Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: international law

Showing posts with label international law. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

What really is the Temple Mount "status quo?" According to Arabs, whatever they claim it is

First photo of the Temple Mount

The Arab Center in Washington, DC published a paper by Mounir Marjieh that described the "status quo" on the Temple Mount, and of course accused Israel of violating it.

Marjieh's honesty is suspect from the start:

Since the 19th century, the Al-Aqsa compound has been governed by a Status Quo arrangement, a modus vivendi that prevents discord among conflicting parties. Accordingly, Al-Aqsa’s administration belongs to a Muslim institution, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, which is under the custodianship of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This custodianship has repeatedly been reaffirmed and recognized by the international community, including the United Nations, UNESCO, the Arab League, the European Union, Russia, and the United States, and was officially recognized in the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan.

Actually, Israel 's treaty with Jordan doesn't say anything about "custodianship," only that Israel will "respect" Jordan's "special role" in Muslim (not Christian) holy sites in Jerusalem. The language makes clear that Israel is the one that makes decisions, not Jordan. Furthermore, the language implies that Jews can pray in the Temple Mount by referring to " freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance" and "freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace."

Jordan's signature on the treaty makes it binding international law.

Now let's look at his description of what the status quo supposedly is, which seems a bit inconsistent and contradictory.

After many disputes among European states in the 19th century for control over various holy sites in Jerusalem, the Ottoman Empire issued a series of decrees to regulate the administration of Christian holy sites by determining the powers and rights of various denominations in these places. The most important of these decrees was an 1852 firman by the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I, which preserved the possession and division of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and forbade any alterations to the status of these sites. This arrangement became known as the Status Quo.

In 1878, the Status Quo was internationally recognized in the Treaty of Berlin, which was signed between European powers and the Ottoman Empire following the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Article 62 of the treaty stated that: “It is well understood that no alteration can be made to the status quo in the holy places.” Article 62 of the Berlin Treaty extended the Status Quo to include all holy places and not only Christian sites. The Status Quo arrangement is a unique and delicate legal system that contains a specific set of rights and obligations that were created over centuries of practice and are now considered binding international law. It therefore supersedes any and all aspects of domestic law.

The Imperial Firman of 1852 only concerns itself with Christian holy places, not the Temple Mount.

The Treaty of Berlin does not refer to the firman in any way. It does mention a status quo, without giving details of what it is. However, it can easily be read to say that Jews have the absolute right to worship in their holy places, including the Temple Mount. Article 62 says:

The Sublime Porte having expressed the intention to maintain the principle of religious liberty, and give it the widest scope, the Contracting Parties take note of this spontaneous declaration.

In no part of the Ottoman Empire shall difference of religion be alleged against any person as a ground for exclusion or incapacity as regards the discharge of civil and political rights, admission to the public employments, functions and honours, or the exercise of the various professions and industries.

All persons shall be admitted, without distinction of religion, to give evidence before the tribunals.

The freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship are assured to all, and no hindrance shall be offered either to the hierarchical organization of the various communions or to their relations with their spiritual chiefs. ...

The rights possessed by France are expressly reserved, and it is well understood that no alterations can be made in the status quo in the Holy Places.

So we have a contradiction: the Treaty of Berlin says it supports freedom of worship, but also the status quo must not be changed.

Whatever that is. (The placement of that phrase in a paragraph about France implies that the "status quo" comment is only referring to Christian holy places.)

The Ottomans banned all non-Muslims from the Temple Mount until the early part of the 19th century. Marjieh claims that the status quo was "created over centuries of practice and are now considered binding international law." But if it was created over centuries, and for most of that time non-Muslims could not ascend, doesn't that mean that the status quo allows non-Muslims to be banned forever?

Moreover, Marjieh adds another dimension to his definition of the status quo:

Until August 2000, and despite occasional breaches and escalations, the Status Quo functioned relatively smoothly, with the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf collecting small fees from non-Muslims and tourists, who were allowed to enter the holy site provided they followed the rules of the Waqf....

[Now,] Temple Mount groups and Israeli extremists enter from al-Magharbeh Gate as well, and the Waqf is prohibited from preventing them from entering the site. The Waqf can no longer prevent Israelis in military fatigues from entering, although this act is banned per the mosque’s regulations.

So now the Status Quo is defined not as "the conditions for centuries before the Treaty of Berlin" but as "whatever the Waqf decides it is." The Waqf used to ban Jews and Christians, then they allowed them for a fee, then they came up with a rule to exclude religious Jews (as Marjeih complains that cannot do under horrible Israeli law.)

According to this new theory, the Status Quo is subject to the whims of the most extremist Muslims in Jerusalem.

If it can change for any reason, it is not a status quo by definition.

However, as mentioned, both the Treaty of Berlin, and the Israel/Jordan peace treaty, as well as numerous instruments of international law, guarantee freedom of worship for all. None of them say that you can define a space that has been historically the holiest spot on Judaism as an exclusively Muslim place of worship.

According to the Arab Center, the status quo means that the Muslims can make up any rules they want - and that this is international law. It doesn't take much to show that this argument is not only false but nonsensical and contrary to actual, signed international treaties and conventions - including the one they use as Exhibit A.

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12/29 Links Pt1: Why Does the EU Disproportionately Fixate on Israel?; The forgotten speech of Yasser Arafat; Why Israel Cannot Send Its Iron Dome to Ukraine

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Why Does the EU Disproportionately Fixate on Israel?

As part of its "Joint Strategy in support of Palestine," the European Union recently circulated a confidential document that proposes various measures to finance and advance monitoring, undercutting and undermining Israel's policies in Area C of the West Bank, including providing support and legal assistance to Palestinian residents prosecuting land claims in Israeli courts.

Under the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, signed and witnessed by the EU, Israel and the Palestinian leadership (PLO) agreed to divide the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria into three distinct areas of control and administration, pending the completion of negotiation on the permanent status of the territories. It was agreed that Area C would remain under Israel's full control, jurisdiction and administration.

In attempting to undermine and to intervene in Israel's legitimate and agreed-upon jurisdiction and governance in Area C, and in supporting Palestinian attempts to violate the Oslo Accords, the EU is in fact violating the terms of the very agreement to which it attached its signature as witness.

