The UN's latest anti-Israel legal argument is predicated on lies

On Thursday, the UN published a document titled, "Study on the Legality of the Israeli Occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem."

It is 107 pages of tendentious and one-sided arguments all intended to declare Israeli actions since 1967 to be illegal. There are counterarguments to each of their arguments - but they don't let the readers know that.

However, the entire basis of the paper is bogus. Turn to page 18, which declares its "methodology.":

The study takes it as a starting point that the Palestinian territory – i.e., the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip – was occupied by Israel in 1967, in the course of an international armed conflict. 

Setting aside Gaza for now, the question is - when did that territory become "Palestinian?"

Looking at newspaper articles in the years after the Six Day War, the West Bank was usually described as "occupied Jordan."

Here are two articles from 1972, the first about how militant Arabs threatened fellow Arabs running for office in the first elections in the West Bank after the war:

When, exactly, did the territory turn from "occupied Jordan" into "occupied Palestinian territory"? 

It never happened. The world just went along with Palestinian propaganda and eventually believed it. 

The question gets starker when we realize that Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1949 was illegal, and almost no nations recognized it. It was never legally Jordanian territory.

So the West Bank was never "occupied Jordan." It was part of the British Mandate of Palestine, the same mandate that promised the land to be the Jewish state. Not a Palestinian homeland - only a Jewish homeland.

This is international law, that has never been abrogated. Israel has a superior legal right to Judea and Samaria than anyone else. Israel's characterization of the territory as "disputed" was probably a mistake - it should have always claimed it all. But "disputed" is accurate, "occupied" is not.

Which is why the Mandate is never mentioned, and the "methodology" deliberately omits it, pretending that the territory is "occupied Palestinian territory" without ever saying when, legally, it became "Palestinian."

The paper spends a lot of time on the argument that the Mandate system provided a "sacred trust" for the rights of self-determination of the peoples in the territories. But as the Palestine Mandate document above shows, only the Jewish people were given that right under the Palestine Mandate. And the reason is as simple as it is unpalatable to the UN's legal "experts" - in 1920, no one considered that there existed an Arab "Palestinian people." The Arabs of Palestine who were speaking of nationalism wanted to become part of Syria, their interest in an independent state only arose (with very few exceptions) after the West drew the borders of British Mandate Palestine and unity with Syria was no longer an option. 

To apply the League of Nations Mandate language to apply to the self determination of a people who didn't exist as a people at the time - who didn't even consider themselves a people - is the height of deception.

The next part of the "methodology" is even more absurd:n"The study also takes it as a starting point that Israel continues to occupy the Gaza Strip."

Before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, no legal expert had ever said that an occupation is possible without soldiers physically on the ground controlling the territory.

For example, see the definition in the 1972 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms:

Military occupiers are obligated, under international law, to set up a court system, to ensure that cities are governed and continue to run, to set up an entire bureaucracy to run the territory. That is impossible without "boots on the ground," the informal definition of occupation for over a hundred years. 

Israel does not control Gaza. It cannot stop rockets or mortars, weapons manufacturing or military exercises. Israel cannot create a military court system - which is required under the rules of occupation. It cannot arrest anyone. 

The second sentence makes it quite clear that Area A in the West Bank is not "occupied" even if one accepts that somehow the West Bank is "Palestinian territory."

As with all other legal analyses when it comes to Israel, this paper was intended from the outset to determine that Israel's actions and "occupation" are illegal. It set the ground rules to ensure that pesky arguments like the League of Nations Mandate or the accepted definitions of occupation pre-2005 not even be brought up. (When JFK blockaded Cuba, did the US "occupy" Cuba?)

This isn't international law. It is twisting international law against only one state - coincidentally, the only Jewish state. 

And that is only the beginning of the problems with this document. But since the methodology itself is based on lies, that ensures that the rest of the document built on this foundation of lies is invalid as well. 

