WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The world’s in an uproar over Israel redirecting funds from the PA to terror victims following UNGA seeking ICJ “advisory opinion” on Israeli treatment of “the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” The hundred countries telling Israel not to disrespect the International Court are the ones disrespecting it. And, re Israel and Saudi Arabia, read David Friedman’s new book.
100 Countries Lambast Israel for Disrespecting International Court, But THEY’RE the Ones Disrespecting It
JNS ran an article Tuesday, More Than 90 Countries [since increased to over 100] Call On Israel To Restore PA Terror Funds, lambasting the Jewish State for redirecting tax funds it collects for the Palestinian Authority to terror victims, to the extent that the PA paid the perpetrators in 2022 under its “pay-for-slay” program. Israel did this in response to PA instigation of a UN General Assembly resolution seeking an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on Israel-Palestinian Arabs’ issues.
JNS quoted these 100 countries’ less-than-love-letter to Israel:
“Regardless of each country’s position on the resolution, we reject punitive measures in response to a request of an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice ….”
And, not to be left out, the Secretary-General of the UN:
“In parallel, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he ‘notes with deep concern the recent Israeli measures against the Palestinian Authority,’ adding that there should ‘be no retaliation … in relation to the International Court of Justice.”
Two things to note about these developments:
#1: “UN Condemned Israel More Than All Other Countries Combined in 2022 – Monitor,” headline of Times of Israel, 1/3/23; and
#2: It was these Israel-condemning letter writers, or most of them, through their affirmative votes for that ICJ-referral resolution or abstention thereon, not Israel in response thereto against the instigator thereof, which disrespected, indeed mocked, that International Court.
Res Ipsa Loquitur. The question-begging wording of the referral-to-the-ICJ resolution speaks for itself. These countries called on the ICJ to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on
“Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”
and on Israel’s
“prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory”
Not so. “East” Jerusalem – i.e., historic Jerusalem – includes the Old City (Temple Mount, Western Wall), City of David (Pool of Siloam, Pilgrimage Road) and more. It’s the core of a city that’s been three times a native Jewish state’s capital in the past 3000 years. Jerusalem has had a renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 1800’s Ottoman Turkish rule. By us, Jerusalem’s not “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Nor is Judea-Samaria, which, like Jerusalem, Palestinian Arabs have never ever ruled, but which Jews have, as Israel and Judah, Maccabean Judaea and now today’s Israel. The UNGA seeking the ICJ’s “advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation” of historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria not just delegitimizes Israel and Jews, but disrespects, indeed mocks, the ICJ as a Kangaroo Court. And a hundred of these countries write a stop-disrespecting-the-ICJ letter to us?
But wait, there’s more. During the formulation of that UNGA resolution, the Times of Israel, 11/11/22, UN Panel Asks Int’l Court of Justice to Urgently Weigh In on Israeli ‘Annexation,’ quoted the US representative on the drafting committee, Richard Mills. that reference made in the resolution’s full text to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount by only its Arabic name, Haram al-Sharif, was itself “intended to denigrate Israel.”
What Do We Do About It?
We stop disrespecting ourselves.
*** We stop calling historic Jerusalem, the undivided eternal capital of our Jewish people’s historic national home, “East” Jerusalem, as though it were a satellite thereof.
*** We take offense, as Christians should take offense, to the UN calling what had been the Temple Mount for a millennium-and-a-half before Muslims, because it was the Temple Mount, built the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque on it, by its Arabic name only and not “Temple Mount.”
*** We stop calling Judea-Samaria, names in use for three thousand years, including by the UNGA itself in 1947, “the West Bank,” coined by [Trans-]Jordan in 1950 to disassociate it from Jews.
*** We stop calling Jewish presence in historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria “occupation,” and our Jewish communities there “settlements,” in contradistinction to “Palestinian neighborhoods, towns, villages,” and application of Israeli civil law there “annexation” – “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state.”
*** We stop calling Palestinian Arabs “THE Palestinians,” as though Jews, who’ve lived there for three thousand years, aren’t, even though the UNGA itself in 1947 called Palestine’s Jews and its Arabs “the two Palestinian peoples.”
Peace Plans’ State
Hopefully-still Prime Minister Netanyahu says he’ like to establish Abraham Accords relations with Saudi Arabia, which says (see WIN, Friday) “normalization with Israel is something that is very much in the interest of the region,” but “creation of a Palestinian state would be a pre-condition.”
Gentle Reader, I’d have you read Trump’s Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s new book Sledgehammer: How Breaking With the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East. It’s a very readable and enlightening read.
Friedman talks about Trump’s peace plan which he helped develop, which went a long way before being paused by the even further-reaching Abraham Accords, as far as they’ve come. It’s not unlike Rabin’s vision of a western Palestine Palestinian Arab entity “less than a state,” with Israel retaining security control, with united Jerusalem Israel’s capital and Israel’s security border being the Jordan Valley and Judea-Samaria ridge. Thus, Trump’s plan would afford non-Israeli Palestinian Arabs living west of the River at least much of the self-rule “dignity” for them which Saudi Arabia seeks. Trump’s plan gives Palestinian Arabs four years to work out details with Israel, during which period areas designated in the plan as potentially theirs for home rule will be preserved.
Both Bibi and, at the time, Gantz were involved in building the plan, which includes presently suspended sovereignty for Israel over some of Judea-Samaria and is vastly more realistic for Israel than “two-states along the 1967 [i.e., 1949] lines with mutually agreed swaps.” The latter would sever historic Jerusalem from the Jewish State and render it nine miles wide in the lowland middle overlooked by Arab-held hills. Will Saudi Arabia and Palestinian Arabs go for Trump’s more realistic plan, in which Israel still concedes ‘Land For Peace’? Who knows?
In Israeli archeologist Finkelstein’s book, The Bible Unearthed, is his description of the ancient Israelites’ northern kingdom of Israel as having a substantial Canaanite population segment with internal home rule. Coincidence?