100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference

25April2020 is the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference

6 Facts That You Need to Know About Israel’s Legal Rights

What the Experts say.

6 Facts That You Need to Know About Israel’s Legal Rights

אם תרצו – Im Tirtzu 13January2019


Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs logo https://jcpa.org/

100 Years Since the San Remo Conference

Amb. Dore Gold April 22, 2020 https://jcpa.org/100-years-since-the-san-remo-conference/

Delegates to the San Remo conference in Italy, 25 April 1920

Delegates to the San Remo conference in Italy, 25 April 1920

In April 2020, the Jewish people will be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, convened in Italy from April 19 until April 26, 1920, in the aftermath of the First World War. British Prime Minister Lloyd George and his minister of foreign affairs, Lord Curzon, attended along with the prime ministers of France and Italy. Representatives of Belgium, Greece, and Japan also took part. They constituted what was called the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers. Most people have heard of the other great postwar conferences, like the Paris Peace Conference or the Geneva Conferences at the end of World War II. But San Remo has not been on many people’s radar screens, despite the fact that it created the geographic basis of the modern Middle East for most of the 20th century.

San Remo dealt with the disposition of territories that until 1920 were a part of the Ottoman Empire, which had been defeated in the war. Formally, the Ottomans renounced their claim to sovereignty over these lands, sometimes called Arab Asia, in the Treaty of Sevres, which was signed the same year as San Remo, on August 10, 1920. It was at Sevres that a draft peace agreement between the allies and the Ottoman Empire was worked out. What these postwar treaties enabled was the emergence of the system of Arab states, on the one hand, and the emergence of a ”national home for the Jewish people,” on the other hand. The Balfour Declaration from 1917 was in essence a declaration of British policy. But San Remo converted the Balfour Declaration into a binding international treaty, setting the stage for the League of Nations Mandate, which was approved in 1922. It has been noted that at San Remo, Jewish historic rights became Jewish legal rights.

Were these legal rights of the Jewish people superseded in subsequent years? At the time that the UN Charter was drafted in 1945, officials were cognizant that this argument might be raised. Therefore, they incorporated Article 80 into the UN Charter which stated specifically that “nothing in this chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United  Nations may respectively be parties.” Thus, the foundations of Jewish legal rights established through San Remo were preserved for the future.
Amb. Dore Gold
Ambassador Dore Gold has served as President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs since 2000. From June 2015 until October 2016 he served as Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously he served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999), and as an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.


International Law Expert Prof. Avi Bell Discusses Israel’s Legal Rights

אם תרצו – Im Tirtzu 27April2020

TOP

[This should be the first step in regaining our land from the Arab thieves. Next all of Area C and expel the Arabs from Area B then Area A.]

Does the Term “Annexation” Even Apply?

TheJerusalemCenter 18May2020

It so happens that this year is the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, where the victorious allied powers from World War I divided the Ottoman Empire and proposed Mandates for the former territories of Ottoman Asia. The territory that was to become British Mandatory Palestine was designated as a future Jewish National Home already then. British diplomacy in 1920 set the stage for not only the emergence of Israel in 1948, but also the entire system of Arab states. This history is pertinent to the debate that has emerged about Israel retaining parts of the West Bank this year in fulfillment of the Trump Plan. It is commonly referred to as “annexation” and states have pointed out that they oppose the annexation of someone else’s territory. The statute of the International Criminal Court in fact defines as one of the acts that constitutes the crime of aggression specifically as the annexation of the territory of another state.

So is it correct to label Israeli actions with respect to the West Bank “annexation?” Can you annex territory that has already been designated as yours?

Indeed, annexation resulting from aggression is unacceptable. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus was an act of aggression. The Russian invasion of Crimea was an act of aggression. Israel in the West Bank is an entirely different story. In addition to the designation of these territories as part of the Jewish national home, one must remember that the West Bank was captured by Israel in a war of self-defense in 1967. That makes all the difference. The great British authority on international law, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, drew a distinction between unlawful territorial change by an aggressor and lawful territorial change in response to an act of aggression.

It would be more correct not to use the term “annexation” but rather “the application of Israeli law to parts of the West Bank.” The idea that the Jewish national home applied there was backed by much of the international community from San Remo onwards. Even Article 80 of the UN Charter established that national rights from the period of the League of Nations carried over to the newly established United Nations.

In 1920 British leadership under Prime Minister Lloyd George was pivotal in protecting Jewish national rights. Today, 100 years later, British leadership should follow that example.

https://www.jpost.com/

Mobster storms Palestinian town to get back beloved horse

‘Nissim would make sure that they would go in and get the horse out. This is a horse that he raised like a baby.’

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF 19MAY2020 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/mobster-storms-palestinian-town-to-get-back-beloved-horse-628562

One thief definitely bet on the wrong horse when he decided to steal a head mobster’s favorite equine friend. Nissim Alperon, the head of a large mob family, led his private army into a Palestinian city just to get the stolen horse back.

Without consulting the IDF, Alperon led a convoy of ten vehicles into Qalqilya, located under Palestinian control in the West Bank east of Kfar Saba, to retrieve the horse, according to Channel 13.

Shalom Zohar, a friend of Alperon’s, told Channel 13 that “this horse was getting out of there even if 200 or even 300 Israelis had to enter [the town]. Nissim would make sure that they would go in and get the horse out. This is a horse that he raised like a baby.”

Alperon, who has survived multiple assassination attempts, realized that his horse, worth about NIS 300,000, had been stolen. It’s unclear if the thief realized who he was stealing from.

“We activated some connections with pretty respectable people on the Palestinian side. We really went in to Qalqilya, a half hour after the Ramadan fast ended. We arrived at the Palestinian police and demanded the horse,” said Zohar. “A gathering started of all sorts of residents who didn’t look kindly at the Israelis coming right up to their homes. There was a really big concern that there would be some sort of lynching, so the Palestinian Authority sent their police forces and succeeded in moving the crowd a bit.”

While they waited for the horse, the mobsters sat with the Palestinian police and had some kanafeh (a traditional sweet pastry) and sweets.

After being in the village for a number of hours, Zohar, a businessman from Samaria and the one responsible for the negotiations, received a phone call from the officers in the PA and was told to wait at the entrance to Qalqilya, according to Channel 13. The horse was eventually brought to the mobsters and they left the area and returned home.

TOP


San Remo Conference – ועידת סן רמו

wzo 26April2020

לפני 100 שנה, ב 26/4/1920, הכריעו המעצמות המנצחות בסן רמו שבאיטליה לקבל את תביעת ההסתדרות הציונית על הקמת מדינה יהודית בארץ ישראל. ההחלטה מוועידת סן רמו היא מסמך מחייב של המשפט הבינלאומי ומעניקה לעם היהודי את הזכות המלאה על ארץ ישראל כולה. העבירו הלאה והגבירו את המודעות. Exactly 100 years ago, on April 26, 1920, in San Remo, Italy, a historic event occurred for the Jewish people.
The leaders of the victorious Allied Powers in World War I complied with the demands of the World Zionist Organization and acknowledged the rights of the Jewish people to an independent state in the Land of Israel.
The decision was at least as important as the Balfour Declaration and the United Nations vote of November 29th, 1947.
The resolution of the San Remo Conference is a binding document of international law, which to this day gives the Jewish people the legal right to the entire Land of Israel.
Unfortunately, the San Remo Conference and its historic decision, is almost unknown to the world, even in Israel. Therefore we at the World Zionist Organization decided to produce a video that will explain in 100 seconds about the San Remo conference held 100 years ago.

TOP

Balfour Declaration

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs logo

https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/the%20balfour%20declaration.aspx
The Balfour Declaration
November 2, 1917

During the First World War, British policy became gradually committed to the idea of establishing a Jewish home in Palestine (Eretz Yisrael). After discussions in the British Cabinet, and consultation with Zionist leaders, the decision was made known in the form of a letter by Arthur James Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild. The letter represents the first political recognition of Zionist aims by a Great Power.

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour

 

Lord Balfour

Lord Balfour

 

TOP

San Remo conference

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Remo_conference

1920 mandate for Palestine

1920 mandate for Palestine

The San Remo conference was an international meeting of the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council as an outgrowth of the Paris Peace Conference, held at Villa Devachan in Sanremo, Italy, from 19 to 26 April 1920. The San Remo Resolution passed on 25 April 1920 determined the allocation of Class “A” League of Nations mandates for the administration of three then-undefined Ottoman territories in the Middle East: “Palestine”, “Syria” and “Mesopotamia”. The boundaries of the three territories were “to be determined [at a later date] by the Principal Allied Powers”, leaving the status of outlying areas such as Zor and Transjordan unclear.

The conference was attended by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the prime ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Alexandre Millerand), Italy (Francesco Nitti) and by Japan‘s Ambassador Keishirō Matsui.

Agreements reached

The decisions of the San Remo conference confirmed the mandate allocations of the Conference of London. The San Remo Resolution adopted on 25 April 1920 incorporated the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations were the basic documents upon which the British Mandate for Palestine was constructed. Under the Balfour Declaration, the British government had undertaken to favour the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. Britain received the mandate for Palestine and Iraq.

If you think there are Palestinian people look at their roots, their surname or family name.

Common Palestinian surnames that confirm where 'Palestinians' originate from

Common Palestinian surnames that confirm where ‘Palestinians’ originate from

The Hauranite Invasion

The Hauranite Invasion

No matter what lies the Arab claim about the land of Eretz Israel, this is the reality of the time. The British Mandate for Palestine was both Eretz Israel and TransJordan. The Jews were in Eretz Israel and the Arabs were from other parts.

100,000 Illegal Arab Migrants

100,000 Illegal Arab Migrants

Jerusalem-80-percent- Jewish-British-1864-Census

Jerusalem-80-percent- Jewish-British-1864-Census

The Demography of Palestine

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/british_mandate_for_palestine

During the mandate era, two different social systems developed under one political framework, a Jewish one and an Arab one. Each society had its own welfare, educational, and cultural institutions and they gradually became politically and economically independent of one another.