The EU claim that Area C is "to be preserved as part of a future Palestinian state in line with the Oslo Accords" is simply a mistaken and misleading interpretation of the Oslo Accords. They made no reference whatsoever to any "future Palestinian state" or "two-state solution." On the contrary, the Palestinian leadership and Israel agreed that the ultimate fate of the territories will be agreed upon in permanent status negotiations. No determination was made as to the outcome of such negotiations.

The EU document notes the EU's commitment to "contribute to building a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders." However, the Oslo Accords made no mention whatsoever of the 1967 borders. On the contrary, there has never been any 1967 border but an Armistice Demarcation Line established in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. These agreements stated specifically that the Armistice Demarcation line was not intended to constitute a border but rather a temporary line separating the forces pending negotiation of peace agreements.

It is high time that Israel's government take a far more assertive role in clarifying to the EU and its member states that the anti-Israel fixation of its staff and its actions in undermining Israel's legitimate authority and jurisdiction in Area C will no longer be tolerated.

Face it, the United Nations Is Antisemitic

The UN General Assembly passed 15 resolutions critical of Israel in 2022, compared to 13 resolutions for all other countries. Since 2015, the UN General Assembly has passed 136 resolutions critical of Israel, compared to 58 against all other nations combined. Selectively holding Israel to a higher moral standard than all other nations is classic antisemitism because its real purpose is to delegitimize the world's only Jewish state.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said, "The UN's automatic majority has no interest in truly helping the Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone's human rights. The goal of these ritual, one-sided resolutions is to scapegoat Israel."

How the EU Is Undermining International Law in the West Bank

The 1995 agreement known as Oslo II divided the West Bank into three parts: Area A, to be administered directly by the Palestinian Authority (PA); Area B, to be administered jointly by the PA and Israel; and Area C, to be controlled directly by Israel pending further negotiations. In July, the European Union’s mission in eastern Jerusalem produced a document, recently leaked to the press, stating the EU’s commitment “to contribute to building a Palestinian State within 1967 borders,” and outlining a program to build Palestinian settlements in Area C even where not authorized to do so by Israeli law. Jenny Aharon writes:

The EU . . . insists that its positions are based on meticulous compliance with international law, its own laws and charter, and also the Oslo Accords. This claim is surely [belied] by the leaked document in which we can see an activist EU striving to help the Palestinians take over Area C, the very area that is designated to Israel’s control per the Oslo Accords preliminary agreement which the EU claims to uphold.

The claim [made by the EU] is that the construction is meant for humanitarian ends and is not politically motivated. Yet the EU construction takes place in locations that are highly sensitive, precisely for the purpose of creating new facts on the ground and preparing the area for a Palestinian takeover without any final peace agreement.

Oftentimes the political motivation [of EU-funded construction projects] is obvious, as it is conducted without permits and in such places where Israel has no choice but to demolish it—for example, a school adjacent to a dangerous highway or in places where there are no facilities and thus are not considered habitable environments. The political motivation becomes even more obvious as the document explicitly states the EU’s plan to curb Israel’s archeological activities in order to minimize the Jewish connection to the land.

Moreover, the EU does not seem to consider building in Area A and Area B where all they would need is a permit from the Palestinian Authority. Apparently, in those areas, there is no need for humanitarian aid at all.

Palestinian Authority Paved Illegal Highway in Gush Etzion with Foreign Funding

The Gush Etzion Regional Council and local residents recently discovered the construction of a highway starting at Za’atara village, 11 km southeast of Bethlehem in Gush Etzion, north of the Herodion site, and reaching into the Judean Desert. At the start of the new road stands a sign in Arabic saying it was paved with foreign funding and assistance from the Palestinian Authority.

Mind you, the new highway is built in an agreed upon safeguarded reserve area, where roads and buildings are not allowed to be constructed per the Oslo Accords.

According to the Gush Etzion Regional Council, the road is another part of the ongoing effort to damage the contiguous Jewish territory in Gush Etzion. It provides access to new, illegal Arab neighborhoods in the Gush Etzion area, facilitating faster development.

Back in 2009, Salam Fayyad, then prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and its finance minister, issued the “Fayyad Plan,” aimed at creating facts on the ground, especially in Area C, with major international support, to transform international recognition of a de facto Palestinian state into a de jure state should Israel fail to deliver on its Oslo promises. Over the past 13 years, with increasing speed, the PA has been pursuing Fayyad’s policy, often with the tacit approval of the IDF civil administration and most defense ministers in Netanyahu’s and Lapid’s governments.

The Gush Etzion Regional Council says the paved road was built on preserved territories which the Palestinian Authority undertook in the Oslo Accords not to build homes or roads. Naturally, they had no intention of keeping their commitment, and Area C, especially near the robust Gush Etzion Jewish community, is flooded with illegally built PA homes and roads.

Palestinian Muslims are violating the Oslo Accords paving a road with foreign funding that cuts off the heart of the Judean desert from the Jewish continuum. There is no justification for this act of colonialism and land grab. pic.twitter.com/B2ZnIUUTOM
— Brooke Goldstein (@GoldsteinBrooke) December 29, 2022

Abbas says that the PA might officially return to terror

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told Al Arabiya that there is a chance the Palestinian Authority will return to an official policy of terror in the near future.

Palestinian news sites quoted the interview, where Abbas renewed his threat to cancel security agreements with Israel. “If Israel continues with its actions, I will cancel the security agreement with it. Why continue? Why am I committed to security coordination? And we can breathe without security coordination. Before that, we were breathing, and our people were fighting the occupation,” he said, referring to the second intifada terror spree.

Abbas went on to say that terrorism is still on the table: "I do not endorse armed resistance at the moment, but I may change my mind later."

He then elaborated, "I do not adopt military resistance at this time, but it is possible that I change my mind tomorrow or after tomorrow, or any time.

"We grew up in the armed resistance, until we reached the international club,” Abbas added, apparently pining for the days in the 1970s when Palestinian international terrorism resulted in Europe and the UN rewarding the PLO with increased prestige.

We recently noted that both the PLO Executive Committee and the Fatah Revolutionary Council, both led by Abbas, supported terrorism as a right under international law in meetings this month. Here he is saying that the Palestinian Authority, also under his control, might follow suit.

