary, they know very well that the more frequently such terms are repeated, the more permanently they become engraved in people’s minds.  The leaders of the Palestinian Arabs had a ready answer to any questions asked by interviewers in the wake of the Jerusalem/Haifa massacres.  It was all Israel’s fault because of the Israeli “occupation,” because of construction in the “occupied territories,” and because the Palestinian Arabs are “people living under occupation.”

True, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the course of the 50 (!) interviews that he gave in those two days, did state several times that it is a lie to say that the Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are living “under occupation” since 99% of them live under the rule of the Palestinian Authority.  However, even he did not cringe and did not demand from the interviewer that the word “occupation” not be used.

The efforts of the Jewish State to win the hearts of the world community are completely in vain as long as it allows itself to be tagged with the word “occupier.”  Arafat’s spokesmen will always have the sympathetic ear of civilized mankind, as long as Israel does not challenge the word “occupation.”   Thus far Israel’s shyness on the matter makes her an accomplice in her own demise.

Just look at the absolutely disastrous performance (from this standpoint) of Alon Pinkas, Israeli consul general in New York, talking with Larry King on November 10,  when his opponent was Hanan Ashrawi, one of the most virulently Jew-hating Arab spokespeople.  In the course of the short debate, she mentioned the “O” word and its derivatives not less than 9 times, repeating non-stop  that “occupation is the problem.”  She talked about Jewish settlements on the “Palestinian territories” and the “Palestinian land.” And Pinkas was not only unable to challenge her, but what is far worse, added legitimacy to her words when he said, “One hundred percent justice is unattainable.  Not for us, not for the Palestinians.  This has nothing do with occupation, Larry.  We think that occupation is wrong.  That is why we seek to end it.”  Later in the debate he said that “until 1967 there was no occupation,” thus obviously implying that since 1967, “there is occupation.”

When the Israeli consul general announces to everyone watching CNN that the “occupation is wrong” and this is why Israel “seeks to end it” why should anybody be surprised that the whole world blames Israel?  After Pinkas’s acceptance of Israel’s “occupation guilt”  nobody will question Ashrawi’s statement: “The real issue is that if you want peace, you have to give back that which does not belong to you.  The land that Israel has to give back to the Palestinians is 22 percent of historical Palestine, and on that basis, this is a major historical compromise.”

Let us pause for a moment.  Ashrawi said “compromise” a favorite word of the western world.  She asks “only” for “22% of historical Palestine.”  Especially impressive is the way she chooses the words.  She is not saying that another Palestinian state must be built on 22% of “historical Palestine.”  She says that Israel must “give back” this land to the Arabs, well aware that virtually no one will notice that her declaration calls for Israel’s destruction.  Because what she really means is that after Israel succumbs to the establishment of another Palestinian Arab state in the complete territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which constitute pproximately 5% of historical Palestine, the Jews will still “owe” to the Palestinian Arabs the remainder of “22% of historical Palestine” – i.e. all of the territory of the state of Israel.

The Jewish state made a terrible blunder by allowing politicians and journalists all over the world, including the representatives of the Jewish state itself, to use the term “occupied territories” in conjunction with Yesha.

Putting aside dozens of valid arguments proving that this term is inappropriate, it is enough only to mention that Stephen Schwebel,  former head of the International Court of Justice at the Hague, wrote in the American Journal of International Law in May 1970 (after the Six Day War of 1967)  “¦as between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967, on the one hand and her Arab neighbors acting aggressively in 1948 and 1967 on the other, Israel has better title to the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem, than do Jordan and Egypt.”

If even Jordan and Egypt have less right than Israel to ownership of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority (PA) in this dispute with Israel has no chances at all.   The PA existed neither in 1948 nor in 1967.  It cannot be considered “a legitimate sovereign that was ousted” from Judea, Samaria and Gaza.  Under international law, it is exactly this condition of “legitimate sovereignty” that defines the applicability of the term “occupied” to a certain land.

The Israeli architects of Oslo framed their agreements with the PA based on the  Camp David autonomy provisions.  It appears that they completely misconstrued not only the spirit but the letter of Israeli policy at that time.  It was more than unambiguously presented in the Israeli Government Fundamental Guidelines, unveiled on August 5 1981 and, which stated,

“The autonomy agreed upon at Camp David means neither sovereignty nor self-determination [for the Palestinian Arabs].  The autonomy agreements set down at Camp David are GUARANTEES that under no conditions will a Palestinian state emerge in the territory of western “Eretz Yisrael”.  At the end of transition period, set down in the Camp David agreements, Israel will raise it claim, and act to realize its right of sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and the Gaza strip.”

The time is long overdue for the Jewish State to realize its inalienable right of sovereignty over Yesha.  It must make the strategic decision  to achieve peace, and the first step in this direction is to vehemently oppose anybody’s attempts to label the lands of Yesha as “occupied” territories.  The Israeli government must unequivocally declare that it will see as provocative any usage by any official representative of any country of the  adjective “occupied” or its derivatives in relation to Yesha.  Israel must make it absolutely clear that she will view such incidents as contributing toward the deterioration of relations between that country and the Jewish state.

The second step in Israel’s strategy for Peace will follow naturally.  It must annex the lands of Yesha.   And after the declaration of annexation, a third step must be carried out.  The Israeli forces should return to Yesha and mercilessly destroy Arafat’s regime.  As Michael Ledeen put it in the “National Review” on December 7, “If you win, they will always judge your means to have been appropriate. Once we’ve won, they will sing our praises.  But if we start to show kindness, generosity and compassion too soon, they will interpret it as weakness, and strike again.”

Let us replace the word “Americans” with  the word “Israelis” and declare loudly together with Ledeen:

“We need to sustain our game face, we must keep our fangs bared, we must remind them daily that we Israelis are in a rage, and we will not rest until we have avenged our dead, we will not be sated until we have had the blood of every miserable little tyrant in the Middle East, until every leader of every cell of the terror network is dead or locked securely away.”

Only then it will become clear that Israel made a strategic decision to achieve peace, since there can be no peace without total victory over the enemy.

12/09/01 – Boris Shusteff is an engineer.  He is also a research associate with the
Freeman Center for Strategic Studies.
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MYTH – “The Geneva Convention prohibits the construction of Jewish settlements in occupied territories.”
FACT – http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/Human_Rights/geneva1.html

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the forcible transfer of people of one state to the territory of another state that it has occupied as a result of a war. The intention was to insure that local populations who came under occupation would not be forced to move. This is in no way relevant to the settlement issue. Jews are not being forced to go to Yesha; on the contrary, they are voluntarily moving back to places where they, or their ancestors, once lived before being expelled by others. In addition, those territories never legally belonged to either Jordan or Egypt, and certainly not to the Palestinians who were never the sovereign authority in any part of Palestine. “The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the local population to live there,” according to Professor Eugene Rostow, former US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs.

The settlements also do not displace Arabs living in the territories. The media sometimes give the impression that for every Jew who moves to the West Bank, several hundred Palestinians are forced to leave. The truth is that the vast majority of settlements have been built in uninhabited areas and even the handful established in or near Arab towns did not force any Palestinians to leave.

