Peace Talks - Will Israel Really Withdraw?

ZOA Demands Time Magazine Apologize For Anti-Semitic/Misleading Cover/Article Entitled 'Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace'

www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=1931

 

Why bother to do that. Why not simply acknowledge the (often hand-written) records of the minutes of Knesset, Defense council and War room meetings which clearly show that the main reasons for Israel's attacks were anything but the conviction of an existential threat to the Jewish state.

HBendor, are you claiming that these records are false? That Begin, Rabin, Moshe Dayan, Eshkol, Yigal Allon, Halm Shapira, Narkis all lied? If so you are going to have to reveal some truly extraordinary evidence that you have never shown to date.

So, no. I don't need neutral records. I will rely on official and private Israeli records as referenced by historians providing impeccable archival references. CAN YOU BETTER THOSE? If so, cough up.

And here is the clincher, HBendor. I use as my reference for the words of the Israeli hierarchy the publications of the very Tom Segev who YOU claim (see above) to be a neutral source!! Thank you soooo much for your substantiation and acceptance of my source. Your acknowledgement of Segev's neutrality is duly recorded.

 

Territory acquired is self defense

International law: a South African perspective By John Dugard

Go there and study this case
http://books.google.com/books?id=e9...&resnum=6&ved=0CCQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

What was this act of war? Are you referring to Egypt’s closing of ‘innocent passage’ to Israel through the Straits of Tiran after Israel had committed war acts against a country with which Egypt had a mutual defence treaty, namely Syria? Check your evidence. I suggest researching the words of Moshe Dayan and Colonel Jan Mühren on this topic of Israel's war against Syria. They were both most certainly there. So forget about Israel not striking or provoking first. She started a year ago due to Rabin's paranoia with Syria. Read Owen, Segev and Ben-Ami's proof of this. They are on your shelf.

See if you can answer this. What was the number one reason that the Sabra generals wanted to attack Egypt. What do the official Israeli records say? You might like to start with the public statements of Rabin and Begin. If you need a reminder, please yell. No need to thank me.

 

OK, HBendor, I will go there and study that case. I will get back to you on whether John Dugard supports your oft-repeated contentions. I might need a day or two.

Keep safe.

 

Wersted, I am VERY please that you recognise that 'Balfour' and the 'Mandate' promise a Jewish homeland. I also recognise it. So I presume you realise that it did not promise a sovereign racist-based Jewish state, right? And where did you get the 'stand-alone' bit from? Can you reference that please So I DO presume you realise that both documents promise that the Jews could reside in Palestine and become Palestinian citizens, and create their homeland within that country. Do you disagree? That is called the one-state solution, and from your post you seem to support that. Odd!!

 

How many times do i need to repeat the same thing?

The jews were promised a nation which they could move to, and have sovereign rule over - but did not mean they would be the only people living in it.

Since there were significant sections of the Mandate region that were sparsely populated. this would not have been a challenge to accomplish.

The arabs would continue to rule over their areas, and the jews - as ultimately expressed and implemented with the UN partition plan - would rule in their area. This did not mean that any non-jews living in the jewish nation would be forced out.

Interesting how israel has to retain arab muslims within its borders, but the West Bank and Gaza strip must be ethnically cleansed - just like the arab muslim nations in the 1940s and 1950s - of all of their jews.

 

Your perspective as stated here, and that of the other jewhaters, makes no sense.

Why would the jews need a special document authorizing their right to move ti the Mandate? Why would anyone have needed an authorization to move there, or anywhere else?

The only explanation - and the one that is factual - is that the jews were to be given a new nation over which they would have sovereign governing authority.

 

This remains a false belief as such a promise would have violated the civil Rights of the existing non-Jewish population of Palestine and that was expressly prohibited by both the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate.

But this is really past history and the Rights of the non-Jewish population were violated. While amends can be made for that it will not change history or remove Israel's current Right of Sovereignty.

As the originator of this thread I do want to point out something that is extremely important. While I certainly believe that UN Resolution establishes a fair foundation for peace between Israel and the Palestinians the real problem I see is in getting the Palestinians to comply with it. It requires the PLO, Hamas, and the Palestinian People to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the Right of Israel to exist in peace. While I can call on Israel to comply with Resolution 242 it is moot if the Palestinians will not accept Israel as it's neighbor and stop all attacks on Israel. Israel deserves peace if it is willing to withdraw from all territories occupied in the 6-Day War and thereafter but I am seriously concerned that the Palestinians would not respect such a peace.

It will take both sides to implement a peace and both sides would have to comply with the UN Security Council resolutions related to establishing that peace. We cannot expect Israel to comply and not expect the Palestinians to comply. We need to bring Hamas to the peace table as well as the PLO if we are to secure such an agreement because it does no good if the PLO were to agree but Hamas were to reject the UN Security Council resolutions and a peace accord based upon them. Without Hamas agreeing to these conditions Israel would be foolish to take any action so Israel needs to invite Hamas to the negotiations if it really wants peace. An agreement with just the PLO has no meaning as it will not stop the violence.

