Op-Ed: Brussels Speech: What Must Also be Said
Professor Hillel Weiss
The author is a noted researcher in the Department of Literature of the Jewish People, Bar-llan University. He is an extra-party political activist and member of the board of the Neemanei Eretz Yisrael organization.
“Ye shall love truth and peace,” says the prophet.
Peace cannot be based on a lie! There is no truth without peace and no peace without truth. This is written is written in the Bible and accepted in natural law. Truth is based on justice whose role is to save the oppressed from the hand of his oppressor.
The question that we face is: Who is the oppressor and who is the victim? Who is the occupier and who is being deprived? For those who are devoted to what is written in the Bible, the issues are clear and simple.
But for now, let us look at international law, which is binding, and begin with a short survey:
Professor
Alan Dershowitz, a Jewish liberal, moderate leftist, and lover of
Israel, one of the top legal experts in the United States, has again
recently condemned the International Court of Justice at Hague for
delivering political decisions.
This is in contrast to the International Criminal Court at the Hague which refused to act as a rubber stamp: It did not recognize Palestine as a state and rejected a series of proposed resolutions that Palestinians submitted against Israel for war crimes, during “Operation Cast Lead”.
Dershowitz levels lethal criticism against the UN, among others, as the leader of the double standard against Israel, and regards it as a corrupt organization that aids and abets terror.
And indeed, after three “Durban Conventions” , after the prostitution of the word ‘racism’, and after accepting Libya in 2003 as a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights, much like in May 2012 - and now in May 2012, accepting Syria to that same position as a leading member of the Commission on Human Rights and the representative of Asia - every honest person must view the UN as a cynical group whose main concern is to protect terrorism.
It is the main cause of the corruption of the ethics of human rights as formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations itself, the gift to the world of the French Jew, Rene Cassin.
We have mentioned the Jewish
contribution to the struggle against racism and we shall again mention
that the Torah of the people of Israel, preceding every other
monotheistic religion that purports to supplant it, was the first to
claim that “There is one father of us all”, blacks and whites, Arabs,
Germans, and Jews, and that father is Adam.
And therefore, if there is a non-racist message in the history of mankind, it is in the Torah of the people of Israel.
The religion of Israel is its national religion - and this and only this element is what defines its identity as a nation – and allows every human being the option to convert to Judaism. To be Jewish is not a matter of race or blood.
It is only barbaric peoples, who rummaged
around looking for racial purity, who should rightly be called
‘racists’. For example, the Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, who has said
more than once that in the Palestine he envisages, there is no room for
Jews.
In the same interview that Dershowitz gave to the Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon on
April 27 , 2012, he says “Western society has a tremendous problem
today with international law, which has become in many cases a source of
evil and which serves the hardcore left and Islamist right as
ammunition against the democratic values of the West (...)”
The
hardcore left was never interested in law and justice. Its ideology
permits the use of the law for political purposes. In his opinion, “the
State of Israel must create for itself an independent corpus of
international law that will be reflected in the decisions of its High
Court of Justice and will be based on the principles of international
law.”
...The law known as “Human Dignity and Freedom” , a Basic
Law in the State of Israel, should make it illegal to expel a Jew
from his own land, but does not. The entire law was legislated
for the “other”. The law was designed for the Arab population but
is a dead letter/ a law no longer enforced for the Jews who are known as
‘settlers’. That was what happened with the expulsion of 10,000 Jews
from their land which is recognized in international law as the national
home of the Jewish people alone, as we shall see shortly.
An
American justice provides strong support for our position – a Jew who
sits on the Federal Appellate Court, Richard Posner, who wrote a
scathing critique of the judicial theory of retired Israeli High Court
Justice Aharon Barak. Posner’s critique appeared in an article written
on the English edition of Barak’s book Judge in a Democratic Society.
The article was published in the New Republic and in it, Posner attacks Barak in the sharpest language: “Barak establishes a world record for judicial hubris,”(...) He is a legal buccaneer”. According to Posner, his writing is “to be considered Exhibit A for why American judges should be extremely wary about citing foreign judicial decisions.[…]”
“What Barak created
out of whole cloth was a degree of judicial power undreamed of even by
our most aggressive Supreme Court justices […]But only in Israel (as far
as I know) do judges confer the power of abstract review on themselves,
without benefit of a constitutional or legislative provision. One is
reminded of Napoleon's taking the crown out of the pope's hands and
putting it on his own head.”
Let us return to the central issue:
Is a Jew living in Israel in areas that were liberated by the Israeli
Army in 1967 indeed a foreign occupier who is violating the Geneva
Convention designed to protect human rights, to prevent the theft and
dispossession of an occupied people?
And in the Land of Israel under the international law in effect today , is the Jew a foreign occupier of a territory that does not belong to him, but to a state that does not exist and never existed, a state called by the name of Palestine?