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BIBLE REVELATIONS commentary:
Opposing powers are frantically trying to prevent the establishment of the Biblically Prophesied ‘Kingdom of God’ in Jerusalem, Israel.  This Kingdom is open to all individuals from every nation and every race on earth – IF they wish to conform and identify with the Requirements of the Creator God of Israel

 

Tongues of Deceit Facts about the Claims on Jerusalem by Jews and Palestinians
From an article: “Tongues Of Deceit”
Presented by: A Time To Speak (speak@actcom.co.il)
15 August 2001

“They speak treachery, with tongues of deceit in their mouths.” Micah 6:12

“They conceive mischief and bring forth evil and their heart prepares deceit.” Job 15:35

There is a Hebrew term “lashon ha-ra” (the bad tongue). Since the Children of Israel came back to the land of their fathers, the bad tongue has been one of the sharpest weapons used against them. This tongue has three forks, that:

• invent deceits to forward an ambition or a spite.
• spread deceits because they are preferred to the truth.
• spread deceits that in ignorance are mistaken for the truth.

For instance: According to Pope John Paul II, “A sad condition was created for the Palestinian people who were excluded from their homeland. These were facts everyone can see.” When this sentence is parsed by standards of evidence and logic, not one single “fact” can be seen in it.

Among the relentlessly repeated deceits:

1. There was a flourishing Arab nation in Arab-Palestine, subjugated and ruined by the intrusion of alien Jews who have no history or roots there.

The nation known at stages of its history as “Israel” “Judah” or “Judea” is the only sovereign nation-state that ever existed in the land now known by the Greco-Roman geographical designation of “Palestine”. The Israelite-Jewish presence goes back some 3,500 years and has never been broken. The Jews were deprived of their ancient political independence by the Roman conquest in the year 70 CE, but never lost their attachment to the Land of Israel or their conviction that they would one day redeem it.

Both Jews and Christians dwelt in the land when it was seized by military forces from Arabia in the Seventh Century. There was no Arabic name for this region, so the conquerors adopted the Greco-Roman “Palestina”, that they pronounced “Falastin”. This region became the neglected province of one foreign empire after another. [See further: A Time to Speak I:2]

2. The Arabs of Palestine had been a nation in the land since remote antiquity.

The Arab military invaders themselves left few descendants in the land, but some of the local population converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language. For 1,200 years thereafter, peoples of many origins came into the land at one time, and left it at other times, while nomads wandered in and out. These peoples came from throughout the Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, Turkey, the Balkans, Armenia, and Central Asia.

In a census of 1931, the non-Jewish population of Mandate Palestine named 24 different countries as their places of birth. They were never an indigenous or homogeneous population, and they never formed a distinct national identity, society or polity. The claim that there is a “Palestinian people” or “Palestinian nation” has a history of decades, not millennia. It was concocted only after the Six-Day War of 1967, avowedly as a device to forward the goal of the destruction of Israel.

“Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”  — PLO Military Department head, 1997.

3. There was a flourishing Arab society in Palestine before the intrusion of the Jews.

At the start of the Jewish resettlement — in the 1870s-1880s — Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, ruled by the Sultan in far-off Istanbul. The entire non-Jewish population west of the Jordan River was about 140,000, including nomads who moved in and out and even roving bandits. That population had been stagnant or in decline for centuries.

The land was depopulated, deserted, impoverished and barren. Western travellers, who knew from the Bible of the beauty, fertility and vitality of ancient Israel, came to visit and found not the Land of Milk and Honey but an empty wilderness of ruin and desolation.

A British consul reported in 1857 that the land was not cultivated,  villages had disappeared, and that “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore the greatest need is that of a body of population”.

Mark Twain rode through just a few years before the start of Jewish resettlement and saw only “. . . the kind of solitude to make one dreary.”  The Galilee was “unpeopled deserts . . .  rusty mounds of barrenness” where he “never saw a human being on the whole route”. He concluded that “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes . . . desolate and unlovely.” —  From Innocents Abroad, 1867.

At about the same time, a British Christian clergyman came to the Holy Land and wrote: “But where are the inhabitants? This fertile [coastal] plain which might support an immense population is almost a solitude. . . . The denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter – ‘The land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants.'” – Reverend Samuel Manning, These Holy Fields, 1894.

By the early Nineteenth Century it was perceived, especially in the United States and Great Britain, that the only hope for the restoration of Palestine was in the return of the only people who loved it and would care for it. Those who seriously espoused the idea of the Return of the Jews included U.S. President John Adams, British Prime Minister Disraeli,  British Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston, and writer George Eliot.

This had indeed been the sustaining hope of the Jews themselves for two millennia, and it became an active movement by the 1870s-1880s, even before Theodor Herzl organized Zionism as a worldwide movement.

4. The Jews displaced and dispossessed the Arabs.

Jews had always “come up to the Land”. Now pioneers began to come, perhaps a dozen or a score at a time, calling themselves Hovevei Tzion (Lovers of Zion), or BILU – an acronym for the Hebrew Beth Ya’akov Lecha Venelecha (House of Jacob Let Us Rise Up and Go 0, that echoes The Lord’s first command to Abraham: Lech lecha . . .  (Rise up and go . . . to a land that I will show you).

They did not take any land away from Arabs, or displace any Arabs. They went into areas long uninhabited and abandoned. The Ottoman Turkish government sternly restricted purchase of land by Jews. An effendi who could claim or contrive ownership of a bit of wasteland would be paid an exorbitantly inflated price for it. On the wasteland, the pioneers drained swamps and irrigated deserts, tilled soil untilled for centuries and built where nothing had been built for centuries. Many died of malaria and other diseases, and many more were murdered by bandits.

They did not create the “sad condition” of the papal lament, Rather, they created conditions that attracted and drew Arabs from other countries and regions, who came to seek the work, wages and a better conditions found only in the vicinity of the new Jewish settlements. Within decades of the start of Jewish resettlement, the Arab population in those areas grew far beyond the limits of natural increase. If the Jews had not come, the Arabs would not have come either.

“Around 1910, my family was staying at a hotel in Switzerland, where we met a very rich Arab. One of the other guests said to him, ‘You Arabs are making a mistake in letting Jews come into Palestine. You should throw them out while you can.’ “The Arab laughed and said, ‘Oh, no. Palestine is one of the poorest and most backward places in the world. There’s nothing there. The Jews will come and fill it with farms and orchards and towns.  They’ll build factories and schools and hospitals and railways. Then we Arabs will throw them out and keep it all for ourselves.'”  — Carrie Nora Isaac, New York

Malcolm MacDonald, a British Secretary of State hostile to the Jews,  admitted in 1938: “The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of their country. If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe that the Arab population of [Western] Palestine today would still have been around the ….. it had been stable under Turkish rule.”

5. The British Mandate to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine was a crime against the Arabs.

According to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the League of Nations Mandate of 1921, “Palestine” included all of the land east as well as west of the Jordan River in the Jewish National Home to be open for “close Jewish settlement”.

