Thursday, March 10, 2016

03/10 Links Pt2: UCL: Religious hate and boycotting Jews; Al-Jazeera admits: Jerusalem is not in Koran

From Ian:

David Collier: UCL: Religious hate and boycotting Jews

Yet another page of shame has been written in the history books of a student union in the UK. This time it was UCL or UCLU (University College London Union). On Tuesday 8/3/2016, a mob of rabid, semi-ignorant, hate-filled ‘red fascists’ assembled together to play ‘government’.
One of the motions tabled (unsurprisingly, given the make-up of the council), was to decide whether or not to support the boycott of Israel. Israel is a touchy subject amongst student unions these days. Time was, that the tiny Jewish state, surrounded by blood thirsty despots like Nasser, Saddam Hussein, the Ayatollah & Gaddafi could count on students to easily differentiate right from wrong.
Today, with talk of the Zionist run USA or Mossad being behind ISIS and 9/11 only too common in certain student quarters, all semblance of moral order has been lost. Israel, whilst still the target for every radical Islamic nutcase in a region that never runs out of them, has somehow become the cause of everything that is wrong in the student world. No doubt Netanyahu, seeing as ‘Zionists’ control the US, UK and the banks, is also responsible for raising university fees.
Think of a nasty accusation and place it before the word Zionist. They all work. ‘Racist’ – easy, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’- but of course, ‘Genocide’ – sure, even ‘Apartheid’ works, all placed on the only liberal country in the entire region where everyone has a free vote. Funny how some UCL students wouldn’t even be allowed to enter cities in Saudi Arabia because of their religion, yet that issue fails to bother a student union council that clearly isn’t working to an agenda about ‘universal’ human rights.
The real motive:
To deal with the claim that the student union vote was actually about human rights. Let’s just look at the central force behind the #BDS motion. UCLU Friends of Palestine Society.

Labour’s expelled Trotskyite says he will not ‘condemn’ 9/11

This week Jeremy Corbyn received flak from the Prime Minister during PMQs over the decision by Labour’s NEC to allow Gerry Downing — a member of the Trotskyist Socialist Fight — to re-join Labour. Cameron said he was ‘completely appalled’ by the decision — as revealed by Guido Fawkes — as Downing has previously described the motivation for 9/11 as ‘entirely understandable’.
After Labour finally expelled Downing again late last night, he appeared on today’s Daily Politics to fight his corner. In an interview with Andrew Neil, Downing attempted to show why he should be allowed to join Labour. Alas, he appeared to do the opposite as he spouted several alarming view points:
Downing also has some pretty interesting views when it comes to Zionism:
AN: You’ve also said that we need to confront the Jewish question, what is the Jewish question?
GD: Well, the fact that Israel can commit absolutely heinous crimes against, Palestinians, they can bomb them without letter and this is presented in the Western media as an attack on terrorists.
AN: Your group says that Zionism plays a major role in politics of all the advanced capitalist countries. You say that Zionists are behind the witch hunt behind Jeremy Corbyn. You say that Zionists hold great sway over our three main political parties. You say that Zionism is the vanguard of injecting anti-Muslim hatred into Western politics. It would sound when you see all that that for you the Jewish question is a Zionist conspiracy?
GD: No, it’s not a Zionist conspiracy. It adds up to something very material and that is the number of millionaires and billionaires of Zionist persuasion which in the American ruling class and in the European ruling classes in general it is their economic and political power, that leads to ridiculous situations.
AN: And Zionists — as you call them — play a key role in that?
GD: They obviously do play a key role, they have duel-citizenship most of them.
And to think he was a member of the Labour party just yesterday!

Gerry Downing on BBC's Daily Politics! [this is just the Zionism stuff, the link has the full 15 min train wreck]

"BDS is Nothing Less than a Declaration of Economic War against the Jewish People"

A truly excellent, even uplifting, speech this past week by Aussie federal Liberal MP Michael Sukkar (a Roman Catholic of Lebanese and Norwegian parentage):
"It is with some dismay that I rise today to acknowledge that 2016 marks 15 years since the seeds of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, also known as BDS, began against Israel at the World Conference against Racism held in Durban in 2001. What passes for left-wing thought in our day and age has never been noted for coherent logic or factual accuracy. Nowhere are these leftist moral and intellectual failings more obvious than on the question of Israel in general and on the BDS campaign against the only democracy in the Middle East.
The member for Fremantle [Melissa Parke], who, I must say, made my day with her recent announcement of her departure from this place, exemplifies the Left’s noxious intellectual bankruptcy on matters Middle Eastern. By hitching her wagon to the anti-Israel BDS she exemplified how those who claim the rubric of progressive are actually quite oppressive when it comes to the Jewish People.
Make no mistake, BDS s nothing more than a declaration of economic war against the Jewish people. We have all seen the BDS causes and the antisemitic ugliness. We saw this on the streets in mob-scene blockades of Jewish owned businesses in Melbourne. We have also seen BDS in all of its genocidal ugliness when its founder, the Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, made it clear that the movement would settle for nothing less than the elimination of Israel as we know it.

Rowan Dean interviews MP Michael Sukkar

Sky News Arabia confirms that Morocco and Jordan have also declared Hizballah to be considered a terrorist organization, joining the Gulf states who declared the same last week.

This goes beyond the EU position that only Hizballah's "military wing" is considered terrorist.

Morocco made its declaration last week at a meeting of the Arab Interior Ministers in Tunisia. That group as a whole also issued a statement not binding on its members declaring Hizballah to be terrorist, although Tunisia did not agree to that wording and said that Hizballah "has played an important role for Lebanon and the Palestinian cause."

