Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: rewriting history

Showing posts with label rewriting history. 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!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

New Arab conspiracy theories: "Jewish Lobby" assassinated Mohammed! Jewish bankers funded Pharaonic wars!

MEMRI found this gem:

Iraqi Shi'ite Militia Leader (allied with Iran) Qais Al-Khazali: "The Devil is not a theoretical enemy. He has a party that abides by his orders. As will be shown, this party of the Devil is led by the Jews.

"The Jews are the soldiers who serve the Devil – this is the Jewish lobby that controls the decision-making, the media, the economy, the dollar, the weapons trade, and so on. This is no longer a conspiracy theory. This has become clear.

"it was the Jews – the Jewish lobby – that murdered the fathers and forefathers of the Prophet Muhammad. This point does not require further proof, right? Secondly, it was the Jewish lobby that assassinated the Prophet Muhammad. You can check it out to see that I am right. Thirdly, I say – and Allah willing, I will prove – that it was the Jewish lobby that murdered Ali bin Abu Taleb.

"Fourthly, I say – and Allah willing, I will prove – that it was the Jewish lobby who was behind the murder of all the Imams.

"Regardless of who was the actual perpetrator... The Jewish lobby is the reason for the occultation of the Hidden Imam. It is the Jewish lobby that is searching for the Hidden Imam, and they might do anything in order to murder him."

I found this highly amusing article in a Jordanian site. The author, Rashid Abdul Rahman Al-Najab, has been reading the works of the late Libyan thinker Al-Sadiq Al-Nihum - who was known as a satirist - and apparently took seriously one of his satirical pieces making fun of Arab conspiracy theories. This is wild:

The global capitalist banking system began five thousand years ago at the hands of goldsmiths in Egypt, when most of the Jews' interest there turned to the banking trade and project financing. The Egyptian banks, which were controlled by the Jews, financed around the year 2400 BC the wars of the Pharaohs.

...When the Hebrews were expelled from Egypt, in the thirteenth century BC during the reign of King Ramesses II, under the influence of the hatred that had generated in the past, and not as history shows it as an escape of an enslaved people seeking freedom, the Hebrew banking capital created the idea of “the chosen people” and "The Promised Land", and the Hebrews wrote the constitution of the modern capitalist state in the arid Sinai. It is a constitution based on reducing the authority of the king, distributing administrative organs among twelve Israeli tribes and ensuring the legitimacy of usury, and even making usury a religious duty to lend to foreigners and protect banks, at a time when it was forbidden Their constitution charged usury among the Jews themselves and urged the liquidation of their debts by general discharge once every seven years.

In the era of King Solomon, in the tenth century B.C., the Jews were managing the entire economy of the Middle East, and they did not hesitate to finance suspicious projects to achieve quick profit, such as financing bars, gambling clubs, equipping pirates, and so on, and this reached an extent that made Christ enter the temple and expel money changers and usurers from its area.

Al Najab certainly doesn't present these absurd facts as satire, although he seems to know that some of them don't quite add up. He says that while the historic facts might not be exactly true, they point to the truth.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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!

Jordan's "Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs" issues another antisemitic statement: "Zionists created the Temple myth"

The Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs is a quasi-governmental Jordanian organization, with many members who are also ministers of the Jordanian government, whose purpose is "working to raise awareness of the importance of the issue of Jerusalem and not to separate it from its Arab and Islamic dimension, expose the Judaization and daily Israeli violations it is subjected to, and increase efforts working to stabilize Jerusalemites, support their steadfastness and publicize their suffering."

It issues a multi-page daily bulletin on supposed Israeli "violations" of the city - like Jews strolling on the Temple Mount.

Its latest accusations are particularly ludicrous - and antisemitic.

As reported in the official Jordanian news agency Petra:

The Israeli occupation exploits many occasions and events as a climate to conduct Talmudic rituals, incursions and attacks against Islamic and Christian sanctities in Palestine, and Jerusalem in particular.

Abdullah Kanaan, Secretary-General of the Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, says that the Israeli occupation is trying to take advantage of the month of August (Av) in a systematic and deliberate process, which includes Israeli measures to create an alleged history and culture through a dramatic industry that shows the Jews as victims to win the positions of the superpowers and sympathize with public opinion towards them.

He said to the Jordan News Agency (Petra) "The Jews claim that on Av 9, 586 BC, the alleged temple was destroyed, and the Jews were taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar, and that on Av 9, 70 AD, the alleged temple was destroyed again by Titus the Roman, and on August 8 1877 AD, the Jews established the first settlement north of Jaffa, and it was called Petah Tikva, and in August 1897 AD, the First Zionist Congress was held, which transformed Zionist thought into a political movement seeking to establish a national home for the Jews in historical Palestine."

