THE JEWS IN PALESTINE WERE ROBBED BY THE BRITISH…DEFINITIVE ARTICLES BY BELMAN AND GRIEF

 INTRODUCTION TO 2 IMPORTANT ARTICLES

A cadre (working membership) of Trotskyism must and will understand this history very well. The Jews at the end of the First World War were given ALL of Palestine to be their national homeland, a Jewish State. That is written into many International Treaties, especially the Treaty of San Remo of 1920. It was British n Imperialism, and later to a lesser extent US Imperialism, which subverted these International treaties. The going back on their word simply signifies the unstable nature of capitalism. So yes Trotskyism and its revolutionary members will be well aware of this history, and stand by this history. Unlike capitalism we believe in a word given a word kept. But written statements or treaties are worthless. It was taken away from the Jews by force, it will be given back to the Jews by force, by the International Socialist Revolution, and by no other way.

We Trotskyists are not on our knees praying and never will be, not are we starry eyed optimists. We are realists. The Jews were robbed of their Homeland by force, the force of British Imperialism, from 1922 to 1939, with the infamout White Paper of that year. And it will be returned to the Jewish people by force as well, the force of the Socialist Revolution.

Do not just read these two documents…study them! Belman who hails from Toronto, his people previously from Eastern Europe, now living in Jerusalem, is a secularist, and is a lawyer, hence the precision in this summary. Grief I believe is also a lawyer and his article is the definitive statement. You can take everything these two say here is the definitive truth. Every Trotskyist leader will stand on the basis of these truths contained in these two documents or will not stand at all.. Our challenge to Irish Antisemites.

2 ARTICLES FOR ALL TO READ CAREFULLY

ARTICLE ONE BY TED BELMAN

SUMMARY OF ISRAEL’S LEGAL RIGHTS TO JUDEA AND SAMARIA

by Ted Belman

  

Background:The Middle East was a part of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled it some 400 years when World War I broke out. The Ottomans allied themselves with Germany. And so it was that, when the war ended, the Ottomans had lost their land. As part of the readjustments, the map of the huge area we call the Middle East was reconfigured. The original plan was to create a Jewish state in what the British called Mandatory Palestine (some 45,000 square miles on both sides of the Jordan river) and an Arab state in the rest of the region. In 1922, the British put the Hashemite family in charge of “administering” the area on the east side of the Jordan — some 78% of the land destined to be the Jewish state — leaving the Jews with some 8,840 square miles, 1/10 of 1% of the area of the Middle East, for a future homeland. The land holdings of the 22 Arab League countries, in contrast, is 6,145,389 square miles.

1.  According to international law, the Jewish people are the sole beneficiary of Self-Determination in the land that was Mandatory Palestine. The rights of the Jewish People to Palestine are enshrined in three legally binding international treaties. These rights have notexpired and are still in full force and effect. [1]

The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I — Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan — agreed to create a Jewish national home [*] in what is now the Land of Israel.

1. The 1920 San Remo ResolutionThis was passed by the San Remo Supreme Council. This council was given the power of disposition by the Great Powers and was convened for the purpose of dividing what was the Ottoman Empire, i.e, redrawing the borders of the Middle East and giving its land to its original inhabitants.The relevant resolution reads as follows:

   “The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust… the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory [authority that] will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration… in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

   The San Remo Resolution also bases itself on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declares that it is “a sacred trust of civilization” to provide for the well-being and development of colonies and territories whose inhabitants are “not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” Specifically, a resolution was formulated to create a Mandate to form a Jewish national home in Palestine.
   Professor Jacques Gauthier wrote that the San Remo treaty specifically notes that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” – but says nothing about any “political” rights of the Arabs living there.[2]
   
   
   
   
2. The 1922 Mandate for PalestineThe League of Nations’ resolution creating the Palestine Mandate included the following significant clause: “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.” No such recognition of Arab rights in Palestine was granted. 
   
   
3. The 1924 Anglo-American Convention on Palestine.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.

4. In the 1924 Anglo American Conventionthe U.S. agreed to support Great Britain as a Mandatory so long as the Mandatory abided by the San Remo Resolution. The sole purpose of the Resolution regarding Palestine was:

1. Drawing the borders of Palestine
2. Reconstituting Palestine as a National Homeland for the Jewish People worldwide
3. Recognizing the Jewish People’s historical connection to the land

There was not even one word in the Mandate or the Anglo American convention about creating an Arab land in Palestine.

In November 2009, the Office for Israeli Constitutional Law (OFICL), a non-governmental legal action organization, sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, warning that by labeling Jewish settlements in the West Bank illegal, she is violating international law, as well as American law. OFICL directer Mark Kaplan said:

“The mandate expired in 1948 when Israel got its independence, but the American-Anglo convention was a treaty that was connected to the mandate. Treaties themselves have no statute of limitations, so their rights go on ad infinitum.”

5. The Lodge-Fish Resolution of September 21, 1922,was a Joint Resolution passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress and signed by President Warren Harding, endorsing the Balfour Declaration with slight variations. This made the text of the Joint Resolution part of the law of the United States until this very day.

“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…”

confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine — anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:

6. Under American Law when a joint resolution is passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives in an identical form and then signed by the President, it becomes the Law of the U.S.

7. Both the Lodge-Fish Resolution and the Anglo American Convention underwent the above noted process (see point 6). Therefore reconstituting Palestine as a National Homeland for the Jewish People worldwide and recognizing their historical connection to the land became part of US LAW.

Any attempt to negate the Jewish people’s right to Palestine — Eretz-Israel — and to deny them access and control in the area designated for the Jewish people by the League of Nations is an actionable infringement of both international law and the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, paragraph 2 of the United States Constitution), which dictates that Treaties “shall be the supreme Law of the Land”.

8. The 1924 Anglo American Convention on Palestine included the whole text of the Palestine Mandate. The Palestine Mandate included the Balfour declaration preamble committing to reconstitute Palestine as a National homeland for the Jewish People worldwide and to recognize their historical connection to the land. It did not mention anything about creating an Arab State in Palestine. The Mandate explicitly prohibited ceding any land in Palestine to any foreign powers or changing the terms of the Mandate without the League’s expressed permission. That permission had to be unanimously passed by all members. That never occurred.[3]

9. The significance of the above (see #8) is that no decision made by the US or Britain, may be in conflict with the terms of the Mandate or the Anglo American Convention. France, Italy and Japan sat on the San Remo Supreme Council – along with the US and Britain – approving the San Remo decision. After the Supreme Council approved the San Remo decision, the resolution was further approved by the League of Nations and its 51 members. This resolution became a binding international Treaty. The Treaty became Res Judicata. Consequently all the above noted countries are bound by their own approval. Thus they are prevented from changing their approval without Israel’s consent.