 

The Jerusalem Viewpoints series is published by the Institute for
Contemporary Affairs,
(founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation.)

No. 579 September-October 2010

I am not the only one who states so... Many here are engaged in disputations... but then, I can only produce a document which substantiates reality! HB

Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People:

From the San Remo Conference (1920) to the Netanyahu-Abbas Talks

Joshua Teitelbaum

* According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the real root of the
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had been their ongoing refusal
to recognize "the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in
their historic homeland" and he has singled out this issue as a key
"prerequisite for ending the conflict." Netanyahu's proposal puts back on
the global agenda a fundamental Jewish national right that was once
axiomatic but today is rarely mentioned.

* Ninety years ago at the San Remo Conference following World War I
(April 1920), the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers determined
the allocation of the Middle Eastern territories of the defeated Ottoman
Empire and decided to incorporate the 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting a
Jewish national home in Palestine into the British Mandate for the
territory, a move which confirmed international recognition of the right of
Jewish self-determination.

* The language adopted at San Remo was a triumph for Zionism, which saw
a national solution to the problem of the Jews. It recognized the existence
of the Jews as more than individuals who subscribed to a certain religion -
Judaism - but rather as a corporate group deserving of national expression,
in this case in the form of a national home. And this home was to be in
Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews. The language agreed upon at San Remo was, as British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon put it, "the Magna Carta of the Zionists." It was clear at the time that the term "national home"
really meant a state.

* Jewish self-determination was part of a process that ended up
decolonizing the Middle East in an effort that led to Arab as well as Jewish
independence. Repeated recent associations of Israel with colonialism - an
ahistorical canard that erases the millennia-long association of Jews with
the Land of Israel as an indigenous people - ignores the benefit that
Zionism actually brought to the Arabs through the process of decolonization.
The British Peel Commission Report of 1937 was quite clear on this. Indeed,
it was the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel that gave critical mass
to a distinct and unique Palestinian identity as well.

* The Jews have been brought back into history through the reestablishment of the State of Israel. This was accomplished with the aid of international institutions which recognized the justice and importance of Jewish national self-determination. These institutions accepted the validity of Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jews. Today, those who deny the Jewish right to national self-determination, more than 60 years after the founding of Israel, engage in a new kind of anti-Semitism.

In his June 14, 2009, address at Bar-Ilan University in which he accepted
the principle of a demilitarized Palestinian state, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu repeatedly emphasized an important Israeli requirement for a final
peace agreement: Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of
the Jewish people. For Netanyahu, this was not a precondition for
negotiations. But, according to his analysis, the real "root of the
conflict" between Israel and the Palestinians had been their ongoing refusal
to recognize "the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in
their historic homeland." He thus singled out this issue as a key
"prerequisite for ending the conflict."

The recognition of the right of the Jewish people to their ancestral
homeland is not a new idea. It actually has long historical roots which,
unfortunately, have been forgotten in much of the public discourse on the
Arab-Israeli conflict. Indeed, the denial of this right has been part of the
international campaign to challenge Israel's very legitimacy. For that
reason, it is critical to reemphasize the international, legal, and
historical foundations of this idea in order to challenge the current
discourse of delegitimization and restore the idea of Jewish
self-determination as an internationally-accepted norm. Thus, Netanyahu's
proposal is important for reasons that go beyond the peace process, for it
puts back on the global agenda a fundamental Jewish national right that was
once axiomatic but today is rarely mentioned.

Historical Roots of the Internationally-Recognized Right of Jewish
Self-Determination

Ninety years ago at the San Remo Conference in Italy following World War I
(April 1920), the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers (Great
Britain, France, and Italy) determined the allocation of the Middle Eastern
territories of the defeated Ottoman Empire. At San Remo it was decided to
incorporate the 1917 Balfour Declaration supporting a Jewish national home
in Palestine into the British Mandate for the territory, a move which
confirmed international recognition of the right of Jewish
self-determination in the place known to the Jews as the Land of Israel (in
Hebrew, Eretz Yisrael).

While some have viewed the mandate system as a continuation of British and
French colonialism, the mandates were temporary by design and eventually
gave way to Arab and Jewish independence. Indeed, the mandate system could be viewed essentially as a move toward decolonization (U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson certainly saw it as such), a step on the way to returning
much of the Middle East to its indigenous peoples and freeing them from the
Ottoman colonizers who had ruled for 400 years.