As reported here before, Iran is very upset over this but so far the only ones supporting Iran in this matter are Algeria, Syria, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and Israeli Arab ministers.

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Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

The just-released Pew Survey (“Israel’s Religiously Divided Society”) contains some fascinating data. While most commentators are making a big deal over the fact that about half of Jewish Israelis agreed that “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel” – astupid question because it doesn’t distinguish between Arab citizens of Israel and residents of Judea and Samaria, or whether ‘transfer’ is at gunpoint or voluntary with compensation, or many other things – I was more interested in its comparison between Israeli and American Jews.

As an American-Israeli, I am often struck by the way Jews in either place don’t understand each other’s cultures and concerns. Israeli Jews don’t understand the liberal (Reform and Conservative) Judaism which so appeal to Americans, they don’t understand American politics, and they think that all American Jews are rich and stupid – especially the ones dumb enough make aliyah (ask me about the ‘American price’ in the shuk). But since Israel has very little power to affect the US, this is of no importance.

What is of great significance is the fact that ignorance in the other direction – the misconceptions of American Jews about Israel and Israelis – are dangerous, especially because they are exploited by the US administration and others who do not have Israel’s best interests at heart.

Orthodox Jews in America are 10% of the Jewish population, and hold views similar to the 22% of Israeli Jews that identify as Orthodox. But the non-Orthodox populations are very different. In Israel, most of them are “hiloni,” usually translated as ‘secular’, and about half as many identify as “masorati” or ‘traditional’ (not to be confused with the tiny Masorati movement, which is the Israeli branch of American Conservative Judaism).

The survey describes Masoratim as holding the “middle ground between Orthodoxy and secularism.” Many Mizrachi Jews put themselves in this category. Although they vary widely in their degree of observance, one example is the man who votes for the ultra-Orthodox Shas party but still drives to the football stadium on Shabbat.

Neither of these groups correspond to anything in American Jewry. Israel’s secular hilonim are overwhelmingly married to other Jews (98%), they tend to be much more knowledgeable about Jewish texts (which they learn in school), they are more likely than unaffiliated American Jews to light candles before Shabbat, keep kosher, or attend a Pesach seder – even though 60% never go to a synagogue, and 40% of them say that they do not believe in God! But 28% of them oppose allowing Reform or Conservative rabbis to perform marriages in Israel, despite the fact that 88% believe that “religion should be kept separate from government policies.”

Almost all Israeli Jews, when asked their religion chose ‘Jewish’ rather than ‘no religion’, even if they also indicated that they didn’t believe in God. And when asked what strain of Judaism they identified with, half of them said ‘Orthodox’ even if they never went to a synagogue. Only 5% identified with the Reform or Conservative movements.

In other words, Israelis are closely tied to Jewish culture and traditions, even if their degree of religious observance is minimal. They respect traditional Jewish belief and ritual, even if they dislike the religious establishment and want it to keep its hands off their lives.

In America, about half of married non-Orthodox Jews have a non-Jewish spouse. The unaffiliated American Jew is usually the assimilated Jew with no knowledge of Jewish texts or identification with Jewish traditions. And Reform Judaism has separated itself from Orthodoxy and even Conservative Judaism so much – both in practice and in philosophy (think of the Reform concept of tikkun olam as social action) – that those who insist that it is more like a different religion than a kind of Judaism have a cogent argument.

Politically, American Jews are more dovish than Israelis. They are much more likely to think a peace agreement with the Palestinians is possible and would be productive, that settlements across the Green Line hurt Israel’s security rather than help it, and that Israel’s government is not making a sincere effort to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

It’s understandable that Israelis take the more pessimistic positions that they do, given recent experience. Only 8% of Israelis self-identify as part of the Left; the rest see themselves as centrists (55%) or right-wing (37%). But American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal or progressive, and they take their cues from the administration that they strongly support, liberal media and opinion leaders.

My experience has been that with some exceptions American Jews are acutely uninformed about the realities here. Because events in Israel are not vital to them, they uncritically accept what they hear from sources they consider authoritative. PM Netanyahu also comes in for a lot of unjustified criticism from Americans, who see him as an extremist, when he is actually squarely in the center of Israeli politics.

American Jews, like other Americans, are influenced to some degree by the flood of aggressive anti-Israel propaganda from the numerous groups whose function is to demonize Israel. There is also a large group of liberal rabbis who transmit information from the small-but-vocal Israeli Left to their congregants as though it is mainstream opinion in Israel.

The Pew survey notes that some 57% of American Jews see “working for justice and equality” as part of their Jewish identity (only 27% of Israelis agree). So anything framed this way is appealing to American Jews.

The Women of the Wall is an interesting example. Started as a movement of Orthodox women who wanted to be able to pray out loud in the women’s section of the Kotel, it was co-opted by the American Reform movement, and presented as a struggle against fanatic sexism. Ironically, the Reform movement’s intervention may have derailed the partial victory of the original Women of the Wall.

The Reform Movement, which is very close to the Obama Administration, also wants political influence in Israel, which it seems to believe it deserves because of its moral superiority to Israelis. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, URJ president, announced his intention to intervene in Israel’s affairs last October when he said

… Jews who see brokenness in the treatment of Israel’s minorities, or in the way ultra-Orthodox views of Judaism are being enshrined in secular law, are being told that, when it comes to Israel, you should check your commitment to tikkun olam at the door. We will not.