In the words of its own heads such as Yassar Arafat, Faisal Husseini, Zuhair Mohsen of the terror organization Al Saika, and even former Knesset member Azmi Bashara - all of it was invented for no other purpose than to be a Trojan horse whose reason for existing is to destroy the state of Israel.
Only a week ago, one of the Hamas
leaders from Gaza was photographed imploring Egypt and complaining of
the lack of raw materials. He says: We are all brothers. Half of the PA
Arab families in Gaza are called al-Masri, meaning from Egypt, and they
come from Egypt and the other half from Saudia Arabia. The film may be
seen on Youtube.
Dr. Ohana-Arnon, in his article on the origin of
the Arab immigrants, says: “Palestinian society is built on a clan or
hamula system. The origin of the hamula can be learned from its name:
the al-Masri hamula is from Egypt., al-Hindi from India, al-Mugrabi from
Algeria, al-Ajami from Iran, al-Turki from Turkey., al-Hawari from
Hawara in northern Sudan, now living in Nazareth. Al-Araqi is from
Iraq (they settled in the Israeli cities of Tira and Taibeh). Abu-Kask
is from Egypt settled (in the inner coastal region) Huran from Mt. Huran
– Mt. Druzim south of Damascus, Bushnak from Bosnia (now in Caesarea).
Masarwa –from Egypt. Habash from Ethiopia, now in Lod. Barnawi from
Borno in Nigeria, now in Jerusalem, Turkeman from the Causcasus.
Not all of the Arabs in the land of Israel are immigrants, but it is foolish to ignore two basic facts: first: that from the late 19th century and until the British mandate, there was a great wave of Arab migration towards Israel, and the second – that in order to create a significant “refugee problem” UNWRA determined in an arbitrary and unprecedented manner that only two years of residence in the country before 1948 is sufficient to define a person as a Palestinian refugee for all of his life, allowing him and his descendants to demand the “right of return.
The world’s enthusiasm for the Palestinian issue
does not attest to a sense of justice but to a fervent hatred of
Israel. The nations say: “Let us go and destroy them from among the
nations, and the name of Israel shall no longer be remembered”. This is
the garden-variety brand of anti-Semitism, which must
inevitably bounce back to those who launch it, when they will feel
remorse and shame. The punishment for nations who try to dispossess the
people of Israel from God’s land and take it over is written many times
in the Book of Books. I will just refer you to one chapter regarding the
nations being judged in the Valley of Jehosaphat, from the Book of
Joel, chapter 4:
1 For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring back the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem,
2
I will gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of
Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there for My
people and for My heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the
nations, and divided My land.
12 Let the nations be stirred up, and
come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all
the nations round about.
16 And the LORD shall roar from Zion, and
utter His voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shall
shake; but the LORD will be a refuge unto His people, and a stronghold
to the children of Israel.
17 So shall ye know that I am the LORD
your God, dwelling in Zion My holy mountain; then shall Jerusalem be
holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more.
This
is the question that confronts us here too. Did the Jews conquer a
country which was not theirs and mistreat the original inhabitants? Or
perhaps it is exactly the opposite: the Arabs’ continuing conquest of
the Land of Israel and now of Europe as well is the topic of the
discussion.
The foreign occupation is Arab occupation – and it doesn’t matter if it began in the 7th century. The Ottoman conquest was stopped in Vienna in 1683, the Moslems conquered the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and were expelled from there hundreds of years later in the Reconquista. Rome occupied Israel and destroyed the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount in the year 70, expelling al the Jews from their land.
Everything
that has been happening since is a continuation of this conquest and
occupation. Each time there has been a new conqueror and occupier until
the present day when the true owners of the land are finally returning
and putting an end to a 2000 year occupation.
The God of Israel
who has a design for human history- the God of the universe keeps an
account. An account of every Jew who perished in the Holocaust, as well
as in Egypt under the Pharaohs who embedded Jewish infants in bricks.
Wherever
they hurt, strangled, and slaughtered Jews, the God who keeps accounts
will come and when it pleases Him, He will exact payment. About that, we
have no doubts...
Gunter Grass is a friend of the radical left
in Israel. Grass likes to cite the influence of Israeli writer Amos Oz
on the subject of Israel. The Israeli leftists deny the natural and
normal right of self-defense to the State of Israel, like Charles de
Gaulle who denied Israel the right to the first shot. No one denies
Israel its classic right to be the victim.
Even if Israel were destroyed - God forbid - by Iran, it would not have the moral right to make a second strike, according to the Goldstone Report. Just like the Turkish response to our stopping the flotilla to Gaza, so would be the nations of the world’s reaction to an Israeli victory over Iran. That is a very sick thought.
Professor Alan Dershowitz said in his
interview: “First I want to say that those Israelis are not only the
greatest enemies of Israel; they are also the most dangerous”. He
mentions names and adds: “These are all people who wrap themselves in
the Israeli flag just so they can burn it”.
