The President’s Action on Immigration

As I research and write what amounts to a bi-weekly column on my deeply held concerns about the state of Israel, under the collective heading “I Am A Jew,” I think it is appropriate for a short time out, to focus on another pressing issue, namely the gridlock in the Congress.

The President’s action on immigration, taken out of absolute frustration with the inability of Congress to deal with the needs of the nation, made me address this issue with a short Letter to the Editor of The Record, a North Jersey daily newspaper. I chose The Record because my frustration with the New York Times has reached the breaking point. Getting a letter printed in that storied paper is like winning the lottery, with the odds being similar.

While the New York Times has an average circulation of 1,865,318 The Record has a daily circulation of 138,904 and a Sunday circulation of 167,278 and it is growing. It is better to reach a potential readership of 167,278, than to strive for the moon, and reach no one.

My Letter to the Editor of The Record, which appeared in last Sunday’s edition,  is set forth below:

Regarding “Obama calls for ‘accountability’ ” (Page A-1, Nov. 21):

The president’s action on immigration reminds us once again that gridlock has become the norm in Congress.

An immigration bill passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote, and a vote count in the House showed that it would have passed if it had been put up for a vote.  But the Republican Speaker, John Boehner, refused to allow a vote.

We have a similar situation in the Senate, where numerous House bills have died without being put to a vote because the Democratic Majority Leader, Harry Reid, wants to protect members of his caucus from having to cast votes that might be politically difficult. 

This puts far too much power in the hands of single individuals, and quite possibly, is a greater cause for gridlock that even the infamous filibuster.

The Constitution did not intend one party leader in either chamber to exercise veto power over legislation. I strongly urge that the Congress pass rules that require an up or down vote on any legislation passed by the other chamber.

The American people should demand it. 

Emil Scheller 

Fort Lee, Nov. 21 

Comments are welcome and will be published with attribution unless anonymity is requested. 

I AM A JEW (PART XIX - I Almost Wish I Hadn’t Started This Study!)

As the title shows this is the 18th part (actually the 19^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV, Part XVI, Part XVII and Part XVIII.

As I reach Part XIX of this series, I am beginning to wish I hadn’t started this research. I started researching and writing on this subject because I was shocked at the brutality of the Gaza campaign, a murderous infliction of collective punishment on innocent civilians, having no other purpose than to terrify. The message was, “accept what we impose upon you - don’t resist - resistance is futile - any attempt at resistance and we will kill you, your wives and your children. We will destroy your homes, your infrastructure and make your lives a living hell, and if you thought it was already a living hell, think again, we can and we will make it even worse.

But for all that I wrote about Gaza before, I neglected to mention other horrors.

J Street called attention to the fact that:

Even before the horrible 50-day military confrontation this summer in Gaza, the water situation for the 1.7 million Palestinians who live there was desperate.

 According to UNICEF, more than 90 per cent of the water extracted from the territory's sole aquifer is unsafe for human consumption; an estimated four-fifths of the water sold by private vendors there contaminated. Additionally, nearly 100,000 cubic meters of wastewater are discharged into the sea every day because sewage treatment plants are overwhelmed.

Currently, potable water flows from Israel to Gaza through two pipelines. A third pipeline has been constructed but has not been turned on. Israel could turn the lever tomorrow and double the flow of clean, potable water to Gaza.

 This action is being held up pending broader negotiations that, of course, are complex and may never reach fruition.

That was bad enough!

But my research uncovered so much more. The massacres from the beginning! The ethnic cleansing from the beginning! I almost wish I hadn’t found out.

But what I have begun must be finished! Pleasant or unpleasant, the truth must be uncovered! It must be told.

The inhumanity of man to man is old. But I thought Jews were better than that. And still my research uncovers more. I started with how proud I was to be a Jew. Can all the achievements of all these Jews, from Einstein to all the others wash away the crimes committed in the name of creating a Jewish state. I hear the lament from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. 

I thought that the destruction of homes of Palestinians who commit acts of terror had come to an end. (See: Part IV where I wrote:

As long ago as 2005 Israel announced that it was halting the demolition of militant’s homes, an implicit admission that this was a policy that had been in effect. See here.

But here is a headline from the BBC.  See here and here.

 Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered that the homes of Palestinians who have carried out attacks in Jerusalem be demolished.

No one has been convicted. And most of the people living there are not even accused. But there is no respect for due process. No respect for Arabs.

Israel is supposed to be the last refuge for Holocaust survivors, but to quote from Haaretz See here or here:

According to the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, 87 percent of Holocaust survivors who request financial aid live on less than NIS 5,000 a month, while 58 percent live on NIS 3,000 or less. Meanwhile, 70 percent of survivors who turn to the foundation cannot afford dental care, and 18 percent need financial aid to pay for eyeglasses.

But where does the Israeli government spend its money, instead of helping Holocaust survivors. According to The Forward: 

“…state spending on the settlers… includes the cost of building homes and other facilities, special hardship subsidies and providing energy, communications, roads and other infrastructure not needed by the military…. They do not include the likes of health, education and welfare spending on the 350,000 West Bank settlers included in the statistics. The CBS data include 19,000 Israelis in the Golan Heights annexed from Syria and, until 2005, 9,000 settlers in the Gaza Strip. They exclude 200,000 Israelis living on land annexed and incorporated into Israel’s Jerusalem municipality.

But where is the money for the Holocaust survivors?

But what about Holocaust survivors in the United States? Some 350 Survivors and Descendants of Survivors ran an ad in the New York Times reading in part:

Genocide begins with the silence of the world, …We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. 

See here. The complete text can be found here.

Well, they do not represent all Holocaust survivors, and I don’t give this group any special standing, but they are entitled to a hearing. Are they right to claim special status because of their Holocaust connection? I would think not, but at least their Jewishness and their Holocaust connection aught to shield them from the charge of anti-Semitism, just as I asserted my Jewishness, and my pride in being Jewish as a shield against claims of anti-Semitism, or of being a self-hating Jew.

But how were they treated? It tells us much more about the unconditional supporters of Israel, then about their critics.

Here were some of the comments by Israelis that appeared on Facebook translated into English:

David Cohen: Those aren’t Holocaust survivors those are probably collaborators with the Nazis.

 Shmulik Halphon: He’s invited to go back to Auschwitz.

 Itzik Levy: These are survivors who were Kapos. Leftist traitors. That’s why they live abroad and not in the Jewish State.

 Vitali Guttman: Enough, they should die already. They survived the Holocaust only to do another Holocaust to Israel in global public opinion?

 Meir Dahan: No wonder Hitler murdered 6 million Jews because of people like you you’re not even Jews you’re disgusting people a disgrace to humanity and so are your offspring you are trash.

 Asher Solomon: It’s a shame Hitler didn’t finish the job.

 Katy Morali: Holocaust survivors who think like this are invited to go die in the gas chambers.

 Yafa Ashraf: Shitty Ashkenazis you are the Nazis.

Please note the inherent anti-Semitism in many of the comments.  The last comment about Ashkenazi Jews (those who came from Europe) were the primary victims of the Nazis and the founders of the State of Israel, but they are now the double victims of Israeli anti-Semitism.

But they weren’t the only ones who savaged the Jews who spoke out.

The Forward published an article by Alvin H Rosenfeld, Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University  and author of The End of the Holocaust, which savages the authors of the Times ad under the title: "Moral Emptiness of Holocaust Survivors Who Took on Israel - TheTrue Face Behind a New York Times Ad" and can be summarized by its last paragraph.

In fact, it is unlikely that many people emerged from Hitler’s camps ennobled or enlightened. To believe otherwise and to arrogate to oneself as a “survivor” or a relative of a “survivor” some special access to wisdom and virtue is, as IJSN’s ad shows, little more than moral pretense.

But since Israel’s very founding was predicated on the persecution of Jews in the Holocaust, it is perverse to denigrate the very group whose existence and suffering formed the impetus for the founding of the State of Israel.

Or as one post in the response to the article points out:

This article is a sad, completely ad hominem, attack on this group of Holocaust survivors. These are people who are carrying on a traditional of Jewish social activism; many have heroically taken the tragedy of their own dehumanization and channel that toward decades of work for peace and justice. It is one thing to disagree with them (and to make reasoned arguments to that effect), quite another to launch into a dismissive rant against them that doesn't even consider the content of the letter that they published in the NYT. Trying to end the violence and build some sort of constructive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not an "anti-Semitic" project. Indeed, it is necessary for the survival of the Jewish state.