The Zionist movement, for its part, operated along two main axes: the acquisition of land and immigration. Private capital and Zionist institutions purchased large-scale tracts of land, including from Arab landowners. Jewish immigration and the natural growth of the Arab population in Palestine dramatically transformed the demography of Mandatory Palestine as it grew from approximately 700,000 inhabitants in 1922 to around 1,800,000 in 1945. The Arab population doubled, while the Jewish population grew tenfold.

Mark Twain's Palestine

Mark Twain’s Palestine


100 Years Since the San Remo Conference

TheJerusalemCenter 06May2020

See more Diplomatic Dispatch videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1uUSrjSnB01cffzLv7A9tLLKcACZMS_c

The San Remo Conference transformed the Balfour Declaration into a binding international treaty, setting the stage for the League of Nations Mandate in 1922. Thus, at San Remo, Jewish historic rights became Jewish legal rights. Join Ambassador Dore Gold in conversation with Chris Matthews of the European Coalition for Israel, on San Remo’s enduring significance.

In April 2020, the Jewish people commemorated the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, convened in Italy from April 19 until April 26, 1920. British Prime Minister Lloyd George and his minister of foreign affairs, Lord Curzon, attended along with the prime ministers of France and Italy. Representatives of Belgium, Greece, and Japan also took part. They constituted what was called the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers.

Most people have heard of the other great postwar conferences, like the Paris Peace Conference or the Geneva Conferences at the end of World War II. But San Remo has not been on many people’s radar screens, despite the fact that it created the geographic basis of the modern Middle East for most of the 20th century.

San Remo dealt with the disposition of territories that until 1920 were a part of the Ottoman Empire, which had been defeated in the war. Formally, the Ottomans renounced their claim to sovereignty over these lands, sometimes called Arab Asia, in the Treaty of Sevres, which was signed the same year as San Remo, on August 10, 1920. It was at Sevres that a draft peace agreement between the allies and the Ottoman Empire was worked out. What these postwar treaties enabled was the emergence of the system of Arab states, on the one hand, and the emergence of a ”national home for the Jewish people,” on the other hand. The Balfour Declaration from 1917 was in essence a declaration of British policy. But San Remo converted the Balfour Declaration into a binding international treaty, setting the stage for the League of Nations Mandate, which was approved in 1922. It has been noted that at San Remo, Jewish historic rights became Jewish legal rights.

Were these legal rights of the Jewish people superseded in subsequent years? At the time that the UN Charter was drafted in 1945, officials were cognizant that this argument might be raised. Therefore, they incorporated Article 80 into the UN Charter which stated specifically that “nothing in this chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.” Thus, the foundations of Jewish legal rights established through San Remo were preserved for the future.

* * *
“Diplomatic Dispatch” is a new series of video briefings on strategic issues that Israel faces today by Jerusalem Center President Dore Gold, produced by the Center’s Institute for Contemporary Affairs, founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation.


Dore Gold Cambridge Jerusalem Speech and QnA

TheJerusalemCenter 29January2018


100 years of San Remo and Jewish Self Determination by Natasha Hausdorff

UKLFI Charitable Trust UK Lawyers for Israel 25April2020

‘100 years of San Remo and Jewish Self Determination’

Natasha Hausdorff explains how the San Remo Conference rebuts the myth of Israel as a colonialist entity and recognised the millennia-long association of Jews with the Land of Israel.

Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister at 6 Pump Court Chambers. She has a law degree from Oxford University and qualified as a solicitor at the American commercial law firm Skadden, working for them in London and Brussels. She subsequently gained an LLM from Tel Aviv University, where she focused on public international law and the law of armed conflict. She has clerked for the President of the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem, Chief Justice Miriam Naor, and acquired a particular insight into the Israeli Courts’ application of international law. She is based in London where she combines her barrister’s practice with lecturing on international law. Natasha is a director of UK Lawyers for Israel and sits on the Committee of the UK Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.

All About the Facts

Legal Grounds 13August2017
Narrative, shmarrative! This biting musical parody, featuring the talented Latma team, will have you laughing out loud. To learn more about the actual facts, see: http://legalgroundscampaign.org/en/the-facts/

TOP

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs logo

The 1922 Mandate for Palestine

https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/the%20mandate%20for%20palestine.aspx
The Mandate for Palestine July 24, 1922

The mandates for Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine were assigned by the Supreme Court of the League of Nations at its San Remo meeting in April 1920. Negotiations between Great Britain and the United States with regard to the Palestine mandate were successfully concluded in May 1922, and approved by the Council of the League of Nations in July 1922. The mandates for Palestine and Syria came into force simultaneously on September 29, 1922. In this document, the League of Nations recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and the “grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

TOP

Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

21July2023  https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2023/07/written-100-years-ago-david-lloyd.html

Written 100 years ago: David Lloyd George’s essay on antisemitism and Zionism still resonates

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George

 

This essay, by former British premier David Lloyd George, was published in many newspapers during July 1923.

Strangely enough, I did not find the full contents online in any digital text format, so I transcribed it and am publishing it here.
The essay is notable for a number of reasons.
It describes antisemitism in an accurate way that is just as true today as it was a century ago.
It argues that only Jews can possibly turn what he describes as the neglected wasteland of Palestine into a successful nation.
He notes that antisemites love the oppressors of the Jews no matter how vile they are.
And he argues that Zionism is not meant to be for Jewish supremacy but to give Jews equal rights among the nations.
If anything, Lloyd was too pessimistic. He said that the land could not be restored in a single generation, and could not have imagined that the Jews would have turned the country into a workable independent nation in only 25 years.


 

London, July 14 (1923) —Of all the bigotries that savage the human there is none so stupid as the antisemitic. It has no basis in reason—it is not rooted in faith—it aspires to no ideal —it is just one of those dank and unwholesome weeds that grow in the morass of racial hatred.

 

How utterly devoid of reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost confined to nations who worship the Jewish prophets and revere the national literature of the Hebrews as the only inspired message delivered by the Deity to mankind, and whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and promises of the great teachers of Judaism.

 

Still, in the sight of these fanatics, Jews of today can do nothing right. If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor they are vermin. If  they are in favor of a war, that is because they want to exploit the bloody feuds of Gentiles to their own profit. If they are anxious for peace they are either instinctive cowards or traitors. If they give generously – and there are no more liberal givers than the Jews .-. they are doing it for some selfish purpose of their own. If they don’t give—then what would one expect of a Jew?

 

If labor is oppressed by great capital, greed of the Jew is held responsible. If labor revolts against capital—as it did in Russia—the Jew is blamed for that also. If he lives in a strange land he must be persecuted and pogrommed out of it. If he wants to go back to his own he must be prevented. Through the centuries, in every land, what ever he does or intends or fails to do, has been pursued by the echo of the brutal cry of the rabble of Jeru-salem against the greatest of all Jews—”Crucify Him !”

 

No good has ever come of nations that crucified Jews, It is poor and pusillanimous sport lacking all true qualities of manliness. and those who indulge in it would be the first to run away were there any element of danger in it. Jew baiters are generally of the type that found good reasons for evading military service when their own country was in danger.

 

The latest exhibition of this wretched indulgence is the agitation against settling poor Jews in the land their fathers made famous. Palestine under Jewish rule once maintained a population of 5,000,000. Under the blighting rule of the Turk it barely supported a population of 70,000. The land flowing with milk and honey is now largely a stoney and unsightly desert. To quote one of the ablest and most farsighted business men of today, “It is a land of immense possibilities in spite of the terrible neglect of its resources resulting from Turkish misrule. Its glorious estate has been let down by centuries of neglect. The Turks cut down the forests and never troubled to replant them. They slaughtered the cattle and never. troubled to replace them.”

 

It is one of the peculiarities of the Jew hunter that he adores the Turk.

 

If Palestine is to be restored to a condition even approximating to its ancient prosperity it must be by settling Jews on its soil. The condition to which the land has been reduced by centuries of the most devastating oppression in the world is such that restoration is only possible by a race that is prepared for sentimental reasons to make and endure sacrifices for the purpose.

 

What is the history of Jewish settlement in Palestine? It did not begin with the Balfour declaration. A century ago there were barely 10,000 Jews in the whole of Palestine. Before the war there were 100,000. The war considerably reduced these numbers, and immigration since 1918 has barely filled up gaps. At the present timorous rate of progress it will to many years before it reaches 200,000.

 

Jewish settlement started practically 70 years ago. It started with in 1854 — another war year. The Sultan had good reasons for propitiating Jews in that year, just as the Allies had in 1917. So the Jewish settlement of Palestine began. From that day onward it has proceeded slowly but steadily. The land available was not of the best. Prejudices and fears had to be negotiated. Anything in the nature of wholesale expropriation of Arab cultivators, even for cash, had to be carefully avoided. The Jews were therefore often driven to settle on barren sand dunes and malaria swamps.

 


Everywhere the Jew cultivator produces heavier and richer crops than his Arab neighbor. He has introduced into Palestine more scientific methods of cultivation, and his example is producing a beneficent effect on the crude tillage of the Arab peasant. It will be long ere Canaan becomes once more a land flowing-with milk and honey. The effects of fie neglect and misrule of centuries cannot be effaced by the issue of a declaration. The cutting down of trees has left the soil unprotected against heavy rains, and rocks which were once green with vineyards and olive groves have been swept bare. Terraces which ages of patient industry built up have been destroyed by a few generations of Turkish stupidity. They cannot be restored in a. single generation. Great irrigation works must be constructed if the settlement is to proceed on a satisfactory scale.

 

Palestine possesses in some respects advantages for the modern settler which to its ancient inhabitants were a detriment.