And this interview, where Abbas says that terror is an option - meaning he has no moral problem with it, just it is not a smart tactic at this time - will likewise be ignored by the media.

Because they already spent their entire capital on the lie that Abbas is a man of peace, and the truth takes a back seat to the narrative and admitting they have been wrong since he took over from Arafat.

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Fake News: No, Al Jazeera didn't file a lawsuit against Israel at the ICC. The ICC doesn't accept lawsuits.

From Reuters:

Al Jazeera on Tuesday said it has filed a lawsuit at the International Criminal Court against Israeli forces over the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot during an Israeli raid in the West Bank in May.

The lawsuit following an investigation by the television news network's legal team, Al Jazeera said on Twitter.

The ICC must identify the individuals who were directly involved Abu Akleh's killing, Al Jazeera lawyer Rodney Dixon KC told a news conference in The Hague on Tuesday.

This is a joke.

There is no such thing as a "lawsuit" at the ICC. Al Jazeera cannot initiate any sort of legal action at the ICC. Only the UN Security Council, a state party to the ICC, or the ICC prosecutor can initiate any action at the ICC.

The ICC only is tasked to prosecute four war crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and the crime of aggression of one state against another.

All Al Jazeera did was send a letter to the prosecutor. They made it look like a big deal, flying a group to the Hague to hand in the envelope, but that it all they did.

You can write to the prosecutor, too: otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int. It doesn't mean anything.

The prosecutor has no obligation to do anything just because he received a letter. Sending a letter that will be ignored is hardly newsworthy.

In other words, this is nothing more than a publicity stunt on the part of Al Jazeera.

As usual, the media just parrots Al Jazeera's press release as if it is real news, without asking a single international law expert what this means.

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A French court ruled Israel's "occupation" is legal. The UN makes up new laws to say otherwise.

The UN Commission of Inquiry - which is not a court - decided that Israel's occupation is illegal, which is pretty much new legal ground. And the Commission even admits it!

Its report says, "It is unclear in international law and practice when a situation of belligerent occupation becomes unlawful." But that doesn't stop it from trying - and then pretending it did!

A number of legal experts have identified several principles that, when adhered to, may be used to determine the legality of an occupation. These include whether sovereignty and title are not vested in the occupying power, the occupying power is entrusted with the management of public order and civil life in the occupied territory, the people under occupation are the beneficiaries of that trust in view of their right to self-determination, and the occupation is temporary.

In the present report, the Commission focuses on two indicators that may be used to determine the illegality of the occupation: the permanence of the Israeli occupation, already noted in its previous report to the Human Rights Council at its fiftieth session, and actions amounting to annexation, including unilateral actions taken to dispose of parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as if Israel held sovereignty over it.

No legal precedent. Just asking some "experts" who are anti-Israel - and not asking legal experts who are not already antipathetic towards the Jewish state.

In short, the UN is making things up to come to a pre-determined conclusion by cherry picking legal scholars who agree with that conclusion - and not even seeking the opinions of anyone else.

Yet none of these assumptions as to what makes an occupation illegal - a concept that is virtually sui generis, made up for Israel - are based on actual legal rulings. They are making up novel arguments, treating them as established law, and hoping that people believe it.

There is one case that is precedent for the legality of Israel's presence in the West Bank. And, naturally, the UN doesn't cite it.

In 2013, a French court of appeals ruled in a mostly forgotten but quite important case (Association FRANCE-PALESTINE SOLIDARITE “AFPS” and PLO et. al. vs. SOCIETE ALSTOM TRANSPORT SA) that Israel's presence in the West Bank is a case of legal occupation.

The PLO had claimed that Israel's occupation is illegal based on a hodgepodge of arguments, such as claiming that Israel violates the Hague Convention IX of 1907, Article 5, that says "In bombardments by naval forces all the necessary measures must be taken by the commander to spare as far as possible sacred edifices, buildings used for artistic, scientific, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick or wounded are collected, on the understanding that they are not used at the same time for military purposes...."

The court acidly noted that there were no bombardments of Jerusalem.

More importantly, the French court ruled that the PLO's claims of being occupied under the Hague and Geneva Conventions were invalid to begin with, because those conventions are based on one nation invading the territory of another "high contracting power" and the PLO was not a state.

The case is summarized here.

It is the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 that an independent, non-Israeli court has been called upon to examine the legal status of West bank territories under international law, beyond the political claims of the parties.

While this court does not decide international law, it examined international law and ruled according to those laws. As such, it should have been referred to by the UN COI as a precedent, or at least as a source for legal arguments.

Of course, the COI does nothing of the sort. The French court ruled the "wrong" way and therefore must be ignored, while wholly new legal opinions must be promoted.

Because the UN COI is not trying to determine the truth. Its entire purpose is to twist law and facts to create a new legal framework and a new "truth" tailor-made to damn Israel.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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11/02 Links Pt2: The Holocaust Is Not Your Metaphor; The Balfour bogeyman; AOC’s ‘obsession’ with Israel is ‘shameful’; LA Council Passes IHRA Definition of Antisemitism

From Ian:

The Stories She Never Told

My mother loved to talk politics, real estate, and cooking. She’d happily offer intelligent insights on nearly any subject except one: her own life. With stops in prewar Hungary, Auschwitz, the Sorbonne, Mexico, and finally Manhattan, my mother’s life was extraordinary, but she kept it to herself. I hated that, but I knew why. So tender-hearted that news of terrorist attacks or natural disasters brought her to tears, she needed to distance herself from the pain of her own past. Still, as her child, I needed to understand her and the world that created her.

As a teenager and young adult, I plied her with questions, but I was only partly successful. I uncovered the scaffolding of her past but not its interiority. My mother is gone now, but my curiosity remains. I still search for her by immersing myself in stories of prewar Hungarian Jewry. Surprisingly, a new book about a Sephardic Holocaust survivor has opened a window into my mother’s inner life.

One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World, a Natan Award winner, is a Tuesdays with Morrie-style recollection of journalist Michael Frank’s conversations with nonagenarian Stella Levi, who grew up on the island of Rhodes. My mother was born thousands of miles and a universe away in the Romanian city of Satu Mare, the small Romanian city better known by its Yiddish name Satmar—the birthplace of the Satmar Hasidic sect—yet their lives seem to mirror each other.