I don’t know how it played in America, but the arrogance inherent in his statement was not appreciated in Israel, which is struggling to do right by all of its minorities, including Haredim, its Arab citizens, illegal migrants, those living in neighborhoods flooded with illegal migrants, and Palestinian Arabs whose idea of politics or religion seems to be to stab Jews. And there is certainly more than enough to do in America on the question of minorities!

My message to American Jews would be that before trying to be the 800-pound gorilla you would learn about the complexity of the situation here, and the challenges that we face just to keep the state from being overrun by the surrounding barbarians. Probably a good default when you don’t understand something would be to align yourselves with the majority of Israelis, who after all have to live with the situation. And here is a hint on one specific issue: neither the government nor the opposition nor the average Israeli think the “two-state solution” is workable in the foreseeable future.

G. B. Shaw said that England and America are two countries divided by a common language. This can be taken to mean that the language is more different than it looks; but it could also mean that the common language hides deeper cultural differences, something which has always seemed to me to be true. I learned to be more careful speaking to British acquaintances in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Perhaps this would be a good lesson for American Jews as well.

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03/10 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: Iran's Cash for Murder; My friend Taylor Force is dead

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Iran's Cash for Murder: Why is the UK Silent?

The Iranian distribution of cash to families of terrorists is an open incitement to an ongoing campaign of murder. It should by now have not only been condemned by the whole world, but have caused a colossal rethink among the P5+1 nations that signed the ill-judged accord with Iran.
It is worth considering another recent Iranian development: the decision -- allegedly by a conglomeration of media outlets, but hardly able to be separated from the government in a country whose press is more "government" than "free" -- to increase the cash-bounty on the head of the British novelist Salman Rushdie.
The British government has been strangely mute on the matter. The "normalised" relations with Iran were meant to lead to business opportunities for Britain and an increase in decent behavior from Tehran. Instead, the first major test of Iranian-British relations in several decades turns out to be precisely the same test that the late Ayatollah Khomeini drew up in 1989.

My friend Taylor Force is dead

He laughed and smiled a lot in the classes at West Point. He sat behind me, next to me, or across from me during our first two years at the United States’ premier institution. He was very mild-mannered, sharp, and professional. I couldn’t think of someone who was more of a model of “America’s finest” than him. He was handsome, articulate, brilliant, and just so GOOD. I can’t think of a moment where he wasn’t exuding an aura of pure positive energy. He was as honest and heartfelt as they come, but now he’s dead.
Taylor Force was murdered in cold blood by a West Bank Palestinian. Hamas announced that they’re celebrating their martyrs last night. As I write this, there are parties from Gaza to Ramallah continuing all day, and probably tonight. It’s not every day they get a former US Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. For them, this is a great boon.
Taylor died in a war that he didn’t know he was in the middle of. Taylor is dead because of a lot of misleading ideas about exactly what goes on in Israel. Misleading people is currently the policy of the US government.
The US and Israel’s policy is to see the idea of a Two State Solution through. The reason for this policy is the belief that there’s more good than evil in the world, and peace is a reality that can be achieved. Moreover, they believe peace is something that must be achieved.

Mourning the Loss of Taylor Force

Taylor Force, who died yesterday when a Palestinian terrorist stabbed him to death near the beach in Jaffa, was an Eagle Scout. He was a Field Artillery Officer in the United States Army who had served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was a graduate student of business administration at Vanderbilt University, and he was in Israel on a school-sponsored trip to do what creative, enterprising people in free and robust societies do when they travel: meet like-minded people, inspire and draw inspiration in turn, and enjoy a meal and a stroll in a scenic part of town.
That’s a vision of life that Israelis readily share. The young Palestinian man who snuck into Tel Aviv for no other purpose than to take the lives of innocent men and women, and who ended up killing Force and wounding his wife, holds a starkly different view. So does Mahmoud Abbas, who recently insisted that terror acts like the murder of Force were nothing more than “a peaceful popular uprising,” as well as the majority of Palestinian officialhood, which supports the violence in words and in deeds, and, according to a recent poll, 72 percent of young Palestinians, for whom violence, not diplomacy, is the path forward.

How You Can Support the Family of Taylor Force, the American Student Murdered in Israel

On Tuesday, American business school student Taylor Force was murdered in Tel Aviv in a spree of terrorist attacks across Israel that left 14 injured. Force, 28, was in Israel on a school trip run by Vanderbilt University, where he was an MBA student. His wife was also severely injured in the attack, according to Israeli medical services.
A graduate of West Point, Force was a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, speaking alongside Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Vice President Joe Biden mourned Force, saying: “Let me say in no uncertain terms: the United States of America condemns these acts and condemns the failure to condemn these acts. This cannot become an accepted modus operandi. This cannot be viewed by civilized leaders as an appropriate way in which to behave even if it appears to inure to the benefit of one side or the other. It’s just not tolerable in the 21st century. They’re targeting innocent civilians, mothers, pregnant women, teenagers, grandfathers, American citizens. There can be no justification for this hateful violence.”
In the wake of Force’s tragic murder, one of his classmates has launched a crowdfunding campaign to assist his family. “The world lost a wonderful man on Tuesday,” the page reads. “Taylor was loved and respected by everyone who was fortunate to have known him. His permanent smile, positive spirit, and kindness were complemented with his honor, integrity, and dedication to serving others.” You can donate here.

UNRWA cover-up continues! UNRWA logo removed from hate-school page

UNRWA sprung into action after I revealed that one of their schools in a Gaza City camp last October held a ceremony to support the stabbing spree against Jews and posted about it on Facebook.

