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- In electric atmosphere, Medea Benjamin takes over the president’s speech http://t.co/PUqQE1DDA0, 15 hours ago
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click link to see last 100 comments- SF officials describe ‘apartheid’ label as ‘intolerance alienating the Jewish community’ (18)
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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
You should read Ed Luce’s comments in the Financial Times recently, regarding the depth of Kerry’s commitment. And Kerry’s strategic thinking ability, which is a quality that was lacking in Hillary Clinton.
Then you must assume that he is going to force the Palestinians into more fruitless talks, while Netanyahu presses on with construction in the settlements, legalizing the outposts, and the Judaization of Jerusalem and Area C.
Kerry is much too intelligent to believe that Netanyahu is going to destroy his fragile coalition in order to appease a toothless US administration. Obama has no real leverage to employ without congressional backing (and neither Kerry nor Obama has that when it comes to Israel). Kerry has even intervened to temporarily stop the EU from taking very modest actions on labeling (not banning) products from the settlements. Obama just visited Jerusalem and gave Netanyahu a free hand.
In the meantime, the administration has done nothing to repeal the legislation that prevents the PA from forming a governing coalition with Hamas, is wasting its political capital with the EU by demanding they keep the ICC at bay on the situation in Palestine, and is still violating longstanding US policies regarding the promotion of universal UN membership for all states.
The only thing Kerry can threaten to do is stand out of the way and allow the Palestinians to continue taking unilateral actions - and the clock is running-out on that issue whether he likes it or not.
I think Kerry is just playing for time and letting the clock run out yet another deadline.
The European Council on Foreign Affairs has a report out saying that its time for EU Ministers to stop paying 1 billion Euros per annum to hide the fact that Israel has hollowed-out the Palestinian economy, adopt sanctions against the settlements and their products, and drop their political maneuvers and objections that have kept the Palestinians from having their day in the international Courts. The Council on Foreign Relations is talking about salvaging the two state solution, but the Court's can address the requirement to adopt equal rights and end the apartheid system without regard to the outcome of the one state/two state process. link to ecfr.eu
The Obama administration and the EU have been using blackmail and the absence of a free economy to force the Palestinians to delay going to the UN Security Council for membership, then delay going to the General Assembly for recognition, then delay taking the situation of apartheid and the settlements to the ICJ and ICC, and delay some more on any unilateral action to join other international conventions and organizations that offer members legal protections and safeguards.
The Palestinians have nothing to show for all of these delays, and the EU Ministers have no incentive as members to go pressuring the ICC on behalf of the US forever and destroy the legitimacy of their own institution in the process.
On an even more creepier note, the editors of Haaretz have several articles today on the pseudo-scientific subject of antisemitism:
*Richard Wagner: The man, the myth, and "the anti-Semitic music"
*Wake up to the BDS campaign's "tarted up anti-Semitism"
*The Church of Scotland's parody of Judaism: Even after removing "the bluntly anti-Semitic phrasing of its original report", the Church of Scotland's new version has kept intact not only the delegitimization of political Zionism - but of Judaism itself.
*British guilty of "disguised anti-Semitism", Israeli minister tells The Telegraph
I hope Aluf Benn feels better now that he got all of that excess bile out of his system.
The soldiers then were standing in the Mughrabi Quarter, which encompassed most of what is today the long, wide plaza in front of the Western Wall. Mawalid’s home once stood in this area, along with 135 other buildings, including three mosques and two zawiyas, or pilgrim hospices.
(sarcasm) I've said it before and I'll say it again, it was necessary to clear all of that Muslim cruft out of there in order to give that prime real estate to the New Aish Center at the Western Wall and to supply the Haredim with a place where they can hurl chairs, soiled diapers, and rocks at Jewish women who recite the traditional prayers.
Aish HaTorah in-turn gets an Israeli government-supplied bully pulpit - right across the plaza from the holiest spot in Judaism - from which to preach the comforting theological truth that the Jewish victims of the Holocaust were the reincarnated souls of great sinners who were being punished and therefore only got their just deserts. (/sarcasm)
It's breath-taking to think that these same utterly hateful people, who are complicit in recieving the proceeds of war crimes committed in the Mughrabi Quarter, are also responsible for fighting "antisemitism" on American campuses through their Hasbara Fellowship outreach program and Title VI lawfare actions aimed at silencing the Palestinians whose families, friends, or countrymen were the victims of this outrageous war crime.
As to Israel’s right to take property by eminent domain, no-one seems to recognize the (possible, likely, absolute?) violation of international laws of war for the occupier to destroy or “take” property except for reason of military necessity.
The exception for "military necessity" does not apply to private property.
The prohibition contained in Article 46 of the regulations attached to the 4th Hague Convention of 1907 does not allow for any such exception:
link to avalon.law.yale.edu
Barak Ravid, the Israeli daily Haaretz’s diplomatic correspondent, said: “This report on the Muhammad al-Durrah case is probably one of the least convincing documents produced by the Israeli government in recent years.”
Zionist Historian Yoav Gelber has written about the State's practice of commissioning inquiry panels and demanding that they exonerate suspected individuals or groups:
-- link to hnn.us
OTOH, what on earth was this redredging of ancient events about? Anyone have another theory?
I've already commented that the report its just a prop the media can wave in the air, while they talk around the subject and plant seeds of doubt.
