WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The gap between intensity of attacks on our Jewish homeland’s legitimacy and our responses to them, let alone our affirmative assertions of the history, legality and justice of our people’s national home, only grows. A suggestion in an internet article this week may start to reverse this.
Yom San Remo: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Confirmation came to me this week in an internet article that there is indeed such a thing as “an idea whose time has come.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve become increasingly incensed and frustrated over the last few years at the crescendo of international attacks on our Jewish homeland of Israel
– incensed over everybody and his brother-in-law from the United Nations (e.g., UNSC2334, permanent UNHRC Inquisition on Israel’s purported mistreatment of the peace-loving “Palestinians”), European Union (e.g., “settlement” product labeling decrees), International Criminal Court unprecedented investigation of Israel, Amnesty International (“apartheid” against “Palestinians,” no right to exist as “Jewish state”), attacks in the U.S. Congress (e.g., Sen. Sanders, Cong. Levin’s “Two-States” bill offending even liberal Prof. Dershowitz, “the Squad”), BDS by even an ice cream company (“we’re pro-Israel, just against some of its policies” – the Jewish homeland’s claim to Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem); not least the U.S. Reform and Conservative Jewish movements calling for “two-states” with borders that “hew precisely to the 1967 borders” and against Israeli “annexation” in “the West Bank,” as though Israel had no credible homeland claim to Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem) badgering Israel, not to mention annual “Nakba Day … Israel Apartheid Week” … etc., etc.;
– frustrated over our Jewish people not just failing to make effective responses to all these attacks, but utter absence of our non-responsively affirmative making of our Jewish people’s historical and legal homeland case to the world, even alas to ourselves.
Enough. Steve Feldman, Executive Director of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the ZOA, and a stalwart champion in the Diaspora of our homeland of Israel, had a JNS article this week, Celebrate San Remo Day (see it on JNS or zoa.org), that instantly struck me as “Of course, exactly what’s needed!”
On April 25, 1920, the victorious Allies of WWI dealt at San Remo, Italy, with disposition of the defunct Ottoman Empire’s conquests, a vast portion of which was claimed by the Arabs and a tiny portion by the Jews.
An Israel Forever article (israelforever.org/interact/why_you_should_know_san_remo/#) makes clear San Remo’s significance, both to Arabs and Jews:
“Let this sink in for a moment: before the San Remo conference there did not exist a single Arab independent nation state. Not one. All 22 Arab states that exist today (as part of the Arab League) became nation states either as a direct result of the San Remo conference, or much later. Therefore, the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state is exactly equal or greater to the legitimacy of any of the Arab nation states.
At that time, the Israel Forever article continues, “the Arabs of Palestine viewed themselves as Syrian and as pan-Arabs,” and “only later, once they had secured all the rest of their Arab lands, did the Arabs change their story …redefining the conflict as Jews against Palestinian Arabs within that small territory, rather than what it originally was: returning a small patch of Ottoman empire land to its rightful owners, the Jewish people, while dividing 99% of the land among the Arabs.” The result of San Remo and other conferences was, inter alia, “the Mandate for Palestine, granted to the British government for the sole purpose of establishing a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel.” The article concludes: “It is essential that we protect the truth that formal recognition of Israel as the Jewish national home became binding international law not in 1947 or 1948, but in 1920,” with the San Remo resolutions which “were adopted and signed unanimously by all 51 countries of the League of Nations” [later accepted by the UN].
The Palestine Mandate originally embraced Palestine on both sides of the River Jordan, but contained a clause enabling Britain to withhold its application to the part (78%) east of the River, which it immediately did, creating today’s Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan. There was no such clause in the Mandate for withholding from the reconstituted Jewish national home areas of Palestine west of the River.
Another Israel Forever article, San Remo: The Forgotten Milestone to the Liberation and Creation of Israel, contains these super-significant observations on San Remo as a response to the vicious word war on our Jewish homeland of Israel:
“When the notion of ‘occupation’ took root, it soon turned into ‘illegal occupation,’ then ‘brutal occupation’ and, finally, ‘apartheid,’ which is a crime against humanity and international law. Once corrupted language describes a distorted reality and the distortion spreads, thought becomes corrupt and any resulting action is bound to fail. [emphasis original]
“… So next time you hear about the ‘occupation of the West Bank’ and its supposedly ‘illegal settlements’ – an almost daily occurrence in the discourse of the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters – you should remember that this territory, as the rest of Israel, was lawfully restored to the Jewish people in 1920 and its legal title has been internationally guaranteed and never revoked ever since. Any negotiation toward achieving a lasting peace should be based on this premise.
“Last but not least, San Remo marks the end of the longest colonization period in history” [citing the Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamluks and Turks successively ruling the land of Israel as foreign conquerors between Judaea’s final destruction by Rome in 135 CE and today’s Israel’s independence in 1948 as the land of Israel’s next native state.]
“This liberation from foreign rule should normally be celebrated by all the progressive elites who have traditionally supported every national freedom movement. But it isn’t so, for reasons that defy reason.”
But don’t kid yourself. It’s not just “progressive elites” who don’t celebrate San Remo’s national liberation significance. It’s us. Steve Feldman this week put it this way:
“April 25 is one of the most significant dates in Jewish history – yet stop 100 Jews exiting a synagogue or Federation event to ask them why the date is significant, and not one will come up with the correct answer – or perhaps any answer.
“On April 25, 1920, the world – or at least some of the most dominant nations of the world at that time – proclaimed that the Jewish people are attached to a specific territory to be returned to the Jewish people for the restoration of the Jewish homeland and that it be enshrined in international law.”
Right, Steve. But I’d push Yom San Remo’s importance a little step further. American Jews today, in our relationship with the Jewish homeland of Israel, fall into three camps: The alas minority like me who see the land of Israel, Palestine west of the River, historic Jerusalem (Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and all) and defensible Judea-Samaria ridge being inherently part, as our indivisible history-and-San Remo-based Jewish national home; the majority “two-state solution” believers, many of whom would resurrect the old defunct 1949 Israel-Jordan exclusively military ceasefire lines; and those indifferent to a Jewish homeland altogether.
Go back and read again that sampling above of all the legitimacy attackers of our people’s homeland Jewish state. Recognizing and annually openly commemorating April 25 as “Yom San Remo” may reinforce in more of our community (even those willing to part with some of it in a peace settlement) the historical and legal validity of our people’s homeland claim, and perhaps even awaken such an appreciation among traditional American supporters of national liberation movements. (A few years ago, a rabbi from Israel told a session I attended that he and others believe that their correctly seeing Israel as such is the only way many Americans will view it favorably.) By me, it’s an idea whose time has come.