 

Its one great river with its two tributaries are rapid and have a great fall. For power this is admirable. Whether for irrigation or for the setting up of new industries, this gift or nature to Palestine is capable of exploitation impossible before the scientific discoveries of the last century. The tableland of Judea has a. rainfall which if caught in reservoirs at appropriate centers would make of the “desert of Judea” a garden. If this were done, Arab and Jew alike would share in the prosperity.

 

There are few countries on earth which have made less of their possibilities. Take its special attractions for tourists. I was amazed to find that visitors to Palestine in the whole course of a year only aggregate 15,000. It contains the most famous shrines in the world. Its history is of more absorbing interest to the -richest people on earth, and is better taught to their children, than even that of their own country. Some or its smallest villages are better known-to countless millions than many a prosperous modern city.

 

Hundreds of thousands ought to bow visiting this sacred land every year.- Why are they not doing so? The answer is Turkish misrule scared away the pilgrims. Those who went there came back disillusioned and disappointed. The modern “spies” on their return did not carry with them luscious grapes of Eshcol to thrill the multitude with a desire to follow their example. They brought home depressing tales of squalor, discomfort and exaction which dispelled the glamour and discouraged further pilgrimages.. The settled Government gives the Holy Land its first chance for 1900 years. But there is so much undeveloped country demanding the attention of civilization that Palestine will lose that chance unless it is made the special charge of some powerful influence, The Jews alone can redeem. it from the wilderness and restore its ancient glory.

 

In that trust there is no injustice to any other race. The Arabs have neither the means, the energy nor the ambition to discharge this duty. The British Empire has too many burdens on its shoulders to carry this experiment through successfully. The Jewish race, with its genius, its resourcefulness, its tenacity and, not least, its wealth, can alone performs this essential task. The Balfour declaration is not an expropriating but-an enabling clause. It is only a charter of equality for Jews. Here are its terms:

 

“His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this. object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights or existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” 

 

This declaration was subsequently endorsed and adopted by President Wilson and the French and Italian foreign ministers.
The Zionist ask for no more. It has been suggested by their enemies that they are seeking to establish a Jewish oligarchy in Palestine that will reduce the Arab inhabitant to a condition or servitude to a favored Hebrew minority. The answer to that charge is to be found in the memorandum submitted by the Zionist Association to
the League of Nations:

“The Jews demand no privilege unless it be the privilege of rebuilding by their own efforts and sacrifices a land which,- once the seat of a thriving and productive civilization, has long been suffered. to remain derelict. They expect no favored treatment in the matter of political or religious rights. They assume as a matter of course that all inhabitants of Palestine, be they Jews or non-Jews, will be in every respect on a footing of perfect equality. They seek no share in Government beyond that to which they may be entitled under the constitution as citizens of the country. They solicit no favors. They ask, in short, no more than an assured -opportunity of, peacefully building up their national home by their own exertions and of succeeding on their merits.” 

 

This is a modest request which these exiles from Zion propound to the nations. And surely it is just for it to be conceded, and, if conceded.- then to be carried out in the way men of honor fulfill their bond.

 

There are 14 millions of Jews in the world. They belong to a race which for at least 1900 years has been subjected to persecution, pillage, massacre and the torments of endless derision, a race that has endured persecution which, for variety of torture, physical, material and mental inflicted on its victims; for the virulence and malignity with which it has been sustained; for the length of time it has lasted, and, more than all, for the fortitude and patience with which it has been suffered, is without parallel In the history of any other people.

 

Is it too much to ask that those amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land their father made holy by the splendour of their genius, by the loftiness of their thoughts, by the consecration ‘of their lives and by the inspiration of their message to mankind?.

TOP

Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

JerusalemCats Comments: This is why you need to control your Borders! 1922 Census proof of Illegal Arab immigration from Syria, Transjordan and Arabia

British census in 1922 says that lots of Arabs came to Beersheva from Transjordan and Arabia

Elder of Ziyon 18May2020 http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2020/05/british-census-in-1922-says-that-lots.html

From the British census of Palestine in 1922, which put the population of the Beersheba district at 75,254:

Click to download PDF file  Click to download British census of Palestine in 1922 or PalestineCensus1922

The Ottoman authorities in 1914 placed the tribal population of Beersheba at 55,000, and since that date there has been a migration of tribes from the Hejaz and Southern Transjordan into the Beersheba area mainly as a result of succession of adequate rainfalls and of pressure exerted by other tribes east of the River Jordan.

That is some 20,000 Arabs who came from southern Jordan and from the Hejaz area of Saudi Arabia to settle in Beersheba, increasing the population there by close to 40% in a few years.

People tend to forget that Arabs (especially the Bedouin represented here, but also other Arabs) never considered any national boundaries as being meaningful. They freely moved from one area to another. We’ve noted this before with a major influx of Arabs from the Hauran area of Syria in the early 1930s because of a drought:

The Hauranite Invasion

The Hauranite Invasion

Which was preceded by as many as a hundred thousand more illegal Arab immigrants in the late 1920s (with one arguing that the 1922 census

100,000 Illegal Arab Migrants

100,000 Illegal Arab Migrants

What do all of these people have in common?

They are all considered “Palestinians” today, and to have lived in Palestine for centuries beforehand.

In fact, a significant number of Arabs who lived in Palestine in 1948 were there for far less time than the 72 years since.

TOP

 

Adam-Millstein-tweet-03July2020 Jews are from Judea, Arabs are from Arabia! The simple truth by a young and proud Jewish-American member of ClubZ (Z for Zionism). Judea and Samaria are an integral part of the biblical land of Israel.

Adam-Millstein-tweet-03July2020 Jews are from Judea, Arabs are from Arabia! The simple truth by a young and proud Jewish-American member of ClubZ (Z for Zionism). Judea and Samaria are an integral part of the biblical land of Israel.

 

TOP

NATIONAL HOME FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE- JUNE 30, 1922

The U.S. Congress in 1922 March 7, 2008 | Eli E. Hertz http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=100
On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the “Mandate for Palestine,” confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:“Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.“Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.” [italics in the original]On September 21, 1922, the then President Warren G. Harding signed the joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine.Here is how members of congress expressed their support for the creation of a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine – Eretz-Israel (Selective text read from the floor of the U.S. Congress by the Congressman from New York on June 30, 1922). All quotes included in this document are taken verbatim from the given source.

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD 1922 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NATIONAL HOME FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE
JUNE 30, 1922 HOUSE RESOLUTION 360

(Rept. NO. 1172)
Representative Walter M. Chandler from New York – I want to make at this time, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House, my attitude and views upon the Arab question in Palestine very clear and emphatic. I am in favor of carrying out one of the three following policies, to be preferred in the order in which they are named:

(1) That the Arabs shall be permitted to remain in Palestine under Jewish government and domination, and with their civil and religious rights guaranteed to them through the British mandate and under terms of the Balfour declaration.

(2) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, they shall be required to sell their lands at a just valuation and retire into the Arab territory which has been assigned to them by the League of Nations in the general reconstruction of the countries of the east./

(3) That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, under conditions of right and justice, or to sell their lands at a just valuation and to retire into their own countries, they shall be driven from Palestine by force.

The 1924 Anglo-American Convention on Palestine

http://www.think-israel.org/belman.israelownssamariajudea.html

Click to download PDF file   Click to Download  1924-Anglo-American-Convention

  1. The United States of America ratified a treaty with the British Government known as the Anglo-American Treaty of 1924, which included by reference the aforementioned Balfour Declaration and includes, verbatim, the full text of the Mandate for Palestine.

    “Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on the 2nd of November 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…”

    The United States of America is legally bound to the principles contained in the “Balfour Declaration” and the “Mandate for Palestine.”

2. The British Mandatory was not a sovereign. All its rights and obligations relating to Palestine, emanated from the Mandate of Palestine. The Mandatory was a trustee for the League of Nations, and it was not given the power to take any steps which violated the terms of the Mandate. It could not change the terms of the Mandate at its pleasure, as it did in the following two cases:

  1. Ceding 77.5 % of Palestine to Trans Jordan (in 1922)
  2. Ceding the Golan to Syria (in 1923)

3. The Mandatory violated article 5 & article 27 of the Mandate when it ceded 77.5% of Palestine to TransJordan and the Golan to Syria:

ART. 5. “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.”ART. 27: The Mandatory had no right to amend the Mandate terms without the full consent of the League of Nations or its Mandates Commission.

TOP

Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

 

1931 British census says while Jews in Palestine are a nation, Arabs are not

Elder of Ziyon 13May2020 http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2020/05/1931-british-census-says-while-jews-in.html

The 1931 British Census of Palestine includes an interesting observation: Click to download PDF file   Click to download 1931 British Census of Palestine    1931 British Census of Palestine

 

In addition, however, to the development of this complex of religious communities, a political development has taken place, and the Jewish Community existing as legal entity, and created historically under a principle of religious freedom, has now a specifically political character. The following quotation descriptive of the community is extracted from Command Paper No. 1 700 of the 1st of July, 1922 :-

. . . The Jewish community in Palestine has its own political organs : an elected assembly for the direction of its domestic concerns elected councils in the towns : and an organization for the control of its schools. It has its elected Chief Rabbinate and Rabbinical Coun­cil for the direction of its religious affairs. The business is conducted in Hebrew as a vernacular language, and a Hebrew Press serves its ” needs . It has its distinctive intellectual life and displays consider­ ” able economic activity. This community, then, with its town and ” country population, its political, religious and social organizations, ” its own language, its own customs, its own life, has, in fact,’ national ‘ ” characteristics.”