At the same time the Zionuts are trying to lay down a marker and show other journalists that they will endure the same McCarthy-style ordeal if they dare to repeat the performance of France 2 and Charles Enderlin in this particular episode. They will be dragged through the Courts and subjected to endless state-sponsored libel and innuendos. Netanyahu is hopeful that others will decide that it's just not worth the grief to expose what is going on under the guise of the occupation.
Is it actually possible that Israel has forgotten how to lie?
No they have too much experience for that to happen. Zionists propagandists lie, even when the truth would serve them better, just to stay in practice. This is just a case of over-confidence in the modest skill-level they've obtained.
Will this, if it occur in real life, actually keep the ICC off Israel’s back?
This speculative report published a decade after the fact doesn't meet international standards for any kind of adequate, impartial, and independent investigation. So Article 17(2) et seq would apply:
-- link to untreaty.un.org
This official government account was the 417th consecutive investigation to find Israel not at fault, the most perfect record achieved by any country in recorded history facing comparable existential threats.
That's not so far-fetched an idea. But it indicates that quite bit of whitewashing is still in store for those of us who bother to keep track of these things:
-- link to un.org
To focus on the Zionist narrative entails that he looks specifically at the transformations in European political currents in regards to Jewish people there.
Just to clarify, prior to WWII there were hundreds of Sephardic communities in the Balkins, France, Germany, England, and elsewhere in Europe. The members weren't Mizrahi or Arab Jews. But it is a mistaken view to think that an Ashkenazi is necessarily more "European" than a Sephardi or that prominent Sephardic Jews, like Moses Montifiore, didn't play an instrumental role in financing Jewish agricultural colonies and other Zionist projects in Palestine. I've noted elsewhere that the estate managers of Sephardic Jews, like Judah Touro and Monifiore, actually evicted poor Misrahi Jews of the old Yishuv from lands acquired by their charitable trusts in order to build homes there for the new Zionist Jewish settlers. During the Ottoman era, it was mainly Sephardic Ottoman subjects who served as the actual land purchasing agents for the Zionist movement in Palestine.
This comment resorts to the similar argument that all Jewish people are represented by the Zionist gang that operates the State of Israel
Your comment resorts to bullshit. I noted that there certainly are Ashkenazim and Sephardim of good will who want to live peacefully alongside their Palestinian friends and neighbors. They are not in the majority according to the opinion polls and their views are not reflected by their elected political and religious leaders either.
More to the point, the article above portrays Arab Jews as if they are all sitting around singing Kumbaya, when in fact many of them in the past and the present use their familiarity with Arabic and Arab culture on behalf of the Arab Intelligence branches of the Jewish Agency and its militias or the IDF to betray and even murder their Arab brethren.
Entire volumes have been devoted to the subject as I noted in my comment above. From time to time the IDF and police revive the idea and announce the formation of another Mista’arvim unit to operate in Arab areas under deep cover. Here are a few more examples:
*Naḥmān Ben-Yĕhûdā, Political assassinations by Jews: a rhetorical device for justice, page 229-30 link to books.google.com
* Haaretz Secret police unit monitoring Israeli citizens
Undercover cops operating in East Jerusalem, Arab villages in recent years to thwart terror attacks. link to haaretz.com.
The Palestine: Information with Provenance (PIWP database) has a page that lists over a dozen sources for "The Mista'arvim (Israeli "Arabized" secret police -- posing as Palestinians)" which describes things like Non-violent resistance strategy: Israeli secret police posing as aggressive demonstrators to justify police attack link to cosmos.ucc.ie
Massad aside, what Shasha is talking about seems way worse in the Christian world than in the Jewish one! Most WHITE and privileged Euro-Christians have NO IDEA that Arab Christians even EXIST, in spite of all their bible-study with Palestinian cities all over them!
Oh they know that they exist. For example, in 1913 a federal judge ruled that neither Faras Shahid, a native of Syria, and a Christian nor Jesus Christ could be considered free white persons eligible to immigrate to the Eastern Federal District of South Carolina unless they could establish their European heritage. link to press.umich.edu
Someone must have realized the inherent contradiction of praying for Jesus to return in the face of an outright federal ban, because the following year another Syrian, George Dow, obtained a judgment on appeal which held that the lower courts had erred in ruling that a Syrian of Asiatic birth is not a free white person within the meaning of the naturalization statute.
The three judge panel, of Pritchard, Knapp, and Woods, reasoned that some German works available at the time the act was first adopted categorized the Syrians as members of the white race and that:
-- link to nclebanese.wikispaces.com
Although many Sephardim could, and did establish their European heritage, the Mizrahim were finally considered both Caucasian and White (for the purposes of the statute).
link to press.umich.edu
And yet the invisible Arab Jews with their roots in the ancient Near East, Medieval Iberia, and the polyglot Ottoman Empire do not match this Eurocentric pattern.
I think the differences are overblown. There are certainly Ashkenazim and Sephardim of good will who want to live peacefully alongside their Palestinian friends and neighbors. But you can't whitewash the historical record of the Arab Jews to exonerate them of the various roles some of them played in persecuting their Muslim and Christian neighbors as full partners in the Zionist political experiment.