10. No decision, policy or measure taken by subsequent American administrations may be in conflict with the Terms of the Palestine Mandate. (The sole purpose of the Mandate was-to reconstitute Palestine as a national homeland for the Jewish People world-wide and recognize their historical connection with the land.) Under the Doctrine of Estoppels the US is estopped from making policies, taking any steps, measures, spending any monies on policies, which run contrary to its covenants and undertaking under the Anglo-American Convention of 1924, because among other things they are violating US Law.

11. Both their Excellencies, the Emir Faisal and Abdullah approved the League of Nations decisions.At different points in history, Emir Faisal, in an agreement with Weitzman, agreed to support the Zionist claim on both sides of the Jordan river and later Abdullah, agreed with Churchill to support the Zionist claim to the territory from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean, including Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and the Golan Heights. The Supreme Council did not want to approve the final borders of Palestine on both sides of the Jordan until they had the approval of Emir Feisal.[4]

12. All rights emanating from the three international treaties were approved by the League of Nations and inherited by the United Nations. They did not expire. The United Nations had no right to vary them.

The UN has no right to pass a resolution which ran contrary to an existing earlier decision/ resolution on its books.The UN or Britain are not sovereigns and had no right to change borders at its pleasure.

The same Supreme Council that drew the borders for Iraq Syria and Lebanon, gave Israel the right to its borders from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This was approved by the League, and its members: Britain, France, Japan and Italy. They have no right to vary that which they had approved.

13. The General Assembly does not have the right to create enforceable resolutions or borders. So even if the Arabs had accepted the Green Line [the armistice lines after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war], these borders would not have been legally enforceable.

14. The Partition Plan of 1947 only demarcated the cease fire lines. It had no binding legal force.

• It was not approved by the Arabs. In order for the Green Line to have had any sort of legal significance that approval would have been necessary at the very least; 
• The General Assembly has no power to change borders. Therefore its decision or advice was insignificant from a legal perspective. 
• The UN has no power to vary an existing valid international treaty which the League of Nations – its predecessor – had approved. (Res Judicata). The UN inherited from the League of Nations the granting to Israel of the lands between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. 
• The UN has no power to draw new agreements which run contrary to existing valid International Agreements or treaties which it had inherited from its predecessor, the League of Nations. 
• No borders decided by the San Remo Conference and approved by the League of Nations, save those of Israel, were ever challenged or changed; 
• In 1923 Britain – the Mandatory and Trustee of the Palestine Mandate of 1922, and of the British American Convention of 1924 – contrary to the explicit terms of the Mandate, ceded the Golan to Syria.[5]“This treaty which was concluded by the principal powers, in effect, as representative of the League of Nations, is binding on the League, particularly after it approved it. The League cannot therefore change the mandate provisions. (Nor, of course, does the Mandatory have that right)”[6]

OFICL chairman Michael Snidecor has stated, “The General Assembly has no authority to create countries or change borders. The UN partition plan [1967] was just that — a plan.”

Significant precedents:

1. The Vienna decision on treaties: According to Howard Grief:

Rights gained from Mandates don’t cease at the expiration of the Mandate

The principle of law that rights once granted or recognized under a treaty or other legal instrument do not expire with the expiration of that treaty or instrument is now codified in article 70(1)(b) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (the Treaty on Treaties). This article states that “unless the treaty otherwise provides or the parties otherwise agree, the termination of a treaty… does not affect any right, obligation or legal situation of the parties created through the execution of the treaty prior to its termination”.

As a result, Jewish rights to Palestine and the Land of Israel remain in full force today under international law.

The South Africa decision on Mandates basically says the same thing: rights gained by a country through a mandate don’t expire at the expiration of the mandate.[7]

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. 
 

End Notes

[*] Jewish National Homeand “homeland for the Jewish people” were a less in-your-face way of saying “Jewish State.”

[1] See, for example, this, this, this, this and this, for starters. Other articles can be retrieved by googling for “Howard Grief” and/or “Yoram Shifftan”.

OFICL chairman Mark Kaplan has pointed out that IDF’s presence in the West Bank has added to this misconception of illegal activity.

“Israel chose to adopt a policy of military rule in 1967, which makes it smell of occupation. And the world says it is illegal occupation because of all the propaganda that’s been out there. Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria does not qualify as an occupation under international law because of the Anglo-American Convention — and if you look at the Hague and Geneva conventions.” 
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243026960&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull).

[2] Jacques Gauthier, Thesis Defense, 
http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2007/12/02/an-e-mail-that-is-about-jacques- gauthiers-phd-dissertation-on-the-legal-status-of-jerusalem-an- important-document-to-be-read-by-the-annapolis-process-and-the-un-lawyers/,

[3] Howard Grief, The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law: A Treatise on Jewish Sovereignty over the Land of Israel, pg 204

[4] Jacques Gauthier re: minutes of San Remo Conference. 
http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2007/11/jerusalem-is-jewish-issue.html

[5] Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine,pg 236.

[6]  Jacques Gauthier, Thesis, pg 404.

[7]  Jacques Gauthier. 
http://www.globalpolitician.com/26079-israel-west-bank-settlements 
 

Ted Belman is a Canadian lawyer and editor of the IsraPundit.comwebsite, an activist pro-Israel website. He now lives in Jerusalem. Contact him at tedbel@rogers.com

THANKS TO

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

ARTICLE 2 BY HOWARD GRIEF

Legal Rights and Title of Sovereignty of the Jewish People to the Land

of Israel and Palestine under International Law

Howard Grief

The objective of this paper is to set down in a brief, yet clear and precise manner the legal rights and title of sovereignty of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and Palestine under international law. These rights originated in the global political and legal settlement, conceived during World War I and carried into execution in the post-war years between 1919 and 1923. Insofar as the Ottoman Turkish Empire was concerned, the settlement embraced the claims of the Zionist Organization, the Arab National movement, the Kurds, the Assyrians and the Armenians.