In fact, the Jewish Community is a ” nationality “. The consciousness of the existence of this “nationality ” has led the non-Jewish religious communities to a vague conception of an Arab “nationality “. This Arab ” nationality ” has no legal existence since there is no Arab community in any formal sense. Its basis is perhaps best described as an awareness, on the part of members of some of the non-Jewish religious communities, of the possibility of common factors in the aims of the several communities. This awareness found its expression in a request during the preparations for the census from the Arab Census Committee that persons enumerated at the census should be given the opportunity of declaring an Arab ” nationality “.

While this is speaking about “nationality” from a legal perspective, realizing that the Jews of Palestine had even in 1922 already become a cohesive community that acts and self-governs like a nation, it is striking that it notes that there is no similar Arab consciousness of nationality.

Of course, the word “Palestinian” is not mentioned. They were taking about a general Arab nationality, not specifically Palestinian Arab national feelings, which of course virtually did not exist at the time.

TOP

United Nation Article 80 of The UN charter: No right gained by a country through a mandate will expire as a result of the expiration of the mandate

United Nations repertory
https://legal.un.org/repertory/art80.shtml

Charter of the United Nations

Chapter XII — International Trusteeship System Article 80

“1. Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements, made under Articles 77, 79, and 81, placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.

2. Paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be interpreted as giving grounds for delay or postponement of the negotiation and conclusion of agreements for placing mandated and other territories under the trusteeship system as provided for in Article 77.”

TOP

UN Partition Plan – Resolution 181 (1947)

Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs logo
https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/maps/pages/1947%20un%20partition%20plan.aspx

Following Britain’s announcement in February 1947 of its intention to terminate its Mandate government, the UN General Assembly appointed a special committee – the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine – to make recommendations on the land’s future government. UNSCOP recommended the establishment of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, to be joined by economic union, with the Jerusalem-Bethlehem region as an enclave under international administration.

On 29 November 1947 the UN General Assembly voted on the partition plan, adopted by 33 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions. The Jewish side accepted the UN plan for the establishment of two states. The Arabs rejected it and launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish state.

 UN Partition Plan - Resolution 181 (1947) Map

UN Partition Plan – Resolution 181 (1947) Map

29 November 1947 – UN Passes Resolution 181 – The Partition Plan

Israel’s Foreign Affairs Min. 29November2016

On Nov 29 1947 the United Nations voted on the Partition Plan. The General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 recommending the partition of the British-ruled Palestine Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It was approved with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions and one state absent.

Resolution 181 was accepted by the vast majority of the Jewish population, yet rejected by the Arab population in Palestine and by the Arab states, who embarked on a relentless war against the plan to establish a Jewish state.


Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-29November2023-biggest stories of Nov 29-the lands allocated to a Jewish state
One of the biggest and lesser known stories of Nov 29 is that the lands allocated to a Jewish state (two color map) were essentially those the Zionists reclaimed from malaria through land purchase, science and education (blue map).
Moreover, the sudden and extremely rapid increase of the Arab population in the 1920’s and 1930’s in this barely populated backwater region (this was the highest population increase rate in the world in 1931/2) was only in part due to immigration spurred by Zionist development of the land. The major share of the massive Arab population increase was thanks to Malaria eradication, which was the work of the Galician born famed microbiologist and ardent Zionist Dr. Israel Kligler (credit to the great historical work of Anton Alexander).
With this knowledge it remains even a greater tragedy that the now much more numerous Arabs of the land directed their efforts towards brutally fighting Zionism rather than choosing to live side by side with an emerging Jewish state.
In the shadow of the Oct 7 massacre we mark once more the Nov 29 moment when the Jews said yes to the UNGA plan of partition (having prioritized having a state, even if tiny and mostly desert and lands reclaimed from malaria and no Zion and no Judea) and the Arabs said no and proceeded to wage a brutal war to the present day (having prioritized – still – the goal of the Jews not having a state at all and of any size).

(Note on map titles: for twenty centuries, before a campaign of denial was underway, it was well understood that the name “Palestine” merely denoted the geographic region where the Land of Israel was and was therefore deeply associated with Jews and the their continuous connection to the land. Hence the League of Nation in establishing the mandate recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” as the “grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country” and which is why the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra of Jewish musicians became the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra…)

Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-29November2023-biggest stories of Nov 29-the lands allocated to a Jewish state

Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-29November2023-biggest stories of Nov 29-the lands allocated to a Jewish state

 

UN Partition Plan-Resolution 181-1947 color Map

UN Partition Plan-Resolution 181-1947 color Map

 

TOP

After the UN Partition Plan of 29November1947


Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-29November2023-After the UN Partition Plan of 29November1947
I am launching an exhibition at the @UN
which shows what really happened after the UN voted in support of the Partition Plan on November 29, 1947, 76 years today.

The Arab countries rejected the plan and tried to destroy Israel and even expelled hundreds of thousands of Jews from their countries. It details how the Palestinian mufti worked with Hitler to promote Jewish genocide and deportation and how the mufti incited antisemitism throughout the Arab world.

I will continue to fight at the UN to reveal the truth.

Watch and retweet >>

Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-29November2023-After the UN Partition Plan of 29November1947

Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-29November2023-After the UN Partition Plan of 29November1947

 


Map – Israel 1949 -1967 Armistice Lines

Map - Israel 1949 -1967 Armistice Lines

Map – Israel 1949 -1967 Armistice Lines

 

TOP


Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs logo https://jcpa.org/

Rejection of the UN Partition Plan of November 29, 1947, Was a Prequel to the October 7 Massacre

Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch 29November2023 https://jcpa.org/rejection-of-the-un-partition-plan-of-november-29-1947-was-a-prequel-to-the-october-7-massacre/

 

Tel Aviv crowds celebrated the UN’s vote for partition on November 29, 1947. (Government Press Office/Hans Pinn)

Tel Aviv crowds celebrated the UN’s vote for partition on November 29, 1947. (Government Press Office/Hans Pinn)

November 29 – on this day in 1947, the newly formed United Nations General Assembly voted to alter the provisions of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and divide Israel into two entities: a Jewish state and an Arab state. While the representatives of the Jews expressed their support for the plan, the representatives of the Arabs rejected the decision, refusing to accept the creation of a Jewish state within any boundaries. The events of the October 7 massacre, in which all the Palestinian terror organizations, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and Fatah et al. participated, demonstrate that nothing has changed in 76 years.

 

The 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine was formulated pursuant to the Balfour Declaration, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and the 1920 San Remo Conference. In the Mandate for Palestine and similar mandates issued at the time, the international community divided the fallen Ottoman Empire into various countries. “Palestine,” like, Syria, and Jordan, was created as part of this process. At the time, “Palestine” referred not only to the geographical area of modern-day Israel (including the Gaza Strip, Judea, and Samaria) but also to the geographical area of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

 

British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia,” and Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan walking in the gardens of the Government House, Jerusalem, during a secret conference on March 28, 1921, to discuss splitting the Mandate of Palestine and the formation of the Kingdom of Jordan west of the Jordan River. (Library of Congress)

British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia,” and Emir Abdullah of Trans-Jordan walking in the gardens of the Government House, Jerusalem, during a secret conference on March 28, 1921, to discuss splitting the Mandate of Palestine and the formation of the Kingdom of Jordan west of the Jordan River. (Library of Congress)

To find a solution for both the Jewish and Arab national aspirations, the Mandate for Palestine allocated the entire region from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to establish the Jewish state. The Mandate further provided that the Mandatory, Great Britain, would have the authority to separate “Trans-Jordan” – i.e., Palestine to the east of the Jordan River – from the rest of Palestine and thereby create the Arab state. In its essence, the Mandate for Palestine was the first international expression of the “two-state solution.”

 

While the League of Nations initially issued the Mandate for Palestine, its provisions were adopted by the UN under Article 80 of the UN Charter. The Mandate, as adopted by the UN Charter, had very concrete legal ramifications and could only have been changed with broad international consensus.

 

Thus, to fundamentally alter the Mandate, the UN proposed what is commonly known as the “UN Partition Plan.” While many members of the UN General Assembly voted in favor of the resolution, decisions of this nature only become binding under the newly proscribed provisions of the UN charter when approved by the UN Security Council. Since the Arab countries rejected the partition outright, no decision was ever made by the Security Council. In its essence, the UN Partition Plan was a betrayal of the “two-state solution,” replacing it with a “three-state solution” – Jordan, another Arab state, and the Jewish state.

Arab volunteers on the way to Palestine to fight against a Jewish state, 1947. (Abdulrazzaq Badran/Public Domain)

Arab volunteers on the way to Palestine to fight against a Jewish state, 1947. (Abdulrazzaq Badran/Public Domain)

From November 1947 to May 1948, the Arab countries could have reconsidered their decision and given birth to a second Arab state in “Palestine.” They did not. Instead, they chose the path of war to annihilate Israel.

 

From 1948 to 1967, when the Gaza Strip was controlled by Egypt and Judea/Samaria controlled by Jordan, the Arab countries, together with the international community, could again have reconsidered their decision and established the second Arab state. They did not. Instead, they chose the path of war to annihilate Israel.

 

Since the international community accepted the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the representative of the newly recognized “Palestinian people,” many more opportunities to create the second Arab state, now referred to as “Palestine,” have been rejected by the Palestinian leadership.

 

In the July 2000 Camp David discussions, then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat could have agreed to the creation of the Palestinian entity, but he refused, again choosing the path of violence. In 2008, the current PLO/Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, could have accepted the Israeli offer to create a Palestinian entity in a territorial area greater than the size of the Gaza Strip and Judea/Samaria. Still, he, too, refused, preferring to continue on the path of brainwashing generations of Palestinians to despise Israelis and reject Israel’s right to exist.

 

While the timing and acts of barbarism of the October 7, 2023, massacre were complete tactical surprises, it is impossible to argue that Israel and the international community were not given forewarning.