Oh, they didn't announce that they were launching an investigation. They didn't say that people would be fired. They didn't apologize for this blatant breach of UN and human rights. They didn't say a word about the child abuse they were involved in.

No, they first took down the specific posts that I referred to.

And now they removed the UNRWA logo from the page!

From this:

To this:

Will they claim that this school is not a UNRWA school? Even though it is located inside an UNRWA camp?

Most UNRWA schools follow the same design and all use the UN blue color scheme, and this school is no exception. Also note the UNRWA logo on these girl's vests in this photo taken earlier today:

And earlier photos on their Facebook page leave no doubt:

Not to mention that the school is mentioned on UNRWA's own site!

Once again, UNRWA is showing that it doesn't actually care that its schools teach support for terror - but it cares very much about the possibility of losing funding because of meddling Westerners who want to know how hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent. So they want to add some barely-plausible deniability to the hate that they teach, knowing that their donors (with the notable exception of Canada) are not likely to stop funds as long as they are fed a line about UNRWA caring about neutrality and human rights.

It is a cover-up and it is happening in front of our eyes.

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Legal scholars Eugene Kontorovich and Avi Bell have written an impressive new paper submitted to the Arizona Law Review that uses a well-known principle of international law to determine the borders of nations and applies it to Israel.

Here are the important excerpts of the 70-page paper.

ABSTRACT: Israel’s borders and territorial scope are a source of seemingly endless debate. Remarkably, despite the intensity of the debates, little attention has been paid to relevance of the doctrine of uti possidetis juris to resolving legal aspects of the border dispute. Uti possidetis juris is widely acknowledged as the doctrine of customary international law that is central to determining territorial sovereignty in the era of decolonization. The doctrine provides that emerging states presumptively inherit their pre-independence administrative boundaries.

Applied to the case of Israel, uti possidetis juris would dictate that Israel inherit the boundaries of the Mandate of Palestine as they existed in May, 1948. The doctrine would thus support Israeli claims to any or all of the currently hotly disputed areas of Jerusalem (including East Jerusalem), the West Bank, and even potentially the Gaza Strip (though not the Golan Heights).

What is uti possidetis juris?

Today, it is generally accepted that the borders of newlyformed states are determined by application of uti possidetis juris as a matter of customary international law. The doctrine even applies when it conflicts with the principle of self-determination. Summarizing the operation of the rule, Steven Ratner explains, “[s]tated simply, [the doctrine of] uti possidetis [juris] provides that states emerging from decolonization shall presumptively inherit the colonial administrative borders that they held at the time of independence.” Recent decades have shown that uti possidetis juris applies to all cases where the borders of new states have to be determined, and not just in its original context of decolonization. Thus, for instance, uti possidetis juris was used to determine the borders of the states created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union,Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.

Does it apply to Israel?

The application of the principle of uti possidetis juris to the legal borders of Israel seems straightforward. Israel emerged as a new state in 1948, when it declared statehood at the expiration of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. The new state of Israel was immediately invaded by its neighbors and several nonneighboring Arab states, and at the conclusion of hostilities, Israel possessed only part of the territory of the Mandate (the remaining mandatory territory was occupied by the states of Syria, Egypt and Transjordan). Israel and its neighbors reached armistice agreements, but they failed to reach peace treaties or boundary agreements. For its part, the British Mandatory government—the immediately prior ruling authority until 1948— did not propose or reach any agreement on borders with the new state. While there had been proposals to divide the territory of Palestine between two new states (one Jewish and one Arab), Israel was the only state to emerge from the Mandate of Palestine.

Israel’s independence would thus appear to fall squarely within the bounds of circumstances that trigger the rule of uti possidetis juris. Applying the rule would appear to dictate that Israel’s borders are those of the Palestine Mandate that preceded it, except where otherwise agreed upon by Israel and its relevant neighbor. And, indeed, rather than undermine the application of uti possidetis juris, Israel’s peace treaties with neighboring states to date—with Egypt and Jordan—appear to reinforce it. These treaties ratify borders between Israel and its neighbors explicitly based on the boundaries of the British Mandate of Palestine.Likewise, in demarcating the so-called “Blue Line” between Israel and Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations Secretary General relied upon the boundaries of British Mandate of Palestine.

Given the location of the borders of the Mandate of Palestine, applying the doctrine of uti possidetis juris to Israel would mean that Israel has territorial sovereignty over all the disputed areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank and Gaza, except to the degree that Israel has voluntarily yielded sovereignty since its independence. This conclusion stands in opposition to the many public figures who have pronounced that international law dictates very different boundaries.Amazingly, however, such pronouncements reveal no awareness or discussion of the application of uti possidetis juris to the borders between Israel and its neighboring states. Indeed, the literature on both the doctrine and the Israeli-Arab conflict has almost entirely ignored application of uti possidetis to Mandatory Palestine.

At its expiration in 1948, the borders of the Mandate of Palestine, both internal and external, were relatively well demarcated and uncontroversial. Thus uti possidetis juris could be a powerful tool for resolving extant disputes about the borders of Israel. To be sure, Israel appears to be interested in drawing consensual new boundaries that differ from the borders established by uti possidetis juris. Uti possidetis juris does not preclude later modifications of borders. Application of uti possidetis juris, as is customary in other boundary disputes, would nevertheless provide a clear baseline for future negotiated solutions.

Why would this apply to Israel whose boundaries did not come close to the British Mandate lines after the 1948 war?