As part of the settlement in which the Arabs received most of the lands formerly under Turkish sovereignty in the Middle East, the whole of Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, was reserved exclusively for the Jewish people as their national home and future independent state.

Under the terms of the settlement that were made by the Principal Allied Powers consisting of Britain, France, Italy and Japan, there would be no annexation of the conquered Turkish territories by any of the Powers, as had been planned in the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 9 and 16, 1916. Instead, these territories, including the peoples for whom they were designated, would be placed under the Mandates System and administered by an advanced nation until they were ready to stand by themselves. The Mandates System was established and governed by Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, contained in the Treaty of Versailles and all the other peace treaties made with the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey. The Covenant was the idea of US President Woodrow Wilson and contained in it his program of Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, while Article 22 which established the Mandates System, was largely the work of Jan Christiaan Smuts who formulated the details in a memorandum that became known as the Smuts Resolution, officially endorsed by the Council of Ten on January 30, 1919, in which Palestine as envisaged in the Balfour Declaration was named as one of the mandated states to be created. The official creation of the country took place at the San Remo Peace Conference where the Balfour Declaration was adopted by the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers as the basis for the future administration of Palestine which would henceforth be recognized as the Jewish National Home.

The moment of birth of Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty thus took place at the same time Palestine was created a mandated state, since it was created for no other reason than to reconstitute the ancient Jewish state of Judea in fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and the general provisions of Article 22 of the League Covenant. This meant that Palestine from the start was legally a Jewish state in theory that was to be guided towards independence by a Mandatory or Trustee, also acting as Tutor, and who would take the necessary political, administrative and economic measures to establish the Jewish National Home. The chief means for accomplishing this was by encouraging large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine, which would eventually result in making Palestine an independent Jewish state, not only legally but also in the demographic and cultural senses.

The details for the planned independent Jewish state were set forth in three basic documents, which may be termed the founding documents of mandated Palestine and the modern Jewish state of Israel that arose from it. These were the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920, the Mandate for Palestine conferred on Britain by the Principal Allied Powers and confirmed by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922, and the Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920. These founding documents were supplemented by the Anglo-American Convention of December 3, 1924 respecting the Mandate for Palestine. It is of supreme importance to remember always that these documents were the source or well-spring of Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty over Palestine and the Land of Israel under international law, because of the near-universal but completely false belief that it was the United Nations General Assembly Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 that brought the State of Israel into existence. In fact, the UN resolution was an illegal abrogation of Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty to the whole of Palestine and the Land of Israel, rather than an affirmation of such rights or progenitor of them.

The San Remo Resolution converted the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 from a mere statement of British policy expressing sympathy with the goal of the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state into a binding act of international law that required specific fulfillment by Britain of this object in active cooperation with the Jewish people. Under the Balfour Declaration as originally issued by the British government, the latter only promised to use their best endeavors to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. But under the San Remo Resolution of April 24-25, 1920, the Principal Allied Powers as a cohesive group charged the British government with the responsibility or legal obligation of putting into effect the Balfour Declaration. A legal onus was thus placed on Britain to ensure that the Jewish National Home would be duly established. This onus the British Government willingly accepted because at the time the Balfour Declaration was issued and adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference, Palestine was considered a valuable strategic asset and communications center, and so a vital necessity for protecting far-flung British imperial interests extending from Egypt to India. Britain was fearful of having any major country or power other than itself, especially France or Germany, positioned alongside the Suez Canal.

The term “Jewish National Home” was defined to mean a state by the British government at the Cabinet session which approved the Balfour Declaration on October 31, 1917. That was also the meaning originally given to this phrase by the program committee which drafted the Basel Program at the first Zionist Congress in August 1897 and by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist Organization. The word “home” as used in the Balfour Declaration and subsequently in the San Remo Resolution was simply the euphemism for a state originally adopted by the Zionist Organization when the territory of Palestine was subject to the rule of the Ottoman Empire, so as not to arouse the sharp opposition of the Sultan and his government to the Zionist aim, which involved a potential loss of this territory by the Empire. There was no doubt in the minds of the authors of the Basel Program and the Balfour Declaration regarding the true meaning of this word, a meaning reinforced by the addition of the adjective “national” to “home”. However, as a result of not using the word “state” directly and proclaiming that meaning openly or even attempting to hide its true meaning when it was first used to denote the aim of Zionism, ammunition was provided to those who sought to prevent the emergence of a Jewish state or who saw the Home only in cultural terms.

The phrase “in Palestine”, another expression found in the Balfour Declaration that generated much controversy, referred to the whole country, including both Cisjordan and Transjordan. It was absurd to imagine that this phrase could be used to indicate that only a part of Palestine was reserved for the future Jewish National Home, since both were created simultaneously and used interchangeably, with the term “Palestine” pointing out the geographical location of the future independent Jewish state. Had “Palestine” meant a partitioned country with certain areas of it set aside for Jews and others for Arabs, that intention would have been stated explicitly at the time the Balfour Declaration was drafted and approved and later adopted by the Principal Allied Powers. No such allusion was ever made in the prolonged discussions that took place in fashioning the Declaration and ensuring it international approval.

There is therefore no juridical or factual basis for asserting that the phrase “in Palestine” limited the establishment of the Jewish National Home to only a part of the country. On the contrary, Palestine and the Jewish National Home were synonymous terms, as is evidenced by the use of the same phrase in the second half of the Balfour Declaration which refers to the existing non-Jewish communities “in Palestine”, clearly indicating the whole country. Similar evidence exists in the preamble and terms of the Mandate Charter.