In 1922, the British detached the entire region east of the river,  depriving the Jewish National Home of a full 75 percent of Mandate Palestine. This they did in order to provide a puppet kingdom for their protégé Emir Abdullah, after he was driven out of Arabia. Since there was no historic name for such a kingdom, it was called after a biblical river.  From that day to this, the Kingdom of Jordan has permitted no Jew within its borders, and when it seized control of Judea and Samaria (1948-1967) it killed or drove out every Jew there as well.

The British progressively limited the areas open to Jews west of the Jordan River. They slammed and bolted the gates of the Jewish National Home at the very time when Jews most desperately needed a haven. The British obsessively counted and recounted the number of Jews, with a view to barring their entry or deporting them. At the same time they permitted a massive influx of Arabs from other countries and regions, technically illegal but never hindered.

These newly arriving Arabs took the places meant for the Jews, and so charmed or intimidated the British that the Jews they displaced were consigned to the death camps of Europe, or left to drown on their way to the Promised Land. Shortly before the start of World War II, the British Foreign Office actually requested the government of Nazi Germany to prevent the escape of Jews, and a few years later admonished the U.S. State Department not to encourage the escape of Jews, because nobody wants them.

“So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied until their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population.” — Winston Churchill, 1939

“If we must offend one side, let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs.” — British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, 1937

“If we must have preferences, let me murmur in your ear that I prefer Arabs to Jews.” — British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, 1943

The Jews who succeeded in reaching the Jewish National Home were confined to only 17 percent of Mandate Palestine, which became the State of Israel in 1948. That the Arabs were not granted 100 percent is what they ever since constantly proclaimed to be the Crime of the Century, to be undone by any means.

6. Jerusalem is a holy city of Islam, where Jews have no history, rights or claims.

Jerusalem has been the heart of Israel and of world Jewry for 3,000 years, and there has been a virtually unbroken Jewish presence there for all that time. When modern statistics are on record, they show Jews as the majority in the city:

• 1860:  11,000 Jews, 6,500 Muslims, 4,500 Christians
• 1906:  40,000 Jews, 13,000 Christians, 7,000 Muslims
• 1999:  633,000 Jews,  200,000 Mulsims and Christians

Jews around the world turn toward Jerusalem when they pray. Muslims turn toward Mecca. Jews and Christians make religious pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Muslims make religious pilgrimages to Mecca.

Jerusalem is not mentioned at all in the Koran. It does not appear on lists of Muslim holy cities. Caliphs and sultans ruling from afar paid little or no heed to Jerusalem; it dwindled to a dirty, dilapidated and poverty-stricken village — scarcely to be expected in any city that is loved or revered.

Arabs built little in Jerusalem, with the exception of the Dome of the Rock, that a caliph built in the Seventh Century — on the site of the First and Second biblical Temples. It is now being alleged that those Temples never existed, and while one might suppose this too preposterous to require rebuttal, the historically illiterate minions of the news media may repeat it with quite serious mien.

During the Jordanian occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Jewish residents were killed or driven out. For 19 years, Jews of all nationalities were banned from their holy places and historical sites, while ancient synagogues and cemeteries were wrecked or crudely desecrated. Now, the Muslim religious authorities still permitted to administer Temple Mount are relentlessly unearthing and destroying every relic of the Temples they say never existed — a program dubbed “archaeological terrorism”.

7. Judea, Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza are Palestinian territory, unlawfully occupied by Israel. Israeli settlements there are illegal under international law.

Israel is not occupying Palestinian territory because there is not and never has been any such thing. “Occupied Palestine”, like “Arab East Jerusalem”, as a diplomatic and journalistic stock epithet that melts away under analysis.

The status of Judea, Samaria and Gaza are still fixed by the Mandate for the Jewish National Home, while the other parts of the Mandate lands have become the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan. In 1948, Jordan launched a war of destruction against Israel during which it seized control of these areas. In 1967 it launched another war of destruction against Israel during which it lost that control. Since then, the areas have been under Israeli administration, as is quite lawful. Israeli settlements in that land are also quite lawful, regardless of the juridical rulings of radio-TV broadcasters.  [See further A Time to Speak No. I-6, June 2001]

Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, Israel has turned over administration of some cities and areas to the PLO, but it was not a grant of sovereignty nor is it irrevocable. It is conditional on PA/PLO fulfillment of its own undertakings in those Accords — a fulfillment that it never began. Israel retains responsibility for security in those areas, and the right to take action against terrorism or any other threat to its security that emanates therefrom. The mantras of the news media notwithstanding, Israeli actions for security and/or self-defense are not attacks against or incursions into “Palestinian territory”.

8. The Palestinians seek only to free themselves of occupation and regain the lands taken from them.

As noted above, lands were given to them by Israel, not taken from them. Since Israel’s voluntary withdrawals after the Oslo Accords, some 98% of the Arabs resident in Judea, Samaria and Gaza now live under the rule of the PLO.

When the PLO was founded in 1964, it adopted a charter defining its purpose as the total destruction of Israel, to be achieved by terrorism and war. This was before the Six-Day War of 1967, when the lands the PLO now purports to liberate were still held by Jordan and not by Israel. It therefore cannot rationally be argued that the terrorism is caused by or excused by the “occupation”.

The Oslo Accords demanded the cancellation of this Charter, but that has never been done. Despite public relations flimflam to the contrary, the goal of the destruction of Israel is still in effect. The pretense that the Palestinians yearn only for a state in these areas, side-by-side with Israel and at peace with it, is belied by PLO-officials themselves:

In 1974, the PLO adopted its Plan of Stages: First take control of any territory that it can trick Israel into yielding. Then use that territory as the springboard for the war to destroy Israel. That Plan of Stages is also still in effect.

After signing of the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat announced: “This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our Prophet Muhammad and Koraish.” [Note: Two years after Muhammad signed the treaty with the tribe of Koraish, he attacked and annihilated it.]

In a speech in Sweden, he promised to: “. . . eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews won’t want to live among us Arabs.”

Faisel al-Husseini, scion of one of the most powerful Arab families, and PLO “Minister for Jerusalem” defined the PLO program:

“[We will] continue to aspire to the strategic goal: namely, Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea. Whatever we get now, cannot make us forget this supreme truth.”  April 2001

“If we agree to declare our state over . . . the West Bank and Gaza, our ultimate goal is the  liberation of all historic Palestine from the River [Jordan] to the Sea [Mediterranean]. We distinguish the strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure.”  June 2001

PLO Minister of Communications, 1999: “Our people have hope for the future, that the occupation state [Israel] ceases to exist.”

9.  The Moslem “claim” to Jerusalem is unfounded

The Moslem “claim” to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran, which although Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, nevertheless talks (in Sura 17:1) of the “Furthest Mosque”: “Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque.” But is there any foundation to the Moslem argument that this “Furthest Mosque” (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever.

In the days of Mohammed, who died in 632 of the Common Era, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem was captured by Khalif Omar only in 638, six years after Mohammed’s death. Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on the Temple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style.

The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name “Omar Mosque” is therefore false. In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik’s son, Abd El-Wahd – who ruled from 705-715 – reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine “basilica” structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular “ship” in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.

Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death.  Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the “Sacred Mosque,” and the mosque in Medina as the “Furthest Mosque.” So much for the Moslem claim based on the Aksa Mosque.

With this understood, it is no wonder that Mohammed issued a strict prohibition against facing Jerusalem in prayer, a practice that had been tolerated only for some months in order to lure Jews to convert to Islam. When that effort failed, Mohammed put an abrupt stop to it on February 12, 624. Jerusalem simply never held any sanctity for the Moslems themselves, but only for the Jews in their domain.  [By Dr. MANFRED R. LEHMANN – who is a writer for the Algemeiner Journal. Originally published in  the Algemeiner Journal, August 19, 1994.]

Source: Tzemach News Service (TNS)
tzemachnews@tzemach.org
Web site: http://www.tzemach.org/fyi

 

January 10, 2002

Middle East Orwellism
Understanding the double edged vocabulary of the Middle East. – A Call for sanity –
By Steven Plaut, Haifa Israel

It is just one more of those unpleasant facts of life that the anti-Israel lobbies of the planet have no real interest in the well being of the Palestinians, but are merely motivated by hostility to Jews.   It is another unpleasant fact that those protesting their support for the Palestinians are merely seeking the destruction of Israel.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Middle East Orwellism.  It took September 11 to force the Western world to confront the realities of the Middle East, and – as part of this – the prevalence of Orwellism in that part of the world.

In the Middle East, words often mean their opposite, causes and effects are generally reversed, victims are generally blamed and aggressors whine about their victimization.  The same pattern is increasingly characteristic of the Israeli-bashing choruses in the Western media and elsewhere.

In the aftermath of September 11,  Americans were treated to daily lectures by demagogues from the Moslem world about how the United States must be to blame if terrorists were so angry at it that they attack it. Spokesmen for the most barbaric and oppressive regimes on earth lectured the West about its “insensitivity” and immorality.   Supporters of terrorism argued with a straight face that the attacks on New York and Washington were all a Jewish cabal.  And the worst acts of savagery and terrorism against civilians were praised as protests by “victims” of Western “racism” and “colonialism”.  (BIBLE REVELATIONS Comment – And Yasser Arafat, patriarch of Arab Terrorism, was awarded a Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize).

Israel of course has had to deal with the Orwellism of the Middle East all along.  It has long listened to the reversal-of-cause-and-effect homilies coming from the Arab world, under which Israeli retaliations for barbaric terrorist attacks against its civilians are “aggression”, while those very attacks themselves are “protests” by frustrated “activists” and “victims”.   Israel has also been lectured by the Western armchair peacemakers about how its settlements are the cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, whereas they are in fact its consequences.   Israelis are told that their “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip caused the Middle East War, whereas their occupation was in fact the consequence of that war.

In the Middle East’s Orwellisms, victims are turned into aggressors, savages and barbarians are painted as victims, imperialists and warmongers are declared moderates, defense is aggression, offense is defense, democrats are denounced as imperialists, dictators are lauded as democrats, and there are no problems on the planet that could not be resolved through the destruction of Israel.

The anti-Israel lobby demonstrably puts on display its recreational compassion for the “suffering Palestinians”.   In fact, it has no interest at all in any Arab suffering unless it can somehow be used as a bludgeon to delegitimize Israel.  The simple fact of the matter is that Arabs living under Israeli rule are the only Arabs in the Middle East who are NOT  brutally oppressed by their rulers.   They are the best-treated political minority in the Middle East.  They are the only ones living under some semblance of the rule of law, the only ones enjoying basic freedoms, the only ones who can vote, the only ones protected by due process, and the only ones NOT subject to summary execution and mass murder when challenging their regime.

The Middle East is the planet’s best illustration of Moynihan’s Law, holding that the degree of oppression of any people is an INVERSE function of the amount of cries of oppression one hears from them.   The only government in the Middle East that does not indiscriminately shoot Arabs who criticize it is that of Israel.

But Middle East Orwellism is swelling, especially in Europe and in liberal circles in the United States. The Belgium ravagers of the Congo have even taken time away from their enormous efforts on behalf of the US-led war against terror in order to put Israel’s elected Prime Minister on show trial for the fact that some Lebanese Arabs killed some Palestinian Arabs in 1982.   But that is only the tip of the iceberg of hypocrisy.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in enlightened government and progress, and that is why they support Arab fascism, and are silent when Algeria or Sudan massacre their civilians.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in peace, and this is why they support all forms of military aggression against Israel, and think such aggression must be rewarded.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in democracy, and that is why they believe that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that must be dismembered and destroyed.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in basic freedoms, and that is why they support the likes of Arafat, Mubarak, the Saudis and the Assads.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in freedom of speech and of the press, and this is why they support  the Palestinian Authority.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in self-determination and self-definition for all, all except for Israeli Jews.

The Israel-bashers claim to oppose violence,  which is why they “understand”  Palestinian terrorism.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in human rights, but not in Arab countries.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in voting, but not in Arab countries.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe that aggression and terror must never be rewarded, which is why the only policy they are willing to countenance for Israel is appeasement.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in minority rights, but not for Middle Eastern Jews, Kurds, Southern Sudanese, Copts or any other politically incorrect groups

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in freedom, but are not disturbed that slavery still exists in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere among Arabs.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in a free press,  and so they support censorship by the PLO and the Arab regimes, and “coordinate” their coverage of Palestinian Authority news with the PLO.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in freedom to practice religion freely for people in the Middle East, but of course only for Moslems.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in affirmative action preferences for those who  suffered from past discrimination, just as long as they are not Jews.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in progress and enlightenment, which is why they endorse concessions to those preaching  jihad, medieval blood libels, and Holocaust Denial.

The Israel-bashers hate it when people blame the victims, which is why all Arab terrorism is the Jews’ fault

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in progress, but Arab societies should never be expected to progress beyond 13th century feudalism.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in democracy, but not for Arabs

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in honest government, which is why they have nothing to say about Arab kleptocracies.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe that human rights of Arabs must be protected, but not in Arab countries.

The Israel-bashers claim to believe in women’s rights, but not among Arabs.

The Israel-bashers claim to oppose the use of torture, except when it is by the Palestinian Authority or similar progressive Arab force.

The simple fact of the matter is that the only “human right” the Israel-bashers really think Palestinians need is their right to attack Jews and to destroy Israel.

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January 23, 2003

Revisiting the Six-Day War
By Joseph Farah
WorldNetDaily.com

Occupation, occupation, occupation.

If you listen to Arabs, that’s the cause of the conflict with Israel – occupation.

They blame all their ills – from refugees living in squalor for the last 50 years to Yasser Arafat’s bad breath – on the so-called Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Arabs say the Israelis grabbed this real estate in a war of aggression in 1967. In fact, Israel did not start that war. Israel did not want that war. Israel merely defended itself – very, very effectively – from coordinated attacks by Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Arafat’s terrorists.