Ironically, the peace process of recent decades, which revived the idea of a
two-state solution which would allow the fulfillment of both Jewish and
Palestinian self-determination, has also resurrected the idea of a one-state
solution - a move which in time would bring about an Arab majority in the
land, thus ending Jewish self-determination. Although the supporters of a
one-state solution or a Palestinian "right of return" may drape their ideas
in the cloth of human rights, in effect they would be denying the Jewish
people their fundamental right of self-determination. Beyond the great
injustice this would bring upon the Jewish people, it would most certainly
not bring about peace. Those truly concerned with peace and stability should
support self-determination for both peoples in two states, since in the
Middle East a one-state solution would only bring death and destruction.
Think Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan - not Switzerland.

The Lead-Up to San Remo

By the time the San Remo Conference convened in April 1920, the Allies had
already made some progress regarding the disposition of Ottoman territorial
possessions. The British had become convinced of the desirability of a
post-war British Palestine, but still needed to convince the French, since
this contradicted the terms of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 which
determined that Palestine was to be under international control. The best
way for the British to gain French support was first to convince them to
support a Jewish national home in Palestine, which was achieved in June
1917.3 As a result of this diplomacy, the Balfour Declaration was issued on
November 2, 1917. French acquiescence to British rule in Palestine was a
result of the realities brought about by British military successes in the
Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire and Palestine in particular - in which
the French played practically no role at all.

The Covenant of the League of Nations, which was approved by the Paris Peace
Conference in April 1919 and later incorporated in the Treaty of Versailles,
signed on June 28, 1919, recognized the mandate system of "tutelage" and
gave international validity to it in Article 22 of the Covenant.5 But the
nature of the mandates and who would be the actual mandatory powers was
negotiated between the victorious powers, Britain and France, who first met
in London during February 12-24, 1920. The London conference, and the San
Remo meeting which followed in April, were aimed at establishing an Allied
consensus prior to signing a treaty with the Ottoman Empire, which would
become known as the Treaty of Sèvres (and which would eventually be replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey).

At San Remo

Britain, France, Japan, and Italy, with the United States observing, met
from April 18 to April 26, 1920, as the Supreme Council of the Principal
Allied Powers to discuss the mandates and the future of the Middle Eastern
territories of the recently defeated and now defunct Ottoman Empire. Britain
was represented by Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, Lord George Nathaniel Curzon. At the table for the French
were Prime Minister Alexandre Millerand and the director of political
affairs for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Philippe Berthelot. The
significance of what transpired at San Remo on April 24-25, 1920, has not
always received the attention it deserves, for in a sense, it was at San
Remo that Israel was born.

to be continued

 

continued from previous

On April 24, Britain and France, with Italy chairing the meeting and Japan
observing, discussed the future of Palestine. The British, led by Lloyd
George and Lord Curzon, were keen to have the mandate for Palestine awarded to Great Britain, and to include the language of the Balfour Declaration in the treaty with Turkey. The French, however, were not enthusiastic, despite what the British perceived to have been prior agreement on the issue. Berthelot argued that the Balfour Declaration was a unilateral British document, and "an unofficial declaration made by one power" had no place in the treaty. Furthermore, the French wanted some recognition of their role as a custodian and protector of Christian holy sites, which the Balfour Declaration did not mention.

Lloyd George, however, would hear nothing of a French presence. Two
mandatory powers in Palestine were quite impossible, and, he threatened
ominously, "it might even easily raise difficulties in regard to [Great
Britain's] relations with France." France should let Britain handle
Palestine alone and have mercy on London's burden, since "n any case the
task of governing Palestine would not be an easy one, and it would not be
rendered less difficult by the fact that it was to be the national home of
the Jews, who were an extraordinarily intelligent race, but not easy to
govern." The French eventually relented, reducing their demands to a
stipulation in the process verbal that the rights of non-Jewish communities
would not be suspended. A draft of the article was put before the Supreme
Council on April 24 and it was officially approved on April 25. In the end,
the British had carried the day.[/

The San Remo language gave detailed content to the general provisions
regarding the mandate system as formulated in Article 22 of the Covenant of
the League of Nations noted above. The operative paragraph reads:

The mandatory power will be responsible for putting into effect the
declaration originally made on the 8th [2nd] November, 1917, by the British
Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favor of the
establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it
being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the
civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,
or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.[/

The parties also agreed that France would be the mandatory power for Syria,
and Great Britain for Mesopotamia (later Iraq) and Palestine .

The language with respect to Palestine adopted at San Remo is remarkable for
several reasons. First, it established recognition by the Great Powers of
the principle of Jewish national self-determination. As such, it was a
triumph for Zionism, which saw a national solution to the problem of the
Jews, as opposed to other proposed solutions, such as assimilation. It
recognized the existence of the Jews as more than individuals who subscribed
to a certain religion - Judaism - but rather as a corporate group deserving
of national expression, in this case in the form of a national home. And
this home was to be in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews.
Interestingly, the rights of the Arabs ("non-Jewish communities") in
Palestine did not include national, but only civil and religious rights.