They were born within two years of each other in the mid-1920s; both grew up in religiously observant but non-Hasidic families (prewar Satmar was home to many non-Hasidic Jews), and both belonged to the last generation of Jews to feel deeply rooted in their European birthplaces. My mother’s forebears had lived in or around Satmar for more than two centuries. Levi’s family had been part of the Juderia, Rhodes’ Jewish district, since the Spanish Inquisition. Both grew up in the embrace of aunts, uncles, and cousins in a world that moved to the eternal rhythms of the Jewish calendar.

Living within a 5-mile radius in Manhattan, both Levi and my mother viewed themselves as consummately modern women, yet both were intensely nostalgic for their childhood homes. Levi spoke of “a place where old women sat outside and told stories … took dishes to be baked in the communal oven … and where a granddaughter learned to prepare her grandmother’s sweet and savory dishes.” Unable to access the right words, my mother expressed her longing to recreate the flavors of her childhood and by carrying a crumpled photograph of her doomed aunts and cousins inside of her wallet.

Daniel Greenfield: The Holocaust Is Not Your Metaphor

"A production of Romeo and Juliet for non-binary performers"

This is what happens when the Holocaust becomes universalized, a free-floating metaphor and finally woke kitsch.

Yes, that’s the problem there.

This production, which has now been canceled, comes on the heels of things like the various Anne Frank revisions, including the Latino/ICE one. The underlying problem though is the use of the Holocaust and Hitler as a metaphor for everything bad.

The Holocaust is not a lens. It’s certainly not a lens for whatever woke nonsense is trying to appropriate Jewish history to make claims about the “rise of fascism” today.

There, is to a much lesser degree, similar objections to Netfix’s Dahmer movie which distorted and rewrote the history of the murders to score political points.

Treating real events, especially the murder of people, as a metaphor reduces the dead to the means of a political end while robbing them of their voice, their history and their identity.

The Holocaust is not slavery, slavery is not the Holocaust, whatever some sexual minority is upset by is not either one, and real events are not interchangeable. Neither are real people.

The Balfour bogeyman

In the eyes of the Palestinian Authority, one historical act is attributed with all future Palestinian suffering. That act is the Balfour Declaration, issued today, Nov. 2, in 1917. The declaration was the first contemporary, internationally recognized expression of the right of the Jewish people to establish a national homeland in the geographical area known as “Palestine”.

“His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

As exposed by Palestinian Media Watch, the PA Ministry of Information called the Balfour declaration: “The greatest crime in the history of mankind,” and the official PA daily called it “The crime of the century.”

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who also serves as the PA’s Supreme Shari’ah Judge recently claimed that the Balfour declaration violated international law:
“Israel’s very existence contradicts international law. On what right do you bring people who have no connection to this land and plant them here and tell them: This is your national home? Who gave Britain a right to give a national home? Was Palestine the land of [former British Foreign Secretary Arthur] Balfour’s father?”

[Facebook page of the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Oct. 10, 2022]

So how then, can one answer the PA’s claim?

While the Balfour Declaration was an important statement of policy on the part of the UK government, it certainly did not have the ability to bring about the creation of the Jewish state without wide international consensus.

Historically, the declaration was issued as part of a new regional order that was born out of World War I and the demise of the Ottoman Empire, which, inter alia, had controlled most of the Middle East for centuries. As part of the new order, new borders were drawn and countries were, for the first time, carved out.

In the Ottoman Empire, “Palestine” as the separate national country and identity, as the PA claims, never existed. Rather, the region was merely just another region of the empire with no specific definition.

Abbas’ advisor: Israel’s existence contradicts international law

Alex Kane at Jewish Currents justifies terrorism

At the socialist site Jewish Currents, writer Alex Kane provides us with an excellent example of anti-Israel agitprop - and even justification of terrorism - disguised as a critical analysis of the definition of terrorism.

Like all good propaganda, the article starts off with a very reasonable point:

ON OCTOBER 9TH, a Palestinian shot and killed Noa Lazar, an Israeli soldier serving at a checkpoint near the Shuafat refugee camp. Three days later, a Palestinian gunman killed Ido Baruch, a soldier who was guarding Israeli settlers as they marched near the Palestinian town of Sebastia in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called the Shuafat attack a “severe terrorist attack,” and said the assailant behind Baruch’s shooting was a “despicable terrorist.” The Jerusalem Post, Israel HaYom and i24 News referred to the Shuafat shooting as a “terrorist” act. The centrist Anti-Defamation League as well as the liberal Zionist J Street also referred to the shootings as “terror” attacks.

This broad consensus across the Zionist political spectrum reflects a commonly-held view among many Israelis and Israel advocates that the killings of soldiers engaged in a military occupation are acts of “terror,” in the same category as indiscriminate attacks on civilians. But this view represents only one pole of a discursive struggle between Israelis and Palestinians, and, more broadly, Western countries and formerly-colonized nations, who have clashed in international fora like the United Nations (UN) over whether violence against agents of a military occupation ought to count as “terrorism.”

While different countries have codified their own definitions of terrorism in their national laws, “there is no international legal consensus on the meaning of terrorism,” said Ben Saul, Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney and author of the book Defining Terrorism in International Law. According to Saul, there is general agreement among states that the deliberate killing of civilians to achieve political goals constitutes terrorism; the disagreement lies in “whether insurgent or guerrilla attacks on soldiers in armed conflicts should also be called terrorism.”

Kane is partially correct - not only Israel but most Western nations and media usually refer to attacks on their own soldiers as terrorist attacks, but generally not attacks on other nations' soldiers (not just "agents of a military occupation" as Kane claims.) For example, the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed over 300 US and French soldiers was referred to as a terrorist attack in US statements and news articles even though the targets were military.

However, the official definitions of terrorism adopted by many countries do not give exceptions for attacks against soldiers. Most Western countries make no mention of civilian or non-combatant targets in their definitions. The FBI defines international terrorism based on the identity of the attackers being associated with designated terror groups; attacks against armed forces are not excluded.

Be that as it may, Kane's initial point has validity - one instinctively associates terror attacks with civilian targets - and he leverages that to skillfully pretend that other criticisms of the use of the term have equal validity.

