(The following is a rebuttal to Diana Buttu's piece in the Washington Post, The world should respond to Trump’s Jerusalem declaration with sanctions on Israel, which I submitted to the Washington Post
on Dec. 10. I was tentatively hopeful they would print this, but as time dragged on and I received no response, I realized there was no interest in printing this opinion. I offer it here, instead, in a slightly modified version.)
After President
Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Diana Buttu in her
piece, The world should
respond to Trump’s Jerusalem declaration with sanctions on Israel,
asserted that his actions were somehow an “aggression” that broke the law.
Which is funny, because growing up, my mother taught me that sticks and stones
can break my bones but names can never hurt me. This is completely analogous
here, as Israeli cars are stoned daily with the (too often successful)
intention of killing as many Jews as possible, for no other reason than that
the drivers and their passengers are Jewish and driving on land Arabs covet.
Recognition of
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, on the other hand, is semantics, words that
cannot hurt anyone, and certainly abrogate no law.
Buttu writes:
“Under the United Nations’ 1947 Partition Plan for Palestine, Jerusalem was
never intended to be the capital of any country, but rather a shared city under
an international regime with sovereignty resting with neither Israel nor
Palestinians.”
That’s correct.
Buttu, however, seems to have forgotten that the Arabs rejected Partition,
opting instead to attack the fledgling State of Israel. Let’s get specific here
and mention that this was some five Arab states attacking the new state of just
600,000 Jews. Who was the aggressor here? Who the bully and who the victim? If
the Arabs wanted Jerusalem to retain its international status, as set forth by
Partition, why then did they attack?
And the fact is,
attack they did. To their detriment.
They lost the war they initiated.
They lost the war they initiated.
Buttu likes to
cite rule of law, being a lawyer by trade, but seems to have forgotten that
since five Arab armies launched a war against a tiny group of people on a small
sliver of land, instead of accepting the Partition Plan, the Arabs, for all
intents and purposes, took Partition off the table. The Arabs did that, not
Israel, and not President Trump.
Israel had
accepted Partition, though it would have meant a much reduced land mass,
difficult to defend.
It was the Arabs
who said no to Partition, and instead launched a war.
This is why
Jerusalem is not today, the international city that Buttu mourns, the one
called for by Partition, which the Arabs scorned, preferring to take their
chances, attacking one small nation.
And losing.
Buttu speaks of
Israel taking 78% of the land for themselves in 1948. What she does not say is
that Transjordan (today, Jordan) was created on 78% of the Mandate for Palestine,
which had been promised to the Jews by Balfour in 1917. What happened here, is
that after Balfour viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people,” the Arabs complained: they wanted their national home in Palestine, too.
So in fact Israel
did not “take control of 78% of Palestine in 1948,” rather, Jordan, by its very
creation, took 78% of Israel. And Israel meekly accepted this situation. Any
national home in Jewish indigenous territory was better than none. We were used
to being meek, saying yes sir. Centuries of being occupied, expelled, forced to
wander, and persecuted, will do that to you.
And with the UN
Partition Plan, Israel accepted yet a further reduction of its land mass, gave
away more bits and pieces, more crumbs.
But the Arabs
were not going to settle for less than the entire land mass, all for itself,
free of Jews. Which is why five Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948. And lost.
That should have
been the end of the story.
But Diana Buttu
gives the reader an “alternative ending,” in which she says that in 1948,
Israel “occupied a large part of Jerusalem’s western half,” while in 1967,
Israel occupied the “West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” and that “the eastern part
of Jerusalem also came under Israel’s military rule.”
What actually
happened is that in its defensive war of 1948, in which Israel was attacked by
five Arab armies, the Jews succeeded in taking back part of their longed for
holy city. Had the Arabs not attacked, Partition would have been fully embraced
and adhered to by Israel, and Jerusalem would have remained an international
city. But the Arabs did not accept
Partition, and went to war.
It was Jordan, by
the way, that occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948. As Jordan was the
aggressor, this was considered an illegal occupation by every single UN member
state, with the exceptions of Great Britain and Pakistan, two states that had/have
no love for the Jews.
 |
| Arab Legion soldier in the ruins of the Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem |
In 1967, the Jews were once again forced to fight when the Straits of Tiran were closed, a casus belli. When this time, against all odds, the Jews recaptured their holy city, they were not in contravention of international law, because they were fighting a defensive war.
Occupation is
defined by Article 42 of
the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which states that “territory is
considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the
hostile army." That would be Jordan, which attacked Israel in 1948, and
took over part of Jerusalem, thus abrogating the terms of Partition. That would not be Israel in 1967, when, in the
course of defending itself against hostile armies, the Jews managed to retake
that same territory.
There is a vast
difference between land taken in an offensive versus land taken during
defensive maneuvers. A legal difference. In no way, can Israel be said to be an
occupying force, when it is and was the entity attacked. To say otherwise is contrary
to international law.
