From Ian:
Eugene Kontorovich: Why President Trump is keeping the promise made at San Remo in 1920
Eugene Kontorovich: Why President Trump is keeping the promise made at San Remo in 1920
It is easy to criticize the artificiality of the countries established by the League of Nations. But in a world, and particularly a region, where ethnic and religious groups live intermixed and not separated into grid-like boxes, some arbitrariness of borders is inevitable.PodCast: Clifford D. May on Antisemitism, Iran, and Israel
Every League of Nations-mandated territory lumped an unhappy minority in with a majority: the Muslims in with Lebanon’s Christians, the Kurds with Iraq’s Arabs, everyone with everyone in Syria. The process was imperfect, but the known alternatives are what existed before – a vast pan-ethnic empire – or every group trying to carve out its own sliver of territory, which ends up looking like Syria over the past eight years.
THIS IS why the post-World War I borders are overwhelmingly accepted as the binding sovereign borders of the countries that arose in the British Mandatory territories. Both Kurdish secession and Syrian annexation of Lebanon get no international support because they would call into question Mandatory borders.
There is one place in the Middle East where the international community takes the entirely opposite position about Mandatory borders. And that, of course, is Israel.
While the Pompeo statement did not say anything about borders, it did reclaim the San Remo principle that Jewish settlement is not illegal. The legal basis for this deserves some discussion.
Pompeo repudiated the conclusions of a 1978 memorandum by the State Department legal advisor Herbert Hansell. The memo’s conclusions had already been rejected by then-president Ronald Reagan, but it had never been formally retracted.
The four-page memo jumped in broad strokes across major issues, and cited no precedent for its major conclusions. Indeed, in the decades since, its legal analysis of occupation and settlements has consistently not been applied by the US, or other nations, to any other comparable geopolitical facts. It was always what lawyers call a “one-ride ticket” applicable just for Israel.
Hansell’s memo had two analytic steps. First, he concluded that Israel was an “occupying power” in the West Bank. That triggers the application of the Geneva Conventions. He then invoked an obscure provision of the Fourth Geneva Convention that had never been applied to any other situation before (or since). It says the “occupying power shall not deport or transfer its civilian population” into the territory it occupies.
Hansell, without much discussion, concluded that Jews who move just over the Green Line have somehow been “deported or transferred” there by the State of Israel. In short, he read a prohibition on Turkish-style population transfer schemes as requirement that Israel permanently prevent its Jews from living in those areas that Jordan had ethnically cleansed during its administration.
Under international law, occupation occurs when a country takes over territory that is under the sovereignty of another country. This is why borders of countries arising in former Mandatory territories are those of the relevant Mandate. That, for example, is why Russia is considered an occupying power in Crimea, even though most of its population is Russian and it has historically been part of Russia. Yet due to internal Soviet reallocations, when Ukraine became independent, Crimea was incorporated into the borders of its predecessor, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. For international law, this establishes clear Ukrainian sovereignty, even over the self-determination objections of a local ethnic majority.
Middle East Forum Radio host Gregg Roman spoke on December 18 with Clifford D. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), about the recent British election and the fight against antisemitism and radical Islamist actors in the Middle East.The Tikvah Podcast: Arthur Herman on China and the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship”
According to May, the victory of Boris Johnson and the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn, was first and foremost a resounding public endorsement of Brexit – the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. Though approved in a popular referendum three and a half years ago, parliament has voted against ratification three times, causing seething resentment across the political spectrum.
However, the scale of the Conservative victory underscored the public's rejection of the Labour Party's increasingly socialist platform and the virulent antisemitism of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. According to May, Corbyn's embrace of Hamas and Hezbollah alienated British Jews, long a mainstay of Labour's political base. Jews "had been leaving the Labour Party, some of them were packing their bags to go elsewhere – to Israel, the United States, Australia somewhere they feel safer," he said. "They can now unpack."
But the fight against antisemitism, an "ancient and shape-shifting pathology," is "not over in Britain by any means," May warned. Antisemitism, both in Britain and in the rest of the world, "is not going away, we're not going to cure this pathology. It can, however, be treated." He pointed to President Trump's recent executive order strengthening the protection of Jewish university students under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act as model of such treatment:
What President Trump did is to say antisemitism is rampant on American college campuses. As the laws are now interpreted, Jews are not protected as other minorities are. This executive order says Jews also should be protected as are other minorities facing discrimination.
May expects Prime Minister Johnson to use his stronger parliamentary mandate to promote policies combating antisemitism:
They're already talking about an anti-BDS resolution or law, understanding the extent to which BDS – a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions [against] Israel – is based on antisemitism and is fundamentally antisemitic in its intent. Boris Johnson seems to understand this. So this is good news. Both of these are battles won in this this endless war against this very specific brand of bigotry.
In both Israel and the United States, most politicians, foreign-policy experts, and citizens desire a strong and ever-closer relationship between the two nations. Israel and America share values, interests, and a deeply rooted biblical heritage that ties them inextricably together. But lately, U.S.-Israel relations have hit an impasse of sorts. As the Jewish state pursues greater economic ties with the People’s Republic of China, it has created new friction with America, which views China—rightly—as a geopolitical and economic rival.
In his December 2019 Mosaic essay, Hudson Institute scholar Arthur Herman delves into the sources of the U.S.-Israel tension caused by China and suggests a path forward. This new piece follows up on his 2018 essay, “Israel and China Take a Leap Forward-but to Where?” In this podcast, Herman joins host Jonathan Silver to discuss the evolving nature of Israel’s relationship with China, how that relationship has strained relations with Israel’s most reliable ally, and how Israel and the United States can best preserve their special relationship as they both seek to meet the challenge of China’s rise.