The San Remo Resolution on Palestine combined the Balfour Declaration with Article 22 of the League Covenant. This meant that the general provisions of Article 22 applied to the Jewish people exclusively, who would set up their home and state in Palestine. There was no intention to apply Article 22 to the Arabs of the country, as was mistakenly concluded by the Palestine Royal Commission which relied on that article of the Covenant as the legal basis to justify the partition of Palestine, apart from the other reasons it gave. The proof of the applicability of Article 22 to the Jewish people, including not only those in Palestine at the time, but those who were expected to arrive in large numbers in the future, is found in the Smuts Resolution, which became Article 22 of the Covenant. It specifically names Palestine as one of the countries to which this article would apply. There was no doubt that when Palestine was named in the context of Article 22, it was linked exclusively to the Jewish National Home, as set down in the Balfour Declaration, a fact everyone was aware of at the time, including the representatives of the Arab national movement, as evidenced by the agreement between Emir Feisal and Dr. Chaim Weizmann dated January 3, 1919 as well as an important letter sent by the Emir to future US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter dated March 3, 1919. In that letter, Feisal characterized as “moderate and proper” the Zionist proposals presented by Nahum Sokolow and Weizmann to the Council of Ten at the Paris Peace Conference on February 27, 1919, which called for the development of Palestine into a Jewish commonwealth with extensive boundaries. The argument later made by Arab leaders that the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine were incompatible with Article 22 of the Covenant is totally undermined by the fact that the Smuts Resolution – the precursor of Article 22 – specifically included Palestine within its legal framework.

The San Remo Resolution on Palestine became Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres which was intended to end the war with Turkey, but though this treaty was never ratified by the Turkish National Government of Kemal Ataturk, the Resolution retained its validity as an independent act of international law when it was inserted into the Preamble of the Mandate for Palestine and confirmed by 52 states. The San Remo Resolution is the base document upon which the Mandate was constructed and to which it had to conform. It is therefore the pre-eminent foundation document of the State of Israel and the crowning achievement of pre-state Zionism. It has been accurately described as the Magna Carta of the Jewish people. It is the best proof that the whole country of Palestine and the Land of Israel belong exclusively to the Jewish people under international law.

The Mandate for Palestine implemented both the Balfour Declaration and Article 22 of the League Covenant, i.e. the San Remo Resolution. All four of these acts were building blocks in the legal structure that was created for the purpose of bringing about the establishment of an independent Jewish state. The Balfour Declaration in essence stated the principle or object of a Jewish state. The San Remo Resolution gave it the stamp of international law. The Mandate furnished all the details and means for the realization of the Jewish state. As noted, Britain’s chief obligation as Mandatory, Trustee and Tutor was the creation of the appropriate political, administrative and economic conditions to secure the Jewish state. All 28 articles of the Mandate were directed to this objective, including those articles that did not specifically mention the Jewish National Home. The Mandate created a right of return for the Jewish people to Palestine and the right to establish settlements on the land throughout the country in order to create the envisaged Jewish state.

In conferring the Mandate for Palestine on Britain, a contractual bond was created between the Principal Allied Powers and Britain, the former as Mandator and the latter as Mandatory. The Principal Allied Powers designated the Council of the League of Nations as the supervisor of the Mandatory to ensure that all the terms of the Mandate Charter would be strictly observed. The Mandate was drawn up in the form of a Decision of the League Council confirming the Mandate rather than making it part of a treaty with Turkey signed by the High Contracting Parties, as originally contemplated. To ensure compliance with the Mandate, the Mandatory had to submit an annual report to the League Council reporting on all its activities and the measures taken during the preceding year to realize the purpose of the Mandate and for the fulfillment of its obligations. This also created a contractual relationship between the League of Nations and Britain.

The first drafts of the Mandate for Palestine were formulated by the Zionist Organization and were presented to the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The content, style and mold of the Mandate was thus determined by the Zionist Organization. The British Peace Delegation at the Conference produced a draft of their own and the two then cooperated in formulating a joint draft. This cooperation which took place while Arthur James Balfour was Foreign Minister came to an end only after Lord Curzon, the Foreign Secretary who replaced Balfour on October 24, 1919, took personal charge of the Mandate drafting process in March 1920. He shut out the Zionist Organization from further direct participation in the actual drafting, but the Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, was kept informed of new changes made in the Draft Mandate and allowed to comment on them. The changes engineered by Curzon watered down the obvious Jewish character of the Mandate, but did not succeed in suppressing its aim – the creation of a Jewish state. The participation of the Zionist Organization in the Mandate drafting process confirmed the fact that the Jewish people were the exclusive beneficiary of the national rights enshrined in the Mandate. No Arab party was ever consulted regarding its views on the terms of the Mandate prior to the submission of this instrument to the League Council for confirmation, on December 6, 1920. By contrast, the civil and religious rights of all existing religious communities in Palestine, whether Moslem or Christian, were safeguarded, as well as the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion. The rights of Arabs, whether as individuals or as members of religious communities, but not as a nation, were therefore legally assured. In addition, no prejudice was to be caused to their financial and economic position by the expected growth of the Jewish population.

It was originally intended that the Mandate Charter would delineate the boundaries of Palestine, but that proved to be a lengthy process involving negotiations with France over the northern and northeastern borders of Palestine with Syria. It was therefore decided to fix these boundaries in a separate treaty, which was done in the Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920. The borders were based on a formula first put forth by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he met his French counterpart, Georges Clemenceau, in London on December 1, 1918 and defined Palestine as extending from the ancient towns of Dan to Beersheba. This definition was immediately accepted by Clemenceau, which meant that Palestine would have the borders that included all areas of the country settled by the Twelve Tribes of Israel during the First Temple Period, embracing historic Palestine both east and west of the Jordan River. The very words “from Dan to Beersheba” implied that the whole of Jewish Palestine would be reconstituted as a Jewish state. Though the San Remo Resolution did not specifically delineate the borders of Palestine, it was understood by the Principal Allied Powers that this formula would be the criterion to be used in delineating them. However, when the actual boundary negotiations began after the San Remo Peace Conference, the French illegally and stubbornly insisted on following the defunct Sykes-Picot line for the northern border of Palestine, accompanied by Gallic outbursts of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist sentiments, though they agreed to extend this border to include the Galilee but not any of the water sources from the Litani valley and the land adjoining it. As a result, some parts of historic Palestine in the north and northeast were illegally excluded from the Jewish National Home. The 1920 Boundary Convention was amended by another British-French Agreement respecting the boundary line between Syria and Palestine dated February 3, 1922, which took effect on March 10, 1923. It illegally removed the portion of the Golan that had previously been included in Palestine in the 1920 Convention, in exchange for placing the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) wholly within the bounds of the Jewish National Home, and made other small territorial adjustments. The British and French negotiators had no legal right to remove or exclude any “Palestine territory” from the limits of Palestine, but could only ensure that all such territory was included. The exchange of “Palestine territory” for other “Palestine territory” between Britain and France was therefore prohibited as a violation of the Lloyd George formula accepted at the San Remo Peace Conference.

