Monday, July 22, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
They accurately quote Article 3 of CERD:
States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction.
They rule that Israel is violating CERD:
The Court observes that Israel’s legislation and measures impose and serve to maintain a near-complete separation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between the settler and Palestinian communities. For this reason, the Court considers that Israel’s legislation and measures constitute a breach of Article 3 of CERD.
But they ignore the part of CERD that allows Israel to treat Palestinians and Israelis differently, in Article 1:
This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens.
Israel allowed to treat citizens differently from non-citizens. Every nation does the same, treating citizens and non-citizens differently under the law (voting, passports, army recruitment.) Citizens have rights and responsibilities that non-citizens do not have.
Furthermore, there are Israeli Arab citizens who live across the Green Line, even in "settlements" outside Jerusalem, and they are treated the same as Israeli Jews. In some ways, they have more legal rights than Israeli Jews do, since they may buy homes in Area A where Jews are forbidden to enter. They prove that there is no racial discrimination in the West Bank - the only discrimination is the type that CERD explicitly allows, that between citizens and non-citizens.
The ICJ, by deliberately ignoring the very first article of CERD, proves that it has no interest in the actual law.
It's bad enough when an NGO like Human Rights Watch selectively quotes international conventions to prove their predetermined point.
The ICJ is supposed to be above that.
This one section proves that it is just as biased, just as much of a propaganda organ, as every other anti-Israel organization. And it proves that any decision it renders about Israel is not worth the paper it is written on.
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Much of the ICJ argument relies on mentioning that a small number of "settlers" are "non-Israeli Jews" who receive some of the same benefits as Israelis in Judea and Samaria. and it seems to try to use them as proof that Israel is engaged in racial discrimination. However, nations have much latitude in how they treat different classes of non-citizens, including prospective citizens, often giving them rights that other non-citizens like tourists do not get. On the other side, Palestinian Arabs who work in Israel receive some of the benefits of citizens, like minimum wage and other work benefits. Flatly calling these policies "discrimination" under CERD is false and intentionally misleading.
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