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Emet m'Tsiyon

Sunday, June 28, 2020

Applying Israeli Sovereignty to Judea-Samaria Will Help the Cause of Justice & Peace

People the world over are looking at Israel, at Jerusalem, to see if and how Israel will apply its sovereignty to parts of Judea & Samaria. These areas are part of the Jewish National Home juridically erected by the international community at San Remo in 1920 & at the League of Nations in 1922. No subsequent piece of legislation in any international forum did or could have vitiated that part of international law.

Yet it is precisely on these grounds, the grounds of international law, that much of the criticism and/or hostile opposition to Israel's expected move is focussed. The expected hypocritical criticism has come from the European Union and the Arab states, with some voices in Europe, both governmental and among the public, being even more vituperative, if possible, than most Arab states. As to hypocrisy, neither the EU nor the Arabs have much to say about Turkey's occupation of northern Cyprus, going on since 1974, although Cyprus is itself a member of the EU!!!
Another source of hypocritical and/or historically ignorant criticism or vituperation comes from the so-called "Liberals" or "progressives" in the United States who mostly revolve politically around the Democratic Party. The Dem critics usually go off about Israel violating international law or Israel preventing peace by making a "two-state solution" more difficult or impossible to achieve, so forth and so on. Some Dems are worse.

Leading Democratic politicians, including the Dems' presumed presidential candidate, Joe Biden, have publicly opposed what they call Israel's "annexation" of territory assigned to the Jews on the grounds of historical right as part of the aforementioned Jewish National Home. Moreover, the Dems shamelessly or ignorantly overlook their own party's role in furthering the Nazi Holocaust, the Shoah. Indeed, every year they honor President Franklin Delano Roosevelt --a Democrat-- with a dinner and former president, Barak Hussein Obama, once said that FDR was his "role model". Yet FDR was a silent partner in the Shoah. The Dems have not yet agreed to acknowledge that. Let those who disagree with me about FDR and the Shoah produce some historical evidence that he tried to rescue or even allowed the rescue of more than a token number of Jews threatened by the German Nazis. How about evidence that FDR used his air power to destroy the gas chambers and the railroad tracks that led up to the death camps?

Now in view of the fact that much of the criticism of Israel's application of sovereignty claims to rest on international law, one of the major tasks of the Israeli government in moving toward the application of sovereignty and Israeli law to land that belongs to Israel lawfully is to explain and elaborate why the move is in consonance with international law and that it is just on historical and political grounds. Indeed the League of Nations mandate for Palestine writes in its Preamble:
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connexion of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country . . .

But  this and previous governments of Israel have been remiss in not emphasizing to the world our rights to the Land under international law. The web site The Israeli Settlement Blog is a good source of information not only on settlements but on the legal issues involved. Its section on the legality of settlements is especially helpful as it contains a large groups of informed articles on the legality of the settlements as well as of Israel ownership of the Judea-Samaria territory. See at link below:
http://theisraelisettlements.blogspot.com/p/settlements-legal-issues.html

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