He continues, “On August 21, 1969 AD, the Zionist Dennis Rohan burned parts of the Al-Qibli Mosque, and in August 1979 AD, an extremist group (Gush Emunim) planned to destroy the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, but it failed. On August 3, 2011 AD, the Knesset discussed the project to build a cable car to link the western and eastern parts of Jerusalem with the aim of changing the historical identity of the city and facilitating the transportation of settlers. to occupied cities."

And he goes on to say: "These are maliciously invented occasions to consolidate the legend of the Temple and the Promised Land."

He called for educating the world public opinion through all the media about the seriousness of the so-called sad month of Av for the Jews, and stressing that it is a Talmudic, political, settlement month that has nothing to do with historical facts that confirm the absence of the alleged temple or any archaeological evidence that supports Zionist myths in historical Palestine.

This committee, whose entire purpose is to deny any Jewish ties to Jerusalem, is respected and has been quoted by the UN.

Temple denial and the claim that there is no proof of the Temples is ludicrous and antisemitic. As I've mentioned before, the entire Temple Mount was built by Jews, in sections, from the time of the Biblical kings to the Hasmonean extensions to the Herodian extensions. These extensions with their differing characteristics can be seen from the Eastern Wall of the Mount.

The entire Temple Mount is proof of the Jewish Temples and Biblical history!

It is bad enough that Jordanian media spouts pure antisemitism every day. Just this past weekend one writer quoted 18th century antisemitic philosophers to "prove" that Jews are selfish, greedy, ugly, and their consciousness is that of animals.

But this is an official Jordanian organization, whose members are in the government, and which was established by the Jordanian royal family. They deny even Islamic sources that prove the deep connection of Jews to Jerusalem and the existence of the Temples, and Islamic tradition admits that the Dome of the Rock was purposely built on the site of the Temples in order replace them.

Their Jew-hatred runs so deep that they are willing to discard even their own historians.

Accusing Jews of inventing a new history for Jerusalem is a perfect example of Arab psychological projection.

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!

No, it isn't Israelis who try to use archaeology to erase history. It is Palestinians.

On Tuesday, an exhibition called "Inscriptions and Writings of Ancient Palestine" was unveiled at the headquarters of the League of Arab States in Cairo.

The exhibit features photos of Canaanite inscriptions from between the 19th and 7th centuries BCE.

The reasons given for the exhibit are almost completely political.

The exhibition is meant "to purify the history of Palestine and the general culture of myths and legends," meaning to exclude the idea that Jews have a history in the region.

The head of the scientific committee of the exhibition, Durgham Fares, said that the exhibition, which will be shown in various countries, "aims to strengthen international, Arab, and Islamic public opinion in support of the rights of the Palestinian people to freedom, independence, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, by providing a neutral scientific reading of the history of Palestine."

Fares also described "the importance of archaeological inscriptions and writings in understanding the ancient history of Palestine, and in refuting the modern allegations of the Zionist movement and the occupation."

This is propaganda, not a sober description of Canaanite culture. (The claim that Palestinians are descended from Canaanites is also quite shaky. Some almost certainly were, but most prominent Palestinian families proudly trace their lineage to other parts of the world.)

No one contests the idea that the earliest known use of an alphabet was in the region of Canaan, although it appears to have originated in Egypt as a simplified version of hieroglyphics for Semitic languages.

Unlike the curators of this project, the Israel Museum has an entire apolitical exhibit that credits the creation of the alphabet to Canaanite miners who were working for Egyptians in the Sinai, and who converted the thousands of Egyptian pictograms into a simplified, limited set of consonants.

The Israelis don't hijack history, as they are often accused of. They look at archaeology objectively and if a find is important for Muslim or Christian or Canaanite history they publicize it as well as they do for Jewish history. There is a bias, certainly - everyone is more interested in their own ancestors - but they are not dishonest. In fact, some of the most important Muslim archaeological treasures were found - and preserved - by Israelis. .

As this exhibit shows, the only parties that explicitly use archaeology to erase the history of a people are the Palestinians and their allies.

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!

German schoolbooks biased against Israel

What do you do when your hate becomes socially unacceptable?

Find an alternative that people won't blame you for!

From TheJC:

Textbooks in German schools display a strong political bias against Israel, according to a new report.

It reveals a disturbing trend of blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians.
And it says teachers in German schools tend to shy away from discussing Israel in class because of fears of sparking unmanageable debates.

The report, conducted by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and the Mideast Freedom Forum, focused on 16 history and politics textbooks used in secondary schools in Berlin and Brandenburg.

The Amadeu Antonio Foundation described textbooks as “inadequate, often one-sided and tendentious” in their depiction of Israel.

It said there is a “different weighting of the victims on the Palestinian and Israeli sides.

“A mostly paraphrased David versus Goliath narrative is dominant. Terrorist attacks and other acts of violence are sometimes played down or ignored.

