Over & Out

Thanks to the readers and commenters who have supported this blog over the past ten years. Regular readers from the United States and Israel, from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, the Ukraine, Romania,  and many other countries besides, including, intriguingly and flatteringly, a regular visitor from a certain Arab state, I thank you all, and wish you all well. You,  and the State of Israel.

This blog began in June 2010, in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident and the exponential rise in antisemitism that followed in its wake. I've posted a number of pieces on historical facets of Israel and Zionism, including several pertaining to the origins of the overt anti-Israel bias of the BBC, identifying the late Keith Kyle as the first of that particular tribe.  These historical posts were the ones I particularly enjoyed, and which I feel were the most useful. Some have been reprised on the Jews Down Under website, and others can still be found archived on the Elder of Ziyon blog (sincere thanks to the famed Elder for having invited me to contribute those guest posts).

Having an interest in Jewish-Christian relations, and mindful that if it had not been for a Jew who lived some 2000 years ago there would be no such profession as Christian priest I've exposed the excesses of the Reverend Stephen Sizer, and was the person who took this notorious 9/11 screenshot that went viral (thanks to the UK Jewish News, to whose editor I emailed it after a reporter from the "Voice of Anglo-Jewry", the Jewish Chronicle, had informed me that they had no interest in it!) Shame on you, JC reporter. (You know who you are).

I'm flattered that Gerry Bowler, in his book shown here, cited me in note 55 on page 277: that, I think, was one of my best posts.

It goes without saying that we who love Israel must be ever vigilant regarding the mendacious propaganda of the New Israel Fund and similar groups, the equation of "Islamophobia" with antisemitism, the Islamic antisemitism infiltrating the West, the leftist propaganda of the ABC and the BBC, and the increasing hostility towards  Israel of often unashamedly antisemitic propagandists in academia.

Oh, the stupidities of the Jewish Left, going on, seemingly, for ever! (hat tip: David Singer):

Once, fairly early in my blogging career, I was threatened, via a high-powered lawyer, with a libel suit by an anti-Israel senior academic at a British campus, despite the fact that I had provided links to all the statements I attributed to that particular expatriate Israeli. Intimidated, I removed the post. I doubt the redoubtable David Collier, who has since taken the pro-Israel blogosphere by storm, would have done so.

The campus warfare against Israel is, needless to say, vicious and growing. I've focused from time to time on the appalling anti-Israel propaganda on certain campuses, especially at Swarthmore College, where an assistant professor committed to replacing Israel with a bi-national state teaches peace and conflict studies and takes students on annual propaganda visits to Israel and the disputed territories.

I've regularly posted the articles of Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, who I know has quite a following.

But my blog has grown stale, and there are more pro-Israel bloggers than when I started, and many of them are far better at the task than I am. So, keen to concentrate instead on historical studies that I've all but neglected., I'm ceasing this blog, and this final day of this month (and foreshadowed changes to the Blogger platform that I don't much like) seems a good time to bring it to a close.

Links to many good blogs can be found on my bloglist, and many notable quotations from various historic and public figures  are on my side bar. I recommend the Canada Free Press for articles by David Singer (who's contributed numerous articles to them over the years, not only of the kind that I have regularly posted on here, as a click on that link will show ) and the highly informative and frequently wryly amusing  Twitter page of historian of Britain's relations with Israel Dr James Vaughan.

David Singer's weekly articles can also be accessed on the antipodean J-Wire service, as here

Am Israel Chai!

Do, please, read this article by the great Melanie Phillips, quoting the equally great and heroic Baroness Deech and Professor David Patterson.

Shalom.

David Singer: Jordan Moves to Resolve West Bank Sovereignty Problem it Created

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Jordan’s Prime Minister Omar Razzaz has made a welcome intervention to resolve the issue of
sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank).

Razzaz’s offer comes as Israel readies to restore Jewish sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria
after an absence of 3000 years – as promulgated by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for
Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter – and detailed in President Trump’s deal of the century.

Razzaz has raised the possibility of a “one-state solution” to replace the “two-state solution”:

“We are against unilateral actions. We are against annexation. We are against any steps that are not within an overall scheme that leads to a two-state solution. Short of that, if we’re not going towards a two-state solution, let us know what we’re going towards, what kind of one-state solution we’re going towards.”

The “two-state solution” favoured by the international community for the last 40 years – creating an
independent State of Palestine between Israel and Jordan – has long passed its anticipated birth
date. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) refusal to sit down with Israel to negotiate
creating such a State in Gaza and 70% of Judea and Samaria – as detailed in Trump’s Plan – is the
final nail in the coffin for an unattainable solution first aired by the 1980 Venice Declaration.

Razzaz should consider going towards the “Jordan one-state solution” that existed between 1948
and 1967 – after Transjordan:

• invaded and conquered Judea and Samaria in 1948 – ethnically cleansing all Jews then living there

• changed its name in 1949

• unified “the two banks of the Jordan, the Eastern and Western, and their amalgamation in one single state: The Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan” in 1950

• granted Jordanian citizenship to the West Bank Arab residents between 1950 and 1988

Razzaz lays down three conditions for any “one-state solution”:

“Jordan will not absorb transfers of Palestinians. Jordan will not become ‘the’ Palestine, as the Israeli extreme right wishes. And Jordan will not give up its custodianship over [holy Muslim and Christian sites in] Jerusalem. These three are clear for us.”