On May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its statehood, its forces controlled only a small part of Palestine. While Israel’s geographic scope of authority expanded by the end of the war, the armistice agreements that ended the war in 1949 left large parts of Palestine in the hands of Syria, Egypt and Jordan. The doctrine of uti possidetis juris, however, rejects possession as grounds for establishing title, favoring instead legal entitlement based upon prior administrative borders. And it is clear that the relevant administrative borders of Palestine at the time of Israel’s independence were the boundaries of the mandate as they had been set in 1923. Israel was the only state that emerged from mandatory Palestine, and it was a state whose identity matched the contemplated Jewish homeland required of the Mandate, and that fulfilled a legal Jewish claim to self determination in the Mandatory territories. There was therefore no rival state that could lay claim to using internal Palestinian district lines as the basis of borders. At the same time, while considerable efforts had been invested in creating and advancing proposals for altering the borders of the ultimate Jewish state and a companion Arab state, no such efforts had ever been crowned with the success of implementation. Thus, it would appear that uti possidetis juris dictates recognition of the borders of Israel as coinciding with the borders of the mandate as of 1948.

Certainly Israel has the right to voluntarily modify the borders in peace agreements, and the authors suggest that perhaps Israel's withdrawal from Gaza would also have that legal weight. Nevertheless, this legal principle that has been the basis of determining the borders of many other states worldwide should be equally applicable to Israel's borders.

The paper notes that historically there was a competing legal principal, uti possidetis de facto which says that legal possession of land only applies to where there is actual control - but no international court has applied that principle in modern times, and it is universally understood in determining the borders of other nations that uti possidetis juris is the single guiding legal principle.

But what about the rights of Palestinian Arabs within the boundaries of the British Mandate?

Another set of problems related to the Palestine Mandate concerned questions of self-determination. From the outset, the Palestine Mandate was anomalous, in that it recognized a particular people as entitled to express its self-determination on the territory of the Mandate, even though that people was not at that time the majority population of the Mandate. Over the years, Palestinian advocates have argued that this portion of the Mandate was ultra vires, and that the Jewish people were not entitled to receive a grant of the legal right to self-determination. The argument has little to recommend it. But even if the argument were well-founded, it would have little effect on the outcome of the uti possidetis juris analysis, as we have seen. Even unlawful treatments of the right of self-determination have not been seen as grounds to undermine the uti possidetis borders of other Mandates.

A potentially more serious matter is the question of whether the Jewish people were the only nation entitled to self determination in the Mandate of Palestine. The Mandate itself gives no indication of there being another entitled nation, describing only a Jewish national home and no other national home or national expression. The Mandate provides for a single partition (the separation of Transjordan from the remainder of the Mandate), but no other. The Mandate of Palestine was not, of course, the only Mandate to encompass populations who would not be granted the right to self-determination and an independent state (consider, for instance, the Kurds in the Mesopotamian Mandate). However, the Mandate of Palestine was the only one in which the majority population (the Arabs of Palestine) was not granted a right of self-determination by the founding documents. It may be argued, nonetheless, that, notwithstanding the silence of the founding documents of the Mandate, the Palestinian Arabs did have a claim to self-determination. General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 would have given both the Palestinian Jewish and Palestinian Arab peoples independent states.

The rights of multiple nations to self-determination on a given territory should not, prima facie, disturb application of the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. This is not simply because the doctrine of uti possidetis juris does not rely upon the existence of a prior claim of self-determination for the new state. Nor is it simply because uti possidetis juris may actually conflict with and override the demands of self-determination, as the International Court of Justice stated explicitly in the Burkina Faso case.321 The most important reason for rejecting the idea that multiple claims of self determination forbid application of uti possidetis juris is that many of the states that have had their borders established by uti possidetis juris have, in fact, been subject to multiple claims of self-determination; in no case has the existence of an additional nation with a right of self-determination defeated application of the doctrine of uti possidetis juris. This is true even when the new state that claimed the benefit of uti possidetis juris was later itself driven apart by new internal claims of self-determination. Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. provide several examples of this. Consider, for instance, Serbia (later subject to the secession of Kosovo) and Ukraine (later subject to the highly controversial secession of Crimea).
If an Arab Palestinian state had achieved independence in 1948, alongside the Jewish one, this would doubtless have affected the application of the rule of uti possidetis juris. With two states having achieved independence at the same time within the Mandate of Palestine, it would obviously not be possible for both states to share the borders of the Mandate. Different lines would have to serve as the basis of the borders of each states—if the new states could not reach agreement on mutually acceptable boundaries, the borders of districts or subdistricts would have to do. But, despite the potential self-determination claim of the Arab population of Palestine, only one state was born in 1948 at the termination of the prior administration. As the Palestine Mandate ended, the state of Israel achieved independence. No other state did.

Likewise, if the partition of Palestine envisioned by General Assembly Resolution 181 had been implemented, even if only administratively, the application of uti possidetis juris would have changed. Resolution 181 called for a U.N. Commission to take over administration of Palestine as the Mandatory withdrew. The Commission was to “carry out measures for the establishment of the frontiers of the Arab and Jewish States and the City of Jerusalem” and then to assist in the creation of provisional governments before the states achieved independence. However, the Commission never arrived in Palestine. Neither the Commission nor the Mandatory ever sketched out the proposed frontiers. At no time was a separate administration ever set up for the proposed Jewish, Arab and Jerusalem territories as called for by the resolution. In short, at the time of independence, there was only one administrative unit in Palestine. To attempt to apply uti possidetis juris to any borders other than those of the Mandate would leave the remaining Mandatory territories terra nullius, which is exactly the situation the doctrine seeks to avoid.