The 1920 Convention also included Transjordan in the area of the Jewish National Home, but a surprise last-minute intervention by the US government unnecessarily delayed the confirmation of the pending Mandate. This gave an unexpected opportunity to Winston Churchill, the new Colonial Secretary placed in charge of the affairs of Palestine, to change the character of the Mandate: first, by having a new article inserted (Article 25) which allowed for the provisional administrative separation of Transjordan from Cisjordan; second, by redefining the Jewish National Home to mean not an eventual independent Jewish state but limited to a cultural or spiritual center for the Jewish people. These radical changes were officially introduced in the Churchill White Paper of June 3, 1922 and led directly to the sabotage of the Mandate. Thereafter, the British never departed from the false interpretation they gave to the Jewish National Home which ended all hope of achieving the envisaged Jewish state under their auspices.

The question of which state, nation or entity held sovereignty over a mandated territory sparked great debate throughout the Mandate period, and no definitive answer was ever given. That is extremely surprising because the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919 and ratified on January 10, 1920, stated flatly in Article 22 that the states which formerly governed those territories which were subsequently administered by a Mandatory had lost their sovereignty as a consequence of World War I. That meant that Germany no longer had sovereignty over its former colonies in Africa and the Pacific, while Turkey no longer had sovereignty over its possessions in the Middle East, prior to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The date when the change of sovereignty occurred could only have been on January 30, 1919, the date when it was irrevocably decided by the Council of Ten in adopting the Smuts Resolution, that none of the ex-German and ex-Turkish territories would be returned to their former owners. These territories were then placed in the collective hands of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers for their disposition. In the case of Palestine, that decision was made in favor of the Jewish people at the session of the San Remo Peace Conference that took place on April 24, 1920 when the Balfour Declaration was adopted as the reason for creating and administering the new country of Palestine that, until then, had had no official existence. Inasmuch as the Balfour Declaration was made in favor of the Jewish people, it was the latter upon whom de jure sovereignty was devolved over all of Palestine. However, during the Mandate period, the British government and not the Jewish people exercised the attributes of sovereignty, while sovereignty in the purely theoretical or nominal sense (i.e. de jure sovereignty) remained vested in the Jewish people. This state of affairs was reflected in the Mandate Charter where the components of the title of sovereignty of the Jewish people over Palestine are specifically mentioned in the first three recitals of the Preamble, namely, Article 22, the Balfour Declaration and the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine. These three components of the title of sovereignty were the grounds for reconstituting the Jewish National Home in Palestine as specifically stated in the third recital of the Preamble. On the other hand, since the Jewish people were under the tutelage of Great Britain during the Mandate Period, it was the latter which exercised the attributes of Jewish sovereignty over Palestine, as confirmed by Article 1 of the Mandate, which placed full powers of legislation and of administration in the hands of the Mandatory, save as they may be limited by the terms of the Mandate.

This situation continued so long as the Mandate was in force and the Jewish people living in Palestine were not able to stand alone and hence not able to exercise the sovereignty awarded them by the Principal Allied Powers under international law.

The decisive moment of change came on May 14, 1948 when the representatives of the Jewish people in Palestine and of the Zionist Organization proclaimed the independence of a Jewish state whose military forces held only a small portion of the territory originally allocated for the Jewish National Home. The rest of the country was in the illegal possession of neighboring Arab states who had no sovereign rights over the areas they illegally occupied, that were historically a part of Palestine and the Land of Israel and were not meant for Arab independence or the creation of another Arab state. It is for this reason that Israel, which inherited the sovereign rights of the Jewish people over Palestine, has the legal right to keep all the lands it liberated in the Six Day War that were either included in the Jewish National Home during the time of the Mandate or formed integral parts of the Land of Israel that were illegally detached from the Jewish National Home when the boundaries of Palestine were fixed in 1920 and 1923. For the same reason, Israel cannot be accused by anyone of “occupying” lands under international law that were clearly part of the Jewish National Home or the Land of Israel. Thus the whole debate today that centers on the question of whether Israel must return “occupied territories” to their alleged Arab owners in order to obtain peace is one of the greatest falsehoods of international law and diplomacy.

The most amazing development concerning the question of sovereignty over Palestine is that the State of Israel, when it finally had an opportunity to exercise its sovereignty over all of the country west of the Jordan, after being victorious in the Six Day War of June 5-10, 1967, did not do so – except in the case of Jerusalem. The Knesset did, however, pass an amendment to the Law and Administration Ordinance of 1948, adding Section 11B, which allowed for that possibility and was premised on the idea that Israel possessed such sovereignty. Israel did not even enforce the existing law on sovereignty passed by the Ben Gurion government in September 1948, known as the Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance, which required it to incorporate immediately any area of the Land of Israel which the Minister of Defense had defined by proclamation as being held by the Defense Army of Israel.

Israel’s legal rights and title of sovereignty over all of the Land of Israel – specifically in regard to Judea, Samaria and Gaza – suffered a severe setback when the Government of Prime Minister Menahem Begin approved the Camp David Framework Agreement for Peace in the Middle East, under which it was proposed that negotiations would take place to determine the “final status” of those territories. The phrase “final status” was a synonym for the word “sovereignty”. It was inexcusable that neither Begin nor his legal advisers, including Aharon Barak, the future President of the Israel Supreme Court, knew that sovereignty had already been vested in the Jewish people and hence the State of Israel many years before, at the San Remo Peace Conference. The situation became much worse, reaching the level of treason when the Government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Declaration of Principles (DOP) with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and agreed to give it about 90% or more of Judea and Samaria and most of Gaza over a five-year transitional period in order to “achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peaceful settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process” with the Arabs of Palestine. The illegal surrender of territory to the “Palestinian Authority” originally called the “Council” in Article IV of the DOP was hidden by the use of the word “jurisdiction” instead of “sovereignty” in that article. Further dissimulation was shown by the sanitized reference to “redeployment of Israeli military forces in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip” to disguise the illegal act of transferring parts of the Jewish National Home to the PLO. A spade was not called a spade.

