IS THE UNITED NATIONS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CREATION OF THE MODERN STATE OF ISRAEL ?
In reviewing historical facts,
various actions and documents; it is clear that the U.N. did not create but
endorsed the sovereignty of the State of Israel in 1948. The actual
reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in United Nations General Assembly Resolution no. 181 (II) of 1947 (commonly known as the “Palestine Partition Plan”) recommended (and I emphasize recommended which is advisory only) the creation from all of the lands of Mandatory Palestine west of the Jordan River, representing 22% of original Mandatory Palestine, a Jewish state (comprising slightly less than 11% of the Land), an Arab state (comprising slightly less than 11% of the Land) and an internationally-administered greater Jerusalem, which terminates after 10 years and becomes part of the sovereign state of Israel.
It is often asserted that the modern State of Israel was created by this Resolution as a byproduct of
Although widely accepted as an unassailable truism, this assertion is quite false.
Israel’s juridical birth certificate is the pre-Holocaust San Remo Resolution and its incorporation of the 1917 Balfour Declaration having the force of international law and its execution by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922 (provisionally operative from 1920 international law and treaties) -- not the post-Holocaust United Nations Palestine Partition Plan of 1947. Moreover, the Mandate was itself explicitly based upon the preexisting “historical connection of the Jewish people with the
The Mandate for
MANDATE FOR
The Council of the
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them; and
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917 (the Balfour Declaration), by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country; and
Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have selected His Britannic Majesty as the Mandatory for
Whereas the mandate in respect of
Whereas His Britannic Majesty has accepted the mandate in respect of Palestine and undertaken to exercise it on behalf of the League of Nations in conformity with the following provisions; and
Whereas by the aforementioned Article 22 (paragraph 8), it is provided that the degree of authority, control or administration to be exercised by the Mandatory, not having been previously agreed upon by the Members of the League, shall be explicitly defined by the Council of the League Of Nations;
Confirming the said Mandate, defines its terms as follows:
ARTICLE 1 The Mandatory shall have full powers of legislation and of administration, save as they may be limited by the terms of this Mandate.
ARTICLE 2 The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the Preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
ARTICLE 3 The Mandatory shall, so far as circumstances permit, encourage local autonomy.
ARTICLE 4 An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration, to assist and take part in the development of the country.
The Zionist Organization, so long as its organization and constitution are, in the opinion of the Mandatory, appropriate, shall be recognized as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.
ARTICLE 5 The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no
ARTICLE 6 The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the Land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
ARTICLE 7 The Administration of
. . .
Since the Jewish people’s right to reestablish their nation-state in the biblical Land of Israel became a pillar of international law decades before the advent of the Holocaust, and since this aspect of international law was merely a formal acknowledgment of the 4,000 year old aboriginal Jewish right to the Land, it is a gross misrepresentation of History to claim that the State of Israel instead emerged from the womb of the United Nations, impregnated by alleged European remorse over the Holocaust.
Moreover, while the Holocaust did not create
the State of Israel ,
the absence of the State of Israel did create
the Holocaust. For, had the Jewish State already existed with its own
sovereignty when Nazi Germany arose from the ashes of World War I, virtually
all of those who perished in the Holocaust would, instead, have been
forcibly expelled by Nazi Germany to a welcoming Israel; and, consequently,
there would have been no Holocaust.
Furthermore, if genuine European
remorse over the Holocaust had really existed in 1947, then the United Nations
General Assembly would never have issued its niggardly
Palestine Partition Plan -- a recommendation of the international community
which (following the decades-earlier illegally severing from all of Mandatory
Palestine allocated to the Jews, in all of its lands east of the Jordan
River, representing 78% of original Mandatory Palestine,
first in 1922, territory which later became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in
1946, being 78% of the Land, and then again in 1923, territory which comprised
the Golan Heights, being 1% of the Land) left the Jewish people with less
than 11% of Palestine and of that which the League of
Nations had originally allocated to them under the Mandate for Palestine,
deprived them of any sovereignty over Jerusalem, and saddled them with a
demographic and sectarian time bomb in the form of a population that was 45%
Arab, virtually all of whom were hostile to the creation of a Jewish
State. Rather -- especially in light of the
uncompromising language of Article 5 of the Mandate for Palestine -- a
penitent U.N., acting through its Security Council, would have
issued at that time an authoritative resolution under Chapter VII of
the U.N. Charter (which, unlike Chapter VI of the U.N. Charter, authorizes
coercive enforcement measures): (1) affirming the continuing primacy
of the Mandate for Palestine as the legal foundation for the
establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, (2) recognizing full Jewish
sovereignty over the entire western portion of Mandatory Palestine, including
Jerusalem, which constituted the remaining 22% of original
Mandatory Palestine assigned as the National Home for the Jewish people, and
(3) acknowledging that the Jewish people had the right to repatriate to their
countries of origin the many hundreds of thousands of hostile Arabs who, from
1920 onward, had been permitted by Great Britain, as Mandatory trustee for the
Jewish people, to inundate the western portion of Mandatory Palestine in rank
violation of its fiduciary obligations to the Jewish people under the Mandate
for Palestine. Furthermore, the British initiated and expanded restrictions on
Jewish immigration into Clearly, Israel exists neither due to Europe's alleged guilty conscience nor due to the issuance of the meager Palestine Partition Plan, but due only to the fact that the renascent Jewish State outgunned and outnumbered militarily, defeated the seven Arab states (namely, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan aka Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) which, together with the Arab League’s “Arab Liberation Army” and local “Palestinian” militias drawn from Arab population centers throughout the western portion of Mandatory Palestine, had sought to annihilate the Jewish State, thereby igniting Israel's defensive War of Independence.
