T. Belman. This is a very accurate telling of each narrative by friend of mine from Toronto, Judith Shier Weisberg. It runs for 57 minutes and contains everything you need to know about Jewish rights and Palestinian lies. It also clearly makes the case that it is a lie to say that Israel is an occupier or that settlements are illegal. EXCELLENT.
Hadrian’s Curse
By Tsafrir Ronen z”l wrote this in 2008 and made a documentary on it. I believe much of this talk came from this article.
Hadrian’s Curse: The Secret All The Arabs Know (Part I)
At the Annapolis Conference, President Bush spoke about his vision regarding the virtues of two nations for two peoples.
One of those peoples the Jewish people has a clear identity. Yet it would be interesting to know the identity of the second people. Already in 1977, a central spokesman of that second people (a PLO leader, Zahir Muhsein, head of the as-Saiqa Organization) revealed the truth in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw. Here are his words:
The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ?Palestinian people to oppose Zionism for tactical reasons. Jordan, a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. As a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
Are you in shock? If the Palestinian people do not exist, what does exist? Arabs who live in Eretz Yisrael, and who have disguised themselves as Palestinians for fraudulent purposes. Only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel in Muhsein’s words. A fraud so successful that even George W. Bush can be found seeking a state for that fraud!
Do you think Zahir Muhsein is alone? This transparent fraud about the so-called existence of Palestine is revealed to us by all Arab leaders.
In 1974, the late Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad,declared, ‘It would be fitting for us to mention to the responsible Israeli authorities that we view Palestine not just as an inseparable part of the Arab nation, but also as a part of southern Syria.’ In 1987 he reiterated this at a conference in Amman by saying, “A country named ‘Palestine’ has never existed. Jordan’s King Hussein responded, “The appearance of the national Palestinian persona serves as a response to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.
Yet the prize goes to Yasir Arafat who, in 1970 with candid simplicity, told the reporter Arianna Palazzi,
“The question of borders doesn’t interest us. From the Arab standpoint, we mustn’t talk about borders. Palestine is nothing but a drop in an enormous ocean. Our nation is the Arabic nation that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond it. The PLO is fighting Israel in the name of Pan-Arabism. What you call ‘Jordan’ is nothing more than Palestine.”
Such revelations are an eye-opener for anyone who has not understood until now the masked ball being run by the Arabs. The true meaning of Arafat’s words “that Palestine is Jordan” is that for the Arabic people living under the “Pan-Arab” umbrella, in addition to over 20 Arabic countries, there is already a country called Jordan that was established by the British for the Arabs on 78 percent of the Land of Israel. This is land promised to the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922.
Anywhere else on earth, could an additional country be established for a people that already has 21 countries?
All the same, there is nothing like the testimony of a PLO founder, Ahmed Shukari. Already in 1956 he proclaimed from the UN podium, as the Arab League?s ambassador there, “Such a creature as Palestine does not exist at all. This land is nothing but the southern portion of Greater Syria”
And if Ahmed Shukari says that Palestine does not exist at all, the logical inference is that “Palestinians” also do not exist. That same Shukari was born to a Turkish mother in Lebanon, was a Jordanian lawyer, served as the Syrian ambassador to the UN, the Arab League’s ambassador to the UN, and the Saudi’s UN ambassador. In 1964, after this talented actor who changed loyalties like a chameleon was fired by the Saudis, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser hired him to found the PLO, an organization dedicated to the ‘liberation’ of a country that in his own words did not even exist.
All the prominent spokesmen of that poor, homeless ‘people’ openly say the following: The Arabs who live in Eretz Yisrael are precisely the same Arabs who live in Syria, Jordan or Lebanon. They are not a separate country, but a fragment of the enormous Arab nation divided among many Arab countries. In their identity they are Arabs, and the invention of Palestine is just a transparent bluff a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity.
Can any testimony be better than that of the Arabs themselves, by exposing the lies and deceptions involved in Palestine’s creation?