 Unfortunately, Professor Rosenfeld essay says nothing useful or constructive about the urgent issues confronting that area of the world. He's more interested in besmirching the reputation of other US-based Jewish intellectuals who happen to disagree with him.  

It is indeed unfortunate that an intelligent, fact based, debate on Israel’s policies cannot be had without this kind of vitriol.

The kneejerk defense and justification for every Israeli action, no matter how ignoble or outrageous, is a sad commentary on the traditional humanism and social consciousness that has so long been the hallmark of Jewish tradition.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (PART XVIII - Colonialization at its worst!)

As the title shows this is the 18th part (actually the 19^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV, Part XVI and Part XVII.

I have written at length about Israeli unending expansionist policies and its treatment of its indigenous Arab population.

In particular, my post "I AM A JEW (PART XV - A Return to a Defense of Israel’s Policies & a Rebuttal)" shows the unending encroachment by Israel of the Western Bank, until less and less land is left to the indigenous Arab population

The deception in this campaign and the contempt that Israel has shown for the International community and even the United States can best be illustrated by its policies in Jerusalem.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has declared "We will continue to build in Jerusalem, our eternal capital."

But how many are aware that a Capital needs to have foreign embassies to function as a Capital and that means, at least a tacit recognition by the International community of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. But there is not a single country in the world, including the US, that recognizes Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel. According to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews:

Countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel—including the United States—have their embassies located outside of Jerusalem, mainly in Tel Aviv, and citizens born in Jerusalem are not officially listed in American documents as having been born in Israel.

But the issue between Israel and the Palestinians has never been about the Jerusalem, as the city has long been constituted. The Palestinians have long been willing to let Israel have Jerusalem as its capital and the P.L.O.’s acceptance would quickly bring International recognition. But Israel has not and has never been content with having the Jerusalem that has its holy sites and that has a majority Jewish population. It knows the Arabs want a piece of Jerusalem that is primarily populated by Palestinians as its own Capital, and that this is a sin qua non for the P.L.O. in peace negotiations.

So instead of trying to find a sensible demarcation line between the two ethnic groups, it has chosen to invent a new Jerusalem, which not only encompasses the historic Jerusalem, but a new invented Jerusalem that encompasses territory that has never been part of the city of Jerusalem.

B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories informs us, and I quote:

Between 1948 and June of 1967, Jerusalem was divided in two: West Jerusalem, which covered an area of about 38 square kilometers was under Israeli control, and East Jerusalem, which contained an area of some 6 sq. km, was ruled by Jordan. In June 1967, following the 1967 War, Israel annexed some 70 sq. km to the municipal boundaries of West Jerusalem, and imposed Israeli law there. These annexed territories included not only the part of Jerusalem that had been under Jordanian rule, but also an additional 64 square kilometers, most of which had belonged to 28 villages in the West Bank, and part of which belonged to the municipalities of Bethlehem and Beit Jala. Following their annexation, the area of West Jerusalem tripled, and Jerusalem became the largest city in Israel. (Emphasis added)

And so Israel, without regard to any Palestinian rights, seizes, expropriates, steals, (or whatever you want to call its land seizures) Palestinian land and declares all these former 28 Palestinian villages part of Jerusalem. This one could hope, is a way for Palestinians to be given an area for their capital that is called Jerusalem. But even here, Israel is determined to thwart this aspiration, and is incorporating these new settlements into the new Jerusalem, in order to make sure that Palestinians cannot claim even a pseudo Jerusalem for their own Capital.

For more on Jerusalem, I refer the reader to therealnews.com where a video discussion is available.

Again I find myself quoting from Jeff Halper, the Director of Icahd the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, for nothing I can say can put the situation in better perspective.

Well, I think--look, I think the basic problem is that there's an entire disconnect between, on the Palestinian side, resistance and, on the Israeli side, occupation and military force, and any political process. In other words, there is no more political process. The two-state solution is gone. The Kerry initiative failed.