The paper concludes:

It is likely that a future peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians future solutions will reflect the parties’ presumed desire to accommodate Palestinian self-determination, as well as the right of states to modify existing uti possidetis juris borders by agreement. Uti possidetis juris is not, therefore, the last word on matters.

At the same time, it is likely that any future solution to the boundary disputes of Israel that wishes to take international law seriously will have to take account of the rules of uti possidetis juris. The doctrine is therefore an indispensable starting point for legal discussions of borders.

And that is the precise point. The 1949 armistice lines never held any legal value under international law, they were meant to be temporary. Jordan's seizure of the West Bank was not recognized by international law. The assumption that the so-called "1967 lines" should be used as the borders of a Palestinian state is legally baseless.

UPDATE: Video of a lecture that describes this in detail:

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Meet Mohammad Wari, one of the Arabs who was stabbed in Jaffa

Mohammad Wari is one of the victims of the Jaffa stabbings this week:

Reading Wari's social media posts you see an example of a successful, secular and funny man who happens to be an Arab who lives in Israel.

He is a product manager at Hola, an Israeli company that allows people to bypass Internet filters and that can be used in places like Iran and China. His LinkedIn profile says:

ENTP personality type. Continuously striving to improve my performance and expand my knowledge. I'm an avid self-learner, taking an active role in being a team player, leading brainstorm sessions, finding solutions, helping the team to stick with its objectives, and reaching its goals. I'm a big supporter of team diversity and believe that ultimately it serves a crucial role in finding creative solutions. Very experienced in product management, I like taking basic ideas and leading them to the next level, improving on what there is and filling the gaps on what's yet to be done.

Wari is a staunch atheist and hates religious-based conflict.

He works out at the gym:

He has gone skydiving:

Wari is also not shy about expressing political opinions and he speaks out against anti-Arab racism in Israel. He visited Berlin over New Year's. He likes Western music. He loves going back home to visit his family.

In other words, he looks, sounds and acts like any other single young Israeli professional.

The Palestinian Arabs (and other anti-Israel activists) who support terror attacks hate the Mohammad Waris as much as they hate Israeli Jews. They don't want Arabs in Israel and the territories to be seen as normal people, but only as victims. They don't want Palestinian youths to aspire to be like Mohammad Wari - they want them to be like his attacker.

Mohammad Wari shows that the entire philosophical basis of the Palestinian Arab leadership, and the propaganda that is force-fed to people worldwide, is wrong.

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Work accident!

A Hamas terrorist named Suleiman Mohammed Liadi was killed in some sort of training accident on Wednesday.

Hamas' obituary mentions that he was a tunnel worker but does not say that he died in a tunnel accident. We can only speculate on what killed him.

Now that he is dead, Hamas can show us his face while its members, for some reason, keep hiding their own faces even deep within Gaza during his funeral procession:

Far more Hamas terrorists have died this year by their own actions than were killed by Israeli forces.

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03/09 Links Pt2: Israeli Arab Diplomat Disrupted by Chants of ‘Long Live the Intifada,’ ‘Allahu Akbar’

From Ian:

Israeli Arab Diplomat’s Lecture at UC Davis Disrupted by Chants of ‘Long Live the Intifada,’ ‘Allahu Akbar’ (VIDEO)

A talk by an Israeli diplomat at the University of California, Davis on Monday was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, The Algemeiner has learned. After unfurling a large banner across the room, the demonstrators chanted “Long live the intifada,” and other slogans, then exited the premises.
George Deek, an Israeli Arab Christian, was speaking on “The Art of Middle East Diplomacy,” when some 30 people moved to the front and sides of the room, according to witnesses and video of the event.
Completely obscuring Deek from the audience, they unfurled an enormous banner across the front of the room that read “1948=1492,” referring to the years of the Israeli War of Independence and the year in which both Columbus discovered America and the Jews were expelled from Spain.
They then began chanting anti-Israel slogans. Upon their exit, they yelled “Allahu Akbar!”

Protesters Interrupt and scream at Israeli Diplomat with "Long live the Intifada" at UC Davis

Palestinian Bassem al-Tamimi lead plaintiff in suit against dozens of Americans for supporting Israel

A group of Palestinians led by professional provocateur and propagandist Bassem Al-Tamimi has filed suit against a slew of Americans, American businesses, American organizations, international businesses and Israeli entities. The Complaint is embedded at the bottom of this post.
Altogether nineteen Plaintiffs have brought claims against fifty-three defendants. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are Martin F. McMahon, a colleague in his law firm, and Sameer Jarrah, who claims a license to practice law in Jordan.
Al-Tamimi is a familiar figure. He is at the heart of LI’s ongoing battle with Ithica, New York’s public school system (where he encouraged third-graders to become “freedom fighters for Palestine”), peddles the blood libel that Israel harvests and sells Palestinians’ organs, and uses his own daughter (and other children) as props in his war against Israel

Shirley Temper’s Father/Terror Supporter Bassem Tamimi Has US Visa Revoked

Bassem Tamimi, terror supporter & enabler, and father/exploiter of “Shirley Temper”, has apparently had his US visa revoked, according to a letter he himself posted on his Facebook page.
In 2012, Tamimi was arrested and sentenced to prison for planning demonstrations in Nabi Salih, as well as “soliciting” others to throw stones at IDF soldiers as they attempted to disperse the weekly rallies. Later that year, he was again arrested, this time for an illegal demonstration in the car park of Rami Levy, a supermarket accessible to both Jews and palestinians. I am guessing he failed to disclose at least one of those.
Tamimi has just been in the news, leading a group in some anti-Israel lawfare: filing a lawsuit in a US federal court against Sheldon Adelson, Elliot Abrams, John Hagee and a range of banks, companies and NGOs “linked to the settlement enterprise and to alleged war crimes in the three Gaza wars.”