The language is a verbatim repetition of the Balfour Declaration, with one
significant change. Whereas in the Balfour Declaration, Great Britain
promised to "use their best endeavors to facilitate" a Jewish national home
in Palestine, at San Remo this became an operative obligation. As the
mandatory power, Britain was directly charged with "putting [the Balfour
Declaration] into effect." But most importantly, when the Balfour
Declaration was first issued, it was little more than a political
declaration. Once it was embedded into the Palestine Mandate, it became "an
international legislative act" by the Principal Allied Powers.

The language agreed upon at San Remo was, as Lord Curzon put it, "the Magna
Carta of the Zionists."11 It was clear at the time that the term "national
home" really meant a state. Back in 1917, three months after his declaration
was issued, Lord Balfour confessed: "My personal hope is that the Jews will
make good in Palestine and eventually found a Jewish state."12 U.S.
intelligence recommendations drafted for President Wilson at the 1919 Paris
Peace Conference had the same impression: "It will be the policy of the
League of Nations to recognize Palestine as a Jewish State as soon as it is
a Jewish state in fact."

In the Wake of San Remo

On April 26, 1920, acting upon instructions, British Major General Louis
Jean Bols, Chief Political Officer and Chief Administrator, Occupied Enemy
Territory Administration (South), announced to the heads of the communities
in Jerusalem that the Supreme Council had approved a mandate for Palestine
that would probably go to Great Britain. Most importantly, he told them,
"the Balfour Declaration regarding a Jewish National Home shall be included
in the Turkish Peace Treaty."14 The announcement, reported the Times, "was
quietly received."15 But in Jewish communities throughout the world, there
were celebrations.16

The agreed language of San Remo was incorporated verbatim into the Treaty of
Sèvres, signed with Turkey on August 10, 1920, as Article 95.17 The treaty,
however, was never ratified by Turkey since the new nationalist government
headed by Mustafa Kemal, the hero of Gallipoli, would have no part of the
treaty due to its many clauses - unrelated to Palestine - that he considered
prejudicial to Turkey. By the time a replacement treaty, the Treaty of
Lausanne, was signed with Turkey on July 24, 1923,18 the mandate for
Palestine had already been confirmed in the League of Nations Mandate for
Palestine of July 24, 1922.19 It went into effect on September 26, 1923.

The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine is a key document that
underscores the international legitimacy of the right of Jewish
self-determination in the Land of Israel, or Palestine. According to Howard
Grief, this can be seen in the three "recitals" occurring in the Preamble.20
The first recital is embodied in the reference to Article 22 of the League
of Nations Covenant, which, by implication, represents self-determination as
"the well-being and development" of the former subject peoples. The second
recital is the repetition of the Balfour Declaration as changed at San Remo,
where Britain is charged with actually carrying out the intent of the
Declaration. Finally, the third and perhaps the most important recital in
the Preamble recalls and notes that "recognition has thereby been given to
the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine"; it further
stresses that this was "grounds for reconstituting their national home in
that country."

It should be clear from the above that Jewish self-determination was part of
a process that ended up de colonizing the Middle East, if not entirely by
design. This effort led to Jewish as well as Arab independence. Repeated
recent associations of Israel with colonialism - an historical canard that
erases the millennia-long association of Jews with the Land of Israel as an
indigenous people - ignores the benefit (even if ironic) that Zionism
actually brought to the Arabs through the process of decolonization. The
British Peel Commission Report of 1937 was quite clear on this:

The fact that the Balfour Declaration was issued in order to enlist
Jewish support for the Allies and the fact that this support was forthcoming
are not sufficiently appreciated in Palestine. The Arabs do not appear to
realize in the first place that the present position of the Arab world as a
whole is mainly due to the great sacrifices made by the Allied and
Associated Powers in the War and, secondly, that, insofar as the Balfour
Declaration helped to bring about the Allies' victory, it helped to bring
about the emancipation of all the Arab countries from Turkish rule. If the
Turks and their German allies had won the War, it is improbable that all the
Arab countries, except Palestine, would now have become or be about to
become independent states.

With respect to the Palestinians per se, it is clear that for many years
after the end of World War I, they considered themselves part of Syria,23
although through constant contact with the challenge of Zionism, and with
the independence of the Arab states, a separate Palestinian identity later
developed.

