WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Danny Danon brought up UNSC 2334, calling it the low point in decades in US-Israel relations in the UN, in his final press conference as Israel’s UN rep this month. The news articles on his remarks didn’t fully convey how dangerous to our Jewish homeland that UNSC resolution actually was. Not “Land For Peace,” but Land Without Peace was its demand. But even in negotiations, “two-states on the 1967 lines with agreed land swaps” is incompatible with a secure meaningful Jewish homeland state. Here’s why.
2334: Not Just “Daylight,” but Light Years
Danny Danon, retiring Israeli representative to the UN, referenced UNSC 2334 in his final press conference this month. Not for the first time, he bitterly criticized the U.S. abstention on UNSC 2334, adopted in the Obama administration’s final days in December 2016. Resolution 2334 had “reaffirmed” that
“the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution, and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace”
and “underlined” that the UN Security Council
“will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations”
Danon called that resolution, on which the U.S. had “worked” and “ensured” would pass, “the lowest place in decades regarding Israel and the US at the UN.” (Israel Today, 7/24/20, “Outgoing Israeli Ambassador Takes Final Swing at Obama”).
What bothers me is the inadequate way in which the news articles carrying Danon’s farewell remarks characterized that devastating UN resolution. That Israel Today article said the resolution “condemned Israel over the continued presence of Jews in the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria.” Algemeiner, 7/10/20, and JNS, 7/9/20, went a bit further, both saying that 2334 “condemned Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria, as well as eastern Jerusalem.”
Jonathan Tobin struck nearer the mark back on December 26, 2016, just after the resolution was passed. Writing in Commentary, “Why This Resolution Was Different,” Tobin pointed out that “while other resolutions unfairly criticized the Jewish state, none of them specifically labeled the Jewish presence in territory Israel took control of in the 1967 Six Day War as illegal,” making Israelis living in these areas “international outlaws.” He drove home that “under the terms of this resolution, the Western Wall and other Jewish holy places in Jerusalem are considered to be Palestinian.”
Even this, by me, doesn’t go far enough. Tobin in that Commentary article referenced Obama’s intention, stated at the start of his first term back in January 2009, to create “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel. Daylight? By me, more like Light Years. Beyond ripping from the Jewish state, half a century after their liberation, Jerusalem holy places that successive Jewish kingdoms had ruled for many hundreds of years, and gifting them to “the Palestinians” who’ve never ruled Jerusalem for one day in history, this resolution undoes the Six Day War and sets as borders the old 1949 military ceasefire lines (which weren’t borders), turning Israel into a defenseless nine-miles-wide in the lowland middle historic Jerusalem-less ghetto sliver of the land of Israel, all with nothing to show for it. Talk about “Land For Peace,” 2334 practiced Land Without Peace, saying nothing about Arab refugees’ “Right of Return” (never mind about the Arab-Israeli conflict’s greater number of Israel-absorbed Jewish refugees from Muslim lands) or any issue between Arabs and Jews other than Israel, as the UN put it, flagrantly violating international law in building illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and other occupied Palestinian land.
American Jews have to choose. One choice is to stand with Israelis, who, after all they’ve been through before, during and after rebirth of the Jews’ sovereign homeland state, reject an inside-the-land-of-Israel Palestinian Arab state in addition to Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan in 78% of the Palestine Mandate. That’s my choice. The other choice is “a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps,” which former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Shapiro (Times of Israel blog, 5/17/20) wrote “remains a consensus policy within the Democratic Party.” That’s also the choice of the American Jewish Reform and Conservative movements in their open letter last year to President Trump, in which they called for that “two-state solution” with borders that “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders” except for any agreed “territorial adjustments.” (Even the United Nations and Amb. Shapiro called the 1949 lines “the 1967 lines” and not “the 1967 borders.”)
I implore liberal American Jews to reflect upon what that “two-state solution based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps” means for our Jewish national home – slinking out of historic Jerusalem and the defensible Judea-Samaria hills to a defenseless lowland sliver of the land of Israel. Justly, we don’t have to do this. We have a legitimate claim to the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, leaving Palestinian Arabs the majority in almost-four-fifths of the Palestine Mandate, Jordan, sans any Jews.
But even if you’re for “two-states” as defined by the UN, the Democratic Party and American Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, make this offered surrender of Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem mean something. Refuse to use the Jewish homeland-delegitimizing pejoratives abounding in common discourse. E.g.:
“West Bank” and “East” Jerusalem: “The West Bank” was called Judea and Samaria for thousands of years, including by the UN in 1947. “West Bank” isn’t a synonym for the Hebrew-origin names Judea and Samaria. It’s an antonym. “East” Jerusalem didn’t exist until the seizure of part of that city by Jordan in 1948, and it ceased to be a separate place when Jerusalem was reunited by Israel in 1967.
“Palestinian territory,” “occupied territory”: Calling Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem “Israeli-occupied” or “Palestinian territory” begs the issue of ownership. If the Jewish homeland’s enemies called historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria “disputed” territories, we could call them that too, but they don’t. They call these territories theirs. So call them ours, which they historically (3000 years’ thrice sovereign continuous presence) and legally (San Remo, Mandate) are.
“Israeli settlements” (in contradistinction to nearby “Palestinian neighborhoods … towns”): Whatever its historical meaning may have been, “settlements” today is a dirty word, exemplified by the media’s loving contrast of “Israeli settlements” or “Jewish settlements” in the same sentence with nearby “Palestinian neighborhoods … villages … towns.” Say “Jewish communities” and not “settlements,” which Israelis themselves also should.
“Annexation”: The current fuss is over Israel (maybe) applying Israeli law (“sovereignty”) to areas of Judea-Samaria and Jordan Valley. “Annexation” connotes take-over of another entity’s land as your own, which is why Israel applying sovereignty’s opponents use it.
“The 1967 Borders”: They weren’t. They were 1949 Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines, expressly declared in their defining document not to be political borders. They’re not among the Holy Land’s holy places, indeed are less holy than their successor 1967 ceasefire lines, infinitely securer for Israel, from renewed fighting (again initiated by Jordan) between the same sides.
“The Palestinians”: They’re not. During the Mandate, everyone living in Palestine was called “Palestinian,” a name in fact used more by its Jews (Palestine Post, Palestine Electric Co., etc.) than its Arabs. Nor are Palestinian Arabs descended from Canaanites, though, under the widely-held “indigenous origin” view of where the Israelites came from, we are.
Among a U.S. presidential election year’s rituals is the drawing up of the political parties’ platforms, a process that’s going on now. Four years ago, I told myself, “Well, it’s the Republicans’ turn to lie to us about moving the Embassy.” They said: “We recognize Jerusalem as the eternal and indivisible capital of the Jewish state and call for the American embassy to be moved there in fulfillment of U.S. law.” And then they went and did it. Keep an eye on your party’s platform’s development and encourage a pro-Israel plank.