To understand why even the State of Israel does not believe in its own title of sovereignty over what are wrongfully termed “occupied territories” even by leading politicians and jurists in Israel, it is necessary to locate the causes in the Mandate period:

1. The non-ratification of the Treaty of Sevres of August 10, 1920 with Turkey which contained the San Remo Resolution on Palestine and the non-inclusion of this Resolution in the Treaty of Lausanne of July 24, 1923. This gave the wrong impression that the legal status of Palestine as a whole was never settled definitively as being the Jewish National Home under international law and that Turkey did not lose its sovereignty until the signing of this latter treaty.
    
2. The non-enforcement of most of the terms of the Mandate within Palestine itself, according to their true intent and meaning, by both the British government and the British-administered judiciary which servilely served the former to the point of misfeasance. 
    
3. The deliberate misinterpretation of the meaning of the Mandate by the British government to include obligations of equal weight which it supposedly had undertaken in favor of the Arabs of Palestine, when in actual fact no such obligations ever existed, particularly the obligation to develop self-governing institutions for their benefit, which – on the contrary – were meant for the Jewish National Home.
    
4. The issuance of several White Papers beginning with the Churchill White Paper of June 3, 1922 and culminating with the Malcolm MacDonald White Paper of May 17, 1939, whose effect was to nullify the fundamental terms of the Mandate and prevent a Jewish state covering the whole of Palestine from ever coming into being during the British administration of the country. What the British essentially did in governing Palestine was to implement their false interpretations of the Mandate rather than its plain language and meaning. This turned the Mandate Charter upside down and made its aim of a Jewish state unrealizable. 
    
5. The illegal introduction of Article 25 into the Mandate Charter that after its application on September 16, 1922 led to the dislocation of Transjordan from the Jewish National Home and also had a deleterious influence on the administration of Cisjordan by encouraging the false idea that Arab national rights existed not only in the severed part of the Jewish National Home across the Jordan, but in the remaining part as well.

The end result of British sabotage, misinterpretation, distortion and outright denial of what the Mandate stood for was that Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty over the whole of Palestine as originally envisaged in the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate became so blurred, obfuscated and confused by the time the Mandate ended that it was no longer understood or held to be true. Not even the legal experts of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Zionist Organization asserted Jewish sovereignty over the whole country in any official paper or memorandum submitted to the British government or to the League of Nations.

The mutilation of the Mandate Charter was continued by the United Nations when this new world organization considered the question of Palestine. On August 31, 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) proposed an illegal partition plan which recognized Arab national rights in western Palestine, specifically in the areas of western Galilee, Judea, Samaria, the southern coastal plain from Ashdod to the Egyptian frontier and a portion of the western Negev including Beersheba and what became Eilat. It apparently did not occur to the members of the Committee representing 11 states headed by Swedish Chief Justice Emil Sandstrom, that the UN did not have the legal authority to partition the country in favor of the Arabs of Palestine who were not the national beneficiary of the Mandate entitled to self-determination. The trampling of the legal rights of the Jewish people to the whole of Palestine by the United Nations was in clear violation of the Mandate which forbade partition and also Article 80 of the UN Charter which, in effect, prevented the alteration of Jewish rights granted under the Mandate whether or not a trusteeship was set up to replace it, which could only be done by a prior agreement made by the states directly concerned. The illegal partition plan, with some territorial modifications made in the original majority plan presented by UNSCOP, was then approved by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947 as Resolution 181 (II). The Jewish Agency for Palestine, recoiling from the loss of six million Jews in the Holocaust and trying to salvage something from British misrule of Palestine, accepted this illegal Resolution. By doing so, it lent credence to the false idea that Palestine belonged to both Arabs and Jews, which was an idea foreign to the San Remo Resolution, the Mandate and the Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920. The Jewish Agency should have relied on these three documents exclusively in declaring the Jewish state over all of Palestine, even if it was unable to control all areas of the country, following the example of what was done in Syria and Lebanon during World War II.

Another facet of the story that concerned the illegal denial of Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty over Palestine was the attitude adopted by the United States government towards the infamous British White Paper of May 17, 1939. The United States agreed to the British administration of Palestine pursuant to the Mandate when it signed and ratified the Anglo-American Convention of December 3, 1924. This imposed a solemn obligation on the US government to protest any British violation of this treaty, which had repeated every word, jot and tittle of the Mandate Charter in the preamble of the Convention, regardless of whether the violation affected American rights or those of the Jewish people. Yet when the White Paper was issued in the year of 1939, the US government did not lift a finger to point out the blaring illegalities contained in the new statement of British policy that smashed to smithereens the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, and brought immense joy to the Arab side. It accepted the incredible British contention that changes in the terms of the Mandate effected by the White Paper did not require American consent because no US rights or those of its nationals were impaired, an argument that was demonstrably false. This US passivity in the face of British perfidy, which was strongly denounced by the venerable David Lloyd George and even by Winston Churchill who had himself contributed to the betrayal of the Jewish people and their rights to Palestine, allowed the British government to get away with the highest violation of international law at the very moment when the Jewish people were about to suffer the greatest catastrophe in their history. There can be no doubt that the Holocaust could have largely been prevented or its effects greatly mitigated had the terms of the Mandate been duly implemented to allow for a massive influx of Jews to their national home.

American inaction against the British government was particularly unforgivable in view of the fact that the articles of the Mandate were a part of American domestic law and the US was the only state which could have forced the British to repudiate the malevolent White Paper and restore the right of the Jews of Europe to gain refuge in their homeland.

Both the Mandate and the Anglo-American Convention have ceased to exist. However, all the rights of the Jewish people that derive from the Mandate remain in full force. This is the consequence of the principle of acquired legal rights which, as applied to the Jewish people, means that the rights they acquired or were recognized as belonging to them when Palestine was legally created as the Jewish National Home are not affected by the termination of the treaty or the acts of international law which were the source of those rights. This principle already existed when the Anglo-American Convention came to an end simultaneously with the termination of the Mandate for Palestine on May 14-15, 1948. It has since been codified in Article 70(1)(b) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This principle of international law would apply even if one of the parties to the treaty failed to perform the obligations imposed on it, as was the case with the British government in regard to the Mandate for Palestine.