 And Israel is in the process of finalizing its Judaization of Jerusalem. There is no more Palestinian East Jerusalem. It's buried under the weight of settlements and Israeli highways. Israelis are moving in just freely into Palestinian neighborhoods and taking them over. And in a sense, then, what was resistance to try to get a Palestinian state or try to resolve the problem is simply there is no resistance because there's no political process. And so it's all declined into just lashing out, you know, the driving of cars and killing people by trains… there's nothing else to do if you're a Palestinian but just to lash out or be solemn and stay at home and watch your home being taken or being demolished.

 And on the Israeli side as well, the attack on Gaza this summer, the everyday killing of Palestinians in Jerusalem, in the West Bank, everywhere, is also indicative of the fact that the violence on the Israeli side is disconnected from anything political. In other words, we're in a stage where Israel says, no more [two-state] solution, it's over, and you either live with us and submit or you get out or you die. That's really the Israeli message, so that I think on both sides the violence is increasing, but it's increasing with no political context whatsoever.

But it has now become obvious that in all these years of negotiations with the P.L.O., Israel’s negotiations have never been in good faith, with the possible exception of those conducted by the martyred, Yitzhak Rabin. He paid with his life for conducting serious negotiations.

Now the pretense of decades of insincere “negotiations”, which always had, intentionally,  one or more conditions that Israel knew would not, could not, be accepted by the Palestinians, stands exposed.

Israel will not accept anything less than the complete annexation of the West Bank, - it intends to seize and occupy all of Palestine.

The entire pretense has come to an end!!!

Naftali Bennett, a member of the Netanyahu government, as minister of the economy, and leader of the Jewish Home Party in Israel’s coalition government ends the pretense.  In an op-ed article in the New York Times entitled: “For Israel, Two-State Is No Solution” he writes:

The time has come to rethink the two-state solution.

I give Mr. Bennett credit for one thing. An honest announcement for what has long been Israeli policy hidden behind insincere pronouncements and insincere negotiations, while all the while gobbling up Palestinian lands and forcing Palestinians into ever-smaller Bantustans.

What does Mr. Bennett propose in specifics? No more negotiations.

Instead he would give the Palestinians these portions of the West Bank and I quote:

known as Areas A and B, according to the Oslo Accords.

According to the The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD):  

Area A comprises 18% of the West Bank, B another 22%, leaving a full 60%, Area C, including most of Palestinian farmland and water, under exclusive Israeli control. - These areas, comprising 64 islands, shape the contours of the “cantons” Sharon proposed as the basis of the future Palestinian state. The emerging Bantustan will thus consist of five truncated cantons: a northern one around Nablus and Jenin; a central one around Ramallah; a southern one around Bethlehem and Hebron; enclaves in East Jerusalem; and Gaza. In this scheme Israel will expand from its present 78% to 85-90%, with the Palestinian state confined to just 10-15% of the country. 

ICAHD goes on to explain:

Israel defines its policy of ensuring permanent control over the Occupied Territories as “creating facts on the ground.” In this conception, Israeli control must be made immune from any external or internal pressures to remove Israel from the Occupied Territories (which Israel vehemently denies is an occupation at all), as well as to foreclose forever the possibility of a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state. Nevertheless, …(they) recognize that Israel needs a Palestinian state, since it can neither extend citizenship to the Territories’ three and a half million Palestinians nor deny it to them. It also needs a Palestinian state to relieve itself of the necessity of accepting the refugees. A Bantustan, a cantonized Palestinian mini-state controlled by Israel yet possessing a limited independence, thus solves Israel’s fundamental dilemma of how to keep control over the entire country yet “get rid of” its Palestinian population (short of actual “transfer”).

In quoting the above I deleted a reference to Sharon’s plan, because what we are talking about is Bennett’s. But it isn’t new. It had been the late Sharon’s long ago. It just wasn’t publicized.

Under Bennet’s plan the Palestinians would be crowded into small non-contingent areas, scattered around Palestine, with no connection between them, subject to Israeli entry and exit controls and completely dependent for their survival on the beneficence of the Israeli government. Were the South-Africans any different?

This is how infoplease.com described them:

In 1962 the South African government established the first of the bantustans, the Transkei, as the homeland of the Xhosa people, and granted it limited self-government in 1963, later becoming "independent." Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, and Venda were also granted "independence," but no nation other than South Africa recognized them. Lebowa, Kangwane, Gazankulu, Qwaqwa, KwaZulu, and KwaNdebele were declared "self-governing" in the 1970s.