Those who assert that Israel was created, rather than diminished, by the Palestine Partition Plan knowingly reverse Cause and Effect, as U.N. General Assembly Resolution no. 181 was the result -- rather than the determinant -- of Great Britain’s decision to quit and abandon its obligation for a sovereign Jewish National Home in Palestine; and to execute the remainder of Mandatory Palestine terms. This is because, in February 1947,
Conversely, had the Jewish population centers of the western portion of Mandatory Palestine been destroyed by the Arabs, and had
Clearly, there is an enormous difference between endorsement and creation. While the United Nations certainly endorsed the establishment of modern
Nonetheless, that endorsement did bestow upon
However, delving deeper into the realm of Cause and Effect, it may be cogently argued that the State of Israel presently exists in the biblical
In the absence of this belligerence and impatience, approximately 45% of the citizenry to be encompassed within
Now, let us
hypothetically assume that neither the Arabs residing within the proposed Jewish
State, nor the Arabs residing within the proposed Arab State,
nor the Arabs residing within the surrounding Arab states had
ever initiated a war of annihilation against the Jewish population centers of
the western portion of Mandatory Palestine, but that they had, instead,
simply acquiesced to the creation of Israel within the Partition Plan lines
recommended by U.N. General Assembly Resolution no. 181.
In these
circumstances, a democratic Israel hosting such a substantial law-abiding Arab
electorate (which, never having warred against Israel, would have remained
in place from the outset) would not have enacted the
exclusionist, but morally imperative, Law of Return (which, in implementation
of Articles 6 & 7 of the Mandate for Palestine, grants automatic residency
and appurtenant citizenship rights to any Jew in the World). For, it is
this law, coupled with the voluntary exodus of some 600,000 Arab belligerents
during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, which has allowed the Jewish
population of Israel to maintain, to the present time, its overwhelming
demographic dominance over the extant Arab population thereof (at a historical
ratio of 4:1), despite the fact that the Arab birthrate has traditionally been
(until recently) substantially higher than the Jewish birthrate.
Also in these
circumstances, an Israel which was never invaded by the Arabs of
the proposed Arab State and those of the surrounding Arab states
would not have fought any War of Independence, and
consequently would not have expanded from its 1947 Partition
Plan lines to its 1949 armistice demarcation lines -- let alone to its present
post-1967 liberated defensible borders.
Consequently, it
is likely that such a demographically-challenged Israel (i.e., a country hosting a large peaceful
Arab population that enjoyed a superior birthrate) would have quietly ceased to
exist as a Jewish nation-state several generations ago.
That the belligerent and impatient
Arabs are themselves principally responsible for the State of Israel’s present
entrenchment in the biblical Land of Israel as a Jewish nation-state within
defensible borders is not only ironic but -- more importantly -- also
constitutes a grand historic replay of the circumstances under which the Jewish
people’s forebears, under the leadership of Joshua, originally conquered the
Land. As is related in the Hebrew Bible: “Joshua waged war with all
of these [Canaanite] kings for a long time. There was not a city that made
peace with the Children of Israel except for the Hivvite inhabitants
of In sum, modern
PS. It is interesting to note that the World at large is not questioning the State of Jordan and its territory, which has taken 78% from the international allocation to the Jewish land. The new Arab State of
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court reaffirmed earlier this month that it is legal for Jews (and, therefore, Christians) to pray atop the Temple Mount, despite violent Muslim opposition.
ReplyDeleteThat legal clarification came as part of a decision in the case of activist Yehuda Glick, who sued the Israel Police for banning him from the Temple Mount for a period of two years after he was filmed quietly uttering prayers while visiting the holy site in 2011.
Glick, who survived a recent assassination attempt by a Muslim terrorist, charged the police with failing to uphold Israel’s laws regarding freedom of religious expression.
Israel’s Supreme Court had previously ruled that Jews do in fact have the right to pray in any and every place, as do adherents of all faiths, but that police could take measures to avoid violent Muslim backlashes atop the Temple Mount.
The Jerusalem court determined that the police had gone too far in its handling of Glick and other activists, and had crossed the line by impinging on Jews’ basic human rights.
Glick was awarded nearly USD $150,000 in damages. His lawyer further told The Jerusalem Post that the ruling meant that “starting from today, all Jews are allowed to pray on the Temple Mount. There is no longer any crime in prayer itself.”
Still, many remained skeptical that non-Muslims would now be permitted to openly pray and worship atop the Temple Mount, especially after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year assured the Muslim world that Israel would maintain the status quo there.
http://www.acpr.org.il/english-nativ/02-issue/grief-2.htm
ReplyDeleteLegal Rights and Title of Sovereignty of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel and Palestine under International Law
Howard Grief