This is not opinion. This is fact. A friend of mine, Sol Jacobs, did something very simple – something very obvious – to document this fact, which seems to elude so many today. He went back and looked at what newspapers were reporting about the crisis before June 5, 1967 – before there was any alleged “Israeli occupation.”

Here’s what he found on his month-long timeline leading up to the Six-Day War:

• On May 7, the New York Times reported Syria had shelled the Israeli village of Ein Gev.
• On May 17, the New York Times reported that the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Arafat, pledged to “keep sending commandos” into Israel.
• On May 19, the Los Angeles Times reported Egypt stood accused of using poison gas in Yemen.
• On May 19, the New York Times reported Egypt had deployed its forces along the Israeli border.
• On May 20, the New York Times reported Egypt forced U.N. peacekeeping troops to leave the Sinai Desert in anticipation of its attack on Israel.
• On May 21, the New York Times reported Egyptian soldiers were massing in the Sinai.
• On May 22, the New York Times reported that the PLO would be stepping up its attacks in Israel, that Cairo was calling up 10,000 reserves and that Iraq would be sending aid to battle Israel.
• On May 23, every newspaper in the world reported that Egypt took the provocative action of closing the Gulf of Aqaba to Israel.
• On May 24, every newspaper in the world reported that the U.S. declared Egypt’s military blockade of the gulf “illegal.”
• On May 25, the New York Times reported that Jordan would admit Saudi and Iraqi forces into its country to do battle with Israel.
• On May 27, every newspaper in the world reported Egypt’s fiery threats to destroy Israel.
• On May 29, the New York Times reported the Egyptian buildup of military forces in the Sinai was continuing.
• On May 29, the Washington Post reported that despite all of this provocation, Israel was still reluctant to have a showdown with its enemies.
• On May 29, the New York Times reported new Syrian attacks on Israel.
• On June 3, the New York Times reported that Britain declared the Egyptian blockade could lead to war. It also reported that four Syrian commandos were intercepted in Israel.
• On June 5, 1967, the Six-Day War began. Israel rolled up all of its enemies faster than anyone would have believed. It took control of East Jerusalem from Jordan. It took control of Judea and Samaria on the west bank of the Jordan River from Jordan. It took control of the Golan Heights from Syria. And it took control of the  Gaza Strip and Sinai Desert from Egypt.

You can read these news reports for yourself thanks to the work of Sol Jacobs.

Clearly, the so-called “occupation” of these territories came about as a result of Arab war-making on Israel. Israel merely defended itself well. Israel also proved it was willing to give these territories back to neighbors who would live in peace with the Jewish state, as demonstrated with the return of the Sinai to Egypt.

All of this raises a few questions: If Israel is occupying those territories today, who was occupying them until 1967? If the West Bank and Gaza belong to “Palestinians,” why were they under the control of Jordan and Egypt until June 5, 1967? If Arab “Palestinians” just want their own state, why didn’t they ask for it before 1967?

And, lastly, why is it, according to many of these articles written in 1967, that when the Arabs talked about “occupied territories” then, they meant all of Israel?

Joseph Farah’s nationally syndicated column originates at WorldNetDaily, where he serves as editor and chief executive officer.
If you would like to see the column in your local newspaper, contact your local editor. Tell your paper the column is available through Creators Syndicate

 

Understanding the Media terminology in order to realize its secret agenda

The terror atrocity at the school in Beslan, Russia

This atrocity spanning a few days of terrorist hostage taking in a Russian school,  ended in a blood bath of mindless killing of 250 children, parents and teachers. Once again, the entire world was ‘shocked’.  This human butchery, once again,  was conducted by Muslims, this time Chechen Muslims who attacked and occupied the school on its opening day – meant to be a joyful family event for hundreds of Russian families.

How did the Media present these human butchers to the world as the horror developed?

ABCNEWS.com called them “secessionist Chechen rebels”
CBS News called them “militants” and “hostage takers”
CNN.com called them  “a group of attackers”
MSNBC called them “hostage-takers” and  “Chechen rebels”.
USATODAY.com called them  “armed militants”.
Al-Reuters.com called them  “an armed gang” and says  “It remained unclear who the attackers were”.

It is this type of Media terminology which blinds the masses to the real threat facing civilization in these traumatic times of international terrorism and which serves to hide the openly declared Cause of Islam to rid the world of ‘infidels’,  i.e. all those who refuse to become Muslims.  The use by the Media of whitewashing terminology to refer to these demoniac human butchers, amounts to siding with terror

Winston, a Mid-East analyst and commentator concludes: “When those who purvey their (the Arab Islamic Terrorism) hostile opinions and NOT the news or when they take the side of Terrorists,  they became co-conspirators with Terror.  Freedom of Speech is not a hunting license to assist Terrorists build up their rationale for more murder”.

With Islam wielding this Sword of homicide over humanity today, it is therefore not strange that Israel and the Jews have become the scapegoat for humanity’s bleak future – also in the opinion of the Media.

The NEW YORK TIMES has once again shown its anti-Israel bias as a fellow traveler of the pro-Arab State Department. In its leading editorial of September 2^nd,  2004,  it starts out to lull us with its sensible point of view that Terror is here to stay – but then goes on to blame the State of Israel for Global Terror. (1)

According to the NEW YORK TIMES: All Global Terror driven by Muslim ‘Jihadists’ will cease as soon as Israel is backed into the Mediterranean Sea by Yassir Arafat and his cohorts,  and the non-people called the Arab Palestinians (a title invented in 1967) had their own state on land evacuated in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).

Each time (over the last few decades) that the Arab Muslims attacked to occupy the sliver of land allocated to Israel, the Arabs lost land after each battle. They whined to the world that it was unfair that they lost and that they wanted back what they really never owned to begin with.  Such anti-Jewish institutions as the United Nations, the European Union, the Arabist US State Department adopted their false claims and began to champion the Terrorists while the leading media outlets like the NEW YORK TIMES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, CNN, NPR, and BBC, etc. became PR spokesmen for the Arab Muslim Palestinian cause. In effect, they became provocateur collaborators as they championed Arafat’s war of Terror.  (2)

“The sycophants of the NYT would like to tell us that Arab Muslims are really peaceful folks and, if Israel were to disappear tomorrow, all would be well. But, it is the NEW YORK TIMES and many other media outlets who are the spoilers. The Terrorists need these media resources and the media need the Terrorists in a sick, symbiotic relationship. What good is Terror IF the media don’t report it so as to terrorize other victims into obeying their demands?”

Winston then poses the question:  “How will the NYT and U.S. State Department spin the news of the atrocity in Beslan,  Russia, to protect the Arabs?

Winston’s question was confirmed within hours after his writing, when it was announced that 20 Arabs were already found amongst the hostage takers – one wounded terrorist was kicked to death by Russian parents who dragged him from an ambulance – an act which will no doubt be used by the backers of terror to depict justification for their vile and inhuman strategies.

This consorted pro-Arabist onslaught of the Western Media on the minds of people, follows amazingly accurate to the definition of ‘terrorism’ set by the declarations in the Final Documents of the XIV Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned held in Durban, South Africa,  17-19 August 2004.