Thirty Years in the Making

The PA messaging to the Palestinians for the last 30 years has been very clear: Israel, in all and any borders, is an illegitimate state, borne on the heels of colonialism on stolen Palestinian land; Israelis/Jews are responsible for all the ills of the world and Islamic imperative mandates their destruction; Palestinians are destined to annihilate Israel through the use of terror and violence in the end of days when “trees and stones will call to Muslim believers saying a Jew is hiding behind me” to kill.

 

Hamas’ messaging to the Gazans is precisely the same as the PA’s messaging.

The only difference is that Israel and its security forces have a substantial presence in Judea and Samaria and can act broadly against terror threats. Since the 2005 Israel disengagement, however, the Gaza Strip has become a safe haven for terrorists.

 

If Israel seeks to survive and the international community seeks to avoid another October 7 massacre, the first thing they have to do is to pay heed to the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and the other Palestinian leaders.

 

They are not talking about peace, nor are they talking about coexistence. They are not talking, except when addressing the gullible Western ears in English, about what President Biden refers to as the “two-state solution” – a Palestinian state living peacefully next to Israel. What they are saying, in Arabic, to their own population has never changed: Israel has no right to exist, and we must do everything, including the genocide of Jews, to destroy it.

 

Continuing on the path of being willfully blind and willfully deaf to Palestinian incitement and denial of Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people will not bring about peace. It will, however, guarantee that the October 7 massacre will happen over and over again.

 

TOP

Background: History of the Blood Thirsty Arab Violence against the Jews of Eretz Israel

Let us start with Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler December 1941

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler December 1941
Haj Amin al-Husseini who was, in many ways, as big a Nazi villain as Hitler himself. To understand his influence on the Middle East is to understand the ongoing genocidal program against the Jews of Israel. Al-Husseini was a bridge figure in terms of transporting the Nazi genocide in Europe into the post-war Middle East. As the leader of Arab Palestine during the British Mandate period, al-Husseini introduced violence against moderate Arabs as well as against Jews. Al-Husseini met with Adolf Eichmann in Palestine in 1937 and subsequently went on the Nazi payroll as a Nazi agent. Al-Husseini played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in instigating a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941 as he urged Nazis and pro-Nazi governments in Europe to transport Jews to death camps, trained pro-Nazi Bosnian brigades, and funneled Nazi loot into pro-war Arab countries.
On 20 November1941, al-Husseini met the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on 28 November.
Al-Husseini’s own account, as recorded in his diary, states that Hitler expounded his view that the Jews were responsible for World War I, Marxism and its revolutions, and this was why the task of Germans was to persevere in a battle without mercy against the Jews,
According to the official report of the meeting, on November 28, 1941, Adolf Hitler told Husseini that the Afrika Korps would “liberate” Arabs in the Middle East and that “Germany’s only objective there would be the destruction of the Jews.”
“SS leaders and Husseini both claimed that Nazism and Islam had common values as well as common enemies – above all, the Jews,” the report states.
In fall 1943, it says, Husseini went to the Croatia, a German ally, to recruit Muslims for the Waffen-SS.
Der Grossmufti von Palästina vom Führer empfangen.
Der Führer empfing in Gegenwart des Reichsministers des Auswärtigen von Ribbentrop den Grossmufti von Palästina, Sayid Amin al Husseini, zu einer herzlichen und für die Zukunft der arabischen Länder bedeutungsvollen Unterredung.
9.12.41 Presse Hoffmann

the Jewish Virtual Library. logo https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

the Jewish Virtual Library. logo https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

Arab Riots of the 1920’s

by Jacqueline Shields https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/arab-riots-of-the-1920-s

At the end of World War I, discussions commenced on the future of the Middle East, including the disposition of Palestine. On April 19, 1920, the Allies, Britain, France, Italy and Greece, Japan and Belgium, convened in San Remo, Italy to discuss a peace treaty with Turkey. The Allies decided to assign Great Britain the mandate over Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River, and the responsibility for putting the Balfour Declaration into effect. Arab nationalists were unsure how best to react to British authority. The two preeminent Jerusalem clans, the el-Husseinis and the Nashashibis, battled for influence throughout the mandate, as they had for decades before. The former was very anti-British, whereas the latter favored a more conciliatory policy.

 

One of the el-Husseinis, Haj Amin, who emerged as the leading figure in Palestinian politics during the mandate period, first began to organize small groups of suicide groups, fedayeen (“one who sacrifices himself”), to terrorize Jews in 1919 in the hope of duplicating the success of Kemal in Turkey and drive the Jews out of Palestine, just as the Turkish nationalists were driving the Greeks from Turkey. The first large Arab riots took place in Jerusalem in the intermediary days of Passover, April 1920. The Jewish community had anticipated the Arab reaction to the Allies’ convention and was ready to meet it. Jewish affairs in Palestine were then being administered from Jerusalem by the Vaad Hatzirim (Council of Delegates), appointed by the World Zionist Organization (WZO) (which became the Jewish Agency in 1929). The Vaad Hatzirim charged Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky with the task of organizing Jewish self-defense. Jabotinsky was one of the founders of the Jewish battalions, which had served in the British Army during the First World War and had participated in the conquest of Palestine from the Turks. Acting under the auspices of the Vaad Hatzirim, Jabotinsky lead the Haganah (self-defense) organization in Jerusalem, which succeeded in repelling the Arab attack. Six Jews were killed and some 200 injured in Jerusalem in the course of the 1920 riots. In addition, two Americans, Jakov Tucker and Ze’ev Scharff, both WWI veterans, were killed resisting an Arab attack on the Jewish settlement of Tel Hai in March 1920. Had it not been for the preliminary organization of Jewish defense, the number of victims would have undoubtedly been much greater.

 

After the riots, the British arrested both Arabs and Jews. Among those arrested was Jabotinsky, together with 19 of his associates, on a charge of illegal possession of weapons. Jabotinsky was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment with hard labor and deportation from the country after completion of his sentence. When the sentence became known, the Vaad Hatzirim made plans for widespread protests, including mass demonstrations and a national fast. Meanwhile, however, the mandate for Palestine had been assigned to Great Britain, and the jubilation of the Yishuv outweighed the desire to protest against the harsh sentence imposed on Jabotinsky and his comrades.

With the arrival in Jerusalem of the first High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, British military government was superseded by a civilian administration. As a gesture toward the civilian population, the High Commissioner proclaimed a general amnesty for both Jews and Arabs who had been involved in the April 1920 riots. Jabotinsky and his comrades were released from prison to an enthusiastic welcome by the Yishuv, but Jabotinsky insisted that the sentence passed against them be revoked entirely, arguing that the defender should not be placed on trial with the aggressor. After months of struggle, the British War Office finally revoked the sentences.

In 1921, Haj Amin el-Husseini began to organize larger scale fedayeen to terrorize Jews. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, former head of British military intelligence in Cairo, and later Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria, wrote in his diary that British officials “incline towards the exclusion of Zionism in Palestine.”

Arab riot in Jerusalem 1920. The British arrest Jews. the British encouraged the Arabs to attack the Jews.

Arab riot in Jerusalem 1920. The British arrest Jews. the British encouraged the Arabs to attack the Jews.

In fact, the British encouraged the Arabs to attack the Jews. According to Meinertzhagen, Col. Waters Taylor, financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine 1919-23, met with Haj Amin a few days before Easter, in 1920, and told him “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world…that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.”

Haj Amin took the Colonel’s advice and instigated a riot. The British withdrew their troops and the Jewish police from Jerusalem, and the Arab mob attacked Jews and looted their shops. Due to Haj Amin’s overt role in instigating the pogrom, the British arrested him. Yet, despite the arrest, Haj Amin escaped to Jordan, but he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in absentia. A year later, however, British Arabists convinced High Commissioner Herbert Samuel to pardon Haj Amin and to appoint him Mufti.

Samuel met with Haj Amin on April 11, 1921, and was assured “that the influences of his family and himself would be devoted to tranquility.” Three weeks later, however, riots in Jaffa and Petah Tikvah, instigated by the Mufti, left 43 Jews dead. Following these riots England established the Haycraft Commission to evaluate the cause of these riots. The appendix of the report reads, “The fundamental cause of the Jaffa riots and the subsequent acts of violence was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration, and with their conception of Zionist policy as derived from Jewish exponents . . . the Arab majority, who were generally the aggressors, inflicted most of the casualties.”

Following these riots, Haj Amin consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. As the “Palestinian” spokesman, Haj Amin wrote to Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in 1921, demanding that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration and that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan. Churchill issued the White Paper of 1922, which tried to allay Arab fears about the Balfour Declaration. The White Paper acknowledged the need for Jewish immigration to enable the Jewish community to grow but placed the familiar limit of the country’s absorptive capacity on immigration. Although not pleased with Churchill’s diplomatic Paper, the Zionists accepted it; the Arabs, however, rejected it.

Despite the disturbances in 1920-1921, the Yishuv continued to develop in relative peace and security. Another wave of riots, however, broke out in 1924 after another wave of pogrom’s sent 67,000 Polish Jewish refugees to Palestine. After a week of skirmishes in Jerusalem between the Haganah and Arab mobs, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs lay dead. The Yishuv’s main concern at that time was its financial difficulties; the economic crisis of 1926-1928 led many to believe that the Zionist enterprise would fail due to lack of funds. Zionist leaders attempted to rectify the situation by expanding the Jewish Agency to incorporate non-Zionists who were willing to contribute to the practical settlement of Palestine.

The prospects for renewed financial support for the Yishuv upset Arab leaders who feared economic domination by the Zionists. Led by Haj Amin al-Husseini once again, rumors of a Jewish plot to seize control of Muslim holy places began to spread in August 1929. Violence erupted soon after, causing extensive damage. Rioting and looting were rampant throughout Palestine. In Jerusalem, Muslims provoked the violence and tensions by building and praying on or near the holiest place in the world for Jews, the Western Wall. By late August, the Arabs, in well-organized formation, attacked Jewish settlements near Jerusalem. The disturbances spread to Hebron and Safed, including many settlements in between, and on the Kfar Dorom kibbutz in the Gaza Strip.