* Walter Laqueur noted that "Among the Irgun and the Stern Gang there were many youngsters from the Oriental Jewish community, which was not widely represented in the non-terrorist Hagana." See A history of terrorism, Transaction Publishers, 1977, page 122 link to books.google.com
* One area of the Hagana where they were over-represented was in the Palmach's corps of assassins. Jewish undercover units, called “The Arabists of the Palmach” or Mista’arvim [literally, "Arab-pretenders"], are known to have been in operation in Palestine and neighboring Arab countries as early as 1942. — See Targeting To Kill: Israel’s Undercover Units, Elia Zureik and Anita Vitullo, The Palestine Human Rights Information Center (PHRIC)
*link to thejerusalemfund.org
*link to palmach.org.il
and Zvika Dror, The ’Arabists’ of the Palmach (Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1986)
One of the most virulently racist anti-Palestinian spiritual leaders of the Sephardic community in Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, is an Iraqi-born Arab Jew.
Many weren’t. Most, in the end, were. I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove.
That you were talking out of both sides of your own mouth. There was no need for Askenazim to forge a separate Jewish identity. The Arab Jews that were already inhabiting Palestine had an authentic Jewish identity that wasn't borrowed or transplanted as you claimed:
If you can't see that your statement above removes Palestinian Arab Jews from the discussion, then have one of them explain it for you.
Um, no, not at all. Continuous presence of Jews is not inconsistent with the emigration of some Jews, . . .
No Hophmi, you're statement that Arab Jews were no different from European Jews in that they had brought their customs to Israel from other countries is a gloss. You ignored the fact that many Arab Jews weren't émigrés at all.
You can’t argue out of one side of your mouth that Israelis have a habit of appropriating Middle Eastern customs and out of the other that they’re too tied down to their European customs. Arab Jews came to Israel with customs from their countries. It’s no different.
My, my, Hophmi has forgotten about the "continuous Jewish presence" talking point, while talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Correction: The Arab Jews didn't "come to Israel" with customs from their countries, many of them were already there.
“Given the clear slant and bias of the Political Science Department, [CUNY should] develop a plan to ‘level the playing field,’
They already have the entire "Israel and Jewish Studies Department" which is well equipped to calm the nerves of fragile social wallflowers or intellectual navel gazers.
link to iijs.columbia.edu
So even the Supreme Court does not know how to use commas.
That's the syllabus. The Justices don't author those.
Oh yes, I forgot. You’re for suppressing pro-Israel speech.
Hardly, I'm for tossing foreign agents off our campuses and ending Title VI lawfare on behalf of the so-called Jewish state.
I notice that you had no difficulty suppressing student free speech by misusing a state public meeting law in order to give Ambassador Oren a state-subsidized platform to disseminate political propaganda on behalf of Israel.
Whether professors believe that their expression of polemical political opinions should have consequences, as it does for the rest of us.
Except of course for the shlichas that Israel infests our campuses with to conduct agit-prop on behalf of the apartheid state.
“Visiting professor from Israel” could be someone originally from Israel who has been living elsewhere for many years.
That would include those true believers living somewhere else for many years doing agitation and propaganda work as emissaries (shlichas) on behalf of the Israeli regime, e.g.
*Jewish Agency for Israel Expands Presence on College Campuses
Israel Fellows to Hillel to Help Students on 70 North American Campuses Connect to Israel and Speak Out for the Jewish State link to prweb.com
*Hasbara Fellowships
When the Israeli Foreign Ministry sought to combat anti-Israel propaganda on college campuses, it called on Aish HaTorah to develop the Hasbara Fellowships. This program flies hundreds of student leaders to Israel for intensive training in pro-Israel activism , while guiding and funding pro-Israel activism on 80 college campuses. link to aish.com
*Kol Israel at Columbia/Barnard Hillel
Updates about everything related to Israel at Columbia/Barnard Hillel and friends! For more info contact Tor the shlicha Tor@Hillel.Columbia.edu
link to facebook.com
The Assistant Majority leader, an ardent advocate for Israel, has sent a letter to the City University of New York (CUNY) to suggest the hiring of a “professor from Israel” at Brooklyn College to correct what he calls bias in the school’s Political Science department, . . .
WTF? It's not as if we don't have enough unemployed American professors, what with the cuts in state funding and the Federal Sequester.
Just think, it wasn't all that long ago that the US Supreme Court held that:
-- See AMBACH v. NORWICK, 441 U.S. 68 (1979) link to caselaw.lp.findlaw.com
The last time I checked, Israel is still not a part of our "self-government".
Maybe the NYT will buy it but I can’t wait to see what le Canard Enchaine (French satirical magazine) says about it.
We're talking about an example of state-sponsored racism and xenophobia here.
If anyone dared to publicly deny or condone the murders of the Jewish children in Toulouse in March 2012, much less suggest that their parents were somehow responsible, they'd be hauled into court and end-up behind bars. That illustrates just how tone-deaf Zionist propaganda really is.
I hereby nominate Isabel Kershner and her husband Hirsch Goodman
for the Judy Miller Award, which is of course named for the NYTimes reporter whose fake stories about Iraq’s nonexistent nuclear weapons helped provide the public rationale for George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
Well, they are up against some stiff competition from their editors for that award. Media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting documented an embarrassing lack of skepticism in New York Times stenography over the allegations about Syrian government use of chemical weapons.
Here's a link to the text of the report itself. link to scribd.com
It doesn't even rise to the level of the crappy dramatizations of news reports you've come to expect from one of the many fictional police procedural/forensics shows that have overstayed their welcome in cable re-runs. There's no evidence of any expertise on display here. It's just a prop the wire services and media can wave in the air, while they talk around the subject and plant some seeds of doubt.