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Arab pretense of wanting a Palestinian Arab state evaporated immediately after the UN partition vote 75 years ago

During the UN debates before partiotion in November 1947, st the very same time that Arab leaders were at the UN insisting that they wanted an independent Palestinian Arab state, they were already planning on dividing the area up between themselves.

This article in the Palestine Post is from November 27, 1947:

There was a similar article in the Palestine Post on November 30, 1947, the day of the partition, from a completely different source.

ARAB STATES PREPARE TO FIGHT ABDULLAH

By JON KIMCHE, Special to The Palestine Post 

LONDON , Saturday  —Representatives of the Arab States here express serious disquiet following reports that King Abdullah's Arab Legion will occupy the Arab State sector of Palestine when the British withdraw. One British source normally very close to these representatives has stated , however, that what will happen, according to his information, is rather different .

The Arab Legion , together with a token force from Iraq, will occupy, he said, the central sector of the Palestine Arab State. Syria and the Lebanon will occupy the coastal stretch of the Arab State north of Acre, and Egypt, with a token Saudi Arabian force, will occupy parts of the Negev and the desert frontier area. What will _happen after such a "partition of partitioned Palestine", he added, is anybody's guess, but one thing is certain : that the Arab States will not accept Trans-Jordan taking over by itself, and that TransJordan will oppose Syrian and Lebanese inroads.

Literally hours earlier the Arab leaders were posturing in the UN about how dedicated they were to a Palestinian Arab state.

I once created this map of what "Palestine" would look like today if Israel lost in 1948. It was a guess, but it is in line with this article.

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19th century Arab Palestine was a bunch of squabbling groups who hated each other

Some claim that the Palestinian people have existed for centuries. Here is an account of what Southern Syria (what Arabs called Palestine) was really like in the 19th century, from an 1883 article in the Fortnightly Review by  Captain C. R. Conder, about how absurd the idea of a unified Palestinian Arab population was:

Why do not these oppressed subjects of a foreign power [Turkey] help themselves to liberty? There are, it is true, perhaps only a dozen real Turks in the country, for the Pashas even are Kurds, Armenians, or Europeans. Yet to expect a national rebellion is to argue a great want of acquaintance with Oriental character. The power of combination for a common object is unknown in Eastern communities. Arabi's army might — so some of his officers said — have deserted en masse if any one of them had been able to trust another with his real wishes. To the peasant, the village faction appears more important than any national league, and the Turk knows well how to rule by dividing. Southern Palestine, within the memory of living men, was divided into two fierce factions — the Keis, who seem to have been mainly the original peasantry on the west, and the Yemini, allied with the Eastern Arabs, who were pushing northwards from Yemen. The battles fought between these factions are yet related by the village elders, and much courage and daring was then exhibited by the peasantry.

In Jerusalem itself, three of these factions still divide the Moslem population. The Hoseini, in the middle of the town, are the most powerful ; the Khaldi occupy the east quarter ; the despised Jauni abide among the Jews on the south. A Hoseini mother would rather see her daughter die unwedded than suffer her to take a Jauni husband. The same survival of faction I have traced in many other towns of Palestine, and the division of these Moslem parties, even in the petty villages, is almost as great as that which separates the Moslem from the Arab Christian, Latin, Greek, or Maronite. It is by fostering such ancient enmities, and by playing the Druze against the Maronite, the Arab against his elder brother, the Greek against the Latin, that the Turk retains his power over the numerous sects which are found in Syria. It was the same spirit of disunion which in older days gave birth to fifty Gnostic sects in the Holy Land, and which created the twelve Christian creeds which are now to be found side by side in Jerusalem.