Under the “Jordan one-state solution”:

• No West Bank or Gazan Arab would have to move from his current home or business

• West Bank Arab residents would regain their 1954-1988 Jordanian citizenship – once again electing their own representatives to the Jordanian Parliament

• Unification of Gaza and possibly 70% of the West Bank with Jordan would accord with proposals contemplated by article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine 1922, the 1937 Peel Royal Commission and UN General Assembly “Resolution 181 (II) Future Government of Palestine” in 1947.

• Jordan’s custodianship over the Muslim Holy Sites in Jerusalem is retained under the Jordan Israel Peace Treaty 1994

• The status quo existing between 1964 and 1968 would be restored when the PLO under article 24 of its founding Charter did “not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” or “on the Gaza Strip”:

• The territory comprised in the Mandate for Palestine would have been finally allocated as to about 20% to the Jewish People and 80% to the Arab Nation.

 The late King Hussein of Jordan – writing in Uneasy lies the Head (p.82) stated:

“Palestine and Jordan were both under the British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs they were hardly separate countries. Trans-Jordan being to the east of the river Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine”

Razzaz and Netanyahu need to start a dialogue to bring the “Jordan one-state solution” to fruition and end the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict.

Author’s note: The cartoon—commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”—one of  Israel’s  foremost  political  and  social  commentators—whose  cartoons  have  graced  the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog.

Swarthmore College Continues its Anti-Israel Propaganda

In 2014, when he was a lecturer in peace and justice studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts, Sa'ed Adel Atshan, an adviser to the campus Students for Justice in Palestine, and now a tenured assistant professor at his alma mater, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, took part in a campus event held, in the words of Matt Lebovic reporting for The Times of Israel,

'to expose what they call the “intersectionality” of Zionism with other forms of oppression.'

And what, you may ask, was that all about?  Here, in a nutshell, is the answer:

'Israel was condemned for imposing an “interlocking matrix of oppression” onto Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, women, children, gays, the disabled, and others.'

Lebovic continued:

'Coined in 1989, the feminist sociological theory of intersectionality has often been applied to studies of black women, who – so goes the theory – derive their most potent sense of identity from the intersection of being female and black, as opposed to one characteristic over the other.

More recently, anti-Israel groups have adopted intersectionality to denounce Zionism’s alleged subjugation and silencing of its many critics, including Jews.

“Our very bodies disrupt Zionist narratives,” said Sa’ed Atshan ...

Identifying himself to conference participants as a gay Palestinian, Atshan demanded Israel be “decolonized” for its racist policies. He also condemned Israel for creating a Palestinian society rife with honor killings and the persecution of gays – all caused by the intersection of Zionism with misogyny and homophobia, he said.

“Let us not let the Zionists shape the narratives of Palestinian imperfections,” said Atshan, who received a standing ovation from more than 300 students in a Tufts auditorium.

“We all know Israel is an apartheid state and should be boycotted,” Atshan said.

The activist professor said one-third of his SJP chapter’s students are Jewish, and he cited the “deeply racist and pervasive Birthright Israel program” as an obstacle to peace.

Atshan and other speakers used SJP’s fourth annual conference to call for “reciprocal solidarity” among oppressed groups around the world. Indeed, during the half hour before Atshan’s keynote, three black presenters scarcely mentioned the Mideast, focusing on racially charged events in Missouri and Michigan instead...' [Emphasis added, here and below]

I have blogged several times about Atshan, who each year takes his students on slantedly propagandistic study tours of Israel and the Disputed Territories (see here and here and here).
Canary Mission has some eye-opening lowdown on him here

He's on record as stating:

"I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime."  

In 2018, as reported in the Jerusalem Post by Benjamin Weinthal,  a talk entitled “On Being Queer and Palestinian in East-Jerusalem” that Atshan was due to give at the Berlin Jewish Museum as part of the museum’s ongoing exhibit “Welcome to Jerusalem” was cancelled following protests, the Israeli Ambassador to Germany telling a Munich newspaper that “Atshan is very closely connected with BDS" and “is not a person who wishes to build bridges of understanding with Israel” 

The Swarthmore Bulletin, meant for the noted  liberal arts college's alumni, is published quarterly.  This year's most recent (April) issue consists of 80 pages.  The first 48 pages are occupied by feature articles, the final 32 by class notes.
Fully ten pages of the features section (an inordinate number in comparison to the remainder of the articles) is devoted to an international conflict, and that conflict is -- yes, you've guessed it.  This is not the first time that Atshan's propaganda has infiltrated the Bulletin, and I fear that it will not be the last. Indeed, no article sympathetic to Israel has ever been published in the magazine.

The latest anti-Israel piece, written by Alisa Giardinelli, focuses on a Study Tour of "the Holy Land" led by Atshan during the past academic year, the latest of several he has undertaken since being appointed to the college staff, and the most-subscribed tour to date.