Yet the most compelling argument for the idea that the ‘Palestinian people’ is a fraudulent invention (and that the Arabs are all one people) was expounded by none other than Mr. Husseini, head of the Supreme Arab Committee to the UN special committee that was deliberating on Eretz Yisrael in 1947. Here are his words:
“An additional consideration of great importance for the Arab world is racial uniformity. The Arabs lived in a broad expanse stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. They spoke one language, and shared a common history, tradition and aspirations. Their unity was the solid foundation for peace in one of the most central and sensitive regions in the world. For that reason, it does not make sense that the United Nations should facilitate the establishment of a foreign entity within that well-rooted unity.”
Indeed, Husseini is correct. His declaration before the UN’s investigative committee exposes the simple fact that there is no ‘Palestinian’ language and no unique ‘Palestinian’ culture. The Palestinians are Arabs, and they cannot be set apart from the Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Remove from the argument the lies, and you reveal that the conflict is taking place between the Arabic, Muslim empire of 21 states and the Jewish people claiming their right to their one and only historic homeland, consisting of less than one fifth of one percent of the lands under Arab control.
This is the twisted story of the biggest, most unprecedented fraud in history. It involves such a successful bluff that many people have no doubt about its veracity. This propaganda has become a powerful weapon whereby Israel’s enemies, the Arabs, are trying to conquer Eretz Yisrael without firing a shot and without an army, tanks or jets.
Hadrian’s Curse: The Arabs’ Ultimate Goal (Part II)
Following the Six-Day War, the Arab countries, defeated by a small country determined to survive, understood that Israel would be unbeatable militarily. They understood that the Israeli Samson could only be vanquished through the cunning of the Philistine Delilah. And that’s what happened. Henceforth there would be no more cries firing up the masses to genocide but, instead, a complex melody carefully aimed at the delicate western ear. The Arabs discovered that it was easier to convince the world of the rights of the poor, small, deprived ‘Palestinian people’ to its own state than to justify the demand of the enormous Arab empire for more territory from a tiny country fighting for its life.
The Palestinian people are a deliberate fabrication of Arab countries defeated in battle, a ‘Trojan horse’ for conquering Eretz Yisrael, as Faisal Husseini said after the Oslo Accords.
So was born the worldwide propaganda campaign that turned matters on their head. The Israeli ‘David’ and Arab ‘Goliath’ begot an Israeli ‘Goliath’ oppressing a Palestinian ‘David.’ The object was to blot out the name and identity of ancient, Biblical Eretz Yisrael, and to turn it into ‘Palestinian’ land.
This lie gained such a strong foothold in the media and the bastions of liberalism that no one has paid any attention to the simple truths spoken openly by Zahir Muhsein, Hafez al-Assad, Ahmed Shukari, King Hussein or Yasir Arafat.
Through brainwashing, fabrications and taking advantage of the world’s ignorance and the international media’s superficiality, a process has been going on in broad daylight for several dozen years of rewriting history. As Goebbels and Hitler, the arch propagandists of the 20th century, said derisively, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe in it.
Feeding the Palestinian lie will put an end to the identity of Eretz Yisrael, and we, in turn, will lose our right to the Land. For if there are ‘Palestinians,’ that means there is also a land called Palestine and if there is a Palestine, there is no Eretz Yisrael.
The worst part of this is that many Israeli Jews have themselves fallen into the propaganda trap, and it is they who are letting in the Trojan horse that will destroy our Land?s identity. This war is not being waged by means of weapons and armies, or over physical territory. It is being waged on the battlefields of awareness of the Land’s identity. The Roman name ‘Philistia’ was a fiction invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian after the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 C.E., a fiction of Hadrian then and a fiction to the same degree of the Arabs today.
It is a fabrication that represents no people, not then and not today. It was conceived for one purpose only, namely to wipe out a land’s identity. If the land is called Palestine, the Jewish people are occupiers. If it is called Eretz Yisrael, the Arabs are occupiers.
The Palestinian identity is tactical, artificial and temporary, just a tool in the pan-Arab struggle against Israel. The amazing thing is that it’s all out in the open. Section 12 of the Palestinian charter, with these words, summarizes the idea of this temporary identity:
“The Palestinian people believe in Arab unification. It believes that in order to achieve this goal, it must, at this stage of its national struggle, preserve all the components of its Palestinian persona, increase awareness of its existence and reject all plans liable to weaken it or make it disappear.”