Indeed, it was the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel that gave
critical mass to a distinct and unique Palestinian identity. If Jewish
national self-determination had not been fulfilled, it is debatable if an
entirely separate Palestinian nation would have emerged. The Syrian delegate
raised this issue during the UN debate on the 1947 partition plan:

Palestine used to be a Syrian province. Geographical, historical, racial
and religious links exist there. There is no distinction whatever between
the Palestinians and the Syrians and had it not been for the Balfour
Declaration and the terms of the mandate, Palestine would now be a Syrian
province [emphasis mine - J.T.], as it used to be.

to be continued 1

 

contined from previous 1

Putting Jewish Self-Determination into Action: The Partition of Palestine
and the Admission of Israel to the United Nations

If there were some lingering doubts in the international community about the
wisdom of a Jewish state, the German Nazi horrors of the Holocaust made
abundantly clear its absolute necessity. On November 29, 1947, the United
Nations, in General Assembly Resolution 181,26 agreed to the partition of
Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state,27 to share an economic union,
with a special international regime for Jerusalem. The tally was 33 votes in
favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions, and one absent. At the time, the idea of
a Jewish nation-state was internationally accepted, even taken for granted.
Jews were referred to in national terms - not just religious - throughout
the UN document, as are Arabs. The term "Jewish state" is mentioned 27 times in the resolution.

Israel is both a Jewish nation-state and a democratic state. This was
neither an impossible feat nor a contradiction in terms to the framers of
the partition resolution, who stipulated that both the Jewish and Arab
states in partitioned Palestine would have to be democratic and protect the
rights of the national minority in their respective states.28 But Israel's
legitimacy as a state is not by definition connected to its democratic
nature. That Israel's democracy is imperfect - and what democracy is not -
does not detract from its legitimacy. As Alexander Yakobson and Amnon
Rubinstein write,

Even nations that do not maintain even a semblance of democracy are
universally recognized as entitled to national independence, and even in
such cases (not in fact wholly exceptional in the Middle East) no one claims
that the very idea of national independence is an undemocratic one.

Israel allowed a large national minority to remain in its territory after
the 1948 war. (Jordan and Egypt did not allow Jews to remain in the
territory they captured, which had been allotted to the Arab state
authorized by the UN to come into existence in Palestine.) It naturally gave
expression to the Jewish majority by using Jewish symbols in the national
flag and seal, and in national culture and the designation of Saturday as
the day of rest. This is no different from the many democracies that give
expression to the Christian identity of their majority populations. For
example, several states have Christian crosses in their flags: the United
Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia (these actually have threes crosses in
their flags); Switzerland; Norway; Finland; Denmark; Switzerland; and
Greece. Pakistan and Turkey make use of the Islamic crescent in their flags,
while India uses a religious symbol in its flag. Britain's head of state,
the Queen, is head of the Church of England.

The historical connection of the Jews to the Land of Israel was clear to the
international community, as manifested in the League of Nations mandate
which recognized the "historic connection of the Jewish people with
Palestine" and their right to reconstitute "their national home in that
country."30 UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine which
recommended partition, clearly saw the historical connection of the Jews to
the Land of Israel and its report mentions this several times.

On May 11, 1949, the UN admitted Israel, the Jewish state created by the
United Nations, as "a peace-loving State which accepts the obligations
contained in the Charter and is able and willing to carry out those
obligations."

Europe and America: The Denial of the Legitimacy of Jewish
Self-Determination is Anti-Semitic

Not only is Jewish self-determination a right recognized by the
international community for nearly a century, it has been defined as such by
the European Union and the U.S. State Department in recent years, and the
rejection of that right has officially been declared to be anti-Semitism.

The EU's European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia arrived at a
"Working Definition of Anti-Semitism" in 2005. In elaborating the various
manifestations of anti-Semitism, the document notes that the State of Israel
is "conceived as a Jewish collectivity," and cites as an example of
anti-Semitism: denying the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist endeavor.

This definition was adopted verbatim by the U.S. State Department in March
2008.

The International Legal Status of the State of Israel

In traditional international legal theory, states deserving of recognition
are those which "possess a defined territory; a permanent population; an
effective government; and the capacity to enter into relations with other
States."34 Israel met and continues to meet these criteria. The fact that
Israel is a Jewish state did not add to (or, for that matter, hinder) its
acceptance as a legitimate state among the family of nations. It is
legitimate because it meets these criteria.

The State of Israel is the legitimate expression of Jewish
self-determination. This is in keeping with universal human rights,
including the right to self-determination. While there are those who deny
Jewish self-determination by claiming that the Jews are only a religion,
this is not the position historically shared by the international community.
This is because the Jews have a history of attachment to the Land of Israel
and a constant yearning for a return to it, whether it is physical and
contemporary, or metaphysical and anchored in messianic times.