Adulatory of Atshan, Giardinelli's article is headed "Empathy & Exploration; This journey to the Holy Land offers immersive lessons in understanding conflict", and in it we read such passages as the following:

"Now, with two books forthcoming this spring, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique and The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians, and a third, Paradoxes of Humanitarianism: The Social Life of Aid in the Palestinian Territories, under contract, the responsibility Atshan feels to continue his scholarship and teaching has never been stronger"

 Beneath the subheading "Gaza": 

"To reach the last stop on the last day, the bus turned off the highway and onto a dirt road that rumbled past a three-man Israeli tank unit. It would be as close as civilians could get to the Israel-Gaza border. There, from the vantage point on a low ridge, was the buffer zone immediately in front of everyone as well as the distant high-rises of Gaza City. As the group stood next to a military range tower with shell casings underfoot, it was just about sunset. Then the call to prayer sounded. The group stood in rapt silence, mesmerized by the gorgeous sky, the deep, lyrical tones, and the knowledge that, while separated by an electric fence less than 100 yards away, they shared this scene with the 2 million residents in this blockaded strip of land. A short burst of distant but distinct automatic gunfire broke the reverie. Everyone quickly returned to the bus."

In the caption of an accompanying photo taken by Giardinelli she tells us:

'The group outside a West Bank village. Nancy Yuan ’20, who was born in China and raised in New Zealand, says she appreciated the trip’s many vantage points ... says “And since the plight faced by Palestinian refugees is so protracted, I thought if I don’t take this class, I might miss the chance to grasp what is happening in this multifaceted conflict.”

Layan Shaban, a Haverford student who went on the tour, whose brotjher  Ahmad ('19), who took Atshan's class "a couple of years ago but did not go on the trip", explains:

“My dad wouldn’t let him,” she says, citing her father’s concerns about how an Arab would be treated in Israel. “I also wanted to strengthen my Palestinian identity. I think I’m getting there.”

Beneath the subheading Sderot:

“I’ve been closer to death as a student here than as a soldier on the Gaza border,” says Dar Cohen, 27, from the Sderot Media Center... The Swarthmore group stood with him outside the city’s police station. There, stacked against a wall, were remnants of some of the many rockets that had been launched indiscriminately into the city from Gaza, less than a mile away. Although they fall far less frequently than they did 10 years ago, he says the most recent fell less than two weeks before this visit..."

But then:

'Driving through Sderot’s streets, Angeline Etienne ’22, of Miami, says the bomb shelters prompted her to question who can afford them.

“That doesn’t take away the fact that you’re scared and that you’re in danger,” she says. “But whose fear is more valuable? Whose safety is more valuable?”..."

Regarding Hebron:

“As a Jewish male, I know I won’t have to deal with a lot of the security checks and other security measures that a lot of other classmates are having to deal with,” Max Katz-Balmes ’20 says after an incident in Hebron. “If I’m feeling uncomfortable, as one of the people with the most privilege, I can’t imagine what they’re going through.”

.... For most students, the frequent presence of armed Israeli soldiers — on the streets of Hebron, in a lounge in Ashkelon’s Sapir College, even briefly on the bus crossing a checkpoint — was a new, and unsettling, sight.

“Speaking from my perspective and my community, weapons do not make us feel safe at all,” says Etienne, the sophomore from Miami. “So learning that for a majority of the [Jewish Israeli] population, Mizrahi or Ashkenazi, weapons make them feel safe — that’s genuinely something that I don’t understand.”...'

In Lifta an old man, Yacoub Odeh, told the student group “That was my house”:

'Standing in what had been Lifta’s central plaza, Yacoub Odeh, 79, pointed past a tree and up to the ruin of a modest stone structure that still clung to the side of the hill. It was one of about 50 that together were all that remain of what had been, until 1948, a vibrant Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

On this Sunday, Odeh led a tour through the village’s overgrown paths, past groups of male teenagers who also gathered there, in what is now a nature reserve. Along the way, Odeh spoke of a future in which everyone — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — could live together, “as our grandfathers did.”

“That was a very moving experience,” says Robert Zigmund ’21, a philosophy and peace & conflict studies major from Glenside, Pa., “especially with the contrast of walking past the remains of the houses and seeing people laughing and just playing on them.”...'

Note how that old man's vision dovetails with Atshan's professed vision of a binational state in Israel's place.  Surely it does not take an average Swarthmore IQ to foresee the likely demographic and religious consequences of such a state.

Am Israel Chai!

David Singer: Trump’s Vision of a Democratic “State of Palestine” is Doomed

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump’s vision for the creation of a democratic Palestinian State in Gaza and 70% of Judea and Samaria under his Peace to Prosperity Plan (Trump Plan) – is a futile exercise doomed to failure.

The Trump Plan defines the proposed “State of Palestine” [page 1] in these specific terms:

STATE OF PALESTINE: Throughout the Vision, the term “State of Palestine” refers to a future state, not currently in existence that could be recognized by the United States only if the criteria described in this Vision are satisfactorily met.

The prescribed criteria are:

“a predicate to the formation of a Palestinian State and must be determined to have occurred by the State of Israel and the United States, jointly, acting in good faith, after consultation with the Palestinian Authority” [page 34]

The “Palestinian Authority” no longer exists under that name – having been renamed the “State of Palestine” pursuant to a written decree issued by PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on 3 January 2013. This name-change enabled the UN Secretary-General to inform the General Assembly on 13 January 2013:

“On 8 January 2013, Palestine informed the Secretary-General that the Head of Government was Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the State of Palestine, and that the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the State of Palestine was Riad Malki. In accordance with its request, the designation “State of Palestine” is now used in all documents of the United Nations and on nameplates to be used in United Nations meetings. Mr. Abbas is now addressed as the President of the State of Palestine, Mr. Fayyad as the Prime Minister of the State of Palestine and Mr. Malki as the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the State of Palestine.”