Are there another people in the world that writes in its charter the expression, ‘at this stage’? And what will be in the next stage? Obviously after conquering Israel, the territory will be divided between Arab countries, and those Arab countries will throw Palestine into the dustbin of history.
As Arafat said, the Palestinian people are a fiction. The same goes for the Jordanian people, and all the other Arabic-speaking peoples in the Middle East. They have no separate identities, but are part of the great Arab nation. By their self-definition, they cannot be divided into a number of peoples with individual identities. Rather they constitute one nation consisting of many states, as Arafat himself said in an incautious moment.
For the sophisticated Saudis, with their Saudi Peace Plan, it is clear that its purpose is not to actualize the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination for no such people exist. They conceal the truth that the great Arab nation has already actualized its right to self-determination by establishing a large number of countries, one of which extends over about 78 percent of the area of mandatory Eretz Yisrael. For the Arabs, exploding with laughter over the West’s foolishness, it is clear that if an additional Arab state arises in the western portion of Eretz Yisrael, it will not serve the right of self-determination, but rather the demand of imperial conquest of all of Eretz Yisrael by the Arab nation. Is George W. Bush & Co. dragging Israel to its destruction?
The Palestinian lie is exposed precisely when we listen to authentic Arab voices. The prominent Arab historian, Dr. Philip Hitti, expressed himself as follows at the 1947 Anglo-American commission of inquiry at the State Department: “Sir, Palestine never existed throughout history. Absolutely not!”
Professor Juhan Hazam, testifying at that same commission, said, ?Before 1917, when Balfour made his declaration, there had never been a Palestinian question, and there was no Palestine as a political or geographic unit.?
A local Arab leader, Abd al-Mahdi, testifying before the 1937 Peel Commission, said, “There is no such land. Palestine is a term invented by the Zionists. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our land was for hundreds of years a part of Syria.”
Were there the slightest truth to the claim regarding the historicity of a Palestinian people, we should certainly have expected to find it mentioned in the history books, encyclopedias and archaeological research.
Hadrian’s Curse: Will Israel Finish Hadrian’s Work? (Part III)
The way to Palestinian hell was paved with the good intentions of Christian Zionists like Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary. In the Balfour Declaration, and by the decree of the Mandate, Britain decided, based on historic rights, to grant Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish people. Yet, the declaration refers to “Palestine,” the very name given to that area by the Roman Emporer Hadrian. In his original use of the word “Palestine,” recalling the “Philistines, Hadrian’s intent had been to blot Eretz Yisrael off of the map.
From that moment on, the way was paved for the birth of the Palestinian lie.
Britain’s choice of Palestine was accidental. In its 1938 report to the League of Nations, it stated clearly: “The name ‘Palestine’ is not a country but a geographic region.” Yet its choice bore the seeds of destruction. Through it, the entire land became the stolen property of the Palestinian people, an ancient, rooted people, thousands of years old. This was such an incredible but successful fabrication that large portions of Israeli society fell into its snare.
No one could have imagined in 1917, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, that anyone would use the name Palestine to create a monstrous lie aimed at Israel’s destruction.
The reporter and writer Joan Peters, in her book From Time Immemorial, writes, “The one and only identity never adopted [by the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael] before 1967 was that of ‘Palestinian Arab.'”?
The Palestinian lie was not hatched by any land or any people, but by a map, a map drawn by two European colonial ministers: an Englishman, Herman Sykes, and a Frenchman, George Picot. On the map was written “Palestine.” It was clear to the British that Palestine as a sovereign political unit had never existed. No nation had ever borne its name. No people had ever prayed for its welfare. It was a name that hadn’t existed at all for 1,300 years, during which time (ironically enough) Muslim empires were dominant.
The Land regained independence only when the name “Eretz Yisrael” (the Land of Israel), the name in the hearts of the first Zionists, was restored to it. Had this identity not been preserved by the Jewish People, and had it not been preserved in the hearts of the Christian Bible-loving nations who made up the League of Nations, the national rebirth of the Jewish People might never have taken place.