It reminds me of the exchange between Jack Warden and Paul Newman's characters in The Verdict. Jack Warden is trying to convince Newman's character to accept an out of court settlement for his client who is in a permanent vegetative state:
here is the information that I have from the (disreputable) wikipedia regarding the battle for Jerusalem
LOL! Just for the record, you're quoting a passage from Dov Joseph's book "The Faithful City". The article mentions that he was the head of the Jerusalem Emergency Committee that introduced food rationing. In fact, he was the "Military Governor of Jerusalem" during the 1948 War - when it was still a British Mandate or UN Corpus Seperatum. The Haganah forces that he commanded were just a bunch of outlaws wanted for the recent bombings of the Semiramis Hotel and the local movie houses, + numerous attacks on British and Arab lines of logistical supply.
Likewise Wikipedia isn't actually quoting the Times or the Scotsman, just the parts that Dov Joseph found it useful to describe. So yeah, this is Jimbo Wales and Wikipedia at their finest, regurgitating a completely biased source in the so-called "neutral voice" of the article. The whole thing is written from a Zionist Jewish perspective without the inclusion of the published views of a single Palestinian or British Mandatory spokesman. You couldn't achieve those results by accident, only through a so-called "edit war".
“Following the outbreak of disturbances at the end of 1947 the road between Tel Aviv and Jewish Jerusalem became increasingly difficult for Jewish vehicles. Ambushes by Palestinian Arab irregulars became more frequent and more sophisticated. In January 1948 the number of trucks supplying Jewish Jerusalem had fallen to thirty.
Why does the Wikipedia narrative about the capital of the British Mandate for Palestine only discuss "Jewish trucks" and list nothing but Jewish and Zionist sources? Even the Palestine Post contains reports of Jewish underground attacks on road traffic during this same period. The British High Commissioner wrote his memoirs too you know. I''ve noted elsewhere that he had very unflattering things to say about the conduct of the Jewish forces in reports to the UN and the British Cabinet.
The reports from the UN Palestine Commission and the High Commissioner to the UN Security Council during January 1948 don't describe any major disruptions in the supply of the necessities of life to the population of "Jewish Jerusalem", so they must have managed to get by with the assistance of British, Arab, or other transport after the initial disturbances. If Joseph's figures are reliable, there were 42 trucks per week during the worst period of rationing when someone at The Times "estimated" that 50 were required.
On 3 April the Scotsman newspaper reported that a spokesman at a meeting of Arab military leaders in Damascus had announced that Jerusalem would be “strangled” by a blockade.”
So what? We know it never happened and that Jews were making equally bellicose statements. What would the Scotsman have said if they knew that on 18 February 1948 Ben Gurion, who was in charge of the Jewish Agency Defense Portfolio, advised its Foreign Minister Shertok that:
Do you suppose that the constant flow of weapons and the need to deliver them might have something to do with attacks on Jewish convoys headed for the Military Commander/Emergency Relief Chairman of Jerusalem?
We know from his memoirs that the Syrian's contacted King Abdullah of Transjordan on 15 May and told him they weren't prepared to enter Palestine and wanted the operation called off. When they were finally cajoled into entering Palestine, they took-up positions in the area around Lake Kinneret that they lost as a result of the British-French boundary agreement, and didn't really contribute much for the remainder of the war.
There is a tendency to describe attacks on armed Haganah convoys carrying weapons and fighters back and forth to the remote Haganah bases as if they were innocent victims of aggression. That's true even in cases where the Haganah watchtower and stockade settlements and weapons caches were planted along skirmish or confrontation lines that were located beyond the borders of the proposed Jewish State. Ben Ami and others have written that there was a deliberate plan of settlement developed after 1937 to establish and link-up those remote settlements to major Jewish population centers and determine de facto borders that were much larger than the ones that either the Peel Commission or the UN had proposed - and that's exactly what was going on in Jerusalem.
As Miko Peled documented in is book, his own family, and many of the other Zionist elite, were being offered the pick of the abandoned homes while the beds were still warm. They clearly never had any intention of having anyone stay.
It would have been a cruel joke in any event even if they had been invited back. Pappé and others have reported the unit-level orders to implement Plan Dalet called for expulsions, demolition, and the placement of mines or other booby-traps in the rubble and personal belongings left behind in the leveled Arab villages. Not to mention the fact that Arabs "who joined in building the Jewish state" were treated to 20 years of martial law before they were promoted to second-class citizenship and racial discrimination on steroids. See the preface of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
I doubt you know what Ronen Yitzhak’s best efforts were, because you’d have had to have read his article, which you haven’t. I have.
The author's principle claims are that:
*The Legion attacked the Etzion Bloc as part of an overall Arab strategy to prevent the creation of a Jewish state.
*That in theory, the Etzion Bloc, like other Jewish "neighbourhoods" in the prospective Arab state, should have been able to live and prosper in peace.