Since 2000, countries at the UN have tried to come to a consensus on what’s called the Comprehensive Terrorism Convention, which would codify the criminalization of terrorism in international law. But consensus has again stalled due to disagreements on how to classify national liberation struggles. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a body of 57 mostly Muslim-majority countries, argues that violence committed by those in a struggle for self-determination—a term referring to a people’s ability to form their own state and govern themselves—should not be covered by the terrorism convention but rather by international humanitarian law, which governs the permissible use of force based in part on the “principle of distinction” between civilians and soldiers. The OIC’s argument is aimed at exempting Palestinian and Kashmiri fighters from being considered “terrorists” under international law when they launch attacks on Israeli or Indian soldiers who currently occupy their lands. The African Union and League of Arab States share the OIC’s perspective: Both bodies have adopted regional terrorism conventions that exclude struggles for national liberation from their definition of terrorism.

Here's where we see the depth of Kane's dishonesty. Building on his initial point, he frames the objections of the OIC and others in terms of their targets, saying that their main objections are against considering attacks on "occupying soldiers" to be terrorism.

But that is not what they are saying. The OIC's proposed definition would exempt any attack, even against civilians, even targeting women and children, from being considered terrorism as long as they are "in situations of foreign occupation" or any "armed conflict." It was written, at the height of the second intifada, deliberately to excuse Palestinian suicide and bus bombings.

And this is borne out by parallel activities by anti-Israel activists who have attempted to claim that even directly targeting Jewish civilians are part of a legitimate "right to resist" - by any means. Richard Falk, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote that "Palestinian resistance to occupation is a legally protected right" specifically in reference to the second intifada attacks on Jewish civilians.

Kane is presenting these justifications for attacks on civilians as merely objections to use of the term "terrorism" against soldiers. By not mentioning these facts, he is framing the controversy over the definition of the term "terrorism" as two sides making reasonable, equally valid points and that their disagreements are only about attacking the military.

Kane then subtly justifies attacks on civilians, again by using misdirection to pretend he is only talking about soldiers:

According to George Bisharat, an emeritus professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, “terrorism” is “a buzzword” intending to cast violence against occupation soldiers as illegitimate. In Israel/Palestine, “it’s being used for its political and rhetorical impact to discredit any violent resistance against Israel’s occupation,” he said, which is why “the non-aligned nations, as they call themselves, are insistent on the principle that violence exercised to advance the right of self-determination is not illegal.”

The legal distinction Kane is making has suddenly changed from target of the violence (ostensibly, soldiers) is to the reason for the violence - "self-determination." Kane introduces Bisharat as only talking about targeting soldiers, but Bisharat's words say otherwise. If "violence exercised to advance the right of self-determination is not illegal" then that includes all attacks, including civilians. (Bisharat himself knows that attacks on civilians is illegal, but he is unhappy about it, ludicrously complaining that the inaccuracy of Palestinian rockets makes it too difficult for Palestinians to adhere to international law by only hitting military targets.)

Which means that Kane is classifying attacks on civilians as just another valid position. He's too smart to say it explicitly, but the Bisharat sentence is in fact the main point that he wants to give the reader - that Palestinian terrorism is legitimate because it is resistance.

In fact, the tone of the article is that Israel is unjustifiably referring to legitimate resistance as terrorism, while those who have cheered and funded the murder of Jewish civilians (the non-aligned nations) have solid legal ground for their support.

There is another layer to Kane's propaganda techniques.

This entire article is meant to obfuscate a basic fact. By only talking about Palestinian attacks on soldiers, he is implying that soldiers are the main targets of the terror groups. But the terrorists, whether they are Hamas or Fatah or Lion's Den, make no such distinctions. Their own words and publications never say that they only want to attack soldiers - their targets are "settlers" and, to them, every Israeli Jew is a "settler." When they attack soldiers and guards it is because those are the ones on the front lines, not out of any concern for international law or the definition of terrorism. When the armed groups have the opportunity, they attack civilians, and indeed they prefer to attack civilians because they are softer targets.

This is why the attackers are terrorists by any definition. And that is exactly what Alex Kane and Jewish Currents wants you to forget.

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The UN Commission of Inquiry's footnotes betray how they lie

It happens again and again. A major institution, whether the UN, Amnesty or HRW, issues a report that asserts what it considers facts, it refers to a footnoted publication, and the footnote proves that they are lying.

Here is an example from the latest UN Commission of Inquiry report. It finds that Israel's "occupation" is unlawful under international law. It says:

The occupation of territory in wartime is, under international humanitarian law, a temporary situation, which deprives the occupied Power of neither its statehood nor its sovereignty. Occupation as a result of war cannot imply any right whatsoever to dispose of territory.

The footnote to this points to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), commentary of 1958 on article 47 of the Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

The wording of that commentary makes it clear that Israel is not occupying "Palestinian territory" which is the linchpin of the entire argument.

It says:

This provision of the Hague Regulations is not applicable only to the inhabitants of the occupied territory; it also protects the separate existence of the State, its institutions and its laws. ...As was emphasized in the commentary on Article 4, the occupation of territory in wartime is essentially a temporary, de facto situation, which deprives the occupied Power of neither its statehood nor its sovereignty.

What state is Israel occupying? If there was no state there, there is no occupation. The UN report's own footnote betrays that the assumptions behind the entire report itself is false.

The commentary emphasizes that the purpose of the Convention is to protect the people, not the State. Israel agrees with this and its High Court rulings have always upheld the humanitarian aspects of the Geneva Conventions even without the existence of a Palestinian state in the territories it controls.

However, the text itself makes it clear that there is no occupation if there is no previously existing State that had legal title to the land - and there wasn't one. It sure isn't Jordan, whose annexation of the West Bank was illegal by virtually every yardstick. It cannot be the "State of Palestine" because we are told - by the UN - that the territories have been occupied since 1967 and no one claims that the "State of Palestine" existed before 1988 at the earliest.

I have yet to find an international law expert say the exact date that "occupied territories" of 1967 became "occupied Palestinian territories." But the UN retroactively says that the territories that Israel won in a defensive war have been "Palestinian" since 1967 - they even have had a "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967."