It is also
important to note here the 49th article of the 4th Geneva Convention:
“Individual or
mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from
occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any
other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
This completely
busts the myth of settlement of Judea and Samaria as somehow being in
contravention of international law. Israel did not fight an offensive, therefore
cannot be called an occupier. Settlers, furthermore, are not foreign to Judea
and Samaria, (how could a Jew be foreign to Judea?), nor were they forcibly
transferred. The settlers came willingly to the area. Joyfully even, eager to
build homes in their native land.
 |
| No one forced these settlers to settle where they did. |
The term “West
Bank” is, in fact, a propaganda term. It refers to Judea and Samaria as if they
were the West Bank of the Jordan river, looking out from Jordan. This is
supposed to lend legitimacy to Jordan’s illegal occupation of the area between
1948 and 1967. The territory comprises far too much land, however, to be called
a riverbank. This author lives in Efrat, located in the Judean Wilderness.
Efrat is nowhere near the Jordan River. It is, on the other hand, not so far
from the Dead Sea, though this body of water, too, cannot be seen from my
apartment.
Buttu says that
“despite numerous Israeli attempts since 1948 to have its declaration of
Jerusalem as its capital recognized internationally, not a single country
around the world has accepted its claims, for one simple reason: Acquiring
territory by force goes against international law.”
Except that
Israel did not acquire the land by force, but in pure existential defense.
Israel did not abrogate international law in defending itself against five Arab
armies in 1948. It did not abrogate international law in 1967, when an act of
war forced Israel to defend itself against several Arab nations once more. This
is not only not the legal
definition of acquiring territory by force, it is also a lie to say otherwise.
Thus, Ms. Buttu
is dishonest in the thrust of her piece, which states that recognizing
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is by way of acknowledging that “might is
right.”
It is the Arabs
who were and are the aggressors when it comes to Israel. Israel has only
defended itself. It reacquired its centuries’ old, biblical capital Jerusalem,
only while fighting for its very existence, attacked by the might of five
invading armies.
God wrought a
miracle and the Jews won. And of course the Jews were going to declare
Jerusalem their capital. The Jewish liturgy, canon, and customs are littered
with references to Jerusalem, though the city’s name does not once appear in
the Quran. Yet Buttu speaks of the “theft of Palestinian land” as if the Muslim
Conquest never happened, nor all the other conquests that robbed the Jews of
their land; land that belonged to them before there was an Arab people; land
that belonged to the Jews before Mohammed was born.
President Trump
said some words. No more, no less. He acknowledged a reality: The Arabs lost,
the Jews won—they get to call
Jerusalem their capital if they so choose.
And they do.
Why does anyone
get to question that right?
Buttu goes on to
talk about Israel’s security fence, which has saved thousands of lives,
saying it has worsened the lives of local Arabs. Is that because it prevents
them from killing Jews? Because that is the precise purpose of that ugly,
expensive fence, that obscures the beautiful view. And it works. Proven. Is it
inconvenient to the Arabs? Let them not resort to violence then. Let them live
productive peaceful lives and see how quickly that ugly, expensive fence comes
down.
Buttu speaks of
“the destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes for spurious bureaucratic
reasons.” Here too, Buttu is disingenuous. Rooms of terrorists in their family
homes are destroyed. Had they not murdered Jews, their family homes would remain
intact. It’s a deterrent measure.
Stop killing Jews and POOF, the demolitions stop, too.
It’s a choice.
Buttu speaks of
expulsions (from homes built without permits), construction of “illegal”
settlements, which are not illegal at all (Hague Convention, Geneva Convention,
lather, rinse, repeat), which “scar the land,” which actually had lain rocky
and barren, between 1948 and 1967, when Jordan illegally occupied the territory.
Even now, Arabs like the fertile valleys. Jews have settled on the hilltops and
made them bloom. No one has been dispossessed. It’s a lie.
Buttu speaks of
checkpoints (made necessary by constant Arab terror), and about all the Arabs
“squeezed—indeed suffocating—under Israeli military rule.” But why don’t the 22
land-rich Arab nations surrounding the tiny sliver that is Israel, absorb and
settle their squeezed and suffocating brethren? After all, Israel absorbed the 850,000 Jews expelled
from Arab countries since 1948!
In short, Buttu’s
rant about President Trump’s statement of the obvious, is a lot of sound and
fury signifying worse than nothing, because it signifies a big, giant,
antisemitic lie.
That the world
buys that lie is a choice. It’s a choice to honor aggression. Not Israel’s
aggression, but Arab aggression, what Professor Ruth Wisse says is not an Arab
Israeli conflict, but the Arab War against
the Jews.
The Arabs were
given Jordan: Palestinian State #1. Then they were given autonomy in their
villages throughout Judea and Samaria: Palestinian State #2. Next, the Jews
expelled 11,000 of their own people to give them a third state, Gaza:
Palestinian State #3.
These are salami
tactics parading as Arab nationalism. Cutting off bits and pieces of Israel,
negotiating for a bit here, a bit there, under the guise of creating a
Two-State Solution, when there are now de facto, fully three Palestinian
states.
In addition to
these three Palestinian states, there are 22 other states in the region where
Arabic is the predominant language and Islam is the predominant culture and
religion.
Israel, on the
other hand, has just one tiny sliver of land where Jews can speak Hebrew in the
streets and shops, with Judaism the predominant religion and culture.
President Trump
said nothing more than the truth: Jerusalem is historically Jewish. Everyone
knows this to be true.
To say otherwise
is a lie.
To actually
believe the lie is evil.