Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: occupied territory

Showing posts with label occupied territory. Show all posts

Thursday, August 31, 2023

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.

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

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The EU redefines chutzpah: demands compensation from Israel for demolishing illegal buildings

The classic definition of chutzpah is someone murdering his parents and then throwing himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

The EU has just hit that high standard:

The European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, said this weekend that Israel must pay reparations for structures it demolishes in the West Bank that were built with EU funding.

Lenarcic's remarks were in response to 24 European Parliament members who contacted the commission following Israel's intention to demolish dozens of houses in the West Bank villages of the Masafer Yatta area that were built with financial aid from the European Union or its member states.

"The European Union has repeatedly requested that Israel compensate for the loss of European taxpayers' money," members of parliament wrote to Lenarcic, adding that the commission itself confessed that its diplomatic requests to Israel were ineffective.

Lenarcic responded that "in a number of incidents, Israel has been asked to return or compensate for assets financed by the Union that that were destroyed, dismantled, or confiscated," and that the European Union is continuing to work in this regard through a range of diplomatic and political channels.

This is like demanding compensation from the police for confiscating the car you stole.

The EU-funded buildings are built illegally. Not only under Israeli law - but under international law!

Even if you call Area C "occupied," the occupier is mandated by the Geneva Conventions to maintain a system of laws in the territory. These buildings are built in violation of planning and zoning laws, haphazardly, almost always on public/state lands, with no roads and often stealing water. It is like deciding to build a house in the middle of Yellowstone National Park.

I've seen these structures first-hand, proudly displaying the EU flag.

The EU deliberately builds them in Area C, in areas that no Arabs or Bedoun have ever lived, in order to steal land from use by Israel. They move Arabs from Areas A and B, and bus students from those areas to schools they build in Area C. It is land theft.

And these illegal buildings are popping all over.

I once made an animation showing one brand new village in the Judean desert, funded by the EU and NGOs, and how it has been growing based on satellite images.

There is no infrastructure. With full EU support, the Arabs grab land, build shacks, and then claim that these are their ancient homesteads.

As The Daily Mail reported in 2015:

Alan Baker, an international lawyer who took part in drafting the Oslo Accords in the Nineties, said that the EU’s actions were illegal.

‘The EU is a signatory to the Oslo Accords, so they cannot pick and choose when they recognise it,’ he said.

‘According to international law, all building in Area C must have permission from Israel, whether it is temporary or permanent.

‘The same principle applies anywhere in the world. If you want to build, you need planning permission.

‘The EU is ignoring international law and taking concrete steps to influence the facts on the ground.’

If there is any problem here, it is that Israel has not been pro-active enough in destroying the illegal buildings, empowering the Palestinians and the EU to keep building against international law.

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!

Were there explosions heard in Tel Aviv and Haifa on Friday night?

Iran's Tasnim News Agency reports:

The residents of Tel Aviv and Haifa in the occupied territories left their houses a few days ago after a massive explosion sound and a power outage. The people fleeing in panic were told that the blast sound was caused by the sonic boom of fighter jets during a military drill.

The residents of Tel Aviv and Haifa districts (the Sharon plain) in the occupied territories heard an explosion sound on Friday night, which was followed by a power outage. The people fled their houses for fear of a missile attack by the Gaza resistance forces. They were told after a while that the blast sound was caused by the sonic boom of fighter jets during a military drill.

Immediately after the incident, all reports about the blast released by the Hebrew-language media outlets and accounts were deleted from the virtual space. A number of more famous media outlets had already announced in their reports that updates about the cause of the blast or the number of casualties would be released later.

What has remained unclear two days after the incident is the unannounced war game and why the Zionist regime’s ministry of defense had not publicized the drill beforehand. Another suspicious issue is the deletion of posts and news about the incident from the virtual space.

The monitoring of the incident lays bare the special connection between the Zionist regime’s security organizations and the administrators of social networks, particularly Twitter, showing how they divert the attention of readers by censoring or running whatever story they want about specific subjects.

The findings of the Hebrew department of Tasnim indicate that at first, a person named Yuer Dadia in a post on Facebook protested about the huge blast sound and massive power outages in the Sharon plain, which includes the cities of Netanya, Herzliya, Hadera, Kfar Saba, Kfar Yona, Rosh Haayin, Ra'anana, Hod Hasharon, Ramat Hasharon, Tira and Qalansawe, and wrote, “This corporation is not the electricity corporation. Shame on the electric corporation that charges us millions, but we have no power for hours.”

However, the organization that took action after the incident was not the Israeli electric corporation, but the Zionist regime’s security organizations.