That's disingenuous hasbara. Benny Morris, "The Road to Jerusalem" (page 137) explains that the Etzion Bloc wasn't a neighborhood. It was a heavily armed and re-enforced Haganah military outpost with 400-500 militia men (page 137) that was "deliberately planted" along one of the main lines of communications in the 1930s. Although it was located in the territory of the proposed Arab State, the Haganah command and Ben Gurion decided against dismantling these four military bases or evacuating them. The UN resolution provided for "the right of transit, subject to considerations of national security, provided that each State shall control residence within its borders.". So the Haganah underground had no legitimate way of manning, supplying, and equipping these so-called "neighborhoods" after the termination of the mandate, much less employing them to attack traffic on the road, while the mandate was still in force.
Morris and others note they had already been employed in illegal attacks on Legion, British, and Arab civilian vehicles on the road from Hebron to Jerusalem on April 6th, the 12th, the 30th, and May 1st and 3rd.
Morris, Shlaim, Flapan, Glubb and a host of other authors, including Gelber have long since published the details of (now) declassified documents in British, US, and Israeli archives about 1) the conversations between Foreign Minister Biven and the Prime Minister of Transjordan and Brig. Gen. Glubb; and 2) the conversations between Shertok and Epstein of the Jewish Agency and US Secretaries Marshall and Lovett. The British government funded, supplied, and controlled the Arab Legion. Bevin prohibited it from conducting operations in the area of the proposed Jewish state. So the Legion did nothing at all to prevent its establishment. In fact none of the Arab states entered Palestine until that task had already been accomplished and a quarter of a million Palestinians had been driven into exile. There was a modus vivendi in place that allowed the Legion to occupy the area of the proposed Arab State and coordinate with the Haganah to avoid border clashes.
No amount of spin doctoring from Ronen Yitzhak can transform the Etzion Bloc into mere "neighborhoods" or alter the fact that, from the ouset, Biven and the British Cabinet had prohibited the Arab Legion from interfering in the establishment of the proposed Jewish state.
Your Replies: Mountains of quotes by members of various administrations (not Presidents) that are thoroughly off topic.
You are responding just beneath a comment containing a quote from a letter signed by Kennedy himself in response to the Bowles Approach. It was addressed to Nasser and recited the now familiar resolution 194 formula: "We are willing to help resolve the tragic Palestine refugee problem on the basis of the principle of repatriation or compensation for properties."
Using your hasbara technique for a moment, that didn't say "a principle of repatriation, it said "the principle of repatriation", i.e. the customary one reflected in the Geneva Conventions.
Your brain-dead suggestion that administration officials had spent months before that engaging in unauthorized discussions with Israeli and Arab officials about the "right" of return and the Johnson plan without Kennedy's knowledge is utter nonsense. The FRUS is the official historical documentary record of major US foreign policy decisions. All of these documents were addressed "to" or "cc" the President at the White House.
This is getting tiresome, so this is my last reply to this repeated nonsense.
No you are deliberately trolling the thread, as usual, and that has been tiresome for quite some time.
Many Legionnaires, itching for a fight, were going AWOL and joining the ALA and Palestinian gangs to fight the Jews. In addition, Legionnaires would give the gangs weapons and material. Yitzhak, Ronen. Transjordan’s attack on the Etzion Bloc during the 1948 war.. Israel Affairs 17,2 (2011) 194-207
How "many" exactly? I'd hazard a guess you can't cite any reliable estimates or other sources. The Arab Legion was obviously not responsible for anyone who went AWOL. FYI, the Zionists invented the tactic of joining the British police units in order to obtain training, weapons, and intelligence that could be used against their benefactors. The US and the UK spent years repeating that same mistake, while training Iraqi security forces to take their place;-)
Despite Ronen Yitzhak's best efforts, the fact remains that the Legionnaire convoy was attacked by the nut cases living in the Etzion Bloc and was not part of any Arab strategy. The Zionists had taken over a Christian Church building for use as a fighting position to attack traffic on the road from Hebron to Jerusalem. The Legionaries were obviously not AWOL in that case. They were withdrawing from Palestine under orders they had received from the High Commissioner. They had trucks full of weapons drawn-down from their warehouses in the Suez Canal zone. The Zionists had decided to either capture or destroy them as part of their "War of the Roads" - which certainly was a part of the grand over-arching Zionist strategy.
The assertion, which you have abandoned in interest of being argumentative, is that Kennedy himself insisted on a “right” of return. Nothing that you or Phillip Weiss have provided has backed up that bold assertion.
Now you're just kicking and screaming. I did cite Kennedy's letters to the Arab leaders on the subject. You really can't argue that Kennedy's Secretary of State wasn't getting his marching orders from the President either. I've supplied you with memos that prove Kennedy was informed and consulted on his government's position regarding the principle of the "right" of return at every step along the way.
The letters in question were personally signed by Kennedy and were delivered to the Arab heads of state after the consultations with Kennedy by his underlings on the Johnson plan and Bowles Approach, which offered each refugee 1) the choice of repatriation as a law-abiding citizen of Israel, 2) resettlement via special works projects in an Arab country, or 3) resettlement via United Nations encouragement in a non-Arab country.
link to history.state.gov
Kennedy reaffirmed the formula used in General Assembly resolution 194(III):
-- link to history.state.gov
Here is a memorandum from Acting secretary Bowles to President Kennedy, April 28, 1961 regarding An Approach to the Arab Refugee Problem. He said:
link to history.state.gov
It resulted in letters being delivered to all of the Arab leaders, like this one from Kennedy to Nasser, which recited the now familiar resolution 194 formula:
link to history.state.gov
Even when assured that most refugees would opt for compensation and resettlement elsewhere, Israel still refused to accept law abiding Arab citizens or pay its share of the costs for resettlement.