The term "Jewish state" refers to national, not religious, identity. Most
Israelis would claim they are members of the Jewish people, but are not
religiously observant Jews. As Ruth Gavison admits, the relationship between
Jews and Judaism is a unique one, since

[n]o other people has its own specific religion. The Arab peoples, for
example, comprise Christians, Muslims, and Druze. While there was a time
when the French were mostly Catholics or former Catholics, they still waged
religious wars with the Huguenots, and today a large number of Frenchmen are Muslim. At the same time, no other religion has a specific nationality of
its own: Christians can be French, American, Mexican, or Arab; Muslims, too,
can be Arabs, Persians, or African-Americans. This distinction is not merely
the result of secularization: Judaism, at least from a historical perspective, has never differentiated between the people and the religion.
Nor was there any belated development that altered this unique fact: Social
stereotyping never allowed an individual to be a part of the Jewish people
while at the same time a member of another religion; nor could one be an
observant Jew without belonging to the Jewish people.

Denying Israel's Legitimacy: Thoughts on Root Causes

The legitimacy of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people seemed
unassailable when the UN Partition Plan was approved in 1947 and the State
of Israel was admitted to the United Nations the following year. What has
happened to change that?

Supporters of Israel continue to be baffled by the constant barrage of media
attacks on Israel, no matter what Israel does. Sure, Israel still controls
the West Bank, and its settlement policy is controversial, but this is not
for lack of trying to reach an agreement based on far-reaching and serious
offers to the Palestinians (Camp David, 2000; Taba, 2001; and Prime Minster
Ehud Olmert's proposals, 200. Yet Jerusalem seems to get no credit for
withdrawals from Sinai (1982), Lebanon (2000), and Gaza (2005). In addition,
clear acts of self-defense when attacked from these areas: Lebanon (2006)
and Gaza (2008-2009), and defending a legal blockade against Turkish
blockade runners (2010), receive little sympathy from self-righteous pundits
and government officials. In September 2010, TIME magazine published a cover story entitled: "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace," just as Israel and the Palestinians re-embarked on direct negotiations, which had been delayed for a year and a half at Palestinian insistence. The article itself suggests that Israelis (read Jews) care more about money than about peace.

Some American audiences have difficulty reconciling their notions of
democratic freedom with that of Israel's. This is because the American idea
of freedom revolves around the right of the individual to be free from
tyranny - foreign and domestic - while the founders of Israel, heirs to a
European legacy of nationalism, conceived of freedom as the collective
rights of a certain nation or people - in this case, the Jewish people.
Daniel Gordis writes that while America has inspired much of the Israeli
project, each country had a different founding ethos. America was about
freedom as defined by breaking away from an undemocratic monarchy, designed
to end "the long train of abuses and usurpations," as stated in the American
Declaration of Independence, while Israel's Declaration of Independence is
based on the Land of Israel "as the birthplace of the Jewish people."

to be continued 2

 

to be continued 3

Edward Said, drawing on Michel Foucault and others, taught us about the
importance of narrative and discourse in the Arab-Israeli conflict.38 He was
sensitive to how capturing the discourse - that nexus of language,
knowledge, and power - was essential for promoting the Palestinian cause.
Said and his followers have been enormously successful. Israel is often cast
in the role of colonialist, and words and phrases such as "occupation" and
"right of return" have become politically saturated expressions with only
one meaning. They then play an insidious psychological role in forming and
weighting the discourse against Israel.

Certain elite circles in Europe have their own reasons for denying Israel's
legitimacy, especially the right of the Jewish people to a nation-state of
their own. Daniel Hannan, a British Conservative Party member of the
European Parliament, pointed out during an address in Jerusalem in early
2010 that Israel, by its very existence, challenges the intellectual basis
of European integration, which seeks to supplant the old national ideal on
the European continent with the European Union.

After all, Hannan argues, the EU was founded on the idea that old national
loyalties are arbitrary, transient, and ultimately have been discredited
since they were the cause of many of Europe's great wars. In contrast,
Israel, which was resurrected after 2,000 years, is the embodiment of the
national ideal. If Israel was right to re-establish itself, Hannan
concludes, and the national ideal is correct, then some in Europe might feel
challenged that their multinational alternative was a mistake, explaining
their need to attack Israel and undermine its legitimacy.

There is something particularly galling about denying Jewish peoplehood and
self-determination. Identity is by definition self-defining. The Jews define
themselves as a people and overwhelmingly support the embodiment of Jewish
self-determination as manifested in the State of Israel. Just as there can
be a Palestinian state, since the Palestinians choose a unique identity,
there can be a Jewish state. Affirming the right of the Jewish people to a
nation-state, however, is not only important in the context of the
Arab-Israeli peace process. It is critical for countering the forces that
need to delegitimize the Jewish state for their own internal political
reasons.

The Jews have been brought back into history through the establishment of
the State of Israel. This was accomplished with the aid of international
institutions which recognized the justice and importance of Jewish national
self-determination. These institutions accepted the validity of Zionism, the
national liberation movement of the Jews. Today, those who deny the Jewish
right to national self-determination, more than 60 years after the founding
of Israel, engage in a new kind of anti-Semitism, one that calls for the
elimination of a state created by the United Nations.