The reporter of the Hebrew department of Tasnim has found out that:

1. The incident happened with sound, flashes and a thick plume.

2. There was a massive blackout immediately after the explosion.

3. Some electricity transformers and utility poles exploded.

4. Nearly all electrical appliances that had been plugged in were damaged or caught fire.

I can find absolutely nothing about this. The only tweets I can find on Friday night that mention an explosion are from Iranian or Iranian-allied accounts.The same with the reports that the IDF said that they were sonic booms - I cannot find that anywhere besides the Iranian and Syrian accounts.

I saw someone complain about a 3 hour power outage on Thursday night in Haifa, making acid remarks about the "third world electric company" Israel has. So power outages aren't that unusual, it seems.

The photo above was found to be from at least 2019 (h/t GnasherJew.)

Either a very major event happened and Israel somehow managed to cover it up on all social media (except allowing Twitter to allow the Iranian media to post it), or Iran is making all of this up. Usually their lies are based on some thread of truth, though, so my guess is that the Facebook post by this "Yuer Dadia" is somewhat true but based on either a misunderstanding or a joke, and Tasnim ran with it.

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!

The UN Fourth Committee - completely hijacked by Israel haters

One of the UN General Assembly's committees is the Fourth Committee, which is the "Special Political and Decolonization Committee of the General Assembly."

It has a wide ranging and eclectic official agenda: it "considers a broad range of issues covering a cluster of five decolonization-related agenda items, the effects of atomic radiation, questions relating to information, a comprehensive review of the question of peacekeeping operations as well as a review of special political missions, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Israeli Practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories, and International cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space."

Needless to say, it now ignores every single topic that isn't anti-Israel.

This month, it approved six draft resolutions. None of them were about outer space, or atomic radiation. All of them were about Israel.

“Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (document A/C.4/77/L.12/Rev.1)
“Assistance to Palestine refugees” (document A/C.4/77/L.10)
“Operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” (A/C.4/77/L.9)
“Palestine refugees’ properties and their revenues” (document A/C.4/77/L.11)
“The occupied Syrian Golan” (document A/C.4/77/L.13)
“Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan” (document A/C.4/77/L.14)

The more you learn about the UN, the more it is proven to be a joke.

(h/t Irene)

UPDATE: They do approve some other resolutions (here are last year's), but far more about Israel than any other topic. (h/t Irene)

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!

International Association of Judges meeting in Tel Aviv today

The International Association of Judges is holding its 64th annual meeting starting today in Tel Aviv.

Besides the lectures, there will be excursions to Jerusalem, Masada and the Dead Sea.

As the welcome video says, they ask the jurists that are visiting to "judge with your own eyes."

One country that won't be there is Algeria. Their National Union of Judges announced that they will boycott the meeting:

The National Union of Judges announced the boycott of an annual meeting of the International Association of Judges due to its being held in the occupied Palestinian territories. After receiving an invitation from the International Association of Judges to participate in the annual meeting to be organized in Tel Aviv in the occupied territories, the Algerian organization formally informed the President of the Federation and the African Group of Judges Unions of its boycott of this event, explaining in its statement that the boycott decision came out of its belief in the principles of justice and human rights, and in line with Algeria's official and popular position on the Palestinian cause and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Yes, the Algerian judges are judging themselves morally superior and more concerned with human rights to the 94 countries that are attending.

The World Justice Project ranks Algeria in the bottom half of all countries in the rule of law, 82nd among 139 countries ranked.

I don't think their presence will be missed.

Outside Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and Tunisia. most Middle East Arab countries are not even members of the IAJ.

Notice that Algeria considers Tel Aviv to be in "occupied territories."

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!

Maybe NOW the world will have a problem with Turkey occupying Northern Cyprus

From MiddleEast-in-24.com:

A number of rabbis met today (Wednesday) with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his palace in Ankara, and discussed with him a number of issues related to Jewish life in the country and around the world. The meeting was attended by many rabbis, led by Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Berl Lazar. The person who was supposed to arrive was also the Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who was eventually forced not to arrive because Turkey is a red state.

The rabbis discussed with Erdogan and then ate a sumptuous dinner. According to the organizers of the meeting, this is the first time that a strictly kosher meal is served in Erdogan’s palace.

Erdogan even surprised when he promised to approve the construction, for the first time ever, of a synagogue in northern Cyprus – a territory occupied by Turkey a few decades ago, unrecognized by world nations and having Chabad activities. The Turkish president even stepped in when he said he hoped the synagogue will be inaugurated in about a year. Today there is an improvised and semi-secret prayer house in the Chabad house in the Turkish half of the island, and now the Turkish president has promised to take active action to establish a synagogue there.