“Nowhere in this or the linked documents does it show that Kennedy (or any president) insisted on a “right” of return.”
In fact the Kennedy Administration pushed the Johnson plan and acknowledged that it required Israel to accept the principle of the refugees “right” of return. link to 2001-2009.state.gov
‘Now that they had been reinforced, the Arabs prepared to take the initiative in Haifa. The number of shooting incidents, bomb explosions and skirmishes with the [Arab] Legion grew.’–Yoav Gelber, Palestine 1948: War, Escape And The Emergence Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem, page 23. Gelber was writing about the time period February-March, 1948.
LOL! The Arab Legion was permanently garrisoned in Palestine and was operating under the auspices of the British High Commissioner in February-March of 1948. It had been a small part of the 100,000-man British force deployed in the country during and after the Arab revolt in an attempt to maintain law and order.
Gelber may think the Zionists were fighting for a righteous cause, but this is really just a case in which the members or spokesman for an illegal underground are engaging in revisionist history and complaining that everybody, including the regular authorities, were unfairly picking on them.
P.S. Here's a memo from Secretary Rusk to President Kennedy which explains that:
1) No progress can be made on the Johnson plan until Israel accepted in principle the refugee "right" of return.
2) That while Israel considered the Johnson plan dead, the US government did not.
3) The US government was seeking progress within a UN framework which establishes the principle that the true wishes of the individual refugee, when confronted with a real choice without outside pressure, must be ascertained.
4) The US believed that the majority of refugees would eventually be resettled elsewhere.
Here is a direct quote which lays the blame at Israel's doorstep and warns that it will result in isolation within the global community and loss of legitimacy:
-- link to 2001-2009.state.gov
It's not that there aren't any Kennedy Administration documents about the right of return, its that you are suffering from willful ignorance.
? And further, why with the supposed wealth of documents at your disposal do you provide a quote that in no way supports your assertion?
Because " justice for the refugees" and any reference (at all) to "the plight of those who have been displaced by wars" entails a legally binding obligation to protect those persons under the customary law reflected in the terms of Articles 6 and 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention until they are repatriated or compensated for their harm or loss and resettled elsewhere.
That's the basis of "the right of return" in international law. It undoubtedly applies to all of the people who were displaced as a result of the 1967 war. The State Department documents that I provided establish that the right is nothing new or unusual. Forced permanent population transfers have been illegal since the days of the USA's Lieber code. Here is the applicable text of the 4th Geneva Convention:
Nowhere in this or the linked documents does it show that Kennedy (or any president) insisted on a the “right” of return for Palestinian refugees.
That's incorrect. There's no doubt at all that President Johnson and his administration repeatedly told the Israels that they would have to allow the refugees to exercise their right of return or indemnify those that were resettled elsewhere in line with the UN resolutions on the subject. Try reading the chapters of the FRUS on Postwar Diplomacy, June 11–September 30, 1967; and UN Security Council Resolution 242, October 3–November 22, 1967.
* link to history.state.gov
* link to history.state.gov
That was item number two in his five point plan for ending the conflict in the Middle East, which in-turn became the framework for resolution 242.
Here is the relevant text of President Johnson's "five points" speech, delivered during the State Department's Foreign Policy Conference for Educators, June 19, 1967:
link to presidency.ucsb.edu
I seem to also remember Arab Legion and Iraqi volunteers occupying several Arab neighborhoods and attacking Jewish neighborhoods with their own mortars.
Amazing how you airbrush Arab fighters from the picture.
No I've taken great pains in the past to explain that Ben Gurion launched the offensive against Jerusalem and ordered the commander of the Haganah to give Irgun and Lehi a free hand to conduct operations there. The Arab Legion was responding to pleas for assistance in relieving the siege against their neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Here is Avi Shlaim's summary of the historical events:
link to web.archive.org
It would also be fair to point out that only an estimated 30,000 Arab fighters ever entered Palestine. That pales in comparison to number of foreign Jewish fighters. Almost a third of the Jews in the country, about a quarter of a million, were not citizens and most had never applied according to the information contained in the Survey of Palestine (1946). The so-called civil war was an international armed conflict from the outset.
During a debate in the First Knesset, Ben Gurion was excoriating Begin over the damage to Israel's foreign relations that had resulted from the Irgun's terror attacks during the Jerusalem uprising. The former Haganah commander Moshe Sneh interrupted Ben Gurion and reminded him that he had cabled him and instructed the Haganah not to interfere with the IZL. MK G. Meyer responded by threatening Sneh (ala Anat Kam/Uri Blau) : "Moshe Sneh, don't threaten us with publication!" -- See the Minutes of the 8th Sitting of the First Knesset, 8 March 1949, in Netanel Lorach, "Major Knesset Debates, 1948-1981" Volume 2, JCPA/University Press, 1993, page 445.
Nowhere in this or the linked documents does it show that Kennedy (or any president) insisted on a “right” of return.
Apparently you are not very well informed on the subject. After World War II the US was adamant that displaced persons and refugees had an inherent entitlement to the exercise of the "right of return" to their country of origin or nationality.