This cannot stand. The circumstances that led the international community to
support the establishment of a Jewish and an Arab state (the Arab state did
not come into existence because the Arabs made war on Israel and took over
the territories allotted to the Palestinians) still obtain today. The
international community thus has an obligation not only to work for peace
and a two-state solution, but also to stand by its previous decisions and
stop the campaign to de legitimize Israel as the nation-state of the Jews.

***Joshua Teitelbaum, Ph.D., is Principal Research Fellow at the Jerusalem
Center for Public Affairs. He holds research positions at the GLORIA Center,
IDC Herzliya, and the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. He also holds
visiting positions at the Hoover Institution and the Center for Democracy,
Development and the Rule of Law, both at Stanford University. He is the
author of several Jerusalem Center studies including What Iranian Leaders
Really Say about Doing Away with Israel (200 and The Arab Peace
Initiative: A Primer and Future Prospects (2009). His latest book is
Political Liberalization in the Persian Gulf (Columbia University Press, 2009).

 

Wersted, I don’t care how many times you have to repeat your Myth, because there is simply no basis for it in reality. Here … I challenge you … show me where in the Balfour Declaration, or the San Remo resolution or the Mandate for Palestine these say ANYTHING about:

1) The Jews being promised a nation
2) The Jews would have sovereign rule

Off you go. You are so adamant that I am sure you can supply supporting evidence for your claim in a trice. Because if you can’t, may we ask you kindly to stop spreading unsubstantiated myths on this forum. It just makes your credibility crater.

First, I am not a jewhater. So cut the insults.
Let me point out how hollow your reasoning is. You say that my perspective makes no sense. Well sucks for you, because what I wrote is exactly what the Mandate for Palestine says. Care to challenge that?

You ask why the jews (sic) would need a special document authorising their right to move ti (sic) the mandate. Do you have a passport, Wersted? But more pertinent, what does that have to do with State sovereignty? It is a pure strawman argument.

You conclude that the only factual explanation is that the jews (sic) were given “a new nation”. Well I would absolutely love to see these FACTS that you speak about. How about cutting-and-pasting the law (the Mandate for Palestine) and highlighting where this nation was given to the Jews.

 

Agree with all of the above..but what worries me more than anything is that Israel, and yourself in the bolded part of the quoted post, give the impression that there should never be another attack on Israel from the land of Palestine...and I do not think that is realistic, I really don't..not even if there are agreements in place with Hamas and every fringe terrorist group in Palestine and ditto for the Palestinians with the Israeli equivalents.

Look at us in the UK..we may have "peace" in NI, but we still have those who will not accept that situation, and continue bombing. There will always be the discontented who will not accept the status quo.....and I would think that there may well be some settlers/ex-settlers who will be unhappy with a final settlement as well.

No terrorist action from either side ever is a situation devoutly to be wished, for sure...but not something that can be demanded.

All I hope that at least the two Governments learn to differentiate between the actions of a whole people and the actions of discontented minorities..and refrain from the knee-jerk wholesale retaliations of the past in favour of allowing each government to clamp down on the malcontents in their own countries.

But I still don't see peace resulting from these negotiations...though I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.

 

OK, HBendor, as per your instructions, I went there and studied the case. I am still surprised that you posted this. Are you also moving away from the Zionist myths like Wersted seemed to be doing when he admitted that all Balfour/’Mandate’ promised the Jews was a homeland to settle in. Subsequently he unfortunately fell back on the Myths by insisting that this meant a sovereign racist Jewish stand-alone state with full sovereignty. HBendor, would it come as a surprise to you that he studiously refrained from providing even a scrap of supporting evidence for this view. But, back to Dugard.

I was taken straight to page 140, and imagine my surprise when I was confronted with this in your suggested study on International Law:

QUOTE: “In these circumstances, it is clear that territory can no longer be acquired by the use of force, ie by conquest. … Some have argued that the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force applies only in the case of an aggressive, unlawful war and that a state may lawfully obtain title to territory acquired in self-defence. This view is untenable and is rejected by both state practice and resolutions of the United Nations. The General Assembly Declaration on Principles of Intcrnational Law Concerning Friendly Rclations and Co-operatio: among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations of 1970 draws no distinction between the lawful and unlawful use"

HBendor!! I am amazed. CONGRATULATIONS on your breakthrough. My heartfelt thanks for this reference. I will get back to you on this exciting source of International Law when I have read more.

 

This reading/interpretation is false, for obvious reasons. There would be no incentive for nation A to not attack nation B repeatedly, since any territory lost in an offensive war by A would have to returned to it. This scenario is obviously untenable, and is why the Laws of War regarding captured assets make the distinction of between hostile, aggressive attacks and defensive actions.