None of the reserves were viable nations; they were made up of broken tracts of poor-quality land, riddled with erosion and incapable of supporting their large designated populations. With no industry, opportunities for employment were few.

Can anyone find significant differences between South Africa’s policy under Apartheid and the Bennett proposal?

Allow me to show the reader a map of the proposed plan:

The little brown spots would be what the Palestinians would be crowded into. Carter may have been pre-mature in talking about apartheid, but he sure was prophetic.

As I have said in previous posts the governing party in Israel is Likud. It’s Original Party Platform, according to the Jewish Virtual Library states:

a. The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.

b. A plan which relinquishes parts of western Eretz Israel, undermines our right to the country, unavoidably leads to the establishment of a "Palestinian State," jeopardizes the security of the Jewish population, endangers the existence of the State of Israel and frustrates any prospect of peace.

Given this platform, how could anyone ever have been deceived into believing that a two state solution was possible under such a government? It is not Hamas and certainly not the P.L.O. that stands in the way of an end to the conflict. It is the messianic aim of Israel's ruling party, to do that which Bennett proposes. His talk about building the Palestinian economy is necessary window-dressing to an Apartheid plan that keeps Palestinians outside of Palestine forever as refugees, not ever to be allowed to return to ancestral homes, and to keep such Palestinians as remain in Palestine as a discriminated against, poverty stricken, minority, with few civil rights, and in so far as some remaining in Israel may keep their vote, it will always intend to be, and will remain, a vote that has no influence, and even less power.

An American liberal community cannot, or at least should not, be a party to such human rights abuses. It cannot, it must not, turn its back on its long commitment to civil and human rights. To make an exception for Israel is worse than to have sanctioned the abuses that the Jewish community so long opposed, fought against, and in some cases died for, in the United States.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (PART XVII - A Return to a Defense of Israel’s Policies & a Rebuttal Continued - Pt. 2)

As the title shows this is the 16th part (actually the 17^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV, Part XV and Part XVI.

This is a continuation to a Defense of Israel’s Policies & a Rebuttal but it no longer rebuts the article entitled “Israel’s Borders,” but rather moves on to the article referenced in "Israel’s Borders," namely a Eugene W. Rostow article that appeared in The New Republic on October 21, 1991, some 23 years ago. It appears that time stood still. The same articles are being cited. In any case the article can be found here.

To a limited extent it brings to my consciousness a portion of United Nations Security Resolution 242 that I paid too little attention to. 242’s preamble says:

which should include the application of both the following principles: (emphasis added)

and the second principle set forth is:

(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

So I was wrong to essentially ignore this second principle of an inseparable resolution.

And it could be argued that Israel under this resolution did not have to withdraw its armed forces from occupied territory until “acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;”

But exactly how this resolution justifies the settlement of an ever-increasing Jewish hostile, permanent occupying force, is beyond me.

The state of belligerency in effect ended when the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist within the 1967 borders as long ago as 1993. That is more than 20 years ago.

On September 9, 1993 the P.L.O. chairman, Yasser Arafat exchanged letters with then (soon to be assassinated) Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.The PLO accepts United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

If there was ever any justification for the continued presence of the occupation and the continued expansion of settlements on Israeli territory, it ended on this date. As a matter of fact even Hamas has now recognized Israel’s Right to exist. As I pointed out in my post "I AM A JEW (PART VIII - Hamas & Likud)," the British newspaper The Global Mail reported days ago:

Hamas is endorsing Mr. Abbas’s plan for establishing a state within the so-called “1967 borders” that delineated the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In effect, Hamas now accepts Israel’s existence and the previous agreements arrived at between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. See here.

But none of this matters. When a state is bound and determined at conquest, facts don’t matter. Its objective remains the same, as it has always been, at least in the eyes of Likud, and its leader, Netanyahu.

But allow me to return to Rostow’s presentation.

Mr. Rostow writes:

The United States has remained firmly opposed to the creation of a third Palestinian state on the territory of the Palestine Mandate.

But Rostow gives no source or citation for this bald statement. Any examination of American policy under numerous Presidents, including Reagan, shows that the US has consistently opposed Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank of Palestine.