Israel also has the absolute right to protect its own soldiers and citizens from harm that comes from the territories, under the same Geneva Conventions. As always at the UN and with other modern antisemites, a question of competing rights is being treated as if only one side has human rights, and they assume that Jews simply do not have such rights.

The UN's fast and loose definition of "occupation" is made clear in footnote 10:

For the purposes of the present report, “the territories that Israel occupies” and equivalent terms are a reference to East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan, Gaza and the West Bank outside East Jerusalem.

Israel doesn't occupy Gaza by any definition of the term that existed in any legal manual or article before Israel's withdrawal from the territory in 2005. Those who claim that Israel occupies Gaza without having a single soldier there have literally made up a new definition of occupation to apply to Israel only. Essentially, the UN is admitting - not for the first time - that it doesn't care about the legal definition of occupation to begin with; it applies the label to Israel without any regard to what it means.

Which is this entire report in a nutshell. If Israel is not occupying "Palestinian territory" under the legal definition of occupation then there is no "occupation" that can be declared illegal. The UN decided to make the declaration of illegality first, and tried to justify it afterwards, all while pretending to give an impartial legal analysis.

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Mahmoud Abbas supports Russia's invasion of Ukraine: "Russia adheres to justice and international law"

Ever since the free world has been condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, modern Jew-haters have been trying to paint Israel as being like Russia.

They tried to compare Ukraine to Gaza. They tried to compare Russia's occupation to Israel in the West Bank.

Facts, of course, are not part of the conversation. Modern antisemites rely on emotion and analogy, as well as the ignorance of their audience.

But you don't hear much from them lately about this analogy. Because the Ukrainians and the Palestinians aren't following the script.

Ukrainians have compared themselves multiple times with Israel standing up against a hostile Arab world, not with Palestinians.

And now Mahmoud Abbas, who has pretended to not take sides, has dropped the pretense that he doesn't support Russia.

A month after Hamas leaders met with senior Russian officials (without any negative reaction from Palestinians,) Abbas followed suit and met with Vladimir Putin and other officials.

"Russia adheres to justice and international law, and that is enough for us," Abbas said.

With this, Abbas has placed a "halal" sticker on Russia's invasion of Ukraine as being legitimate, legal and just.

Palestinian activists for years have been repeating the mantras of supporting "justice" and "international law." Now we see that both major Palestinian parties support Russia's interpretation of those two concepts.

And now the same Palestinian activists who have tried so hard to associate Palestinians with Ukrainians look like idiots because Palestinian leaders themselves fully support Russia's invasion - and occupation - of Ukraine.

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Russia's annexation is illegal. Israel's are legal. Here's why.

Over the weekend, anti-Israel voices tried to claim that the international community was hypocritical by condemning Russia's illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory and not doing the same about Israel's annexation of the Golan and "East Jerusalem."

Here is why Israel's annexations are legal, from a paper by Professor Eugene Kontorovich: (Italics his, bold emphasis mine.)

Whatever the current status of an absolute prohibition on territorial change resulting from war, there was certainly no such blanket prohibition in 1967, when the territory came under Israeli control. At the time, international law only prohibited acquisition of force in illegal or aggressive wars. This is evident from the source of the prohibition in the UN Charter, post-Charter state practice, and the understandings of international jurists at the time. There is simply no precedent or authoritative source for forbidding defensive conquest in 1967.

The U.N. Charter prohibits war for most purposes. When the use of force is illegal, it is natural to conclude that any territorial gains from such aggression cannot be recognized as well. Thus the illegality of conquest arises from the presumptive illegality of the use of force. But crucially, the U.N. Charter does not make all war illegal. Indeed, it expressly reaffirms the legality of a defensive war. Since defensive war is not illegal, it follows that the defender’s territorial gains from such a war would not be illegal.

The fundamental legal question is whether the law as it stood in 1967 clearly barred territorial changes resulting from the legal use of force. To answer that, we must see how the state practice, and leading jurists, answered that question after the adoption of the U.N Charter and before 1967.

1. The International Law Commission and leading scholars

The legality of defensive conquest was endorsed by the International Law Commission, a body created by the General Assembly, and tasked with providing fuller explanations of the legal significance of the U.N. Charter and related documents. Composed of some of the most distinguished jurists of the time, its work in the immediate post-War period is seen as providing highly authoritative explanations of the UN Charter. In the ILC’s drafting of their influential Draft Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1949) and Draft Code of Offenses Against the Peace and Security of Mankind (1954), the question of the permissible scope of territorial conquest came up repeatedly. The ILC repeatedly recognized that not all territorial changes in war are illegitimate. Not all annexations were bad, the U.S. delegate argued. All agreed that post-war frontier adjustments were justified to help protect the victim of aggression. There was broad consensus territorial change was only impermissible in a war of “aggression.” Thus the final document provided that states have a duty “to refrain from recognizing any territorial acquisition by another State acting in violation” of the U.N. Charter or other international law rules. But Israel’s use of force in 1967 was defensive – certainly the U.S. is entitled to view it as such – and thus explicitly lawful under the Charter. Thus there is no obligation to refrain from recognizing it.

Furthermore, the leading international law treatises immediately prior to 1967 reveal a disagreement between leading authorities such as Hersch Lauterpacht and Robert Jennings on whether defensive conquest was proper under the UN Charter. The majority opinion seems to side with the permissive view, but both sides acknowledged that the matter was disputed, and a clear rule had not emerged.

2. State practice, 1945-67

The views of the U.N’s International Law Commission and most scholars in finding defensive conquest as lawful under the U.N. Charter should not be surprising given that it simply reflected broad state practice under the Charter. In the years immediately following the adoption of the Charter, many of the victorious Allies took territory of the defeated nations. All these annexations have been recognized, without controversy by the U.S. and international community. To mention only a few of these instances, Holland unilaterally annexed parts of Germany in 1949; Greece and Yugoslavia took parts of Italy; the U.S.S.R and Poland annexed large parts of Germany. The ILC in its deliberations specifically addressed the legal basis for these annexations: because the underlying use of force was lawful (defensive), the acquisition of territory can be permitted.