Even the “Palestinians” remain undefined in the Trump Plan.

These fictitious flights into semantic fantasyland will require the United States and Israel to consult with ghosts.

The criteria for recognizing the State of Palestine include “the Palestinians” having:

• Implemented a governing system that provides for freedom of the press, free and fair elections, respect for human rights for its citizens, protections for religious freedom and for religious minorities to observe their faith
• Appropriate governance in place to prevent corruption
• Ended all programs, including school curricula and textbooks, that serve to incite or promote hatred or antagonism towards its neighbours, or which compensate or incentivize criminal or violent activity.
• Achieved civilian and law enforcement control over all of its territory and demilitarized its population.

The omens aren’t good according to the Human Rights Watch 2020 Report:

• Palestinian armed groups in Gaza fired 1,378 rockets towards Israel 1 January 2019 – 19 November 2019
• Between January 2018 and March 2019, Hamas detained 66 people for social media posts or for allegedly violating broadly worded offences such as “harming revolutionary unity” and “misuse of technology” used to punish peaceful dissent or opposition.
• Hamas authorities detained more than 1,000 Palestinians during March 2019 demonstrations against the high cost of living.
• Laws in Gaza punish “unnatural intercourse” of a sexual nature, understood to include same-sex relationships, with up to 10 years in prison.
• Between January 2018 and March 2019, 1,609 persons were detained in the West Bank for insulting “higher authorities” and creating “sectarian strife,” and 752 for social media posts.
• There is no comprehensive domestic violence law preventing abuse and protecting survivors.

Free and fair elections in the West Bank and Gaza have not been held since 2006.
Trump has given the “Palestinians” four years to replace the current two autocratic Jew-hating regimes with a democratic Palestinian State.  Trump’s vision seems destined to end up in the garbage bin of history.

Author’s note: The cartoon – commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators –  whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog.

"He Just Erases History ... Wilful Deliberate Deception": Beinart's Binational Solution

Few lovers of Israel can be unaware of Peter Beinart's  advocacy of the replacement of Israel with a One State Solution encompassing both Jews and Palestinians.

Recently the self-promoting Mr Beinart has been discussing his vision with, among others, Shadi Hamid and Damir Marusic, as heard here. That's the same Shadi Hamid, author of the book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over Islam is Reshaping the World, who has reminded us that

'Islam, in both theory and practice, is “exceptional” in how it relates to politics. Because of its outsize role in law and governance, Islam has been—and will continue to be—resistant to secularization....

 Two factors worth emphasizing: First, the “founding moment” of Islam looms large. Unlike Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad was a theologian, a preacher, a warrior and a politician, all at once. He was also the leader and builder of a new state, capturing, holding and governing new territory. Religious and political functions, at least for the believer, were no accident. They were meant to be intertwined in the leadership of one man.

Second, more than merely the word of God, for Muslims, the Quran is God’s direct and literal speech. It is difficult to overstate the centrality of divine authorship. This does not mean Muslims are literalists; most are not. But it does mean the text cannot easily be dismissed as irrelevant....

 If Islam is fundamentally different than Christianity, then there is little reason to think it will (or even should) follow a similar path of a reformation then enlightenment.

.... It means Western observers need to do something uncomfortable and difficult. They will need to accept Islam’s vital and varied role in politics and formulate policies with that in mind, rather than hoping for secularizing outcomes that are unlikely anytime soon, if ever.'

For his attitude to Beinart's proposals go here

As Professor Alan Dershowitz says (see below) Beinart's Solution would lead to a demographic war, which the Jews would lose, and which would result in a Muslim state governed by Sharia Law.

Beinart has now removed the mask of a "Zionist", enabling all but the most Quislingesque or the most wilfully blind to drop the blinkers from their eyes. To quote one succinct critic of his on social media:

'We know that the real aim of people like Peter Beinart is the destruction of Israel, and its inevitable transformation into another Islamic hellhole state. After securing the safety of himself and his family from Hamas and Hizbollah terrorists lurking in Manhattan where he lives, he is now able to tell Israel to commit national suicide—something which will fall on deaf ears... According to his entry in Wikipedia, he also wants to hand Taiwan, a democracy, to Communist China. Sadly, he was born too late to have moved the Vote of Thanks to Neville Chamberlain for handing the Sudetenland to Hitler, or for spitting at Winston Churchill for opposing it."

Well said!

And for a passionate no-holds-barred 30-minute demolition of Beinart, here's Professor Alan Dershowitz, talking to Rabbi Mark Golub:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmneC3C1IIo&t=1014s

"Jewish Privilege is ..."

In response to the raw antisemitism on the despicable thread #Jewish Privilege that has been trending on Twitter, a sample of ripostes, including that of Kay Wilson, the British Jew who almost lost her life when attacked by Palestinian Arab terrorists near Beit Shemesh ten years ago.

Also in response, here's a fella with a rather uncomfortable 15 minute lecture for American Jews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CCq415jWxI

David Singer: Britain Shamefully Betrays the Jewish People Again

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes: 
 
Britain – the architectof the San Remo Resolution and Treaty of Sevres in 1920 that led to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922 – has yet again shamefully betrayed the Jewish People by warning Israel not to extend its sovereignty into Judea and Samaria.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that any such action would be in violation of international law – which Netanyahu disputes – despite the Mandate vesting in the Jewish People the right to “close settlement” in Judea and Samaria for the purposes of reconstituting the biblical Jewish National Home in what had been the heartland of the Jewish People 3000 years ago.