That idea led to a long-running dispute and mutual trade boycotts between the US and other countries, like Communist China. It's government interfered with the right of US citizens to be repatriated to the USA. Chinese officials complained that the US was interfering with the right of its citizens to be repatriated, e.g.
link to history.state.gov
link to history.state.gov
link to history.state.gov
link to history.state.gov
link to history.state.gov
link to history.state.gov
link to history.state.gov
The government of Japan complained that displaced persons of western descent had been allowed to exercise their right of return, while persons of Japanese descent had been refused. The Japanese Foreign Ministry said they merely wanted the right of return to their homes and livelihoods too. The US State Department agreed that it was not an unreasonable demand and that US military occupation officials were exceeding their mandate from the UN regarding the trusteeship and their authority under related US law. link to history.state.gov
Declassified documents show that German and Austrian officials reserved their positions on the exercise of the right of return in the post-war settlements. The Allied powers refused to agree on the ground that it would expose them to claims for compensation in international courts over properties seized from Nazi collaborators that had not been returned. Under the circumstances, that's powerful evidence of "mens rea" or a guilty mind, since the international courts would have provided them with all of the usual legal protections recognized by civilized peoples.
link to history.state.gov
link to history.state.gov
The only people who seemed blissfully unaware of the numerous assertions regarding the existence of "the right of return" in the foreign relations practice of the United States were Zionist Jews like Ambassador Goldberg and the Rostow brothers (Walt and Eugene).
link to history.state.gov
Nasser took the position that most refugees would opt to receive compensation rather than a return to conditions of second-class citizenship in Israel. When he suggested that they be individually surveyed by the UNRWA concerning their wishes, the US government responded that it wouldn't be a good idea.
link to history.state.gov
and am not familiar (or have forgotten if I ever knew) about the other countries.
Historian Rafael Medoff, outlines efforts by so-called non-Zionist American Jews working independently and through in the Jewish Agency with various Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, and Saudi officials to negotiate deals on massive population transfers. The destinations were usually Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Transjordan.
See "Baksheesh Diplomacy: Secret Negotiations between American Jewish Leaders and Arab Officials on the Eve of World War II"
I've also cited Joseph Heller, “The birth of Israel, 1945-1949: Ben-Gurion and his critics” and Michael Doran, “Pan-Arabism Before Nasser” which cover the work of Jewish Agency Political Department officials in keeping the Arab governments divided and encouraging behind the scenes support for the partition of Palestine.
It is interesting to see how and when this hasbara evolved, but I recall seeing an eyewitness account from IF Stone in 1948 stating that the flight of Palestinians was an inexplicable surprise to him. I have no doubt of his sincerity, especially since he later was a pioneer in exposing the vapidity of the whole thing, but his initial account led me to believe that the voluntary flight BS started way back in 1948
Of course they did. The Arab States and Count Bernadotte used the occasion of the the XVIIth ICRC Diplomatic Conference in August and September of 1948 to appeal for emergency international assistance to help feed and shelter the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that had overwhelmed the Arab relief agencies.
The Conference was deliberating the draft Geneva Conventions of 1949. Much to the chagrin of the Zionists, the situation helped cement support for the requirement for an occupying power to provide formal protections under the Conventions long after the armed conflicted ended, until the prisoners and refugees were repatriated and resettled.
The Observer from Israel, Dr. Katznelson, said:
link to loc.gov
The Arab ambassadors stressed the fact that the refugees had been displaced by the armed conflict. The Representative of Syria Dr. Kadry replied:
The Representative of Lebanon, Mrs. Kettaneh said:
No sane intellect cares if the refugees fled of their own free will or otherwise. It's not as if there's some sort of legal requirement for civilians to remain in an area where there's an on-going armed conflict that places their lives in danger.
The fact that Haaretz treats this as a relevant factor only proves that it's editorial staff and target audience in Israel might be "a few bricks short of a full load."
Many civilians who tried to remain in the contested areas ended-up as the victims of massacres conducted by the notorious Jewish terror organizations. The Haganah, Irgun and Lehi specialized in terror bombings, drive by shootings, tossing grenades into Arab market places, rolling barrel bombs down hills into Arab villages, and using light or heavy mortars in attacks that destroyed and emptied entire villages of their inhabitants.
Here is an excerpt from Prof. John Quigley's "Palestine and Israel: a challenge to justice" (footnote numbers omitted) which describes the situation. It points out that the Zionist newspapers carried contemporary accounts which said the Arabs were given leaflets which warned them to evacuate or else:
link to books.google.com
One of the most common cries we hear on campus these days is “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea!”
For years the articles at Wikipedia have had banners at the top claiming that almost nothing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is undisputed or can be known for certain - except for the fact that Palestine is the conventional name for the geographical region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. link to en.wikipedia.org
If you still oppose equal rights and freedom anywhere, then you should probably stick to campus life until you learn a thing or two.
P.S. Canada is a party to the 1st Additional Protocol (1977) to the Geneva Conventions.
That means it is bound by the terms of Article 85 to treat the direct or indirect transfer of any portion of Israel's population into the territory that it occupies as a "grave breach" and a "war crime".
Does Israel have the right to extend its customs authority over occupied territory? And should Canada legitimize this?
I think you are looking in wrong place re: CIFTA 1.4 1.