“100. The Ministers unequivocally condemned international terrorism. and urged all States to fulfill their obligations under international law, including prosecuting or, where appropriate, extraditing the perpetrators of such acts and preventing the organization, instigation and the financing of terrorism against other States from within or outside their territories or by organizations based in their territories. They .called upon all States to fulfill their obligations under international law and international humanitarian law to refrain from facilitating, organizing, instigating, assisting, participating or supplying arms or other weapons that could be used for terrorist acts in other States, or acquiescing in or encouraging activities within their territory towards the commissioning of such acts…

107. The Ministers . solemnly reaffirmed the Movement’s unequivocal condemnation of any political, diplomatic, moral or material support for terrorism. They also encouraged all States to consider to accede to and implement existing international conventions against terrorism.”

Certainly sounds like a strong and resolute stand against terror – except for what might be appropriately termed a “terrorism escape clause”:

“104. The Ministers also reaffirmed the Movement’s principled position under international law on the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination and foreign occupation for national liberation and self-determination, which does not constitute terrorism and once again called for the definition of terrorism to differentiate it from the legitimate struggle of peoples under colonial or alien domination and foreign occupation for self-determination and national liberation.” (3)

Clearly, mindless terrorism is sanctioned by this definition, for certain defined reasons!  Which of course, makes it incumbent on the Media to ‘lead’ the minds of their readers and viewers to agreement, by their selective terms of description of what other wise would simply be “mindless, soulless and heartless human butchering terrorists”.

Clearly, the concerned reader or viewer should acquaint him/herself with the intent of Media terminology.  Also with the twisted and contorted views of pro-Arabists and Islamists which are so often presented as ‘pro-humanist’.  For instance, during this school highjacking, an Arab Islamic Mufti in North Ossetia appealed to the  “gang”   to free “some” of the hostages  – the children, who are considered Muslim because  “all children are born Muslim”  and should therefore not be murdered by their brethren: N. Ossetiabs mufti urges hostage-takers to free infants. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)  No doubt, his “appeal” warmed the hearts of those ignorant Westerners who believe in ‘the good of Islam’,  and who regarded this appeal as ‘proof’ of the ‘humane concern’ of Islam for all people. The Media has managed to blind them to the fact that this ‘concerned’ Mufti sanctioned the mindless slaughtering of parents and teachers amongst the hostages!

Similarly, watch those ‘condemnations’ by Palestinian authorities after suicide bombings in Israel:  Such condemnations of the slaughter of Israeli civilians are always phrased so as to be secondary to the killings of Palestinian terrorists by Israel, eg. They would state: “The killing of innocent Palestinians and Israelis are to be condemned” – they thus use the opportunity simply to seal a further condemnation against Israel while the Media use it to establish the ‘humane concern’ of these butchers.  These ‘condemnations’ are only presented to the English Media, while the same sources applaud the killings in the Arab news media.

BIBLE REVELATIONS Comment: While this may sound like a conspiracy by the Media, the Truth is more likely to be as follows:

Bible Prophecy is clear that in the End Time, Satan will go around like a raving lion, devouring and plundering in his final desperate attempts to prevent the establishment of the Kingdom of YHVH in the Promised Land of Israel, with Jerusalem as its universal headquarters.  There are thus two main opposing powers behind world events:  one side being prepared for the establishment of this Kingdom and the other side opposing it.  In this great Battle, humanity is exposed to the Choice of either opposing it, or promoting and subjecting to it.  In choosing opposition to it, one therefore becomes part of the greater community of evil – “by their works, they shall be known.”  It does not require great intelect to see the difference – but is does require great intellect and insight to prevent and realize, that one is not unwittingly part of the opposing side.

References:

1. WINSTON MID EAST ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY September 3, 2004 Email: gwinston@interaccess.com  quoting “Mr. Bush & the Truth About Terror” NEW YORK TIMES September 2, 2004
2. WINSTON MID EAST ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY September 3, 2004
3. IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis

Website: www.imra.org.il   For free regular subscription:
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June 6,  2004

The Quran confirms Jewish right to the Land and to Jerusalem
Extract from Frontpage Interview’s with Prof. Khaleel Mohammed, Assistant Professor  at the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University .

The Quran in Chapter 5: 20-21 states quite clearly: “Moses said to his people: ‘O my  people!  Remember the bounty of  God upon you  when  He bestowed  prophets upon  you , and  made  you  kings and gave you that which  had not been given to  anyone before  you amongst  the nations. O my people!  Enter the Holy Land which God has written for  you, and do not turn tail, otherwise you will be losers.'”

The thrust of my analysis is where Moses says that the Holy Land is that which God has  “written” for the Israelites. In both Jewish and Islamic understandings of the term “written”,  there is the meaning of finality, decisiveness and immutability. And so we have the Written  Torah (unchangeable) and the Oral Torah (which represents change to suit times). And in  the Quran we have “Written upon you is the fast”- to show that this is something that is  decreed, and which none can change.  So the simple fact is then, from a faith-based point  of view: If God has “written” Israel for the people of Moses, who can change this?

When the Muslims entered that land in the seventh century, they were well aware of its  rightful owners, and when they failed to act according to divine mandate (at least as  perceived by followers of all Abrahamic faiths), they aided and abetted in a crime. And the  present situation shows the fruits of that action wherein innocent Palestinians and Israelis  are being killed on a daily basis.

I also draw your attention to the fact that the medieval exegetes of Quran–without any  exception known to me–recognized Israel as belonging to the Jews, their birthright given to  them. Indeed, two of Islam’s most famous exegetes explained “written” from Quran 5:21   thus:

Ibn Kathir (d. 774/1373) said: “That which God has written for you” i.e. That which God  has promised to you by the words of your father Israel that it is the inheritance of those  among you who believe” . Muhammad al-Shawkani (d. 1250/1834) interprets Kataba to  mean “that which God has allotted and predestined for you in His primordial knowledge,  deeming it as a place of residence for you” (1992, 2:41 ).

The idea that Israel does not belong to the Jews is a modern one, probably based on the  Mideastrejection of European colonialism etc, but certainly not having anything to do with  the Quran.  The unfortunate fact is that most Muslims do NOT read the Quran and  interpret it on the basis of its own words; rather they let imams and preachers do that for  them.

How did the Jews lose their right to live in the Holy Land ? All reliable reports show that it  was by the looting and burning that followed from 70-135 C.E.  When the  Muslims  entered  the  place in  638, liberating it from the Byzantines,  they  knew full  well to whom  it rightfully belonged.  The later Muslim occupation and building a mosque on the site of  the Temple was something that was not sanctioned by The Qur’an. How honest is  contemporary Islam with this? Given the situation in the Middle East , politiking etc stands  in the way of honesty.

 

May 18,  2004

The Demolition of Palestinian Structures Used for Terrorism
– The Legal Background
Foreign Ministry of Israel

For nearly four years, Israelis have been the victims of a relentless and ongoing campaign  by Palestinian terrorists to spread death and destruction, condemning our region to  ongoing turmoil, killing more than 900 Israelis and injuring more than 6000. In light of this  unprecedented lethal threat, Israeli security forces have sought to find new effective and  lawful counter-measures that would minimize the occurrence of such terrorist attacks in  general, and suicide terrorism in particular, and to discourage potential suicide bombers.

