Monday, September 21, 2009

Setting the Record Straight on International Law

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Master of propaganda, the "Palestinians", an artificial entity with no historical veracity, have convinced most of the world that the State of Israel is illegally occupying their country, known as "Palestine". They have used the language of international justice to point their desire to annihilate the Jewish state as a human rights crusade. It has come to the point where even the President of the United States refers to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as "illegal". It is necessary for every support of Israel, and decent human being, to set the record straight about Jewish resettlement in the Land of Israel.

Jewish resettlement in the Land of Israel, including Gaza, Judea and Samaria, exist as of right and are completely in accordance with international law. In fact, it is the repeated attempts to prevent Jewish resettlement that is in violation of international law. The Mandate for Palestine, set out by the League of Nations and later enshrined in the United Nations, set out the right for Jews to settle in the entire Land of Israel. The legally binding document was conferred on April 24, 1920 at the San Remo Conference, and its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920. The Mandate’s terms were finalized and unanimously approved on July 24, 1922, by the Council of the League of Nations, which was comprised at that time of 51 countries,4 and became operational on September 29, 1923. The Mandate clearly distinguishes between political rights for Jews and civil and religious rights for non-Jews. Article 2 of the “Mandate for Palestine” explicitly states that the Mandatory should: “... be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.” At no time in the Mandate document are the Arabs referred as a people, or given the right for a country within the boundaries of Palestine set aside for a Jewish National Home.

The claim that Israel is some sort of Holocaust consolation prize to assuage the guilt of Europeans completely disappears when one considers that this document was internationally ratified 30 years before World War Two and explicitly states that Jewish settlement exists by right and not sufferance. The preamble to the text states: "Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." In other words, the soon to be established Jewish state derives its legitimacy from the fact that the two previous Jewish commonwealths existed in the Land of Israel, and that it is the birthplace of the Jewish people. Surrendering any inch of this land to a foreign power is a betrayal of the ancient Jewish ties to the land, and to terms set forth by the Mandator document.

The document, valid until this very day according to international law, sets out that "The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes." The document does not take into account the existence of any "Palestinian Arab" people and does not distinguish in any way between central Israel, the Galilee, Negev, Judea, Samaria or Gaza. The policy of denying Jews the right to settle in Judea and Samaria simply by virtue of their being Jewish is a blatantly anti-semitic policy, one completely illegal. As Yehuda Z. Blum, Israeli ambassador to the UN, explained: “A corollary of the inalienable right of the Jewish people to its Land is the right to live in any part of Eretz Yisrael, including Judea and Samaria which are an integral part of Eretz Yisrael. Jews are not foreigners anywhere in the Land of Israel. Anyone who asserts that it is illegal for a Jew to live in Judea and Samaria just because he is a Jew, is in fact advocating a concept that is disturbingly reminiscent of the ‘Judenrein’ policies of Nazi Germany banning Jews from certain spheres of life for no other reason than that they were Jews. The Jewish villages in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district are there as of right and are there to stay."

Zionism has become a very dirty word recently. Jews must stand up and say that Zionism, supporting the right to Jewish self-determination in the entire Land of Israel, and its practical applications such as resettlement and rebuilding, is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Anyone who opposes Zionism is an anti-semite because he denies Jews the right of self-determination which is accorded to all other peoples. Whenever somebody ignorantly repeats the slander about "illegal settlements" or "outposts", he must be reminded that international law demands that the trustee of the Mandate for Palestine, in the modern world, the State of Israel, encourage "close settlement by Jews on the land" and makes no mention of any other group with political rights in Israel. There is an illegal occupation in Palestine- but it is certainly not a Jewish one.

7 comments:

Avi said...

Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are built on uninhabited land, empty hilltops, valleys, fields. Nobody has forced any Arabs out of their homes and lived in it.

Progressive Pinhead said...

The settlers are violent fanatics, their presence carves up the West Bank into bantustans, they frequently attack Palestinians, beating them, shooting at them, intentionally hitting them with their cars, they are deeply racist, they often destroy Palestinian agricultural, they hve poisoned Palestinian livestock, and they do indeed take "uninhabited" (agricultural) Palestinian land.


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3564242,00.html

Progressive Pinhead said...

Bar,
These are well documented facts, not conspiracy theories. Just look at reports from Amnesty International or B'TSELEM or the work of someone like Ezra Nawi. And the settlements, unlike Israeli Arabs, do divide the West Bank into bantustans, all of the soldiers, and roads on which Palestinians are not allowed to travel that cut across every part of the West Bank, not to mention the wall and the roadblocks.

Progressive Pinhead said...

and I don't care what the demographics of the people who live in the West Bank are, I only care that they respect the other inhabitants. Even religious settlers are not objectionable when they meet this criteria. So people such as Rabbi Menachin Frommen, for example, have been a great edition to the area.

Avi said...

Arab violence against Jews is also well-documented. It is known as terrorism. B'Tselem and Amnesty are hardly objective sources- they base most of their evidence on biased Arab sources.

The only reason for checkpoints and security fences in Judea and Samaria is the threat of Arab terror. If Arabs would not blow themselves up in Israeli restaurants and cafes, there would be no need to search their cars and to stop them at checkpoints. Every time that Arab terror has stopped, restrictions on Arab daily life have eased. However, are you even aware that the average Israeli is stopped and searched by security guards tens of times each day, whenever they walk into a store, restaurant or public building? Are you even concerned with this daily routine of humiliation and inconvenience? A Jew's right not to be blown up along with his family far outweighs any discomfort on the part caused to the Arabs.

Before the 1920s, there were dozens of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Jews had lived in Hebron since biblical times and there were large Jewish communities in other places, such as Gush Etzion. The only reason why Jews had to RE-settle there in 1967 was because they were forced out of their homes during the Arab pogroms of the 1920s. Israel liberated this land in a defensive war launched by the Arab states, and no one has the right to tell Jews where they can and cannot live.

Deborah said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Avi said...

Deborah, my answer to you is the same as Ezra's answer to the Samarians: "'Ye have nothing to do with us to build a house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the LORD, the God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us.'"(Ezra 4:1-3)

If you are really Jewish, then I mourn and weep for you. It is the eve of Yom Kippur, time to return home. Come back to the faith of your grandparents, who would have rather died than accept Yoshke. Return to your people, to your faith, to your G-d.

If you are not Jewish, then give up your idols. Until you do so, you are not welcome to spread your idol worship at this blog.