Britain had betrayed the Jewish People in 1950 after all the Jews living in Judea and Samaria had been ethnically cleansed by the invading Arab army of Transjordan in 1948.  Britain – supported only by Pakistan and Iraq – recognised Transjordan’s illegal annexation of Judea and Samaria, the renaming of the newly merged entityas “Jordan”whilst “Judea and Samaria”was renamed“West Bank”.

Johnson told Netanyahu:

"I am immensely proud of the UK’s contribution to the birth of Israel with the 1917 Balfour Declaration.  But it will remain unfinished business until there is a solution which provides justice and lasting peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.  

The only way it can be achieved is for both sides to return to the negotiating table.  That must be our goal. Annexation would only take us further away from it."

Peace for both “Israelis” and “Palestinians”?

Neither existed until 1948 and 1964.

There were only “Arabs” and “Jews” in 1917. The Arab residents of Palestine then comprised part of “the existing non-Jewish communities”.

Johnson seems apparently unaware that the “Palestinians”:

• were defined for the first time in recorded history by article 6 of the 1964 PLO Charter

• did not claim “regional sovereignty in the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan”or“on the Gaza Strip” under article 24

• were Jordanian citizens between 1954 and1988. 

Johnson’s warning to Israel is the complete antithesis of what he wrote on 29 October 2017 as Foreign Minister – ahead of the Balfour Declaration centenary on 2 November: 

“I have no doubt that the only viable solution to the conflict resembles the one first set down on paper by another Briton, Lord Peel, in the report of the Royal Commission on Palestine in 1937, and that is the vision of two states for two peoples.” 

The Royal Commission was authorised by Royal Warrant dated 7 August 1936 which did not mention  the “Palestinians” – only naming two parties – the “Arabs” and the “Jews” – not three – as disputants.

The Peel Commission after a lengthy and detailed Inquiry concluded that:

“two sovereign independent States would be established  – the one an Arab State, consisting of Trans-Jordan united with that part of Palestine which lies to the east and south of a frontier such as we suggest in [the map] below; the other a Jewish State consisting of that part of Palestine which lies to the north and west of that frontier.”

The Arabs rejected this decision.

The Jews disputed the boundaries.

 Trans-Jordan in 1937 then comprised the remaining 78% of the Mandate territory closed byBritainto Jewish settlement under Article 25.

Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria however was to be facilitated and encouraged under article 6.

The PLO’s outright refusal to negotiate with Israel on President Trump’s Peace Plan strengthens Netanyahu’s decision to restore Jewish sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria after 3000 years. Johnson’s hypocritical posturing should reinforce  – not weaken – Netanyahu’s resolve.

Author’s note: The cartoon –commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”-one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators –whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog.

"Palestinians in Australia are Positioned as Settlers of Colour"

"The State of Israel was created on stolen land 72 years ago."

That's just one of the glaring canards contained in a recent statement (drafted by poet Sara M. Saleh along with academics Dr Micaela Sahhar and Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah) signed by innumerable Australian academics, artists and activists, well-known and obscure, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Muslim and non-Muslim,  that appears in the radical left Australian literary journal Overland, created in 1954.

Signatories include academics Linda Briskman, Bassam Dally, John Docker and his son Ned Curthoys, Ann E. Fink, Gary Foley, Ghassan Hage, Jake Lynch,  Peter Manning, Stuart Rees, Nick Riemer, Peter Slezak, and Marcelo Svirsky; broadcaster and writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied; feminist Sara Dowse; playwright Samah Sabawi, journalist  Maher Mughrabi (features editor, The Age newspaper), and poet Sunniya Wajahat.

Bizarrely,  one high profile signatory, ABC and BBC media favourite Ms Abdel-Magied, who should need no introduction to most readers (see here if you need to), is a participant in this forthcoming "Festival of Jewish Arts and Music" forum!

But I digress.

Most of the  signatories' names will be instantly recognisable to watchers of anti-Israel initiatives in Australia.  If not, googling should pay dividends. It certainly did for me in the case of Susan Stryker, an American gender studies professor in the United States who, it turns out, is not currently based here but was a visiting professor on an Australia campus in 2004.

The statement, inter alia (emphasis added):

 ".... The State of Israel was created on stolen land 72 years ago. Its illegal military occupation of the West Bank – which imposes a punitive legal system on Palestinians in contrast to their Israeli settler counterparts, who enjoy the rights of full Israeli citizens – has been ongoing for 53 years. Throughout this time, Israel has continued to commit war crimes in breach of the Geneva Conventions, and to violate the most basic of Palestinian human rights, ultimately denying Palestinians the right to be sovereign in their own homeland.

Israel’s annexation plan will cement the apartheid reality that currently exists. It confines Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza within 115 bantustans that are physically, economically, socially, and politically cut off from each other. The Israeli state has subjected Palestinians to land confiscation, ethnic cleansing, forcible population transfer, home demolitions, settler violence, severe and discriminatory restrictions on their right to freedom of movement, excessive use of force, torture, and a racist legal system and state apparatus which explicitly operates by granting preferential political, legal, social, cultural and economic rights to Israeli Jews ....