German bank teller refuses service to Israeli

A bank teller at Bank Sparkasse, one of the largest banks in Germany, refused to open an account for an Israeli living in Berlin, telling him that Israeli passport holders are under embargo.
As a result of Ynet's request for comment, the bank's management - after an inquiry that lasted two weeks - responded by saying it was an error done by the teller, adding: "All we can do is apologize."
The Israeli, Yakir Avraham, went to the bank's branch in the Alexanderplatz area of Berlin, and when he gave the teller his Israeli passport in order to open the bank account, the teller took the passport and went into another room to check it. She returned a few minutes later and said "I'm very sorry, but we cannot open up a bank account for you here. We aren't allowed to open accounts for citizens of countries under embargo."
"I was in shock at first. How did it get to the point that they treat us like lepers? I took my passport and left the bank," Avraham told Ynet.
Immediately after the incident on February 24, Ynet turned to the bank management asking if there was a specific bank policy concerning Israel, and what they meant by "a country under embargo." The bank clarified that there is no official policy, and it was simply a mistake made by the teller.

Palestinian teachers have been on strike for several weeks, demanding higher wages that had been promised to them.

Understandably, Palestinians have been very interested in this story, because it affects their kids' futures - it might push the school year into the summer, forcing kids to study during Ramadan fasts, and some might not be ready for college entrance exams.

But Amira Hass of Haaretz is very frustrated that there is no anti-Israel angle to this story. Since that is all she knows how to write, she must invent one.

For the perplexed left, this strike doesn’t sit well with the definition of the Palestinians as victims and as combatants rightly opposing our violent rule. Some people don’t understand why teachers are investing their energies in internal matters. Why don’t they march up to army checkpoints and participate in demonstrations against the separation barrier? And how is it that they are demonstrating about wages while their current and former pupils take part in the lone-wolf uprising, being killed by Israeli gunfire?

However, if instead of converging on Manara Square these teachers were to march en masse towards the civil administration building, east of Ramallah, which houses the bureaucrats who represent the Israeli government, the real arbiter of everything, the IDF would massacre them. The wily Oslo accord turned official Palestinian institutions into a buffer zone between Palestinian subjects and the military rulers.

...The teachers are taking a stance not of victims, but as members of a society that knows it can be an agency of change, not just a needy and passive entity. At the same time, their protests relieve Israelis of the need to understand their own responsibility, as well as relieving pressure on Israel the occupier.

According to Hass and Haaretz, Palestinians simply do not have any responsibility - ever. They are always victims (except for when they cooperate with Israel; then they are monsters.)

In the incredibly condescending world of the radical Left who pretend to care so much about Palestinians, the Palestinians themselves have no more responsibility for their actions than animals do.

This anti-Arab racism of the Left is a truly remarkable phenomenon that is terribly under-reported. But you can see it every single day in Haaretz, +972 and other fringe publications that are taken seriously by too much of the world.

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The Las Vegas debate between J St and RJC is a failure before it begins

Tonight, there will be a much ballyhooed event in Las Vegas:

As described in the Jewish Journal last month:

The Republican Jewish Coalition and J Street are set to put aside their political differences for a brief pause to discuss the U.S.-Israel relationship next month in Las Vegas, according to a news release.In a first-of-its-kind event, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami and Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks will appear together on March 9th at Temple Beth Sholom to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relationship between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the policy preferences and beliefs of Jewish Americans, according to the organizers.PBS’ Jon Ralston will serve as moderator.The two organizations were on opposite sides of the aisle in last summer’s debate over the Iran nuclear agreement. J Street and the RJC are also fighting over the control of Congress in 2016, both invested in winning Congressional seats in battleground states across the country. J Street’s PAC has already announced it will spend as much as $3 million in over 100 local races across the country, challenging incumbents who have opposed the deal, while RJC aims to combat J Street race for race, and support the Republican incumbents.

The framing of this event is flawed and it cannot result in anything good for the American Jewish community.

The entire discussion is framed as a Democratic versus Republican discussion. Both Ben Ami and Brooks have a vested interest in keeping the event framed this way - Brooks because he wants to siphon Jews from the Democrats and Ben Ami because he wants to appear as if he is representing the Democratic pro-Israel center.

But this is false. Ben-Ami represents a fringe part of the Democratic Party. His J-Street is funding Democratic candidates who support the disastrous policies of the Obama White House - against Zionist, loyal Democrats who passionately oppose those policies. Where do they fit in this discussion?

Jeremy Ben Ami consistently claims that J-Street, by being for a two-state solution, is representative of the mainstream of American Jewish opinion. But even AIPAC and Bibi Netanyahu support a two-state solution. Ben Ami represents only the far Left view of "Israel is always wrong" - but that fact will not be revealed.

Ben-Ami is way out of the pro-Israel mainstream when he insists on the Green Line as being the start of all negotiations and the presumption that Jews have no rights in Judea and Samaria. (A truly pro-Israel supporter of the two state solution would want to keep as much of Judea and Samaria as possible as a beginning negotiating position and let the parties hammer out the details. Demanding that hundreds of thousands of Jews be ethnically cleansed from their homeland ab initio, and that Israel return to being nine miles wide, is not a pro-Israel position.)