And then Rostow makes the most incredible statement of all. One that shows his contempt for Human Rights. He urges:

Provisions for a shift of populations… are a possible solution for those West Bank Arabs who would prefer to live elsewhere.

In other words, Mr. Rostow sees nothing wrong with ethnic cleansing. If they don’t like living under a foreign oppressive state, they can pack up and become refugees, like so many already have. In Rostow’s view Palestinians, have no right to self-determination. In fact they have no rights at all.

And so I will deal with only one other article that deals with the Palestinian People (and here I must stress people, for in the end all the juridical arguments that can be made aside, what we are dealing with is people, and people are entitled to govern themselves and not be driven from their homes, or be invited to leave their homes and become refugees if they do not like to live under foreign domination.

Finally, Rostow makes this incredibly deceptive allegation:

The Bush administration seems to consider the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be "foreign" territory to which Israel has no claim. Yet the Jews have the same right to settle there, as they have to settle in Haifa.

This is sophistry at its worst. Jews, as individuals, may have the right to settle in occupied territory, though that it is far from established, but clearly an occupying power does not have the right to annex the territory, and indeed the private property of people in an occupied land, in order to change the ethnic character of that land. The building of settlement compounds with state funds is not the same as the right of individuals.

And so we come to Maurice Ostroff’s article of June 11, 2011

He finds a simple way out of the conundrum of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. He tells us the West bank is not occupied. It is disputed territory.

But for all these years the world has recognized the West Bank as occupied territory, not part of the territory assigned to Israel by the UN resolution and the only, I stress the only basis for Israel’s existence and the only basis for the territory that Israel is to occupy. Any territory beyond that is occupied, as a result of military action. That even includes the territory that Israel occupied between 1948 and 1967. Why nobody has challenged that annexation is difficult to understand. That is the recognized term for occupied territory. The canard about defensive wars allowing for captured territory to be annexed has no basis in law or in fact, and would have made Germany’s annexation of France legal, for it was France that declared war on Germany, not the other way around. In fact had Germany invaded Britain, according to this reasoning, Germany’s annexation of Britain would have been legal. Surely no one would want to stand by such absurd reasoning, and it should be noted that except for its constant repetition, no convincing legal citation has been produced. In fact, as he himself points out, even Sharon used that term.

But regardless of the outrages committed in the “disputed” territory of Kashmir, the proper way to settle such a dispute is to immediately have a plebiscite, and to allow the people of the “disputed territory “to decide their own fate. But that is clearly not what Mr. Ostrov champions, nor does Netanyahu, at least not until after Israel, through its policies, moves enough settler into the occupied territory so as to have a majority, or drives enough Palestinians out of the territory so as to accomplish the same end.

It has become clear that Israel is no longer interested, if it ever was, in negotiating a peace treaty with the Palestinians. It is only interested in annexation driven by a religious fervor based on nothing more than to re-establish a biblical nation.

This messianic drive has become the raison d'être of modern Israel. Unfortunately, it leaves no room for other ethnic groups, except as a despised and oppressed minority within the body politic.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.

I AM A JEW (PART XVI - A Return to a Defense of Israel’s Policies & a Rebuttal Continued)

As the title shows this is the 16th part (actually the 17^th, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the parts.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Special Bulletin, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X, Part XI, Part XII, Part XIII, Part XIV and Part XV.

This part of my dissertation picks up where I left off in discussing the article “Israel’s Borders."

I left off by thoroughly rebutting the assertion that "Israel having been an expansionist state since its establishment, is a myth," and showed that this is clearly not a myth, but rather, an established fact."

Now the next assertion in the article at hand, or as the author of that article likes to put it:

Myth: Judea and Samaria (also called "the West Bank") are part of Jordan.

This is hardly a myth. It is another straw man. Of course the West Bank is not part of Jordan!!!

On August 1, 1988, as reported in the New York Times: 

King Hussein of Jordan tonight abandoned to the Palestine Liberation Organization any claim to the Israeli-occupied West Bank

Now I begin to feel that the article is hardly worth further rebuttal. It is so full of deception and misinformation that it discredits itself, so I will address only one more assertion.

Myth: Israeli settlements in Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") are illegal, an obstacle in peace. 