On August 23, 1929, Arabs murdered 67 Jews in a massacre in Hebron. Three days later, the British evacuated the 484 survivors, including 153 children, to Jerusalem.

Hebron Massacre of the ancient Jewish community by Arab killers in 1929

JusticeVSpropaganda 08June2011

This is the first documented massacre in the holy land, however Arabs murdered Jews also in the 1920th, and until our days this hate to Jews, later using the term of Zionist ‘occupation’ as a convinient excuse for this savage brutal hatefull massacres. What could be the reason in 1929 to slaughter by torture and corrupt the bodies of the ancient Jewish community members who lived in Hebron hundreds of years? Only a Nazi ideology of annihilation; The ‘Palestinian people’ was not invented yet for propaganda purpose: These were ‘just’ Arabs expressing rage and sadistic desires towards the helpless victims. Only few people among Arabs hid and rescued some of their Jewish neighbours, while the majority either participated or witnessed the horrors. What ‘occupation’ could be the excuse for this? So, after being aware to this forgotten detail in history, can someone still consider Jewish settlers in Hebron, as ‘illegal’?

And besides: nearly million Jews were forced to flee from Arab countries due to persecutions. Why are those refugees and survivors not mentioned in mainstream media, and the horrors they have been through?

credits to user aviramoz for the vid, and to artist azam ali for the music

After six days of rioting, the British finally brought in troops to quell the disturbance. Even though Jews had been living in Gaza and Hebron for centuries, following these riots, the British forced Jews to leave their homes and prohibited Jews from living in the Gaza strip and Hebron to appease Arabs and quell violence. By the end of the rioting, the death toll was 133 Jews, including eight Americans, and 110 Arabs (most killed by British security forces).

More than 200 Arabs and 15 Jews were tried and sentenced for their role in the unrest in 1929. Out of 27 capital cases involving Arabs, only three of the death sentences were carried out, the others were granted “mercy” and their sentences were commuted to life in prison. Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir were put to death on June 17, 1930, because they were convicted of particularly brutal murders in Safad and Hebron.

The British approved payment of nearly 100,000 pounds to Jews for “loss of life and permanent incapacity, and proportionately up to the limits of the sum available in respect of damage to property” by Arabs in the 1929 riots. A “special Jewish Fund for relief and reconstruction purposes to repair the losses suffered by the disturbances of 1929” allocated another 433,000 pounds.

Like the riots earlier in the decade, afterward the British appointed Sir William Shaw to head an inquiry into the causes of the riots. The Shaw Commission found that the violence occurred due to “racial animosity on the part of the Arabs, consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future.” The report claimed that the Arabs feared economic domination by a group who seemed to have, from their perspective, unlimited funding from abroad. The Commission reported that the conflict stemmed from different interpretations of British promises to both Arabs and Jews. The Commission acknowledged the ambiguity of former British statements and recommended that the government clearly define its intentions for Palestine. It also recommended that the issue of further Jewish immigration be more carefully considered to avoid “a repetition of the excessive immigration of 1925 and 1926.” The issue of land tenure would only be eligible for review if new methods of cultivation stimulated considerable growth of the agricultural sector. The Shaw Commission frustrated Zionists, but the two subsequent reports issued on the future of Palestine were more disturbing.

The Hope Simpson report of 1930 painted an unrealistic picture of the economic capacity of the country. It cast doubt on the prospect of industrialization and incorrectly asserted that no more than 20,000 families could be accommodated by the land. The Hope Simpson report was overshadowed, however, by the simultaneous release of the Passfield White Paper, which reflected colonial Secretary Passfield’s deep-seated animus toward Zionism. This report asserted that Britain’s obligations to the Arabs were very weighty and should not be overlooked to satisfy Jewish interests. Many argued that the Passfield Paper overturned the Balfour Declaration, essentially saying that Britain should not plan to establish a Jewish state. The Passfield Paper greatly upset Jews, and interestingly, also the labor and conservative parties in the British Parliament. The result of this widespread outcry to the Secretary’s report was a letter from British Prime Minister MacDonald to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, reaffirming the commitment to create a Jewish homeland.

The Arabs found rioting to be a very effective political tool because the British attitude toward violence against Jews, and their response to the riots, encouraged more outbreaks of violence. In each riot, the British would make little or no effort to prevent the Arabs from attacking the Jews. After each incident, a commission of inquiry would try to establish the cause of the riot. The conclusions were always the same: the Arabs were afraid of being displaced by Jewish immigrants. To stop the disturbances, the commissions routinely recommended that restrictions be made on Jewish immigration.

Thus, the Arabs came to recognize that they could always stop Jewish immigration by staging a riot. Despite the restrictions placed on its growth, the Jewish population increased to more than 160,000 by the 1930s, and the community became solidly entrenched in Palestine. Unfortunately, as the Jewish presence grew stronger, so did the Arab opposition. The riots brought recognition from the international Jewish community to the struggle of the settlers in Palestine, and more than $600,000 was raised for an emergency fund that was used to finance the cost of restoring destroyed or damaged homes, establish schools, and build nurseries.

Sources: Mitchell G. Bard, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East Conflict. 4th Edition. NY: Alpha Books, 2008.
Ahron Bregman, A History of Israel, Palgrave MacMillan; New York, 2002.
The Irgun Site
The Jewish Agency for Israel and The World Zionist Organization.
Leslie Stein, The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel. CT: Praeger Publishers; 2003.
Michael Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.


Itamar massacre: Fogel family butchered while sleeping

Itamar massacre: Fogel family butchered while sleeping

Itamar Massacre

What sort of human being deliberately butchers a sleeping baby?

16March2011  |  by https://www.aish.com/jw/me/Itamar_Massacre.html

The Itamar attack, also called the Itamar massacre, was an attack on a Jewish family in the community of Itamar in Israel that took place on 11 March 2011, in which five members of the same family were murdered in their beds.

Last weekend in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the Samarian hills, terrorists infiltrated the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel and perpetrated a massacre of the innocents.

The killers started with Yoav, the Fogels’ 11-year-old, and Elad, his 4-year-old brother. Yoav’s throat was slit — as he was reading in bed, one report said — and Elad was stabbed twice in the heart. Then the attackers murdered Ruth, knifing her as she came out of the bathroom. In the next room they killed Ruth’s sleeping husband, Udi, and their infant daughter, Hadas. Apparently they didn’t notice the last bedroom, where the two other boys, Ro’i, 8, and Yishai, 2, were asleep. It wasn’t until half past midnight, when 12-year-old Tamar came home from a Friday night youth group, that the horrific slaughter was discovered. Much of the house was drenched in blood, and the 2-year-old was shaking his parents’ bodies, crying for them to wake up.

What explains such unspeakable evil? What sort of human being deliberately butchers a sleeping baby, or plunges a knife into a toddler’s heart?

Related Article: Itamar’s Children

Hamas, argued that the murder of Babies was permitted by International law.

As news of the massacre in Itamar spread, young men in Gaza distributed candy and pastries in celebration. The Al-Qassam Brigades, a branch of Hamas, argued that the murder of Israeli settlers was permitted by international law. A day later it changed its tune, insisted that “harming children is not part of Hamas’s policy,” and suggested instead that the massacre might have been committed by Jews. The Palestinian “foreign minister,” Riyad al-Malki, also voiced doubt that the killers could have been Palestinian. “The slaughter of people like this by Palestinians,” he claimed, “is unprecedented.” Actually, the precedents abound.

The atrocity in Itamar recalls the 2002 terror attack at Kibbutz Metzer that left five victims dead, including a mother and her two little boys. It brings to mind the murder of Tali Hatuel and her four daughters, who were shot at point-blank range as they drove from Gaza to Ashkelon in 2004. It is reminiscent of the bloodbath in a Jerusalem yeshiva three years ago, in which eight young students were gunned down. Unprecedented? If only.

The civilized mind struggles to make sense of such savagery.

Related Article: Purim & Responding to the Itamar Massacre

There are those who believe passionately that all human beings are inherently good and rational creatures, essentially the same once you get beyond surface disagreements. Such people cannot accept the reality of a culture that extols death over life, that inculcates a vitriolic hatred of Jews, that induces children to idolize terrorists. Since they would never murder a family in its sleep without being driven to it by some overpowering horror, they imagine that nobody would. This is the mindset that sees a massacre of Jews and concludes that Jews must in some way have provoked it. It is the mindset behind the narrative that continually blames Israel for the enmity of its neighbors, and makes it Israel’s responsibility to end their violence.

But the truth is simpler, and bleaker. Human goodness is not hard-wired. It takes sustained effort and healthy values to produce good people; in the absence of those values, cruelty and intolerance are far more likely to flourish.

For years the Palestinian Authority has demonized Israelis and Jews as enemies to be destroyed, vermin to be loathed, and infidels to be terrorized with Allah’s blessing. Children who grow up under Palestinian rule are inundated on all sides — in school, in the mosques, on radio and TV, even in summer camps and popular music — with messages that glorify bloodshed, promote hatred, and lionize “martyrdom.”

None of this is news. The toxic incitement that pervades Palestinian culture has been massively documented. What children are taught in the classrooms of Ramallah, Nablus, and Gaza City, Hillary Clinton said in 2007, is “to see martyrdom and armed struggle and the murder of innocent people as ideals to strive for. . . . This propaganda is dangerous.” Indeed, it is lethal.

An estimated 20,000 mourners accompanied Udi, Ruth, Yoav, Elad, and Hadas Fogel as they were laid to rest in Jerusalem on Sunday. In his eulogy, Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon predicted bitterly that in time the Palestinian Authority would honor the Fogel family’s murderers and name public squares after them. His comment might have seemed gratuitous — except that at that very moment, in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh, Dalal Mughrabi was being celebrated at a public square named in her honor. It was Mughrabi who, 33 years earlier, led a PLO terror squad on a savage rampage on Israel’s Coastal Road. Thirty-eight innocent Jews were murdered that day, 13 of them children.