... An examination of state practice and international legal opinion shows that international law did not prohibit, and may even have affirmatively sanctioned, defensive conquest as of 1967. The lack of clarity is itself important, because in international law there is a meta-principle dealing with situations where it is not clear whether a rule has emerged. Known as the Lotus Principle, the rule is that when it is not clear whether an international law rule has emerged, states remain free to act. That is, the burden of proof is on those seeking to demonstrate the existence of a rule that would limit sovereign action. That which is not clearly prohibited is permitted. It is not necessary to consider whether any norm prohibiting defensive conquest emerged subsequently to Israel’s actual conquest of these territories. Under the doctrine of intertemporal law, subsequent developments in international law do not change the status of developments that occurred before those changes. That is, international law is non-retroactive, and this is most emphatically true for questions of territorial sovereignty and conquest, where any other principle would lead to chaos in international relations.

Policy Arguments

...The policy arguments for allowing for defensive conquest are compelling. Without such a possibility, an attempted aggressor is insured against significant negative consequences. Territorial expansionism becomes a no even. In short, the lack of any self-- lose game, because aggressors will always at least break help sanctions serves as a license and inducement to aggressors, especially in the absence of a unified international security regime of the kind the Charter originally envisaged.

Of course, no one is addressing the actual international law aspects of the situations - they just make up a facile analogy and assume that the audience is too ignorant to know otherwise.

See also "International Law and the Arab-Israel Conflict" by Julius Stone, edited by Ian Lacey, which concludes that Israel's capture of Jerusalem is legal:

For those who disagree with this analysis, the question remains - who has a better legal right to Jerusalem than Israel? It cannot be Jordan (who gave up its own legal claim,) it cannot be the UN for the reasons given above and it cannot be a nonexistent Palestinian Arab state or entity which didn't even exist when Israel captured it.

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Let's list the lies in Abbas' UN speech (part 2)

Continuing on exposing Mahmoud Abbas' lies in a single speech to the world...

Moreover, the Israeli government allowed the formation of racist Jewish terrorist organizations that practice terrorism against our people, and provided them with protection as they attack the Palestinians and call for their expulsion from their homes. At the top of these terrorist organizations are the Hilltop Youth, the price tag groups, Lahava, and the Temple Trustees, and these terrorist organizations are led by members of the Israeli Knesset, and, in this context, we call on the international community to put these terrorist organizations on the lists of global terrorism.

Have these groups placed bombs on Arab buses or encouraged their members to kill Arabs? I am unaware of that. However, some of them have done illegal things and they were arrested by the Israeli police. So claiming that Israel supports them is another lie.

Abbas is trying to say that Israel is guilty of everything he himself is guilty of. After all, the Al aqsa Martyrs Brigades are part of his Fatah organization and takes credit for terror attacks.

Israel has left us nothing of the land to establish our independent state in light of its frenzied settlement attack, so where will our people live in freedom and dignity? Where will we establish our independent state to live in peace with our neighbors?

The land situation is virtually the same as it was during the Oslo process.

Israel is imposing forged educational curricula in our schools in occupied Jerusalem, in violation of international law, and disrupts the presidential and legislative elections in Palestine, by preventing Palestinian citizens of Jerusalem from participating in them, as took place in three previous elections (1996, 2005, 2006), and enacts racist laws that it perpetuates a system of racial discrimination, an Apartheid against our people in front of the international community, and evades accountability and punishment, so why not hold Israel accountable for violating international law?

Here is a firehose of lies.

Israel is encouraging Arab schools in Jerusalem to use the Israeli curriculum, it is not forcing anything.

The curriculum is accurate and the criticisms of it by Palestinians are ludicrous.

Israel is not stopping Arabs in Jerusalem from participating in elections; they just have to travel a few minutes to get to a polling booth - or they can vote at post offices. Abbas is the one who has used Israel as an excuse not to hold elections.

Israel has no racist laws. The lists given by anti-Israel groups are not discriminatory.

Israel does not perpetuate a system of racial discrimination. It treats Arab and Jewish citizens equally, and it treats non-citizens differently from citizens, just like every other country does.

Israel does not practice apartheid and this is simply an antisemitic slur.

Israel has not refrained from the repeated violation of our land and its recent closure of the headquarters of six Palestinian human rights organizations operating in the Palestinian territory, in accordance with Palestinian and international law, after it had accused them in the past of being terrorist organizations, while the whole world rejected and condemned this accusation, after confirming it was baseless.

The links between those groups and terror groups, especially the PFLP, are beyond dispute.

More coming....

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Palestinians funding illegal settlements -- in Kurdistan

You know how Palestinians say that occupation and settlements are the worst human rights abuses in world history?

It appears that they mean "only if done by Jews."

From Kurdistan 24:

A delegation of Kurds from Afrin visited the Palestinian Consul in Erbil, Nazmi Hazouri, and handed over a letter of protest of a Palestinian foundation building housing units for displaced Syrians in Afrin.

Levant 24 reported that the Palestinian organization Wafaa al-Mohsenin Charitable Foundation delivered 34 housing units to displaced Syrian Arabs in Jindires, in Afrin.

The organization says the project is funded by “the donation of the people of Al-Zaeem village in the city of Jerusalem”

Turkish-backed factions have occupied Afrin since March 2018, when the Turkish Army launched a cross-border offensive against the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Kurds used to make up 96 percent of Afrin's population, but now represent only 25 percent after 2018, over two dozen organizations said in a letter last year.

In a letter, handed over to the Palestinian Consul, the delegation complained over the fact that the demography of Afrin have been changed since 2018, and the orignal people of Afrin have been replaced by Arabs and Turkmens, with the aim of Arabizing the region.

Also two years ago, there were reports that said a Palestinian NGO called “Association for Living with Dignity for the 48 Palestinians” funded Turkish NGO Beyaz Eller to construct a mosque in the Tal Tawil village in Afrin.

In a report released on 6 May 2021, the Syria Justice and Accountability Center, focuses on the role of "Kuwait and other regional governments in financing Turkish-led reconstruction efforts on land in Afrin belonging to displaced Kurdish populations."

The Syria Justice and Accountability Center said the "foreign-funded housing projects are desperately needed to meet the humanitarian needs of IDPS currently residing in the area."

But it noted that the "the manner of their implementation means that they are also contributing to processes of demographic change that many have seen as the explicit intent of Turkey and its proxies."