“Most of the textbooks portray Israel as a war-mongering crisis state and the sole aggressor in the conflict.

“Uprisings and violent attacks on Jewish civilians are given a kind of legitimacy because of the dominant image of Israel.

“The focus of knowledge transfer at school is on the Six Day War, which is also often presented in a distorted way.”

The report says the Second Intifada is “largely ignored in educational material” and there is an “uncritical representation of Hamas” while the failure of the peace process is often blamed on Israel.

Israeli settlement building, construction of the security wall and Israeli rejection of the Palestinian right of return are presented as obstacles to peace.

But Palestinian terror against the Israeli civilian population is not, says the report.

I'm sure it isn't only Germany.

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!

Only Palestinians are allowed to invoke religion for nationalistic purposes

Arab leaders and pundits habitually warn, in English, that Israel is threatening to threatening to turn the conflict into a religious war.

A recent example comes from Ramzy Baroud in Arab News, saying,

What is currently taking place in Palestine is not a religious war, but some Israeli officials and political parties are keen on turning it into one.

Though warnings against “religious wars” in Palestine — in fact, the entire region — have been mostly linked to Israel’s current “most rightwing government in history,” religious discourses have been the most dominant since the establishment of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism, in the late-19th century.

This is absurd to the extreme.

This has been a religious war for decades, and it has been Palestinians making it one.

From their first leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem, their claims have been based primarily on religious themes and arguments. Religion suffuses everything they do - their words, their actions, their thinking - all the way back to the Mufti's claim that "Al Aqsa is in danger!" from Jews.

The Palestinian Arab armed forces in both the 1936 riots and the 1948 war were called the "Army of the Holy War."

The Palestinian constitution says, "Islam is the official religion in Palestine. ... The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation."

The Palestinian Authority has a Ministry of Religious Endowments.

Members of the PLO executive Committee marked Eid yesterday by laying a wreath on the grave of Yasir Arafat.

Mahmoud Abbas' speeches - even to the UN - all begin with "In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful."

Abbas referred to rebuilding Gaza in 2016 as a "jihad."

Every Palestinian media outlet refers to those killed by Israeli forces as "martyrs," not "victims."

The religious aspect is so ingrained that a supposedly secular UNRWA is asking for Muslims to give it "zakat" (religious charity) funds, quoting the Quran. Do any other UN agencies ever quote any other religious texts? (I found an exception that proves the rule.)

And, of course, Gaza groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad are Islamic extremist groups which use Islam to justify attacking Jews.

It isn't Israel that seeks a religious war. It is the Palestinians, and their own religious justifications are accepted without any objection by the world.

But whenever Jews assert their own religious desires in the land of the Torah, they are demeaned - not only by Palestinians - for acting in such a primitive, non-enlightened manner.

The Palestinians claim, and much of the world accepts, the idea that only Muslims have an unquestioned religious claim on the land and the holy sites that were all invariably Jewish holy sites 1500 years before Mohammed was born.

Jewish religious claims are treated with scorn while Muslim religious claims are accepted without question. And part of the reason is exactly because religion is the major component of the Palestinian nationalist philosophy.

Disparaging the Jewish religious claims to the land - especially while not questioning the Palestinian Islamic-based claims - is another manifestation of the antisemitism that is accepted as normal nowadays..

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!

Al Jazeera makes up a Herzl quote

Herzl postcard to his daughter from Jerusalem, October 30, 1898

Al Jazeera, which is still respected as a real news source in much of the Western world, published an article entitled, "This is how Israel plunders the antiquities of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem."

The article starts with a quote, supposedly from Theodor Herzl:

"If we ever get Jerusalem and I am still alive and able to do anything, I will remove everything that is not sacred to the Jews in it, and I will burn the centuries-old monuments."

Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement

The rest of the article goes on to falsely claim that Israeli archaeologists ignore anything non-Jewish in their digs and research, an absurd lie.

What about this supposed Herzl quote?

Here is what Herzl really wrote in his journal on October 31, 1898, during his visit to Palestine:

If I remember you in the future, Jerusalem, not with pleasure will I remember you. The moldy residues of two thousand years of cruelty, intolerance, and filth lie in the stinking streets. If we ever get Jerusalem, and if it is within my ability, I will clean it first. I shall remove everything that is not sacred, I shall set up housing for laborers outside of the city, I shalI empty out the nests of filth, destroy them, burn those ruins which are not sacred, and the bazaars I shall move to another place. Preserving the old building style as much as possible, I will erect a modern, convenient, clean and functioning city around the holy sites.“

At no time did he differentiate between things that are sacred to Jews and to non-Jews, and indeed the postcard that he sent his daughter pictured above shows the Dome of the Rock - certainly not something the secular Herzl wanted to destroy.

Al Jazeera is lying, explicitly, in both the quote and the story itself. Why do people still put any trust in this propaganda rag?

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!