Europe punishes Israel,
blared the headline in Israel National News. “Ha!” I thought to myself. “They
kill 6 million of us and then they punish us? What was that, then? The
Spring Cotillion?”
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| "Selection" of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at the death camp Auschwitz-II (Birkenau) in Poland during German occupation, May/June 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber. |
Europe. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to be so
steadfast, so single-minded in one’s pursuit of hatred’s aim: the Jews. This is
a story not lacking in any irony!
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| Jewish refugees being marched away by British police at Croydon airport in March 1939. They were put on a flight to Warsaw. |
Think on it: the Romans oust the Jews from their land and so they go to Europe (some of them dragged there as slaves). Europe tortures the Jews for two-thousand years with all manner of pogroms and expulsions and then tries to finish them off once and for all, while Great Britain prevents them from coming back to whence they came from in the first place.
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| The Jewish poet Süßkind von Trimberg wearing a Jewish hat (Codex Manesse, 14th century.) |
But after the Holocaust, all of them are forced to do
something: the European nations, America, the UN. And so it is decided they’ll
throw money at the creation of a Jewish State, Israel. They’ll give lip service
to the idea of a Jewish National Home. Britain, meanwhile, will secretly arm the Arabs
from behind the scenes in hopes of counteracting all these efforts.
And the glory of it! Even should the Jews succeed and manage
to defend the Jewish State of Israel against all odds, all those Arabs who want
them dead after all those Germans who wanted them dead, then at least they’ll
all be in one place.
Yes. They managed to murder 6 million Jews, spread as they
were throughout Europe. But 6-7 million of the suckers concentrated (get it?)
in one tiny country the size of the state of Vermont? What with nuclear weapons
a thing, this time they figure they can’t lose. Just point and shoot, as the
saying goes.
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| Fettmilch Riot: The plundering of the Judengasse (Jewry) in Frankfurt on August 22, 1614 |
That is approximately (okay, so exactly) what went through
this author’s head while reading about Europe punishing Israel over the passing
of Israel’s brand spanking new Regulation Law, which gives 125% of the value of
the land, or an equivalent piece of land to any Arab who can prove ownership of
land on which a Jew built a home in Judea and Samaria.
You have to understand: Jews didn’t build in Judea and
Samaria indiscriminately, but did their utmost to ascertain that the land in
question was public—that there were no previous owners. Then and only then did
Jews build homes with the government’s okay and assistance. These claims that
keep coming up, they’re BOGUS. The claimants do not even need to show a deed.
So of course people are going to claim land they want if they don’t even need
to prove ownership with papers of some sort.
Need a crash course in contemporary land rights in Judea and Samaria? You’ve got it. Here’s what historian and political analyst Dr. Moshe Dann, has to say on the subject:
Need a crash course in contemporary land rights in Judea and Samaria? You’ve got it. Here’s what historian and political analyst Dr. Moshe Dann, has to say on the subject:
After the Six Day War in 1967 . . . the IDF commander ruled that the IDF would follow Jordanian law completely and exclusively [regarding land ownership in Judea and Samaria], except where it conflicted with IDF rules and regulations. This was an administrative decision, not law, and exceptions were made, for example to apply Israeli law concerning VAT. But regarding land ownership, the Civil Administration (Minhal) followed Jordanian law. This became important several decades later as Jews built new communities and as Arab Palestinians and NGOs Peace Now, Yesh Din and Rabbis for Human Rights, appealed to the High Court claiming that Jews had built their homes and property on “privately owned land.”
Their claims are based on massive land distributions that were carried out by Jordan during the early 1960’s in Judea and Samaria (the 'West Bank'). These arbitrary land grants were unconditional and, according to Mandate and Jordanian law, when recorded in the land registry, gave the recipients title and permanent possession. Most of the land was never used and no taxes were paid, which are required by Ottoman law, and therefore should have nullified any claims of ownership.
Since Jordan’s occupation of Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem was illegal, and its claim to be the legitimate sovereign was rejected by the entire international community, except for England and Pakistan, the IDF was under no obligation to recognize Jordan’s authority, including its laws and legal structure. Three Israeli laws were already in force and should have been employed:
1. The Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance (1948) requires that Israeli land laws be applied to "any part of Palestine which the Minister of Defense has defined by proclamation as being held by the Defense Army of Israel." According to late attorney and legal expert Howard Grief, this law “was enacted for the sole purpose of recovering for the Jewish State those lands that had been recognized as integral parts of the Jewish National Home under international law in 1920 and had always been considered the patrimony of the Jewish People."