We draw great inspiration from current global justice movements committed to the eradication of racism, fascism, imperialism, and apartheid — a collective and intersectional emancipatory process of decolonisation. As iconic civil rights campaigner Angela Davis writes, “When we are engaged in the struggle against racist violence…we can’t forget the connections with Palestine. In many ways, we have to engage in an exercise of intersectionality. Of always foregrounding those connections so that people remember that nothing happens in isolation.” As Davis makes clear, an unequivocal stance against all forms of racial oppression must include support of Palestinians.

From Minneapolis to Jerusalem to Gadigal land, all sites of recent state-sanctioned violence, we affirm the critical ongoing and historic solidarities between different movements against systemic and institutionalised state violence, systemic oppression, and brutality. Palestinians in Australia are positioned as settlers of colour and have proudly sought and affirmed solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our indivisible anti-colonial struggles....'

Coming hot on the heels of that statement in Overland is this piece in the same magazine.  By postgraduate student Tasnim Mahmoud Sammak, it evidently seeks a One State Solution, entailing the elimination of Israel, as the following extracts [emphasis added] indicate:

"It wasn’t long ago, in December of 2018, that Scott Morrison recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while holding back on moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv (my colonised home city of Yaffa) to West Jerusalem. The move made Australia the only western nation to follow the United States in in supporting the expansion of the Zionist settler-colonial project across internationally-recognised Palestinian land ....

As a Palestinian, I consider it an insult that Western politicians summon the two-state solution in our support as though it were anything but a position of forced surrender....

 This lip-service to two-state solution is the premise for opposing the annexation across political parties in Australia. This includes the Greens, in spite of their more sympathetic record to Palestinian rights.... 

The Palestinian struggle is connected to the global BLM movement through an interlinked vision to dismantle racist settler-colonial structures and systems....

As Palestinians, we have suffered the consequences of the legitimisation of Zionism as a settler-colonial, ethno-nationalist project....

We should demand that our global protest against annexation be tied to our imaginaries [sic] of a Free Palestine. Committing to anything less is a racist’s peace and a racist’s justice.

It is not enough to expect pro-Palestinians to accept the utterance of words of support against annexation from politicians supporting Orwellian peace agreements. The time for feigned pro-Palestinian support should be over. Genuine support for the Palestinian struggle demands opposition to Israeli settler colonisation itself."

 It appears, since images of their logos (along with those of certain private bodies) appear at the base of its website, that Overland receives financial support from the Australian Government, from Creative Victoria (an agency of the Victorian state government), from the Melbourne City Council, and from the Australia Council for the Arts.  These four bodies are financed by the Australian taxpayer, including Jewish taxpayers. It is outrageous that taxpayers' money should be used to finance a magazine that publishes material opposing the existence of the state of Israel and which publishes material that is arguably antisemitic.  It is to be hoped that Australia's Jewish and Zionist representative organisations will strongly protest about the use of taxpayer's money to fund this magazine.

David Singer: Is it “Annexation” or “Restoring Jewish Sovereignty”?

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Students at Australia’s largest Jewish Day School – Moriah College – can be excused for being completely confused as to whether Israel’s proposed application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria constitutes “annexation” or “restoring Jewish sovereignty” in the Jewish people’s biblical heartland after 3000 years.

There is a big difference – as College Principal Rabbi Yehoshua Smukler’s article “The myth of Israeli annexation” informed Moriah students:

“To use the term ‘Annexation’ in relation to Judea and Samaria is misleading. ‘Annexation’, a term applied to the forcible seizing of land or territory and annexing it into one’s own country or bringing it under its rule. It implies Israel is about to ‘seize control’ of areas that don’t already belong to Israel and that it doesn’t currently govern. This is simply untrue. Let’s look at the history.”

Regrettably the Principal’s look at history did not mention that:

• Judea and Samaria were designated by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922 as part of the territory within which the Jewish National Home was to be reconstituted
• the United Nations description of this territory as “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is false and misleading 
• Jewish rights to “close settlement” in Judea and Samaria under article 6 of the Mandate are preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter.  

A subsequent article appeared on the Moriah blog page written by Robert Goot AO SC entitled “Perspectives on annexation”.

Goot is Chairman of the Trustees and a Life Patron of Moriah College, Co-chair of the Policy Council of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and a past President and current Deputy President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).

Goot wrote:

“What is Annexation?
Currently no country has recognised sovereign rights over any of the West Bank and therefore, in strict legal terms, the area cannot be annexed in the sense of one country seizing the land of another.
A unilateral act of this kind, which seeks to change the status of the West Bank, appears to be contrary to the Oslo Accords, which continues to bind Israel and the Palestinians equally.”

Note that:

• Despite Goot agreeing with Moriah’s Principal that “annexation” is not the appropriate term to describe Israel’s intended action – Goot uses that term 35 times in his lengthy article, “the West Bank” 31 times and “Judea and Samaria” only once. 
• PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations General Assembly on 30 September 2015:

“We therefore declare that we cannot continue to be bound by these agreements [the transitional Oslo Agreement and its annexes, and the subsequent agreements signed with Israel] and that Israel must assume all of its responsibilities as an occupying power, because the status quo cannot continue and the decisions of the Palestinian Central Council last March are specific and binding.”

• Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki told a press conference on 15 February 2016: 

“We will never go back and sit again in a direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations”

 True to al-Maliki’s words – no such negotiations have occurred since.
Goot claims that the Mandate for Palestine – which recognised the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine – called for the “creation” – rather than the “reconstitution” – of the Jewish national home in Mandate territory. 

Transjordan – 77% of the Mandate territory denied the Jewish people where 2½ of the 12 Tribes of Israel settled – gained independence in 1946 not 1923 as Goot claims.

Jewish schoolchildren should be focusing on Jewish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria becoming a modern-day miraculous reality after an absence of 3000 years. 

Moriah students have – instead – become pawns in this political clash between two Moriah titans.

Author’s note: The cartoon – commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog.

Black Lives Still Don't Matter to These Muslim Masters

Nor, it seems, to the BLM™ movement.

Writes the Italian journalist Giulio Meotti in a brand new article here, entitled 'Slavery Rampant in Africa, Middle East; The West Wrongly Accuses Itself ': 

'For the intersectional activists, the US is the world's biggest oppressor -- not China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.   It is high time for the United States to stop funding the United Nations.... The United Nations is now being used to perpetuate injustice, not stop it. Real slave traders and racists -- those who believe Western societies and values should not exist at all -- most likely look at the current Western self-flagellation and cheer their approval.'  

The Arab Slave Trade has a long history, but it is the Atlantic slave trade with which most people are familiar.

Adding to that familiarity is this video, about a Muslim Gambian who found himself enslaved in the United States.  It is, of course, an interesting historical tale:

And it is, needless to point out, on the trans-Atlantic trade that the self-flagellating Left and other enemies of the West dwell.

To try to redress the balance, this video might be a good place to start:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OdIqeWkhHU

I might note here that in Mali, black slavery continues to flourish to some extent, and has not been declared illegal, but more notably it also still does so in Mauritania, despite its official abolition there. 

This video, made a few years ago, testifies to the misery to which all too many black people in Mauritania are still subject.

Scandalous.  And so very sad.

Töben Bites the Dust

Image and report, Daily Mail 2008, here

The Aussie Jewish press seems slow in discovering the news that German-born Australian Holocaust denier and Adelaide Institute founder Dr Fredrick Töben has gone to his earthly reward.

His demise occurred on 29 June.

Good riddance.

Remember his flirtation with New South Wales Greens, that I outlined here?

Dead and buried is he, but, as we see here, unsurprisingly his stench remains.

"Annexation Has a Precise Meaning in International Law" (Updated with video)

That's what international relations expert Eugene Kontorowich tells us here, warning us not to believe current widespread  "hype" regarding the so-called "annexation" of the West Bank.

Inter alia [emphasis added, as elsewhere below] :

'.... There  are  many  misunderstandings  about  the  planned  move—starting with what to call it. It is widely described as an Israeli “annexation” of West Bank territory, also known as Judea and Samaria. But annexation has  a  precise  meaning  in  international  law:  the  forcible  incorporation by  one  state  of  the  territory  of  another  state.  The  land  to  which  Israel seeks to apply its laws isn’t legally the territory of any other state, nor has it been since Israel’s independence in 1948. Neither the U.S.  nor the European Union recognizes the existence of a Palestinian state, and Israel’s  sovereign  claim  to  the  territory  is  superior  to  any  other country’s. Putting this move in the same category as Russia’s seizure of Crimea is entirely misleading.

There is no one-word name for what Israel plans to do because it is so  technical  and  pedestrian.  Israel  already  governs  the  territory  in question,  as  it  has  since  1967,  when  it  liberated  the  land  from  a  two-decade Jordanian occupation. But at that time Israel didn’t fully apply its domestic laws there, leaving it under military administration. Israel expected the Arab states to sue for peace after the Six-Day War, and it was prepared to transfer some of the land to them. There was no point in  hurriedly  applying Israeli  law  to  territory  that  might  not  remain Israeli after a peace settlement.The  current  system  of  governance  was  intended  to  be  temporary, but  Israel  retained  it  during  decades  of  negotiations,  all  of  which resulted  in  Palestinian  rejection  of  internationally  backed  offers  of statehood.   In   the   Middle   East,   nothing   is   as   permanent   as   the temporary.

Over the past 53 years, Jews have returned to Judea and Samaria, territories from which they had been, to a man [and a woman! - D.A.], ethnically cleansed by the Jordanians in 1949. Today, more than 400,000 Israelis live in West Bank  settlements,  still  governed  by  an  odd  patchwork  of  military regulations. As a result, property is governed by obscure Ottoman land law. Permitting for infrastructure projects is difficult and burdensome. Most Israeli environmental regulations don’t apply. After five decades of Palestinian rejectionism, it is hard to argue that the legal regulation of these communities must remain in limbo until a far-off peace deal is signed.This doesn’t mean giving upon  the  possibility  of  a  diplomatic settlement.   

Past   peace   efforts   have   been   based   on   the   morally repugnant and impractical assumption that the creation of a Palestinian state  must be preceded by the expulsion of all Jews  from its territory. The  acceptance of  an  ethnic  pre-cleansing  was  one  of  the  reasons  the U.S.  had  previously  opposed  the  application  of  Israeli  civil  law:  to make  life  harder  and  more  uncertain  for  Jewish  settlers  and  thereby encourage  them  to  leave. 