The reverse side of the principle of acquired legal rights is the doctrine of estoppel which is also of great importance in preserving Jewish national rights. This doctrine prohibits any state from denying what it previously admitted or recognized in a treaty or other international agreement. In the Convention of 1924, the United States recognized all the rights granted to the Jewish people under the Mandate, in particular the right of Jewish settlement anywhere in Palestine or the Land of Israel. Therefore the US government is legally estopped today from denying the right of Jews in Israel to establish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which have been approved by the government of Israel. In addition, the United States is also debarred from protesting the establishment of these settlements because they are based on a right which became embedded in US domestic law after the 1924 Convention was ratified by the US Senate and proclaimed by President Calvin Coolidge on December 5, 1925. This convention has terminated, but not the rights granted under it to the Jewish people. The American policy opposing Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is a fit subject for judicial review in US courts because it violates Jewish legal rights formerly recognized by the United States and which still remain part of its domestic law. A legal action to overturn this policy if it was to be adjudicated might also put an end to the American initiative to promote a so-called “Palestinian” state which would abrogate the existing right of Jewish settlement in all areas of the Land of Israel that fall under its illegal rule.

The gravest threat to Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty over the Land of Israel still comes from the same source that has always fought the return of the Jews to their homeland, namely, the medley of Arabic-speaking Gentiles who inhabit the land alongside the Jews. They no longer call themselves Arabs or Syrians, but “Palestinians”. This has resulted in a switch of national identity. The Palestinians used to be the Jews during the Mandate Period, but the Arabs adopted the name after the Jews of Palestine established the State of Israel and began to be called Israelis. The use of the name “Palestinians” for Arabs did not take general hold until 1969 when the United Nations recognized the existence of this supposed new nation, and began passing resolutions thereafter affirming its legitimate and inalienable rights to Palestine. The whole idea that such a nation exists is the greatest hoax of the 20thcentury and continues unabated into the 21st century. This hoax is easily exposed by the fact that the “Palestinians” possess no distinctive history, language or culture, and are not essentially different in the ethnological sense from the Arabs living in the neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. The very name of the supposed nation is non-Arabic in origin and derives from Hebrew root letters. The Arabs of Palestine have no connection or relationship to the ancient Philistines from whom they have taken their new name.

It is a matter of the greatest irony and astonishment that the so-called Palestinian nation has received its greatest boost from Israel itself when it allowed a “Palestinian” administration to be set up in the areas of Judea, Samaria and Gaza under the leadership of Yasser Arafat.

The situation in which the Arabs of Palestine and the Land of Israel claim the same legal rights as the Jewish people violates the authentic international law that was created by the San Remo Resolution, the Mandate and the 1920 Franco-British Convention. It is part of the worldwide folly that has occurred since 1969 when the “Palestinian people” were first accorded international recognition, that authentic international law has been replaced by an ersatz international law composed of illegal UN Resolutions. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 are acts of genuine international law, but they have no direct application or relevance to the legal status of Judea, Samaria and Gaza which are integral territories of the Jewish National Home and the Land of Israel under the sovereignty of the State of Israel. These acts would apply only to the Arab occupation of Jewish territories, as occurred between 1948 and 1967, and not to the case of Israeli rule over the Jewish homeland. The hoax of the Palestinian people and their alleged rights to the Land of Israel as well as the farce that results from citing pseudo-international law to support their fabricated case must be exposed and brought to an end.

The Arabs of the Land of Israel have ignited a terrorist war against Israel to recover what they consider to be their occupied homeland. Their aim is a fantasy based on a gross myth and lie that can never be satisfied, since that would mean the conversion of the Land of Israel into an Arab country. It is up to the government of Israel to take the necessary steps to remedy what has become an intolerable situation that threatens the Jewish people with the loss of their immutable rights to their one and only homeland.

 http://4international.me/the-land-of-israel-and-palestine-under-international-law/

CONCLUSION

These articles by Ted Belman and Howard Grief are not meant to be casual reading. They need to be studied and indeed debated. That is also why on the website “trotskyism” we place them always readily available as a page on the front cover. The aim is not to have these read, digested and their practical significance pursued on an indivisual manner, but in a social manner. This analysis must be made to live inside the Irish political scene and the way to do this is by means of a political campaign by a tightly composed Trotskyist organization, or league of like minded individuals joined together willingly to pursue a common purpose.

This is also a good time to draw attention to why this is so necessary in the Ireland of today. In the period from 1916 to 1922 Jews in Ireland came very much tot he help of the Irish Republicans who were fighting against the common enemy of Irish and Jewish, the cause of all our sorrows, whether we are Jewish or Irish, British Imperialism.

But today, read the following piece that we conclude with, which shows Adams and McGuinness of Sinn Fein today attacking Israel and calling for the Israeli Ambassador to be expelled. It shows that in becoming respectable and in joining with American and British Imperialism, modern Republicanism also becomes Antisemitic.

Irish Government should

expel Israeli Ambassador — Adams

Sinn Féin leaders are attending demonstrations in Dublin, Belfast and Derry today to protest at the actions of Israel whose forces killed a number of civilians this morning when they attacked one of the ships taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams will attend a demonstration at Belfast City Hall at 4pm. Martin McGuinness is to attend a protest at the Guildhall in Derry at 5pm while Sinn Féin Vice President mary Lou McDonald and Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD will attend an event at the Spire in Dublin’s O,Connell Street at 6pm.
Speaking from the Belfast demonstration Gerry Adams said:
“I welcome the fact that Minister Micheál Martin has summoned the Israeli ambassador to explain the actions of Israeli forces in killing up to 20 civilians taking part in a peaceful humanitarian mission to Gaza.

“This morning’s murderous attack is an affront to international law and has endangered the lives of Irish citizens. It requires a firm and resolute response by the Irish Government which must now expel the Israeli Ambassador.
“The government must also use it’s influence to discontinue the EU’s preferential trade agreement with Israel.
“In the wake of this morning’s tragedy, the Irish Government should support and seek the backing of other countries for a new international aid mission to Gaza which will ensure that necessary vital supplies reach the suffering people of that besieged area.” ENDS

http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/18683

The Harp and the Shield of David

 By Shulami Eliash

 ISAAC HERZOG, GREAT FRIEND OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC, PAID AN URGENT VISIT TO THE VATICAN

“Yet I tremble”, words spoken by Isaac Herzog to his friend after talking to the Vatican, recognising that the Vatican was kindly enough, but was being blackmailed by its own doctrine and tradition of Jew Hatred.

(taken from page 63 of that book. You can access part of that book on google)

Herzog made the point, the central point, that he feared his entreaties to the Vatican would come to nothing, because the only solution lay in fast transit to Palestine out of the jaws of the Nazis, but that everything in the Catholic Religion worked against just this only and sole solution, because it the Catholic Faith had always taught that the Jews were a wandering race because they had rejected Jesus as “Messiah”.