2. The Emergency Regulations (Cultivation of Waste [Uncultivated] Lands) Law (1949) “authorizes the Ministry of Agriculture to declare lands as ‘waste’ lands and to take control over ‘uncultivated’ land.”
3. The Emergency Land Requisition (Regulation) Law (1949) authorizes the requisition of land when it is “necessary for the defense of the state, public security, the maintenance of essential supplies or essential public services, the absorption of immigrants or the rehabilitation of ex-soldiers or war invalids.”
Regarding the new Regulation Law, Dann says the media is
making out as though Israel were legalizing land theft, though nothing could be
further from the truth. A piece of property could have been registered in
someone’s name 60 years ago, though that person is long gone. "Sometimes
we can't even find out if that person ever existed. So people claim to be
descendants of that person thereby to own land and that certifies them without
ever going to court," says
Dann.
Now let’s say you didn’t just read about Jordanian land
rights and how these claims for land cannot be proven, and don’t even need to
be proven in order for the leftist Israeli High Court of Justice to rule in
their favor against the settlers. Let’s say you’re completely ignorant of the
contemporary history of the area, but you do know that these territories are
the heart and soul of the Jewish people, indigenous territory.
How could a European be so bold as to tell a Jew he cannot
live in Judea and Samaria? Do Europeans not read their own bible? Are they so
utterly ignorant of history that they do not know where Jews come from?
Of course not. Everyone knows it and no one is fooling
anyone else. Everyone knows where Jews come from. Just as everyone knows where Arabs
come from (hint: Jews=Judea, Arabs=Arabia).
They threw us out of our land, put us in ghettos, forbade us
most forms of employment, tortured us with pogroms and expulsions,
systematically gassed and burned us by the millions, and now deny us the right
to build homes in the land they know we come from. The land that is OURS by
birthright.
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| A 15th-century German woodcut showing an alleged host desecration. 1: the hosts are stolen 2: the hosts bleed when pierced by a Jew 3: the Jews are arrested 4: they are burned alive. |
And so, Europe is punishing us! Denying us the pleasure of
their company by delaying a meeting between Israeli and European officials. (Oh
darn. Don’t you just hate that?)
Oh. Also they chastised us, with various talking heads calling
for a repeal of a law that actually goes above and beyond what has been legally
required of other countries in similar situations. Prof. Eugene Kontorovich writes:
In several prominent cases, long-term occupiers have used compensated takings, and the international community appears to have acquiesced, and certainly did not declare it illegal. Examples include the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus, where a compensation scheme aimed at permitting Turkish settlers to remain in Greek properties was approved in 2005 by the European Court of Human Rights. Similarly, the Russian occupation of Crimea takes private property with compensation (often in the form of other land), even for highly controversial projects like the Kerch Bridge, which will serve to deeply entrench the occupation and facilitate the transfer of settlers. Yet while many aspects of Russia’s occupation of Crimea have been denounced as illegal by the international community, the use of eminent domain has not. In particular, the ICC Prosecutor’s report on possible Russian crimes in Crimea makes no mention of it. The fact that many aspects of Russia’s Crimean occupation have been explicitly criticized on international law grounds, but this one ignored, suggests that it is not seen as illegal.
Indeed, property owners who have been compensated have no injury to complain of. As the French Government wrote in its submission to the International Court of Justice in the Wall Case, “international law… requires compensation which effectively makes good the entire injury suffered by the owners of the property in question. Indeed, claims of violations of international law are often accompanied by demands for compensation. This may be the first case where it is the payment of above-market compensation is claimed as an international law violation.
In short, prior to the introduction of the Israeli “Regulations” bill, neither the consensus of commentators nor any state practice supported the view that the prohibition on confiscation or seizure of private property in occupied territories applies to land-use regulations accompanied by the payment of complete compensation.
So there you have it: Europe is punishing the Jews for doing
more than should be expected of them, especially since everyone knows the
territory in question is Jewish indigenous territory, even if they’re all LYING
about it, and calling it an “illegal occupation.”
Europe is good at a lot of things: chocolate, cheese, wine.
But probably the thing it does best is punish the Jews.
The good news is, we’re just going to keep building homes, having
babies, and being a just and democratic nation, and there’s not a thing they
can do about it.
So there.