The war being waged on millions of television screens the world over concerns the identity of Eretz Yisrael. It is being waged by means of the media, and it seems as though the Arabs have the upper hand. Israel conveys an impression of impotence, of not having yet even identified the battlefield on which its fate will be sealed.
While Israel prepares jets and tanks for a military struggle, Israel’s enemies are preparing their weapons for the final battle, for sticking the last dagger into the back of a State of Israel that does not understand and is not even ready for this battle. Unless Israel prepares for this battle, comes to understand its complexity and frees itself from false terminologies and constant brainwashing, Israel will be defeated and its land will be irrevocably taken from it.
Will Israel, which valiantly vanquished all the Arab armies when they attacked it, also know how to face this propaganda attack that is threatening to destroy it?
It would seem as though the battle is already decided. The Arab propaganda has already penetrated the nervous system and destroyed the immune system that defended the Jewish People for 2,000 years. Even the Israeli prime minister and foreign minister are saying that “Israel’s interest is to establish a Palestinian state.”
In other words, what they want is for the Bible to be rewritten and for King David’s land of the Bible to become the land of Goliath the Philistine.
Could anything be more insane? Is there another nation on earth that behaves this way?
Might Israel be beaten without a single shot fired? Might it simply hand over its land in the name of a wretched, coarse, primitive, charlatan canard, hiding the destruction that the Arabs are preparing for Israel? Could Israel’s leaders be too blind to see the danger looming? Will the vision of the prophets, fulfilled with the establishment of the State of Israel, bring with it the destruction of the identity of the Jewish people’s land? Will it be exchanged for the false identity of Hadrian’s “Palestine”?
The struggle against Israel was the glue that bound the Arab world, otherwise sunken in endless internal quarrels. The Arabs’ aim in fabricating Palestine was not to build a nation but to annihilate a nation. Yet to conceal that plan, they invented the strategy of “phases.” The first phase is the invention of a “Palestinian people.” The second phase is the liquidation of Israel, weakened and wearied after Oslo. All of these falsehoods are being marketed by the media, which is turning out to be an obsessive collaborator with the biggest lie on earth.
The question Israel faces is this: Will the Jews forego the name and the identity of their biblical land? Will the Christian world agree to concede the identity of the cradle of western civilization, the holy land, Eretz Yisrael?
It’s the twist of fate that for all this to happen, the Jews had to vanquish Hadrian completely, return to their land, establish sovereignty, resurrect the Hebrew language, establish a mighty army, industry, the best agriculture on earth, hi-tech, culture, song, dance, reestablish a nation, rebuild Jerusalem as their capital and settle every town and village that Hadrian destroyed. Have we possibly come full circle? Will Hadrian’s curse, which didn’t succeed for 1,800 years when Israel was in exile from its land, succeed now with Israel’s return? Will it be precisely the Israeli government that will resurrect Hadrian’s curse, previously lost in the depths of forgetfulness?
Today, 1,800 years later, an Israeli prime minister is calling for fulfilling what Hadrian failed to do the excision of Eretz Yisrael and the establishment of Palestine.
The Emperor Hadrian is smiling from the grave.
Tsafrir Ronen, was a member of the secular Kibbutz Ein Charod is a media personality, serves in an elite army unit, Sayeret Matkal, and was one of the founders of the “Nahalal Forum on Behalf of the Entire Eretz Yisrael.”
I believe Israel has legal rights to all Judah/Samaria in addition to all of Israel that it now governs by civil law.
Having said that these are debate or arguing points only. Land is controlled by force and taken by force. Just look at history. Some want this not to be so in the year 2015 but that is fact and reality.
@ mar55:
I agree. At the end of the day, “might makes right”.
@ mar55:
The reason I have requested deletion is because the comment from Bernard Ross supposedly was to be on quote. Instead the quote appears below from where i had it marked.
From Bernard Ross
In the end, the legal and diplomatic narratives depend on military power. The real value of those narratives is that it gives those who wish to continue relations with Israel an legal argument for so doing as well as giving Israel a legal argument if it actually ever exercised any rights of Jews.