Palestinian terrorists employ the most abhorrent and inhuman methods, including suicide  terrorism in order to target Israeli civilians and soldiers, contrary to any notion of morality,  and in grave breach of the international laws of armed conflict. Palestinian terrorists operate from within densely populated areas, abusing the protection granted by international law to the civilian population.

Faced with the failure of the Palestinian leadership to comply with its obligations to fight  terrorism, stop incitement and prevent the smuggling of weapons, Israel has been  compelled to combat the threat to the lives of Israelis, exercising its right to self defense  while upholding its obligations under international law. One such security measure is the
demolition of structures that pose a real security risk to Israeli forces.

Terrorists often operate from within homes and civilian structures. When terrorists fire  from within these buildings or activate roadside charges from orchards and fields, military  necessity dictates the demolition of these locations. Under International Law, these  locations are considered legitimate targets. Therefore, in the midst of combat, when  dictated by operational necessity, Israeli security forces may lawfully destroy structures used by terrorists.

A further instance necessitating the demolition of buildings is the use made by terrorist  groups of civilian buildings in order to conceal openings of tunnels used to smuggle arms,  explosives and terrorists from Egypt into the Gaza Strip. Similarly, buildings in the West  Bank and Gaza Strip are used for the manufacturing and concealment of rockets, mortars,  weapons and explosive devices to be used against Israel. The demolition of these structures is often the only way to combat this threat. Another means employed by Israel  against terrorists is the demolition of homes of those who have carried out suicide attacks  or other grave attacks, or those who are responsible for sending suicide bombers on their  deadly missions. Israel has few available and effective means in its war against terrorism.  This measure is employed to provide effective deterrence of the perpetrators and their  dispatchers, not as a punitive measure. This practice has been reviewed and upheld by the  High Court of Justice.

Israel’s security forces adhere to the rules of International Humanitarian Law and are  subject to the scrutiny of Israel’s High Court of Justice in hundreds of petitions made  annually by Palestinians and human rights organizations.

Israeli measures are not a form of “collective punishment” as some have claimed, as if the  intention were to cause deliberate hardship to the population at large. While the security  measures taken in self-defense and necessitated by terrorist threats do unfortunately cause  hardships to sectors of the Palestinian population, this is categorically not their intent.  Wherever possible, even in the midst of military operations, Israel’s security forces go to  great lengths to minimize the effects of security measures on the civilian population not  involved in terrorism.

In this context, Israel adopts measures in order to ensure that only terrorists and the  structures they use are targeted.

Furthermore, though permissible under the laws of armed conflict, Israel refrains whenever  possible from attacking terrorist targets from the air or with artillery, in order to minimize  collateral damage, a policy which entails risking the lives of Israeli soldiers. The death of 13 soldiers in ground operations in the Gaza Strip in early May 2004 is an example of the heavy price Israel pays for its commitment to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties.

While there is no question that the Palestinian population is suffering from the ongoing  conflict, that suffering is a direct result of Palestinian terrorism aimed at innocent Israelis,  and the need for Israel to protect its citizens from these abhorrent attacks. In the reality of the present conflict, Israel is facing a difficult war against terrorism. It is a war that has been forced upon it. It is a war in which the terrorists apply no rules or mercy, a war that takes a  toll of Israeli lives on an almost daily basis. In this reality, Israel must take the necessary  measures to protect the lives and security of its citizens and it is doing so while making  earnest efforts to uphold international law and the rights of Palestinians not involved in terrorism.

Source – IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
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June 30, 2003

ARE THE ISRAELI ‘SETTLEMENTS’ LEGAL?

By Eugene W. Rostow, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, (1966-1969) and 
former Dean of the Yale Law School

(Consolidated Articles of April 23, 1990 and October 21, 1991 from The New Republic.) .

BIBLE REVELATIONS introductory Comment:  The following authoratative reasoning  highlights the intricate background of international law behind the ongoing crisis  regarding ownership of the Biblical Covenant Land.  No consideration whatsoever is  given to the Divine Mandate which the Bible record confirms as having been declared  over this disputed insignificantly small stretch of almost barren land in the volatile Middle East.  Mankind may argue amongst themselves, but the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe has declared what His Special Purpose is for this Land and its internationally disliked Jewish inhabitants.  All mankind is included in this Purpose.  After reading this commentary, be sure to refer to our study:
Declaring War on God!

Text of the commentary follows:

With varying degrees of seriousness, all American administrations since 1967 have  objected to Israeli settlements in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) on the ground that it  would make it more difficult to persuade the Arabs to make peace.  President Carter  decreed that the settlements were “illegal” as well as tactically unwise.  President Reagan  said the settlements were legal but that they made negotiations less likely. The strength of  the argument is hardly self-evident. Jordan occupied the West Bank (Judea and Samaria)  for nineteen years, allowed no Jewish settlements, and showed no signs of wanting to make peace.

(United Nations) Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.  Resolution 242, adopted after the Six-Day War in 1967, set out criteria for peace-making by the parties (to the conflict);  Resolution 338, passed after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, makes resolution 242 legally binding and orders the parties to carry out its terms forthwith.  Unfortunately, confusion reigns, even in high places, about what those resolutions require.

(Since 1967) Arab states have pretended that the two resolutions are “ambiguous” and can be interpreted to suit their desires. And some Europeans (Russian) and even American officials have cynically allowed Arab spokesman to delude themselves and their people ­ to say nothing of Western public opinion ­ about what the resolutions mean.  It is common even for American journalists to write that Resolution 242 is “deliberately ambiguous,” as if the parties are equally free to rely on their own reading of its key provisions.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Resolution 242, which as Under Secretary 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 some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Five-and-a-half months of vehement public diplomacy 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, but should retire once peace was made to what Resolution 242 called “secure and recognized” boundaries agreed to by the parties.  In negotiating such agreement, the parties should take into account, among other factors, security considerations, access to the international waterways of the region, and, of course, their respective legal claims.

Resolution 242 built on the text of the Armistice Agreements of 1949, which provided (except in the case of Lebanon) that the Armistice Demarcation Lines separating the military forces were “not to be construed in any sense” as political or territorial boundaries, and that “no provision” of the Armistice Agreements “shall in any way prejudice the right, claims, and positions” of the parties “in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine problem.”  In making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdraw from the entire Sinai, which had never been part of the British Mandate ….

Resolution 242 leaves the issue of dividing the occupied areas between Israel and its neighbors entirely to the agreement of the parties in accordance with the principles it sets out.  It was, however, negotiated with full realization that the problem of establishing “a secure and recognized” boundary between Israel and Jordan would be the thorniest issue of the peace making process.