(This article originally appeared in The Boston Globe).


TOP

The Murder and Expulsion of the Jews in Arab Lands! Remember 30 November!

“We disappeared.” The story of Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa

World Jewish Congress 26November2016

The Exile of Jews from Arab Lands – Noemi Lieberman

B’nai Brith Canada 29November2016

In 1947, wearing only the clothes on their backs, Noemi Lieberman and and her family were forced to flee their native Libya, leaving all their possessions behind. To this day, neither she nor any of her family members have been given reparations of any kind. The following video is part 2 of B’nai Brith Canada’s series in tribute to Jews from Arab lands. Part 1 with Irene Beunavida from Egypt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz-69…

—————————

Prior to 1948, approximately one million Jews lived peacefully in Arab states throughout the Middle East. With the founding of Israel, Arab nations began to target their Jewish populations with violence, oppression and systemic discrimination. They had their property confiscated, anti-Jewish riots erupted and many Jews were killed, forcing a mass exodus from Arab countries.<

The expulsion of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries

Israel’s Foreign Affairs Min. 20June2017

On June 20th, the world marks ‘World Refugee Day’, commemorating the strength, courage and perseverance of of refugees. On this day, we remember the 20th-century expulsion of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. Jewish communities in Arab countries formed a significant part of the Jewish diaspora. From 1920 onward, some 850,000 Jews were expelled from their homes – from Tripoi to Cairo, from Damascus to Baghdad.

TOP


JewishPress-Logo

San Remo: The Original ‘Deal of the Century’

By Yishai Fleisher
2 Iyyar 5780 – April 26, 2020 https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/yishai-fleisher/san-remo-the-original-deal-of-the-century/2020/04/26/

 

1920 mandate for Palestine

1920 mandate for Palestine

1920 Mandate for Palestine for the Jewish Homeland

One hundred years ago this week, the British Balfour Declaration—which recognized the Jewish rights to the land of Israel—became international law.

The Allies, the countries that defeated the Ottoman Empire in World War I, gathered in San Remo, Italy, in late April 1920 to carve up the Middle East. Basing their outlook on Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination, they set out to establish new would-be countries through a mentoring program called “mandates.” The Arabs, now free of the Turks, would get Syria, Lebanon and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Jews would get “Palestine” (Palestine was a Jewish thing back then).



The language of the 1917 Balfour Declaration was put directly into the San Remo accords: “[T]he Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

This decision was soon unanimously ratified by 56 member states of the League of Nations, and later became part of the United Nations Charter, thus paving the way for the third Jewish commonwealth, reborn on its ancestral soil after 2000 years.

Yet this momentous occasion, on which the international community recognized and then ratified the inalienable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel for the first time in modern history, is often forgotten. Instead, attention is diverted to the radio broadcast of the U.N. vote for Partition on Nov. 29, 1947, where the U.N. General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution adopting the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) partition plan of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states and for which 33 states voted in favor, 13 against and 10 abstained.

Legally speaking, the two events cannot be put on the same scale. The San Remo Accords were binding law, ratified by member states, which took quick effect. Even the United States, which was not a member of the League of Nations, took measures to recognize the accords.

Conversely, the UNSCOP Partition Plan was merely a non-binding resolution, voted on in the toothless General Assembly (not the Security Council), and was immediately rejected by the Arabs—in other words, the whole exercise of the partition plan vote was null and void.

The U.N. bundle narrative

The U.N. partition vote does have the distinction of being the immediate precursor to Israel’s declaration of independence. While David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency accepted the partition plan—ready to take what they could get for the Jewish people in the aftermath of the Holocaust—other Zionists rejected the plan outright as an abrogation of previous agreements. At the time, the U.N. resolution was instrumental, but that is a far cry from the portrayal of the U.N. partition vote as the foundational moment of Israel as a sovereign Jewish state.

So why does the empty U.N. partition resolution get so much play as compared with the real law of San Remo Accords? The answer lies in who is presenting the history—what they want Israeli policy to look like and what they want to say about Israel’s legitimacy.

For those who wish to see a “two-state solution” implemented, the idea that Israel was created through the U.N. partition vote is an indispensable narrative. The logic is clear: If the U.N. gave birth to Israel, and that birth was within the partition framework, then that original vision of two states is the controlling rubric. Any deviation from partition/two-states is an act of imperialism, colonialism and occupation—words which U.N.-narrative folks use against Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria regularly.

Moreover, if the U.N. is the parent of the Jewish State, then under the principle of “Honor thy father and mother,” Israel must kneel to the U.N.’s many anti-Israel resolutions and declarations. The U.N.’s admonitions that Israel is not democratic enough, that it has stolen land, that it abuses the Palestinians and most centrally that it must “give back” land to create yet another Palestinian state, must be heeded.

In short, promoters of the U.N. narrative argue that Israel was born in the halls of the General Assembly and that the original vision of partition is its only legitimate path forward. It is not surprising therefore that two-state proponents are invariably U.N.-touters—cut from the same narrative cloth.

The liberals of San Remo

The San Remo narrative, however, is very different. For those who argue that San Remo is the international legal basis for the creation of Israel, the agreement stands for an unabashed recognition of historic Jewish rights in the land of Israel and a stated goal of reconstituting a Jewish commonwealth.

The text of the Mandate for Palestine (the 1922 document that put the resolutions of San Remo into practice) is straightforward: “Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

At the San Remo conference, delegates never contemplated giving “Palestine” to the Arabs—the absurd idea of taking Judea away from the Jews and creating an Arab state there. For the delegates, giving Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to the Arabs and giving the Jews their historic and biblical land was equitable enough. This was in line with the Wilsonian “self-determination” doctrine—indigenous peoples would gain independence from former empires and govern themselves. Indeed, no one was about to give recognition to the imperialistic Islamic conquests of the 7th century, nor to the 400-year Ottoman domination which the Allies had just terminated.

The text of the Mandate is clear on the issue of land division: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine [Jewish] territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power.”

Indeed, original Israel, as recognized by San Remo-crafted international law, was going to be a big Jewish state, surrounded by newly freed and even bigger Arab states. That was the vision.

And what about democracy?

The issue of democratic voting in the new Mandate states was not clearly defined at San Remo. However, the framers at the conference were well aware of what it would take to balance power in the region: The Jewish state would be Jewish by charter and not by majority rule.

The Mandate for Palestine states that “nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” but does not mention national rights, which could potentially undo the Jewish character of the country in any given election. There was no intent to back an untenable, all-out participatory democracy.

But U.N.-touters cannot stomach the idea that Israel’s core identity is Jewish, without the necessity of a Jewish majority. That is why they are always stressing the contrived “Jewish and Democratic” stipulation—so as to force the two values onto equal footing. In that line of thinking, Israel is not a Jewish state, but rather a democratic state that happens to house a lot of Jews.

However, since demography coupled with democracy could spell the end of the Jewish character of the state, their only viable solution is to shrink away from Arab populations and gerrymander the borders smaller and smaller until there are no Arabs left, only a perfect Jewish democracy on a very small parcel of land remains.

Indeed, the framers of San Remo foresaw the folly of such an approach.

The non-jihad Arab narrative

Anti-Zionist tendencies among Arabs were strong in the 1920s, but were not ubiquitous. At the time, there also existed a line of thinking among some Arab leaders which saw the process of Middle East self-determination as being a boon to all the indigenous people of the region—all the children of Abraham.

Two weeks before the Paris Peace Conference of 1919—the prelude to the San Remo Accords—the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann met with Emir Feisal, son of the Sharif of Mecca, and put an agreement to paper in which the Arabs would accept the tenets of the Balfour Declaration:

“His Royal Highness the Emir Feisal, representing and acting on behalf of the Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, representing and acting on behalf of the Zionist Organization, mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their natural aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration….”

A few weeks later Feisal wrote a letter to the future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a Zionist: “The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper.”

Since that time, much has been done to undermine the goodwill between Arabs and Jews as expressed by the Feisal-Weitzman dialogue. But hidden in the ashes are a few coals of this thinking among the Arabs of today. These Arab thinkers, who usually live in fear of jihadists, believe that Arabs have their 22 states on their tribal lands, and Jews their one state on their tribal land, and that mutual acceptance of these facts will avert needless war and will bring about regional cooperation and then prosperity.

But the U.N.-partition narrative denies that Arabs could possibly accept a sovereign Israel in Judea and Samaria or that regional cooperation could come about without further partition. Instead, the U.N. types promulgate the belief that there is no possibility of peace without partition. Without saying it, they assert the jihadist position that the Arabs could never really accept a Jewish state in their midst and that large areas of the land of Israel must be Judenrein if there is ever to be a chance for peace.

Yet, after the 2005 Gaza disengagement, Israelis have seen clearly that surrendering land only leads to more violence and more demands. A smaller Israel is nothing but a weaker target.

Arab Palestine 1.0

There is yet another fundamental reason why U.N.-narrative folks wish to bury the story of San Remo: They don’t want us to remember that an Arab Palestine was created in the ’20s that should have satisfied Arab demands and made the Israel-Palestine conflict disappear before it began.

In the three years between San Remo and the League’s ratification of the accords in 1923, the British utilized a legal loophole to strip away 77 percent of the mandate for a Jewish Palestine and gift it to the leaders of the Hashemite clan. This was the creation of Trans-Jordan, which was later renamed the Kingdom of Jordan.

For many years, we have been told by the U.N. proponents that there is no Middle East peace because there is no Arab Palestine. They want us to avert our eyes from the fact that the Kingdom of Jordan, created on the land originally intended for the Jewish state, is actually an Arab Palestine—but one which refuses to absorb the Palestinians.