President  Trump’s  peace  vision  rightly rejects this illiberal notion, which hasn’t been the basis of realized or proposed peace deals anywhere else in the world, from East Timor to Northern Cyprus.The  application  of  Israeli  law  wouldn’t  affect  the  treatment  of Palestinians. In the West Bank, they would continue to be governed by the Palestinian Authority. Israel’s Knesset wouldn’t rule over them. The  Palestinian  Authority  would  also  still  have  a  chance  to  make peace. While all evidence suggests the authority isn’t fundamentally serious about statehood, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty in parts of  the  West  Bank  may  help  bring  it  to  the  table.  It  would  show Palestinian leaders that turning down negotiations weakens their hand.Some  Middle  East  experts  say  the  Israeli  move  could  lead  to violence, European sanctions or a reversal  of Israel’s  warming ties with Arab states. 

But the same predictions of doom were made before Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and they proved  entirely  hollow.  Critics  must  explain  why  this  one  should  be any different.Others say Israel should desist because its actions would provoke a possible Biden administration. This is heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic: Israel  must  accept  Democratic  policies  when  Democrats  are  in  office and   also   when   they aren’t.     President Obama,    by    contrast, had   no   problem   allowing   the United  Nations  Security  Council to  pass  an  anti-Israel  resolution even  after  President-elect  Trump asked him to veto it.U.S.   recognition   of   Israeli sovereignty  in  parts  of  the  West Bank  comes  along  with  upfront  Israeli  commitments.  Israel  has agreed to a temporary building freeze in areas of the West Bank that are  under  Israel’s  jurisdiction  but  where  Israeli  law  isn’t  being extended.  

This goes beyond what the Trump administration’s Vision for Peace requires. Israel also knows that a future U.S. administration could   repudiate   support   for   Israeli   sovereignty   and   recognize   a Palestinian state anyway.Israel’s friends are right to take such concerns seriously: 

The plan isn’t without risks for Israel.  But  these  can  be  addressed  through  a formal memorandum of understanding that would commit the U.S. to recognizing Israeli sovereignty and not recognizing a Palestinian state until  the  detailed  Palestinian  prerequisites  in  the  Vision  for  Peace have   been  met  to  America’s  and  Israel’s  satisfaction.  Such  an agreement  between  the  U.S.  and  Israel  could  be  written  to  limit backsliding by the next U.S. administration.The application of Israeli civil law to Jewish settlements isn’t an annexation  or  an  imposition  on  Palestinians.  It  is  a  long  overdue recognition  of  Israel’s  legal  and  moral  rights,  a  step  that  can  no longer be deferred by the Palestinian refusal to make peace'.

A summary of points made by the distinguished Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh in a must-read article here:

'It is dead wrong to assume that if Israel abandons its plan, most Muslims would give up their desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an extremist Iran-style Islamic state.

[Islamic officials] are now calling on Palestinians to launch terror attacks against Israel, not because of the "annexation" plan, but in order to drive the Jews out of the "Palestinian Arab Islamic lands."

Those who are pressuring Israel not to proceed with the "annexation" plan need to hear what Islamic leaders are saying, day and night: that the conflict is not about Jewish settlements or the Jordan Valley, but the "big settlement" called Israel.'

From a host of of international law academics (see signatories at source), an open letter to the Israeli government opposing "annexation":

 ".... Such an action would constitute a flagrant violation of bedrock rules of international law, and would also pose a serious threat to international stability in a volatile region.

The norm prohibiting unilateral annexation of territory acquired by force has come to be universally recognized as a basic rule of international law. All international courts (including the International Court of Justice) and all international institutions (including the UN General Assembly and Security Council) who have considered this matter, as well as the overwhelming majority of international jurists, affirm this rule unequivocally. This prohibition applies equally to territories belonging to other states, as well as to non-self-governing territories in which peoples are entitled to determine their political fate in accordance with the right to self-determination. Furthermore, this prohibition applies to all territories occupied by force, even if it is claimed that force was initially used in an act of self-defense.

The West Bank was taken by force in 1967. It has been consistently recognized by the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, and the International Court of Justice as an occupied territory, in which the Palestinian people is entitled to fulfill its right to self-determination. This remains so even if bilateral negotiations could determine the details of security arrangements and final borders. Furthermore, the Israeli government as well as the Israeli Supreme Court have for decades applied the law of belligerent occupation to the West Bank. This is demonstrated in dozens of decisions by the Supreme Court of Israel, as well as in Israel’s positions before international treaty bodies, where it argues that the West Bank is not under Israeli jurisdiction for the purpose of application of human rights treaties.

It follows that unilateral annexation of any part of this territory would violate the fundamental norm prohibiting annexation as well as the right to self-determination. As such, it would be null and void, entail consequences of international wrongfulness, and – under certain circumstances –  lead to individual international criminal liability. In this context, it matters not whether such actions would be effected through “extension of sovereignty,” “extension of law, jurisdiction, and administration,” or explicit annexation. De facto annexation entails the same legal consequences as de jure annexation. Additionally, in no case can such an act lawfully bring about or justify discriminatory results, inter alia in relation to citizenship or property rights...."

 It seems more signatories are being canvassed.

Update: Meanwhile, here are the folks at Latma  (hat tip: David Singer)