"By funding the construction of settlements that hinder the return of the original residents displaced by Turkish-backed forces, foreign donors may be complicit in the forced transfer of populations – a crime against humanity under international criminal law," the report concluded.

Yes, Palestinians are helping to build illegal settlements on occupied territory.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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I demolished James Zogby's "Israel is Apartheid" arguments on Twitter so thoroughly, he blocked me

James Zogby is the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, Managing Director of Zogby Research Service which provides polling services, a visiting professor at New York University Abu Dhabi, and a former member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee. He is a leading anti-Israel voice in the media and social media.

On Saturday, he tweeted a link to Daniel Levy warning about Israel's reputation, saying, "It may be uncomfortable to some to hear the inescapable truth that Israel is an Apartheid State. The truth is often uncomfortable. And btw, it’s not antiSemitic to call Israel Apartheid - the problem is w/ Israeli behavior."

I responded with a thread:

I've looked at the actual legal definition of apartheid. Those accusing Israel of apartheid are knowingly lying. And I've shown this. No one has found any holes in my arguments.

Falsely accusing Israel of apartheid using made up definitions is indeed antisemitism.

And if you look at the history of the apartheid libel, it is blindingly obvious that the accusation came first, and the fake legal arguments were created after the fact to justify the lie.

B'Tselem's definition was absurd - it could prove that JEWS were victims of apartheid.

So HRW tried, very hard, to combine definitions from the Rome Statute with the ICERD to make it look like Israel was guilty of apartheid. But they ignored the part of ICERD that exonerates Israel. It was a conscious lie, and every legal scholar knows it.

Amnesty copied HRW's argument but tried to strengthen it by adding a 1971 case that they pretended is about apartheid - but it isn't.

It is clear: they all know they are wrong but they want to accuse Israel so much they MADE UP INTERNATIONAL LAW.

But even worse, in these NGOs' Jew-hating zeal, they want to make Israel look uniquely guilty. So the cases of real apartheid in the world, like Lebanese treatment of Palestinians, or Chinese of Uyghurs, others - are shunted aside and not given that label. Real victims suffer.

When you look at all the evidence and history (the Soviets made up the "Israel is apartheid" accusation originally) the desire to paint Israel with the label of apartheid has NOTHING to do with real facts, and everything to do with a desire to demonize the Jewish state. This is antisemitism, plain and simple.

My response received over 500 "Likes" and Zogby finally felt he could no longer ignore it, so he attempted to prove that, yes, Israel really is guilty of apartheid:

1. It’s apartheid when when Israel has two systems of law - one for Arabs & one for Jews; when they’ve expelled 750,000 from their homes & refuse to let them go back to their properties; when they’ve demolished 500 Palestinian villages, seized their land & businesses;…

To which I immediately responded:

Israel doesn't have two systems of law for citizens.

And what happened in 1948 was a war for survival, not apartheid.

But you know that. And lie anyway.

And, of course, by your definition every Arab country that expelled nearly all of their Jews are guilty of apartheid.
Not my definition - YOURS.
Trying to shoehorn a new definition of the term to fit Israel only is indeed antisemitic.

He responded:

It was a deliberate planned expulsion to remove Arabs from the Galilee, the coastal cites and areas around Jerusalem. Ben Gurion’s letters, Moshe Sharret’s diaries, & others have testified to this fact. & what they did afterwards to those whom they expelled made the intent clear

To which I said:

Then why are there still two million Arabs in Israel? If there was a policy to expel them, what is taking Israel so long?
And how does that relate to the LEGAL DEFINITION OF APARTHEID? I am giving a legal argument, you are throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks.

He doubled down:

2…when they have laws that provide that the Arab land they’ve seized & turned over to Jews can never be sold to Arabs; when they continue to seize Palestinian land to build Jewish-only housing & infrastructure, while Palestinians struggle to get permits to build;…
3…when any Jew can immigrate & become a citizen while descendants of those who were expelled cannot; when Israel has multiple laws & policies in place to control what they call the “demographic problem” - that is limiting or controlling the growth of the non-Jewish population…
4. These policies & laws that favor the rights of one group at the expense of Palestinians , constitutes Apartheid. You may not like it, but don’t deny it. Have you no regard for the humanity of Palestinians; no compassion for the discriminatory polices to which they subjected?

But then he moved the goalposts:

5. The problem isn’t our calling Israeli behaviors Apartheid. To try to make that the issue is an effort to deflect. The problem is Israel’s behavior - that’s what must change. And stop resorting to calling antiSemitic anyone who criticizes Israel & defends Palestinian rights.

Zogby's entire argument, repeated at least three times, was "Israel is apartheid!" Yet when challenged, he changed it to "Don't get hung up on the precise definition of apartheid!"

So I called him on it:

No, I am saying when Amnesty or HRW claims Israel is guilty of apartheid, they are lying because it has a specific definition. You know that I am right. Which is why you are changing the subject.
By your argument, every Arab state is guilty of apartheid, because they define themselves as Arab and discriminate against non-Arabs for citizenship.
Tell me, are they guilty of apartheid or not? And why not?
You won't answer because you want to say ONLY Jews are guilty.
Yes, it is antisemitic to say that the Jewish people do not have the right to self-determination. It is antisemitic to apply terms like "apartheid" ONLY to the Jewish state. It is antisemitic to have one standard for the world and another for Israel.
This thread proves it.

James Zogby, the great intellectual defender of Arabs and highly regarded figure in Democratic Party politics, responded....by blocking me on Twitter.

In the end, even the most articulate critics of Israel and defenders of Palestinian intransigence know that they are using their intellectual gifts not in the service of truth but for lies. They assume that their ability to use propaganda methods and gaslighting is the same as real arguments. (For their antisemitic fans, it actually is.)

When their hypocrisy is clearly called out, outside their usual bubble, they try to reframe their arguments to what they think is more solid ground.

When called on that, they are left with only one recourse: shutting down the discussion.

When an anonymous blogger can so thoroughly dismantle the arguments of one of America's leading Arab intellectuals in the constrained format of Twitter, it shows that the anti-Israel side has no argument to begin with.

Their running away from debate proves that they know it, too.

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