@ nfarbstein:
Thank you again. I’m aware that the territories you are mentioning such as Judea and Samaria are ours and were illegally occupied by Jordan. I know the territorial history of Israel. What I was concerned is about the reality of how things work. I’m going to quote Bernard Ross paragraph above these.
In the end, the legal and diplomatic narratives depend on military power. The real value of those narratives is that it gives those who wish to continue relations with Israel an legal argument for so doing as well as giving Israel a legal argument if it actually ever exercised any rights of Jews.
Correction: Gaza was not occupied by Israel (it legally was ours subject to the Mandate for Palestine……
@ mar55:
Your welcome.
One thing I want to clarify as I wrote the above very quickly is regarding point (c) where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the State which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.
In other words, Judea and Samaria (what Jordan mistakenly called the “West Bank” while illegally occupying it after 1949) were always ours from time immemorial through the Mandate for Palestine. While we lost “political” control after defeat by the Romans in 135 AD. we maintained a continual physical presence there through today. In fact, there really is no “Arab” ethnicity and the term merely means “invader” or “bedouin”. More so, these “Arabs” or Bedouins from the Arabian peninsula ruled Israel for only approx. 100 years after which it was Turks and other ethnicities (Syrians, Egyptians, etc.) and they ruled mostly over Jews and some Christians .
However, regarding the other territories that we “occupied” defensively in the 1967 such as Sinai and Golan, Resolution 242 states that Israel only is required to withdraw its armed forces “from territories” it occupied during the Six-Day War–not from “the” territories nor from “all” the territories and only after “a just and lasting peace in the Middle East” is achieved.
While such a peace has not been achieved and likely never will be, Israel still has returned most of the territories it occupied, e.g. Sinai and Gaza (certainly no peace there).
@ bernard ross:
Thank you Bernard. I value your opinion. It makes sense
however, as always in these type of negociations things never get solved in the way we expect. It is always some maneuver we have not counted on and comes to the surface when we thought everything was done.
My pessimism perhaps comes from the fact I have not been feeling well lately. I would like to be alive until I go to
visit Jerusalem. After I do not care if I die.
In the end everything depends on military power. I hope Israel uses all its military power to prevail.
I pray for a miracle and building the third Temple. At least I can dream.
Abbas and Arab league will now be instructing israeli arab party on what to do in Israeli parliamentary votes.
@ mar55:
In the end, the legal and diplomatic narratives depend on military power. The real value of those narratives is that it gives those who wish to continue relations with Israel a legal argument for so doing as well as giving Israel a legal argument if it actually ever exercised any rights of Jews.
mar55 Said:
Sorry, somehow I missed this before
My view legally, is that there are ongoing rights and legal obligations which survive the mandate trust.
1- the Jewish people have a derived or acquired right that survives the mandatee and that all parties who signed the relevant treaties, the LON charter and the UN charter are legally obligated to fulfill those rights. this is a right of immigration and settlement to the former mandate territory. this is a right which is not synonymous with the state and citizens of Israel and can exist and operate completely separate from the state of Israel. this is my view was the prime directive of the mandate and treaties upon which it was base. Israels legal position as agent or successor being secondary.
2-there is a question as to whether Israel’s role is as successor to the Jewish Agency as the “agent” representing world Jewry or in my mind is defacto a successor to the British mandate trusteeship. In my view Israel has not operated de facto as an agent for the Jewish people as there appears to be a conflict between Israels lack of desire for soveriegnty over YS and the right of “world Jewry” to settle in YS. Israel appears to me to have cast itself separately from world Jewry, at least temporarily, as an occupying power similar to that of the British and Jordan.
3- My view is that there is no condition in which the state of Israel has any right to cancel the rights of Jews to settle in the mandate. It may prevent its own citizens from settlement but it still has an obligation, as would any entity administrating the territory, to settle Jews; this can be satisfied with diaspora jews. It may leave and abandon the west bank as a state but it should not do that morally until the west bank is operated by an entity guaranteeing the right of world Jewry to Immigrate and settle YS. basically as it has not annexed it is operating in the same capacity and legal obligation as a mandate trustee. In my view at this time the state of Israel is illegally obstructing Jewish settlement in YS in breach of international law.