Fact: Contrary to what Arab propaganda suggests, Jordan was never sovereign in Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank"). Thus, the constantly repeated accusation of "Israeli occupation" is pointless. Numerous international legal authorities, among them Eugene Rostow, have shown conclusively that Israel's rights in Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank") are based on international law and are further affirmed by U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338. President Reagan concluded that Jewish settlements are not illegal and that "...all people — Moslems, Jews, and Christians — are entitled to live in the West Bank."

Here the so-called “facts” are so numerous and so intertwined that it is difficult to deal with them within a reasonable space. But to illustrate how wrong these assertions are, I need do no more than to quote from UN Resolution 242 which says the opposite of what the author claims.

UN Security Council Resolution 242 calls for, and I quote:

Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; 

and territories is defined by the following map:

The author here relies heavily on Eugene Rostow, not exactly an uninterested observer, but rather another polemicist on behalf of Israel’s expansionism. I will respond to his polemic in due course.

But in so far it is possible, the claims here made are dealt with in an article by David Ignatius writing in the Washington Post of June 4, 2009.

Part of his article are worth quoting because they set the record straight, instead of cherry picking it.

He writes:

President Ronald Reagan stopped the characterization of Israeli settlements as "illegal" when he took office in 1981, but he opposed the expansion of them.

Looking at what Reagan and other Presidents and Secretaries of State said we must look to the Foundation for Middle East Peace, that sets forth what the various Presidents, including Reagan, said, and it shows that Reagan was an outlier. But even the Reagan Administration speaking through its Secretary of State George Schultz in September of 1982 said:

". . . the question isn't whether they [settlements] are legal or illegal; the question is are they constructive in the effort to arrange a situation that may, in the end, be a peaceful one and be one in which the people of the region can live in a manner that they prefer.  [President Reagan's] answer to that is no, expansion of those settlements is not a constructive move." (Emphasis added)

Returning to the Ignatius article, we quote further:

Every administration since the 1967 war -- a total of nine -- has made essentially the same demand. Netanyahu, like previous Israeli leaders, has rejected it.

Ignatius goes on to write:

Year after year, decade after decade, American officials keep repeating U.S. opposition to the settlements -- and Israeli governments keep on building them. More than 120 settlements have been constructed over the past 42 years, and the Israeli population in the West Bank now totals 190,000 in the Jerusalem area and 289,000 elsewhere.

 For years, the official U.S. position was that the settlements were illegal under international law because they violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, on protection of civilians in time of war. That document, adopted in 1949, specifies: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." The application of this article to Israel was endorsed by the administrations of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

 An emphatic statement of the U.S. view that settlements were illegal came from George H.W. Bush in 1971, when he was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: "We regret Israel's failure to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and spirit of this convention."

 Israel's position was that the West Bank was not "occupied" but rather "administered" territory whose pre-1967 status had been unclear under international law. Jordan had ruled the West Bank from 1949 until 1967, but most nations hadn't recognized its sovereignty. To complicate matters further, the Israeli Supreme Court has described the West Bank as "under belligerent occupation."

President Ronald Reagan stopped the characterization of Israeli settlements as "illegal" when he took office in 1981, but he opposed the expansion of them. That position has been maintained by subsequent administrations, which have termed the building of new settlements "an obstacle to peace" and said that the status of existing settlements should be resolved in peace negotiations. Israel has steadfastly refused interim attempts to curtail its settlements, including announcing a specific reservation to the 2003 "road map" for peace.

Before I close this part of my series allow me to expand upon what UN resolutions 242 and 338 actually say. For that I turn to the Reit Institute, a non-partisan non-profit strategy group based in Tel Aviv. 

I quote: 

The main articles of UN Security Council Resolution 242 (11/67) call for:

• Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the 1967 war.
• Termination of the state of belligerency.
• Mutual "acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area, and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."
• Achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.

Resolution 338 (10/73) reiterates the importance of Resolution 242, and calls upon the sides to begin negotiations with the aim of achieving a just and durable peace.

I hardly think that these resolutions form the basis for Israeli settlement policy or give it any legitimacy. To make such a claim strains credulity.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any, unless they have a unique relevance to the segment under discussion, until this series is complete.