Therefore, for the pro-Palestine camp, history must start in 1947, where a Jewish state was slated for partitioning as the U.N. gave birth to it. No one has to know that an Arab Palestine was created 20 years prior.

Deal of the century

We are in the era of the Trump administration’s “deal of the century”—with Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria slated to become a reality. And yet, for some, the goal of an Arab Palestinian state on Jewish land persists.

It would behoove us now to remember the original deal of the century—the San Remo Accords, signed exactly 100 years ago—which recognized and confirmed Jewish historical national rights to the land of Israel, and equitably divided up the Middle East into a strong Jewish state neighbored by strong Arab states. In that deal of the century, Israel was meant to be big, defensible—and Jewish by charter and not by majority—and there were many Arabs ready to accept and respect it.

As we celebrate Israeli independence this year, let us cast off the contrived U.N. narrative in which Israel was born into the inevitability of two states. One hundred years ago, the framers of San Remo laid down common-sense principles, that with implementation, can still become the real deal of the century.

San Remo: 100th Anniversary of International Recognition of Israel’s Legal Rights to the Land

Yishai Fleisher 03May2020
On April 25, 1920, the international community recognized and ratified the inalienable rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel at the San Remo Conference – for the first time in modern history!

Yishai Fleisher, international spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, Israel, hosts three wonderful experts:

For the HISTORICAL perspective: Col. Richard Kemp – a retired British Army officer who served from 1977 to 2006 and completed 14 operational tours of duty around the globe. Kemp is an outspoken critic of the international community’s stance on Israel, and regularly writes and comments on this issue.

For the LEGAL perspective: Jake Bennett, who served in an elite IDF unit and today serves as Director of State Legislative Affairs at the Israeli-American Coalition for Action.

For the SPIRITUAL perspective: Rabbi Mike Feuer, counselor, faculty member at the Pardes Institute, and founder of the Jewish Story history podcast.

This program is sponsored by IM TIRTZU, Hebron Fund, and Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights.

TOP


San Remo Resolution – Celebrating 100 years!

EC4I 30April2020
TOP

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies BESA https://besacenter.org/

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies BESA https://besacenter.org/

The San Remo Conference 100 Years On

By 24April2020 https://besacenter.org/mideast-security-and-policy-studies/san-remo-conference/

Delegates to the San Remo conference in Italy, 25 April 1920

Delegates to the San Remo conference in Italy, 25 April 1920

Mideast Security and Policy Studies Paper #172EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: There is probably no more understated event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the San Remo Conference of April 1920. Convened for a mere week as part of the post-WWI peace conferences that created a new international order on the basis of indigenous self-rule and national self-determination, the San Remo conference appointed Britain as mandatory for Palestine with the specific task of “putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government [i.e., the Balfour Declaration], and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” This mandate was then ratified on July 24, 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations—the postwar world organization and the UN’s predecessor.

The importance of the Palestine mandate cannot be overstated. Though falling short of the proposed Zionist formula that “Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people,” it signified an unqualified recognition by the official representative of the will of the international community of the Jews as a national group—rather than a purely religious community—and acknowledgement of “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” as “the grounds for reconstituting their national home in the country.”

It is a historical tragedy therefore that 100 years after this momentous event, the Palestinian leadership and its international champions remain entrenched in the rejection not only of the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine but of the very existence of a Jewish People (and by implication its right to statehood). Rather than keep trying to turn the clock backward at the certain cost of prolonging their people’s statelessness and suffering, it is time for this leadership to shed its century-long recalcitrance and opt for peace and reconciliation with their Israeli neighbors. And what can be a more auspicious timing for this process than the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference?

Click to download PDF file   Click to Download the .pdf file 172-MONOGRAPH-San-Remo-Conference-Karsh-FINAL

TOP


the-algemeiner-com-logo

Celebrating San Remo and Jewish Sovereignty

by Brooke Goldstein

04May2020 https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/05/04/celebrating-san-remo-and-jewish-sovereignty/

Delegates at the San Remo conference in 1920. Photo: YouTube

Delegates at the San Remo conference in 1920. Photo: YouTube

Last week, we celebrated the momentous occasion of the 100-year anniversary of the San Remo Conference (April 19-26, 1920), convened in San Remo, Italy by the Supreme War Council of the allied powers (the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan) at the conclusion of World War I.

There is a widespread misconception that the State of Israel derives its legal existence from United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) of November 29, 1947 — popularly known as the “Partition Plan.” In fact, Israel’s legal foundation under international law derives not from Resolution 181 (II), which was merely a non-binding recommendation without any force of law, but rather from the San Remo Resolution (April 24–25, 1920), signed, ratified, and proclaimed by the Supreme Council at the San Remo Conference.

The purpose of the San Remo Conference was to formulate the terms of a peace treaty with the former Turkish Ottoman Empire. As a consequence of the military victory by the allied forces, the Supreme Council possessed the legal right of disposition due to the “Right of Conquest,” the prevailing international law, and decided to dispose of the former Ottoman territories by putting into effect the recently established Mandate System, which was in accord with Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (April 28, 1919).

The San Remo Resolution created three separate mandates: (1) Palestine, (2) Mesopotamia, and (3) Syria and the Lebanon. Each Mandate vested de jure sovereignty and transferred legal title specifically to the peoples who were the beneficiaries as they were the geographic inhabitants living in each of the respective newly mandated territories, and/or the people indigenous to the land (both were the case for the Jewish people and Palestine).

The Supreme Council chose the British government to be the Mandatory (i.e., the “Trustee”) for Palestine (i.e., Israel) and Mesopotamia (i.e., Iraq). The British government was thereby legally obligated to administer the allocated Mandates as a sacred trust until such time as the beneficiary peoples could govern the land themselves. France was chosen to be the Mandatory in Syria and the Lebanon under the same terms and conditions.

The terms of the San Remo Resolution were incorporated into the Treaty of Sèvres (August 10, 1920), the Franco-British Boundary Convention (December 23, 1920), and then in the Preamble of the Mandate Charter (July 24, 1922), the latter of which was approved by 52 members of the League of Nations (and, in time, 63 nations, including Iraq and Egypt), as well is in the Treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923). The terms were then also incorporated in a separate treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom, known as the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine.

Significantly, the Anglo-American Convention was ratified on March 2, 1925 and proclaimed by President Calvin Coolidge on December 5, 1925. The Anglo-American Convention also incorporated by reference the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917), and contained verbatim the full text of the Mandate for Palestine, including the following:

Preamble: “Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on the 2nd November, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Article 5 states: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of, the Government of any foreign Power.”

Article 6 states, in part: “The Administration of Palestine … shall facilitate Jewish immigration and shall encourage … close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.”

Article 6 of the US Constitution states, in part: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby.”

Thus, the American ratification of the Anglo-American Convention rendered the treaty part of the supreme law of the United States. The United States is therefore legally bound to the principles contained in both the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine, as both were incorporated into the Anglo-American Convention.

Suggesting that a Jewish presence anywhere within Mandated Palestine is illegal or must be stopped is a violation of the treaty. Enforcing a “two-state solution” within the mandated borders of Palestine is akin to ceding land and would constitute a violation of the treaty.

By way of example, in 1783, the Treaty of Paris marked the end of the American Revolutionary War, and the rights we enjoy as Americans today stand on this document. What keeps the English from canceling this treaty and giving the land to someone else is the principle of estoppel. Once the rights are given, they simply cannot be taken back. Such is the case with the Mandate for Palestine, and the rights that the United States accepted and committed itself to uphold as enshrined in the Anglo-American Convention.

During the Mandate Period (1920–1948), while acting as the Mandatory, Britain illegally signed the Treaty of London with Transjordan on March 22, 1946, giving it the appearance of being officially severed from Palestine and illegally acknowledging the sovereignty and independence of Transjordan contrary to Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (April 28, 1919); the San Remo Resolution (April 24–25, 1920); Articles 2, 5, and 25 of the Mandate for Palestine (July 24, 1922); the Franco-British Boundary Convention (December 23, 1920); the Anglo-American Convention (December 3, 1924); and Article 80 of the UN Charter (October 24, 1945).

Following these actions of the British government, all land east of the Jordan River, constituting approximately 77% of Palestine’s territory, was illegally transferred to the administrative control of the Hashemites, who unlawfully asserted de facto sovereignty over the eastern part of Palestine, which was known as Transjordan. This wrongful directive by Britain as the Mandatory was in violation of the second and third recitals of the Mandate, as well as Articles 2, 4, 5, 6, and 16 of the Mandate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continually and consistently resisted all calls to re-divide the city of Jerusalem, the 3,000-year-old eternal capital of the Jewish people and the modern State of Israel, and has recently and publicly confirmed his dedication to assert de facto sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, an intrinsic part of the land of Israel as defined in the Mandate for Palestine. By doing so, the State of Israel would thereby be fulfilling its legal role and capacity as agent and assignee of the Jewish people, to whom the sovereign legal rights belong.

Brooke Goldstein is a New-York based human rights attorney and award-winning filmmaker, as well as the founder and director of The Lawfare Project and director of the Children’s Rights Institute.TOP


San Remo and “settlements” by Dr Matthijs de Blois

UKLFI Charitable Trust 25April2020

It is commonly stated that Israeli settlements in the “occupied territories” are illegal. This was even the view of the ICJ in the “Wall” Advisory Opinion in 2004. However this view ignores the legal relevance of the Mandate for Palestine, which was created as a result of the San Remo conference. Under the Mandate, the Jewish people were granted the right to “close settlement” in Palestine, in light of their unique historical and religious connection with the land.

Dr Matthijs de Blois is Senior Fellow, thinc; formerly Assistant Professor, Utrecht University; co-author, Israel on Trial – How International Law is Being Misused to Delegitimize the State of Israel

TOP

Print Friendly, PDF & Email