4-Israel not only had a right to invade the west bank in a defensive war but also the right to protect the jewsih people and their rights and interests in the west bank.
My understanding is that Israel operates legally in its own courts under occupation law and its excuse for not annexing is that it wishes to share the land with the pals in a negotiated peace. However, I think it does not want the pals voting in Israeli elections and would feel obligated to grant them full rights if annexed. My own view is that area C can and should be legally annexed in accordance with mandate goals and that A&B should stay in occupation until a full and complete agreement is negotiated. that final agreement should grant a form of autonomy under the sovereignty of the state of Israel. I see no legal obligation to grant annexed areas citizens rights to vote in Israel.
the rights of Jews to immigrate and settle were the overiding prime directive. Under all circumstances Jews should be settled. the rights of pals were compromised by their own behavior and therefore must be curtailed until facts prove otherwise.
If Jews are not being settled then who will be settled? Not settling Jews is equivalent to stating that arabs have a greater right to settle the lands, and apparently area C has a lot of vacant land. The mandate never spoke of settling arabs. Jordan, Gaza and PA west bank are JEW FREE which demonstrates that they cannot be trusted to administrate any area of the mandate with freedom for Jews.
mar55 Said:
yes, but it might never be “settled” as a final agreement but rather a defacto acceptance of existing conditions over time.
In the meantime Israel could settle diaspora jews if not its own Jews, based on fulfilling the mandate which was obstructed under all prior admins. they dont need to annex or even to want the land to fulfill this legal and moral obligation.
As for 242 it is my view that the land aspects of 242 wrt the west bank are fully satisfied and superseded by the treaty between Jordan and Israel with internationally recognized boundaries at the Jordan river. There are no land interests or rights derived from 242 to the PLO and their only rights from 242 regards the refugee issue. I maintain it is false that Jordan transferred its interest to the PLO before the treaty and that the “transfer” was a PR announcement never legally consummated, this is proven by the fact that the subsequent treaty never mentioned any such interest showing that Jordan never sought to protect that “interest” whenn negotiating the treaty. The only argument is the principle of land being taken by force, but the land was taken by force when jordan illegally occupied it and Israels taking overturned that illegality.
it would be interesting to have 2 competing entities claiming to be palestine. Certainly Gaza, de facto , fulfills more criteria for statehood than the PA. how many palestines can one have? a declaration of a state in gaza, even if accepeted by the international community, would diminish PA claims in west bank.
Would they be asked to allow the pal refugees to immigrate to Gaza, i think this is the biggest deterrent to abbas or Haniyeh in seeking a negotiated state in a peace deal? Declaring a state and having Israel restrict immigration to it is much more desrable to them than actually having a free state with millions arriving at their door. 😛 😛 😛
@ nfarbstein:
Thank you again. It is good to know we can’t occupy what legally belongs to the State of Israel. The British have a lot to account to the world community for all the political partitions made in the past that have resulted in more division, hate and wars that could have been avoided. The world is suffering the consequences of their decisions for political expediency. Convenience rather than the common sense required when dealing with so many indigenous tribes in the ME and their territorial needs. Their tribal idiosyncrasies will have these people forever at war with one another.
Israel must do what is good for Israel and let the corrupted UN scream.
All together I thank you for the detailed analysis of the legal situation as it stands.
While Mrs. Weisberg’s history is interesting, and informative, there is a fatal flaw.
San Remo was a very flawed document.
Britain duplicitously put in escape clauses, and refused to prioritize Jewish rights over Arab right EXCEPT in the area of national rights.
San Remo enshrined Arab civil rights, which including building and voting rights. In fact, the Mandate did give voting/representation rights to Arabs, which proves the point. One makes a mistake to over look that.
If Jewish rights are inalienable by San Remo, so are Arab civil rights.
Under San Remo, the IDF would be required to try rock throwers under civil not military courts, etc.
A lot of Mrs. Weisberg’s history is good.