Ben Ami is way out of the pro-Israel mainstream when he insists that Jerusalem be divided and the holy sites given to those who would happily slaughter any Jews who want to visit them.

Ben Ami is way out of the pro-Israel mainstream when his entire organization anti-democracy. J-Street is based on the idea that Israelis don't know what is good for them and that their democratically elected leaders are fanatics who must be taught a lesson about peace from their wise cousins who live thousands of miles away. J Street's entire purpose is to marginalize Israelis and tell the US to pressure Israel (and only Israel) to make more and more concessions for a peace deal while asking nothing from the Palestinians (and giving them veto power over any agreement that doesn't suit them.)

You can support a two-state solution - eliminating the demographic issues and minimizing the security issues - without starting negotiations from a position of giving everything up to begin with. But not according to J-Street.

These issues are what need to be debated with Jeremy Ben Ami - how he is betraying and misrepresenting Jewish American liberal Zionist positions as his own.

But that debate will not occur, because his opponent will happily agree that mainstream Jewish Democrats believe the same extreme positions as Ben Ami.

Look at Jeremy Ben Ami's Twitter feed. You will not find a single time that he has defended Israel. Ever. He has never defended its actions, its army, its leadership, or even its people against the lies and slanders. On the contrary, he has contributed much to the lies and half-truths about Israel. He is not pro-Israel no matter how many times he says he is. That is what must be discussed - how Ben Ami is not pro-Israel nor pro-democracy even from the perspective of liberal Jews.

But Brooks has no incentive to strengthen bipartisan support for Israel. He wants everyone to become Republican. That's his job.

The way that both sides approach the event is described in Jewish Insider:

Matt Brooks: ”When Jeremy and I meet tonight I look forward to a very engaging conversation on what it means to be pro-Israel in today’s climate and how we as a community can be most effective in representing the issues of concern within the Jewish community. There is a big difference in the views and tactics of RJC and J Street and tonight’s conversation will highlight and showcase those differences in a way that the community can discern and choose which is most effective and in the best interest of the Jewish people. This will be a civil discourse but no doubt I’m sure that we’ll see some real fireworks. The stakes are now more important than ever.”

Jeremy Ben-Ami writes… “My case is straightforward, based on data and experience from decades of national elections: Jewish voters support candidates who best reflect the values on which they were raised and policy positions that advance those values. Most Jewish voters support policies that make Israel safer not just against rockets but against some of the more fundamental threats to its future as a democratic Jewish homeland… Looking at the Republican field and particularly the present front-runner, I don’t envy Mr. Brooks — putting the metaphoric football down to yet again make the case that, yes, Charlie Brown, this is the year Jewish Americans will switch their allegiance to the Republican Party.”

So these issues which are vital to be exposed will instead be hidden. The mostly liberal Jewish audience will not be aware that they are being given a false choice between J-Street's disguised anti-Israel positions and those of a party that very possibly will be represented by Donald Trump (a theme that Ben Ami is anxious to hammer tonight.)

We do not need another reason to turn the question for support for Israel into a Republican vs. Democrat issue.

But that is inevitably going to happen tonight, and the losers will be a huge chunk of the American Jewish community who want to support Israel but do not want to vote Republican. And that is way too big a prize to sacrifice on the altar of partisan politics between J Street and the RJC.

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Iran Offers Jews Blood Of Homosexuals For Matzah (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tehran, March 9 - In the spirit of what it called religious tolerance for the minorities within its borders, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced today that it would supply the Persian Jewish community at no cost with all the blood it needs to prepare unleavened bread for Passover this year, citing the availability of a large number of homosexuals to be executed. Passover begins the night of April 22 this year.

Ayatollah Edwar Davnorweesh of the Isfahan Religious District sent a notice to the leaders of Iran's 9,000-strong Jewish community that the recent uptick in hangings and beheadings of gay men in the country meant that the government was in position of being able to supply hundreds of liters of human blood for purposes of preparing matza, and that the Jews would not need to furtively murder non-Jews this year in order to obtain the liquid.

"Our efforts to purify our land of homosexual scum have afforded us the opportunity to foster religious tolerance and enable others to follow their traditions at the same time," the announcement read. "The alacrity with which our enforcement mechanisms have apprehended, tried, and meted out the appropriate sentence to deviants has enabled us to offer, free of charge, all of the blood we can drain from the criminals' bodies to our cherished Jewish community for purposes of kneading into matza, as everyone knows is their ancient practice."

Davnorweesh promised that given the higher risk of homosexual blood containing HIV, it would be tested before being supplied to matza bakers. He expressed bewilderment that those facilities were not equipped with tanks to hold non-Jewish blood, and offered to provide that equipment as well if necessary.

Jewish leaders have yet to respond to the overture, which may or may not have been extended in good faith, according to analyst Maha Rahl, who studies Jewish-Iranian relations. "It's hard to shake the feeling there's something cynical going on on the part of the regime," she said. "At the same time, it would be unwise for this minority community to reject such a gesture. Their welfare is at the mercy of the Ayatollahs, and getting on the bad side of a newly empowered hardline government may not be the wisest thing when every move by the community is scrutinized for signs that they do not show enough gratitude for not being persecuted more, or, worse, hints of Zionism."

Community officials declined to answer questions regarding the possibility that homosexual blood might be unacceptable under Jewish ritual law.

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