The heated question of Israel settlements in the West Bank during the occupation period should be viewed in this perspective.  The British Mandate recognized the right of the Jewish People to “close settlement” in the whole of the Mandated territory.  It was provided that local conditions might require Great Britain to “postpone” or “withhold” Jewish settlement in what is now Jordan.  This was done in 1922.  But the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine, west of the Jordan River, that is in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable.  That right has never been terminated, and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors.  And perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the UN Charter, “the Palestine Article,” which provides that nothing in the Charter shall be construed… to alter in any manner the
rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments…”

Some governments have taken the view that under the Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the rights of civilians under military occupation, Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal, on the ground that the Convention prohibits an occupying power from flooding the occupied territory with its own citizens.  President Carter supported this view, but President Reagan reversed him, specifically saying that the settlements are legal but that further settlements should be deferred since they pose an obstacle to the peace process.

This reading of Resolution 242 has always been the keystone of American policy.  In launching a major peace initiative on September 1, 1982, President Reagan said, “I have personally followed and supported Israel’s heroic struggle for survival since the founding of the state of Israel thirty-four years ago:  in the pre-1957 borders, Israel was barely 10 miles wide at its narrowest point.  The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies.  I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again.”

Yet some Bush (Sr.) administration statements and actions on the Arab-Israeli question,  and especially Secretary of State James Baker’s disastrous speech of May 22, 1989  betray(ed) a strong impulse to escape from the Resolutions as they were negotiated,  debated, and adopted, an award to the Arabs all the territories between the 1967 lines and  the Jordan River, including East  Jerusalem.  The Bush (Sr.) administration seem(ed) to  consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be “foreign” territory to which Israel has no  claim.  Yet the Jews have the same right to settle there as they have to settle in Haifa.  The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never parts of Jordan, and Jordan’s attempt to annex the West Bank was not generally recognized and has now been abandoned.  The two parcels of land are parts of the Mandate that have not yet been allocated to Jordan, to Israel, or to any other state, and are a legitimate subject for discussion….

The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the Mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created.  The Mandate for Palestine differs in one important respect from the other League of Nations mandates, which were trusts for the benefit of the indigenous population.  The Palestine Mandate, recognizing “the historical connection of the Jewish People with Palestine, and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country, ” is dedicate to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The Mandate does not, however, permit even a temporary suspension of the Jewish right of settlement in the parts of the Mandate west of the Jordan River.  The Armistice Lines of 1949, which are part of the West Bank boundary, represent nothing but the position of the contending armies when the final cease-fire was achieved in the War of Independence.  And the Armistice Agreements specifically provide, except in the case of Lebanon, that the demarcation lines can be changed by agreement when the parties move from Armistice to peace.  Resolution 242 is based on that provision of the Armistice Agreements and states certain criteria that would justify changes in the demarcation lines when the parties make peace.

Many believe that the Palestine Mandate was somehow terminated in 1947, when the British Government resigned as the mandatory power.  This is incorrect.  A trust never terminates when a trustee dies, resigns, embezzles the trust property, or is dismissed.  The authority responsible for the trust appoints a new trustee, or otherwise arranges for the fulfillment of its purpose.  Thus in the case of the Mandate for German South West Africa, the International Court of Justice found the South African government to be derelict in its duty as the Mandatory power and it was deemed to have resigned.  Decades of struggle and diplomacy then resulted in the creation of the new state of Namibia which has just come into being.  In Palestine the British Mandate ceased to be operative as to the territories of Israel and Jordan when those states were created and recognized by the international community.  But its rules apply still to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which have not yet been allocated either to Israel or to Jordan or become an independent state.  Jordan attempted to annex the West Bank in 1951 but that annexation was never generally recognized, even by the Arab states, and now Jordan has abandoned all its claims to the territory.

The State Department has never denied that under the Mandate “the Jewish people” have the right to settle in the area.  Instead, it said that Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949, which deals with the protection of civilians in wartime.  Where the territory of one contracting party is occupied by another contracting party, the convention prohibits many of the inhumane practices of the Nazis and the Soviets before and during the Second World War the mass transfer of people into or out of occupied territories for purposes of extermination, slave labor or colonization, for example.

Article 49 provides that the occupying power “shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”  But the Jewish settlers in the West Bank are volunteers.  They have not been “deported” or “transferred” by the government of Israel, and their movement involves none of the atrocious purposes or harmful effects on the existing population the Geneva Convention was designed to prevent.  Furthermore, the Convention applies only to “acts by one signatory carried out on the territory of another.”  The West Bank is not the territory of a signatory power, but an unallocated part of the British Mandate.  It is hard, therefore, to see how even the most literal minded reading of the Convention could make it apply to Jewish settlement in territories of the British Mandate west of the Jordan River.  Even if the Convention could be construed to prevent settlements during the period of occupation, it could do no more than suspend, not terminate, the rights conferred by the Mandate.  Those rights can be ended only by the establishment and recognition of a new state or the incorporation of the territories into an old one.

As claimants to the territory the Israelis have denied that they are required to comply with the Geneva Convention but announced that they will do so as a matter of grace.  The Israeli courts apply the Convention routinely, sometimes deciding against the Israeli Government.  Assuming for the moment the general applicability of the Convention, it could well be considered a violation if the Israelis deported convicts to the area, or encouraged the settlement of people who had no right to live there (Americans for example).  But how can the convention be deemed to apply to Jews who have a right to settle in the territories under international law: a legal right assured by treaty and specifically protected by Article 80 of the UN Charter, which provides that nothing in the Charter shall be construed “to alter in any manner rights conferred by existing international instruments.”  The Jewish right of settlement in the area is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.

Another principle of international law may affect the problem of the Jewish settlements.  Under international law an occupying power is supposed to apply the prevailing law of the occupied territory at the municipal level unless it interferes with the necessities of security or administration or is “repugnant to elementary conceptions of justice.”  From 1949 to 1967 when Jordan was the military occupant of the West Bank it applied its own laws to prevent any Jews from living in the territory.  To suggest that Israel as occupant is required to enforce such Jordanian laws ­ a necessary implication of applying the Convention ­ is simply absurd.  When the Allies occupied Germany after the Second World War, the abrogation of the Nuremberg Laws was among their first acts.

The general expectation of international law is that military occupations last a short time, and are succeeded by a state of peace established by treaty or otherwise.  In the case of the West Bank the territory was occupied by Jordan between 1949 and 1967 and has been occupied by Israel since 1967.   Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 ruled that the Arab states and Israel must make peace, and that when ” a just and lasting peace is reached in the Middle East, Israel should withdraw from some but not all of the territory it occupied in the course of the 1967 war.   The Resolutions leave it to the parties to agree on the terms of peace.

The controversy about Jewish settlements is not, therefore, about legal rights but about the political will to override legal rights.  Is the United States prepared to use all its influence in Israel to award the whole of the West Bank to Jordan or to a new Arab state, and force Israel back to its 1967 borders?  Throughout Israel’s occupation, the Arab countries helped by the United States, have pushed to keep Jews out of the territories so that at a convenient moment, or in a peace negotiation, the claim that the West Bank is “Arab” territory could be made more plausible.  Some in Israel favor the settlements for the obverse reason:  to reinforce Israel’s claim for the fulfillment of the Mandate and of Resolution 242 in a peace treaty that would at least divide the territory.

Source:  Women For Israel’s Tomorrow  (Women in Green)
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