San Remo was NOT strong enough for what Zionists wanted. Even Weismann was upset at British duplicity, and thought the British were weak. Weismann wanted the Mandate to prioritize Jewish rights over Arab civil rights, but Britain refused to do so, for fear of violence.
This is why over-reliance on San Remo is flawed.
You may not like to hear that.
I am not against Israel; but San Remo is too flawed to over-rely on it.
You may not have a view opinion of my historical opinion.
But all of you have a rather accurate understanding of Britain’s depth of duplicity. Remember that, and then judge the merits of San Remo in that light.
Israel has stronger arguments than San Remo and should use them.
@mar55 (I am summarizing this from Judge Schwebel who clearly denotes Israel’s right to J&S and several other sources).
Regarding your last query on the status of the Mandate for Palestine today, it still is a legally binding document. Article 80, the UN cannot transfer these rights over any part of Palestine, vested as they are in the Jewish People, to any non-Jewish entity, such as the “Palestinian Authority.”
Under the Mandate, the Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem before the State of Israel was created. Thus, we are not occupiers in the land that we reclaimed in 1967.
After the 1967 war, Resolution 242 calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until “a just and lasting peace in the Middle East” is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces “from territories” it occupied during the Six-Day War–not from “the” territories nor from “all” the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
It is true that Resolution 242 above supports the general principle of international law that there shall be no weight to conquest, that the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible it must be read together with other general principles, among them the still more general principle of which it is an application, namely, that no legal right shall spring from a wrong, and the Charter principle that the Members of the United Nations shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State. So read, the distinctions between aggressive conquest and defensive conquest, between the taking of territory legally held and the taking of territory illegally held, become no less vital and correct than the central principle itself.
However, regarding any changes in the pre-existing [1949 armistice] lines, the above distinctions may be summarized as follows: (a) a State acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self defense; (b) as a condition of its withdrawal from such territory, that State may require the institution of security measures reasonably designed to ensure that that territory shall not again be used to mount a threat or use of force against it of such a nature as to justify exercise of self-defense; (c) where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the State which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.
The facts of the June 1967 “Six Day War” demonstrate that Israel reacted defensively against the threat and use of force against her by her Arab neighbors.
http://maurice-ostroff.tripod.com/id248.html
@ mar55:
@ nfarbstein:
Thank you for the clarification. I did not know the difference that is why I asked.
This is a great presentation. One thing I would say is that on her discussion regarding San Remo she should have added the distinction between what was said/written regarding Mesopotamia and Syria as compared to Israel (a.k.a. Palestine).
While all three were to be subject to Article 22 of the League of Nations, only Mesopotamia and Syria specifically were subject to Paragraph 4 of said Article (or what mistakenly is referred to as “Class A” by Israels detractors”).
Clearly, if one reads the Mandate for Palestine this issue (if it is an issue at all) is null and void. Under its terms, clearly the Jews are to inherit “Palestine.” In fact, minorities were only to receive civil and religious rights, but Jews were specifically to receive Political rights. Further, Article 6, calls for close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
However, it still is important to stress this distinction, especially to prevent detractors and ignoramus from misrepresenting the truth.
p.s. I had a professor (a Cypriot) in a IR class teach that Palestine was a “Class A” mandate. I had predicted this would happen given the syllabus and came prepared. I jumped out of my seat holding the San Remo Resolution and exclaimed to the contrary. The class nearly turned into a brawl which I was ready for.
This question is for Bernard Ross:
What is the legal position of the League of Nations’ mandate? So much time has passed since the 1920s. Do you think that the ‘verdict’ will be settled by political and military maneuvering and force, as it has been in the past?
Ted: I have forwarded this video to 43 people. Plus two more who I wanted to send with an additional note. I eliminated from my list 13 who have lost their brains.
I think it is the most complete ME history lesson I have seen. Forgotten was how the Russians brought Arafat from Tunisia to exploit the West with the false narrative and the tactics learned from them as to how to milk the naivete from Western countries to become a millionaire
which he did. But that part was not so important to the narrative. South Syrians I remember years ago reading about them. Jordan stealing the land that was to be restore to the Jewish nation. It covers everything. Excellent. Thank you.