Turkey has been building settlements on occupied territory for decades, and it is met with a shrug from the same world leaders who say that Jews building houses in disputed territories are guilty of war crimes.

But now that Erdogan is saying that he is building a synagogue for Jews in occupied territory, that might be enough to get the world upset for the first time at Turkey.

(h/t YMedad)

Are Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam antisemitic?

From Politico:

The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said.

The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it could lead other governments to further crack down on such groups. The groups named, meanwhile, deny any allegations that they are anti-Semitic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing for the declaration, according to a congressional aide with contacts inside the State Department.

The declaration is expected to take the form of a report from the office of Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. The report would mention organizations including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It would declare that it is U.S. policy not to support such groups, including financially, and urge other governments to cease their support.

The report would cite such groups’ alleged or perceived support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has targeted Israel over its construction of settlements on land Palestinians claim for a future state.

It’s also expected to point to reports and press statements such groups have released about the impact of Israeli settlements, as well as their involvement or perceived support for a United Nations database of businesses that operate in disputed territories.

There is absolutely no doubt that these groups are structurally and systematically biased against Israel. They hire people to "research" Israel with a history of anti-Israel advocacy.

One example is Amnesty's Saleh Hijazi, Deputy Regional Director of the MENA Region, whose Facebook pages include support for terrorists Leila Khaled and Khader Adnan, a glaring piece of hypocrisy for a supposed human rights advocate.

Similarly, Omar Shakir had a well-documented history of supporting BDS against all of Israel (not just "settlements") and of being obsessively anti-Israel when he was hired by HRW - and that continued even as he was employed by them.

This results in these NGOs issuing anti-Israel reports that are longer, more numerous and more detailed than their reports on virtually any other nation, with only a smattering of reports about Palestinian human rights or Arab human rights abuses against Palestinians (which only exist when their anti-Israel obsessions were revealed so they wrote token reports for "balance.") In fact, in some cases these groups have supported terror-linked NGOs.

Israel is routinely accused of "apartheid" by these NGOs. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of.

These NGOs become obsessed about companies like TripAdvisor and AirBnB that operate in disputed territories. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of, let alone participate in huge funded campaigns against international companies.

Amnesty and HRW knowingly twist international law to pretend that Palestinians have a "right to return." As many as 60 million Europeans became refugees after World War II, but none of them have the same "right to return" that the 700,000 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants are considered to have today by these NGOs. The only purpose of this demand is to destroy the Jewish state demographically.

Do these obsessions cross the line into antisemitism?

By the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, there is no doubt that these groups are antisemitic because they hold Israel to standards that they do not apply to any other country.

Even if you do not accept the IHRA definition these NGOs seems to have a problem with Jews.

For example, this report from HRW denigrating religious Jews:

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”
The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law.
...
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.

This is an accusation that religious (and traditional) Jews are bloodthirsty fanatics who would kill Arabs at a drop of a hat - and against army regulations. That is antisemitic slander.

Or Amnesty-USA sponsoring a tour by Bassem Tamimi, who accuses Jews of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

Or this Amnesty employee that denied Egypt's expulsion of its Jews - meaning that Jews are the only group whose human rights are not to be defended.

Or these groups pushing to expel Jews - and only Jews - from their homes in disputed territories when there are also thousands of Israeli Arabs who live across the Green Line but are never called "settlers."

Or Ken Roth of HRW practically justifying European antisemitism as simply a response to Israeli actions.

Or Amnesty-UK which has hosted antisemites and BDSers at its headquarters but denied hosting Jewish Zionist groups.

Or when Amnesty's members voted against a resolution condemning antisemitism - a resolution that had nothing to do with Israel, and the only resolution that was defeated at that conference.

Or when Amnesty praised the "Youth Against Settlements" group - which is explicitly antisemitic.

Or Oxfam selling antisemitic literature on its site - copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic books that Oxfam members owned, photographed and blurbed on their website without even considering this to be a problem.

Or Oxfam excusing and supporting Miftah when the latter published the blood libel.

There are dozens of such examples.

In total, it is obvious that these NGOs have a problem not just with Israel, but many of their members have problems with Jews.

Even so, it is unclear whether it is wise for the State Department to declare them antisemitic. Outside the Middle East, the groups seem to do some excellent work and have dedicated employees who really care about human rights. (If the NGOs really wanted to be objective, they would rotate their researchers to different areas of the world instead of allowing obsessive haters of Israel to choose to demonize Israel.)

Declaring the entire organizations themselves to be antisemitic could be counterproductive. But they do have an crazed focus on attacking the Jewish state, and that needs to be publicized.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.