“Catholics are heirs to a long tradition that embodies a belief that the homelessness of the Jew stems from his rejection of the Christian Messiah.”

Herzog, according to this book, was desperate. He was in Rome in order to effect a change.

And he was very worried that a change could not be made. It is his reasoning to his friend that is so important and indeed so telling in its precision.

Herzog had had a long association with Catholicism/Irish Republicanism. He too just as much as Collins or De valera had joined the Irish struggle to rid Ireland of British Imperialism. He was a very close friend to De Valera and I presume to the other Sinn Fein leaders also, such as Collins.

As they fled from the British troops in Dublin these Sinn Fein leaders were put up by Herzog in his home. This Jew, and other Dublin Jews like the Briscoes, did not just talk the talk, they walked the walk of the Irish struggle against the British.

So winding on a couple of decades…In the critical moments in Rome as the Jews were being slaughtered in Poland Herzog was trying to get the Vatican to speak out.

He was also drawing on all of that experience that he had with the Irish Catholic Republicans like De Valera.

This deep felt experience led him to reach terrible conclusions about the Vatican and the Holocaust which was raging as he spoke. It was that the issue was not about kindness. The Pope and the Cardianls were probably very kind people.

He said to his friend after meeting the Vatican that the Irish also were indeed as kind a people as exists.

Then Herzog made a great switch and deep insight in his explanation which gets to the very heart of Antisemitism then and since, up to the present day, with special emphasis on today’s Irish “Left”.

The issue he explained to his friend was rather about Catholic Doctrine: 1. that Catholics were taught that Jews killed Jesus, and 2. that Jews were a wandering race without a country of their own because the Jews had killed Jesus.

And the Vatican did not speak out on the mass murder by the Nazis as Herzog knew deep down in his consciousness they would not, and they would not because they could not.

This is, in fact, the root of all Antisemitism. With obvious aplication to Antisemitism in Ireland today. (The visit of Ambassador O’Reilly to the Jabotinsky Institute in an almost comical fashion reinforces this)

Who listens to the (somewhat marginalised) Catholic Church in Ireland today, some say in argument, trying to dismiss this very point!

Well plenty do. Adams and McGuinnes are devout Catholics for a start, so it has not lost all influence!

But to argue like that misses the whole point. Which is, that in the course of 2000 years of Catholic teaching that the Jews are a cursed race because of the Jesus narrative, that this “propaganda” itself becomes a material force in society, not just words but an actual material and physical entity.

Strangely that leads on to Lenin’s “What is to be done” where Lenin pondered in philosophical mode what ARE the main and ruling ideas inany society.

Understanding that has got great implications as to how Antisemitism in Ireland can be defeated. It has got to be fought at the level of consciousness in the only way possible, by a cadre of people who are mobilised within a disciplined “army” to fight it.

Antisemitism in the left took a big kick forward when Adams/McGuinness gained the ascendency in Sinn Fein. The old leadership based on the Eire Nua philosophy left some room for the Northern Protestants. Adams and co. were far more sectarian.

This change went hand in hand with strident Antisemitism which is the essence of adopting The Palestinian Narrative. Somehow the two went hand in hand.

The Irish “left” had no theoretical independence and both adapted to and added to this fatal “Palestinian Narrative”.

All mysteriously ensconced within the Jesus killed by the Jews Narrative. “Mysteriously” in the sense that much of this was and is subconscious. That is what Herzog meant that the Irish were a kindly people but were being blackmailed by their tradition. The essence of Antisemitism!

16/2/2010 Irish Ambassador Visits the Jabotinsky Institute: Why Did Ireland Only Recognize the State of Israel in 19   Irish Ambassador to Israel Breifne O’Reilly carried out a lengthy visit to the Jabotinsky Institute, highlighted by a detailed discussion with Institute Academic Committee member Dr. Shulamit Eliash on Irish-Israeli relations. Dr. Eliash is the author of The Harp and the Shield of David: Ireland, Zionism and the State of Israel, which examines the topic from a historic aspect, within the context of the Partition Plan (1937), the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust, and the delay till 1963 of Ireland’s official recognition of the State of Israel. Ambassador O’Reilly was welcomed by Institute director Yossi Ahimeir and archive director Amira Stern, who briefed their guest on the Institute’s activities and on the ties between Ze’ev Jabotinsky and his movement and the former prime minister of Ireland Eamon De Valera and his movement. While De Valera greatly esteemed the leadership of Jabotinsky, fighters in the Israeli underground also drew inspiration in their struggle to free Eretz Yisrael from the yoke of the British mandate from De Valera’s struggle for Irish independence from British sovereignty. Jabotinsky and De Valera met at the beginning of 1938. Jabotinsky convinced the Irish leader to oppose the partition of Eretz Yisrael and to call upon Britain to open the country’s gates to Jewish refugees from Europe. De Valera enjoyed special standing as the head of a group of small countries in the League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations. Among the main topics raised with Ambassador O’Reilly’s was the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism throughout the world. Director Ahimeir informed the Irish ambassador of the creation of the Jabotinsky International Center, which is actively engaged in combating outbursts of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment. Ambassador O’Reilly stressed that in Ireland, whose Jewish community numbers around 1500 people, anti-Semitism is almost non-existent. “Our prime minister has initiated a project in cooperation with Germany to fight anti-Semitism, and during the coming year the two countries are planning to host a joint convention devoted to the issue.” Ambassador O’Reilly noted that Ireland apologized for not accepting Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. He agreed with Dr. Eliash that the delay in convening diplomatic relations could be attributed to Vatican pressure, to the fact that Ireland had no special economic interests with Israel, and that at the time Ireland had only a relatively small number of diplomatic representations. The name of former Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Herzog, himself an Irishman, was mentioned as well. Dr. Eliash presented a copy of her book to the ambassador, who leafed through it and recalled that his father had once conducted an interview on Irish radio with De Valera. “I’ll read this book with great interest, and I’ll learn from it. Today the relations between Ireland and Israel are good ones: we do not believe in boycotts, and we draw the line between anti-Semitism and legitimate criticism.” http://www.jabotinsky.org/Site/modules/newsItem.asp?sid=16&pid=146&newsID=111