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).
(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/,
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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 withIsrael .
“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 toGaza which will
ensure that necessary vital supplies reach the suffering people of that
besieged area.” ENDS
“The government must also use it’s influence to discontinue the EU’s preferential trade agreement with
“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
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!
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