Article 93 of the Rome Statute requires member States to assist in the identification, tracing and freezing or seizure of proceeds, property and assets and instrumentalities of crimes for the purpose of eventual forfeiture. link to untreaty.un.org
Canada has stated for the record that the settlements violate the 4th Geneva Convention. Under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, any proceeds from that crime are subject to forfeiture if they are located in Canada. Here is the governments web page on the applicable law:
link to international.gc.ca
R.S.C. 1985 c. C-38 7.1c loses this arm wrestle to CIFTA 1.4 1. “(b) with respect to Israel the territory where its customs laws are applied;”
The government of Canada maintains a Foreign Affairs and International Trade page which contains policy statements. They indicate that Canada views the Israeli settlements as a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
-- link to international.gc.ca
FYI, Article 8 of the Rome Statute cites the Geneva Conventions and the laws and customs of war. The portions of the Canadian criminal code on war crimes has, in-turn, been based upon the criteria contained in the Rome Statute and the Geneva Conventions. See also Proceeds of Crime Offences in Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act: link to international.gc.ca
Israel is only an occupying power. It has concluded a special agreement with local officials in the OPt to collect customs fees on their behalf which are delivered to the Palestinian authorities. For its own part, the government of Israel routinely advises the UN treaty bodies that it's actions in the Occupied territories are not subject to the human rights covenants that apply to garment workers in places like Bangladesh. Israel claims that's because the OPt is NOT part of its sovereign territory or jurisdiction, e.g. See CCPR/C/ISR/2001/2, para 8 or E/1990/6/Add.32, para 6-7
P.S. The legal term of art for the practice of extending a country's municipal and customs laws to another territory is "annexation".
P.S. The FRUS and Israel's own "Documents on Israeli Foreign Policy" series provide scores of examples where Israel privately admitted it intended to resort to the use of force, while officially demanding that the Arab neighbors enter into neotiations.
The only thing that's changed is that, after the 1967 War, Israel has publicly reserved its right to use force as an instrument of its national policy in the conduct of its foreign relations with others, while insisting that other states be demilitarized and claiming there is no one to negotiate with on the other side.
Frankly that attitude has prevailed ever since Jabotinsky departed the Zionist Executive, while complaining publicly about the subtrefuge of "endless talks":
-- link to danielpipes.org
Netanyahu, and people like Daniel Pipes, were raised-up and nourished on those fascist political beliefs. In the Iron Wall Jabotinsky documented the Zionist practice of enlisting the Arab heads of state as allies or strawmen, working against the national interests of the Palestinians.
First of all an advisory opinion removes nothing at all, and everything that you think to have built upon said advisory opinion falls as well.
Advisory opinions on the legal consequences of the applicable international laws and state practice are fully dispositive. Israel's only allies in the case, including the US, UK, et al, argued that there was no need for the ICJ to exercise its advisory jurisdiction, since it had already been universally agreed that the wall and the Israeli settlements were illegal before hand.
The only thing "that fell" were the childish and nonsensical legal theories authored by people who should have known better, like Meir Shamgar, Yehuda Z. Blum, and Alan Baker. Its hilarious that you keep trying to promulgate that stuff here, when the Israeli government shelved the Levy Commission report and never bothered to publish a complete translation.
The rest of the world has moved on and recognized Palestine within the 4 June 1967 borders. Even Uncle Sugar rejected the Levy Commission conclusions. See for example "US displeased with Levy Report": DC official says US 'does not accept legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts' link to ynetnews.com
For that you have chosen the ICCPR in the hope that Israel’s narrow use of the word “jurisdiction” regarding the civil sphere of the Palestinian population
Israel's use of the term wasn't really very limited. It stipulated in writing that the authority of the Palestinian Council encompassed all matters that fell “within its territorial, functional and personal jurisdiction” and included formal implementation and reporting on the ICCPR, which is only open to participation by States. Furthermore Israel said that the Palestinians were obliged under the terms of Oslo and the Wye River accords to carry-out responsibilities reserved for the governments of states under norms of international law.
To return to the subject of this article, any entity that exercises territorial, functional, and personal jurisdiction can refer situations to the ICC or become a party to the Rome Statute.
FYI, The ICCPR and ICESCR establish all of the inalienable rights listed in Article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. The latter and the Rome Statute simply establish criminal responsibility for violations.
First. Your cites contradict each other.
No they don't, they reflect the fact that the various Arab factions and states opposed one another back then, just as they do today. There is no contradiction at all in the historical record presented by Avi Shlaim, Michael Doran, Joseph Heller, or Benny Morris. They all document the fact that the Arab States and their leaders accepted the principle of partition advanced by the Jewish Agency negotiators, and only disagreed over the fairness of the territorial division contained in the final UN plan.
Funny that you mention Glubb Pasha. He once said that, “The Arabs of Palestine, in reality have little Arab blood in their veins”. — Benny Morris, The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine. pg. 14.
I don't believe it's funny at all. That's why I went out of my way to quote the official documentary record of the United Nations on that particular point. The representative of Egypt was perfectly correct when he explained that the "Arab States" had no credentials or other basis upon which to represent the Palestinian people.
Despite the dim-witted attempts to assign blame to the Palestinian people for anything and everything that was ever done by "an Arab" or Muslim living somewhere else, the actors don't necessarily represent members of the Palestinian Christian, Druze, Bahai, or other religious orders or the multi-ethnic culture of non-Arab inhabitants of Turkish, Circassian, or other origins. Your shopworn propaganda is always going to be a hasbara failure because it relies on bigotry and false racial steroetypes.