The same spirit of disunion exists also among the Bedawin, and, indeed, manifested itself among the early conquerors of Islam as soon as their prophet was dead. Recent events in Egypt and Sinai have not shown us the "noble Arab," in whom we have been told we are to place our trust, in a very favourable light ; and the student of history, whether in Omar's time or in the days of Napoleon, will find that the Bedawin have never fulfilled the expectations of their admirers, and have rarely evinced any great nobility of character. As allies no nation could be more unsatisfactory. They skulked over the Kassassin battle-field to rob and mutilate the dead ; they took money to murder Englishmen who trusted to their reputation for good faith ; and they stole a few cows from the British camp. They never took a side heartily for or against Arabi, and they deserted him at his need. Truly, the noble Arab is not found either in Moab, in Sinai, or in Egypt; and we may well question if he exists in Arabia, for those who know the Syrian Arabs well say that the Nejed and Yemen tribes differ only in being fiercer and more warlike ; while as regards the Sakhur and the Anezeh and other large clans who are more remote from European influence than the Belka Bedawin, it has been my experience that they only differ in being greater savages, more ignorant, crafty, and unreliable than those who know better the power of the West. Truly, one is tempted to regard the noble Arab as " an extinct race which never existed."

This is the history that has been excised from not only Arab but Western textbooks as well. 

(I had excerpted much more from this article in 2008.)

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The Jewish Agency's history destroys the "Palestine was an Arab state" narrative

The Jewish Agency is in the news:

Russia is threatening to ban a major Jewish nonprofit agency that helps people emigrate to Israel from operating in the country, a sign of the Kremlin’s deteriorating relationship with Israel and of the far-reaching fallout from the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s Justice Ministry is seeking to liquidate the Russian branch of the nonprofit, the Jewish Agency for Israel, which operates in coordination with the Israeli government, according to a notice from a Moscow court.

The article notes:

The Jewish Agency, founded nearly a century ago as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was instrumental in helping establish Israel in 1948, and has facilitated the emigration of millions of Jews from around the globe. 

This is not true. It was originally founded in 1908 as the Palestine Office, part of the Zionist Organization - in Hebrew,  המשרד הארץ-ישראלי, HaMisrad HaEretz Yisraeli, "Office for the Land of Israel."

In 1921, the name was changed to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in Hebrew "הסוכנות היהודית לארץ ישראל", HaSochnut HaYehudit L'Eretz Yisra'el, literally the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel."

Here is a pin that the Jewish Agency used to distribute:

Apparently, the original name in Hebrew stuck for a while though, as this 1936 letterhead from Berlin shows:

Here is an immigration certificate for a lucky Jew from Poland in 1938 that uses both the "Jewish Agency for Palestine" and "Palestine Office" names, but in Hebrew it is always Eretz Yisrael.

After the War of Independence, it was renamed again, to the Jewish Agency for Israel - but in Hebrew, there was no reason to rename it.

Because before 1948, the translation of "Palestine" was "The Land of Israel."

Today's "Palestine" has nothing at all to do with Palestine before 1948. Every map, every reference to it was always to the Land of Israel (or, in English, the Holy Land.) Palestinian Arabs did not want to be called "Palestinian" - but Jews proudly did.

Palestinian Arabs, at least through the 1920s, also had a name for the land. But it wasn't "Palestine." It was "Suria El Jenobia" - Southern Syria. 

The only people who wanted an independent Palestine were the Jews. And the Jewish Agency, an organization hated by anti-Zionists, helps prove it.

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Palestinians still praising their Nazi collaborating leader Hajj Amin Husseini

July 4 is the anniversary of the death of the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Muhammad Amin Al-Husseini, who died in Beirut in 1974.

News site Safa commemorates his life with this poster, calling him "the icon of the Palestinian struggle."

Husseini wasn't even initially a Palestinian nationalist. up until 1921, he strongly supported a Greater Syria, not an independent Palestine. 

Husseini was behind numerous terror attacks. He constantly incited against Jews. He was the creator of the "Al Aqsa is in danger" lie. He was involved in the murderous attacks on Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936. But that wasn't enough - he collaborated with the Nazis to block Jewish emigration from Europe. He personally toured at least one concentration camp. By any measure, he was an enthusiastic supporter of genocide against Jews.

And he is a Palestinian hero.

You will not find Palestinian articles asking to reconsider whether he is someone who should be lionized. He is simply an "icon" and whatever he did is therefore praiseworthy. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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