 

As has been repeatedly noted the UN Security Council, which has sole authority under the UN Charter, determined that the 6-Day war was initiated by Israel in violation of the UN Charter and was for the purposes of acquiring territory which is unacceptable under international laws and the treaty obligations of all UN member states. That is why Israel must withdraw from those territories in compliance Resolution 242.

So while Israelis can whine and moan the facts are clear because the UN Security Council, and not Israel, was the sole authority in making a determination on the issue.

 

I can agree but the hope would be that the threat would be diminished to the point that it became merely a criminal offense and that the governments of both sides would indict and prosecute any individual guilt of such a crime to the full extent of the law.

The current negotiations are doomed to failure because Hamas hasn't been involved so any agreement would be moot. The US, Israel, and PLO have to invite Hamas to the table for there to be any peace accord.

 

On a previous occasion you failed to show where the Laws of War made the distinction between territorial acquisition via an offensive or a defensive war.

Can you do any better this time? If not, then rather don't keep on banging the same empty can. You lose credibility when you repeatedly provide only your own word as support.

By the way, I am still waiting for your other evidence - that as to where Balfour/'Mandate' offers the Jews a sovereign stand-alone nation. Without it you are just guilty of yet more empty can banging.

 

I do not need to do anything except repeat the same fact, which you of course avoided.

If the Balfour was merely "immigration" papers for jews to move to someone ELSE'S country - it would have said so, but IT DIDN'T.

It said to a JEWISH homeland.

Since the document EXPRESSLY stated JEWISH national homeland, then that would be sufficient to explain a sovereign one.

Which was CLEARLY affirmed in the UN partition plan providing a jewish-sovereign nation, which you of course skipped over.

 

Go back and check the book which was used as a link a few posts above; it affirmed that the UNSC has never found israel to have taken an offensive action in the 6-day war:

http://books.google.com/books?id=e9...&resnum=6&ved=0CCQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Dugard stated on page 141: "Although no United Nations resolutions has branded Israel as the aggressor in the Six-day War..."

So there is no point in repeating this lie.

 

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear oh dear. Your conclusion is just sooooo WRONG!! You need to focus ... seriously. Where do you see the 'document' stating NATIONAL homeland. You honestly need to stop making these trivial errors. Folk are watching this thread and are starting to shake their heads at you.

Homeland as per the Mandate is a place of 'allowed residence' - check out the wording - it all points in that direction. Shiva must be close to being apoplectic with having to explain this to the disbelievers. No, no, no ... don't just skip ahead .... seriously, check out the wording. Do it!! The Arab Palestinians know it off by heart. To want to play in this game, so should you.

A sovereign nation is a legal entity with unique secular political rights that are nowhere granted in the 'Mandate'. Since you have checked it out, you will now be aware. Capiche?

So please, raise your awareness, because most of us simply assume that you know there things, and don't have time to educate you. You need to pull your own cart. Hot air is woefully inadequate. Off you go. Read the Mandate.

On a previous topic, we remain acutely aware that you have been stunningly unable to supply ANY verifiable references for your various claims. You are quickly sinking below the waves with your reliance on your own words. You seriously need to raise the level of your scholarship. So justify your 'sovereign State' and cut the crap that you don't need to support your say-so.

 

Why do i need to re-check what is in the letter, was affirmed by the UN partition plan, and has been accepted as legally defined for what, 80 years?

Maybe YOU need to wonder why the only people trying to revise 80 years of established legal doctrine are jew-haters and racists?

I go by the Balfour Declaration and the Partition plan, the 2 most important documents.

Spend less time with personal insults and attacks, and more time on the facts. Good luck.

 

Wersted, why did you stop your quote with the '...' why did you not stop cherry-picking, and continue? So, because the UN has never accused Israel of being the aggressor, that means that she wasn't? Are you SERIOUS!!?? What kind of debate is that? And from someone in the school that maintains that the UN is redundant and can be rejected!!

Let me quote further from that reference that you so clearly hold in high esteem:
QUOTE: “In these circumstances, It is clear that territory can no longer be acquired by the use of force, ie by conquest. … Some have argued that the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force applies only in the case of an aggressive, unlawful war and that a state may lawfully obtain title to territory acquired in self-defencc. This view is untenable and is rejected by both state practice and resolutions of the United Nations. The General Assembly Declaration on Principles of Intcrnational Law Concerning Friendly Rclations and Co-operatio: among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations of 1970 draws no distinction between the lawful and unlawful use"

Wersted, do you get the gist of what this international legal expert has written above - the reference that you refer to in support? No, I mean not skipping on to the next point, I mean do you REALLY UNDESTAND what has just been quoted? Do you understand that what he states is positively and exactly the very antithesis of what you claim .... AND YET you quote him in support of your position!!?? Oy Vey!!