WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The UN really stuck it to Israel last week, and if you think about it, not just Israel but us American Jews. It’s Israel’s job to get nations’ governments to change their minds before next month’s final vote, but we have to strongly contest the UN’s Verdict-First-Trial-Afterwards terminology and the loaded lexicon of which it’s part, and strongly assert our Jewish people’s claim to our Jewish national home.
World Doesn’t Call Historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria “Disputed,” and Neither Should We
Richard Mills, the United States’ representative to the UN committee composed of at least most member states that last week passed 98-17-52 a resolution seeking an International Court of Justice advisory ruling on
“Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”
and to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s
“prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory”
understated the case. The Times of Israel, 11/11/22, UN Panel Asks Int’l Court of Justice to Urgently Weigh In on Israeli ‘Annexation,’ quoted Rep. Mills that the UN resolution’s reference to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount by only its Arabic name, Haram al-Sharif, was “intended to denigrate Israel.” Indeed, but the Temple Mount isn’t an Israeli holy site. It’s a Jewish holy site, the Jewish holy site, and however liberal, even “woke” a Diaspora Jew you may be, this 98-to-17 with 52 abstentions UN resolution was “intended to denigrate” you. And that goes too for the rest of that Verdict-First-Trial-Afterwards UN resolution – its “occupation, settlement and annexation” of “Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” which the UN’s precious “Palestinian people” have never ruled ever, but which we Jews have three times, including the past half-century, over the past 3,000 years.
And this is on top of a lot of other UN stuff lately and previously castigating Israel, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Nides declaring last Thursday that “We will fight any attempt at annexation” of Judea-Samaria, quoted by Arlene Kushner in her Arlene From Israel blog-post this week, From Israel: Cool the Hysteria!!, 11/15/22, correcting this here again terminology twisting, this time by the U.S. Arlene:
“Let me stop here to correct Ambassador Nides [and, btw, the UN]. What he is speaking about is application of sovereignty, not annexation. Annexation would be the proper term if Israel were to incorporate into the nation an area that is separate from Israel. But Judea & Samaria are part of Mandate Israel and according to international law under uti possidetis juris remain part of Israel. Application of sovereignty would mean applying Israeli law to the area and declaring assumption of full administrative authority.”
Arlene follows this up with multiple reasons for us American Jews to “Cool the Hysteria!!.” Ben-Gvir is not the Devil Incarnate, Israeli democracy is not being destroyed, etc. I commend this article, and also this week’s Blake Flayton’s on JNS, 11/16/22, Can American Jews Make Demands on Israel If They Don’t Live There?, which calls for calm and rational action by both halves of our people, and also Jonathan Tobin’s Israel’s New Coalition Shouldn’t Write Off American Jewry, JNS, 11/18/22, on the importance of both halves coming together.
And so it seems to me that right now is an exceedingly inopportune time for us American Jews ourselves to be sticking it to Israel – heed our vetoes of your cabinet appointments and adopt our liberal values or good-bye. Can this be? Arlene in that blog post this week cites two Conservative Movement instances that, alas, it is:
“And then there was Mercaz Olami, the Zionist arm of Conservative Judaism worldwide, which requested (or demanded, as it seems) that incoming prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu not appoint Ben Gvir as a minister in the new government.
“According to Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, ‘The strength of the relationship between Diaspora Jews and the Jews of Israel is based on common values. We expect the Israeli government to uphold these values in order to maintain the relationship.’” [emphasis Arlene’s]
The full UN General Assembly will vote on this ICJ referral resolution next month. It will be Israel’s job to persuade nations’ governments to change their minds on it before then. We American Jews need to do two things – [1] vigorously contest the UN’s Alice-in-Wonderland-couched judicial proceeding and the utterly bigoted loaded lexicon of which it is part, and [2] vigorously stand up for our Jewish claim to the land of Israel as our Jewish national home, firmly grounded both in international treaty, the Palestine Mandate, and three-millennia physical homeland presence.
[1] TERMINOLOGY: We need to categorically contest the twisted terminology in which all of these attacks on Israel and us are taking place. Start with that UN vote on “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” and our alleged “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation” thereof. That territory – Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem – isn’t “occupied.” Some of us say we should call it “disputed.” The UN doesn’t call it “disputed.” The UN calls it “Palestinian.” Arlene’s right. We should call it “ours.” And say “apply sovereignty,” not “annexation.” But those are just this week’s examples. The whole loaded lexicon has to be fought. Go look at the “Toxic Terms” and “Dirty Words” pages on our website, www.factsonisrael.com.
[2] JEWISH HOMELAND CLAIM: We need to appreciate that Israel isn’t America. Its raison d’etre is to be Jewish, not non-sectarian, not because of the Holocaust, but because the Temple Mount had been The Temple Mount for a millennium-and-a-half before Muslims built Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on it, not coincidentally but because it was the site of the Temple. And because, as historian Parkes wrote in Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine, Israelis’ “real title deeds” were written by the “heroic endurance of those who had maintained a Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement.” And because the Palestine Mandate apportioned the 22% of Mandated Palestine west of the Jordan River as the Jewish national home, handing the other 78% to what’s today Palestinian Arab-majority judenrein Jordan. And because the Holocaust, which btw happened, was not an anomaly, a one-time occurrence, but the culmination of centuries of stateless Jews’ mistreatment in Europe – Pale of Settlement, Ghetto, Holocaust, Inquisition, Pogrom. And because of centuries of mistreatment of indigenous Jewish people in Arab and other Muslim lands as dhimmis, culminating in Israel absorbing more Jews displaced from vast Muslim lands than Arabs left tiny Israel. There were two-sided, not just “Palestinian,” refugees. We’ve taken in ours. The land of Israel – historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria hill country at its very core – is inseparably ours. In the face of unrelenting incessant attacks on it, we have to vociferously claim it.