The State of Israel
has been radically poisoned by accusations of occupation until it does
not notice that it itself has been occupied by groups of assimilated or
kowtowing Jews.
That is not to mention the anarchists who
criticize us every day of the year organized and funded by authorities
who turn a blind eye and abandon the army to their provocations. Israel
has wittingly and unwittingly opened its gates wide to all that seek her
destruction. And that is not just a metaphor. Other examples are
encouraging the illegal African immigrants who come to Israel by the
thousands, flooding the country
But look at yourselves in Europe
today. How did you get to where you are? Was it those ideologies that
deny nationalism under the guise of multiculturalism, inventing the
obligation to identify with the legitimacy of the enemy’s narrative and
obliterating truth as a basic tool of human existence.
Have they not destroyed morality, law, science, and the economy?
Have they not destroyed the culture of the West?
The radical left argues that nationalism, all nationalism, is the religion of the murderers. Now all over Europe we are hearing more and more voices of regret over the multicultural tactic which means Europe surrendering without firing a shot. That is the main reason that the Right is winning elections in European countries such as France, and the reason that I was invited here.
But those sleeping European
leaders continue, they still continue to encourage the establishment of a
Palestinian state with all the enormous resources they possess. They
invest hundreds of billions into a black hole. As long as this
contradiction exits, Europe will continue to turn into Eurabia.
Cosmopolitan
perceptions open the doors of Europe to millions of work immigrants and
give them the rights of citizens. Very soon there will be no Europe, as
your host city proves. Why is the false claim that “Islam is shaking
off the post-colonial conquest in Europe” not accepted in Europe, and
why is it applied to Israel as an occupying nation? What is this double
standard of morality?
Indeed, one of the examples of
international law in the view of universal justice is found in the
Bible. Certainly an enlightened individual would ask himself what is the
validity of the Bible. What is the validity of God? Has he left His job
or changed the rules and forgot to inform us?
Is the Bible the last refuge of the scoundrel? Church heads in the Middle East as well as extreme rightwing Islamists maintain that the Jews of today have no connection to the nation mentioned in the Bible! And indeed these things are examined every day.
The very fact that there are six million
Jews in the Land of Israel today organized into a state and not like
ashes that were spewed out at Auschwitz and scattered over the continent
is perhaps proof that God’s power is greater than the power of all the
enemies of Israel from within and from without. If so, who is right?
Does justice represent only the entity by whose hand it is suppressed?
Does it represent only might and woe to the vanquished?
In 1947
the Arabs refused the UN General Assembly proposal to partition the Land
of Israel into two states. A recommendation which was not accepted as a
decision. It was refused and the seven Arab countries launched a war
against the State of Israel on its first day of existence. Israel had
accepted the recommendation to partition. The Arabs were defeated in
battle as usual.
But Jordan illegally occupied the territory that was designated for an Arab state that didn’t exist and never had. This occupation was recognized only by Pakistan and Great Britain. When Jordan was defeated in 1967, and expelled from the territory by the State of Israel, the territory reverted to its original owners both according to the Bible and to positivist international law of today.
What is interesting here is international law and Israel did restore to itself the territory that Britain had received as a mandate in 1920 from the League of Nations at the San Remo Conference, a mandate for a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel. Without infringing upon the personal rights and religious rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the land, namely the Arabs. That is the legal status to this day.
Appearing on the website of the Land of Israel loyalists is a document, written by Yoel Lerner, a student of the legal expert Howard Grief together with Gedalia Glazar, that shows the continuity of international law and conventions on this subject.
The one who conquers territory from a conqueror wins that area. We Jews say that what is called potentially Palestine under the partition proposal known as resolution 181 was purified through Abdullah father of Hussein and with the defeat of his son , and his willing surrender of the West Bank in 1988. And the Peace Agreement between Israel and Jordan 1994, according to which Jordan gave up all her claims in the west bank.
We are not occupiers in our own homeland. That was also said by Netanyahu in his speech to both Houses of Congress last year. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs says the same thing, thanks to the organization that we have established “the Land of Israel Loyalists” developed by legal scholars Howard Grief, Eliav Shochetman, and Talya Einhorn.
However,
because Israel law has been occupied by the left, and for other
psycho-political reasons, Israel has generally refrained from using
these arguments because it feels that rights which are based on the
Bible are not suited to an enlightened state.
The State of
Israel’s obsessive pursuit of peace, peace until the last Jew, is a
dangerous compulsion that inflames the hatred of our enemies and
intensifies all future war.
At times it seems that for an
unattainable peace, Israel is prepared to risk the lives of its citizens
and to hand over its God-given land to its enemies, not only as a
recognition of the value of peace but as a desire for legitimacy which
it seeks from the nations of the world, especially from its neighbors.
King David, the poet of the psalms, related to this in his psalm about
neighbors and peace, for example in Psalm 120:
1 A Song of Ascents.
In my distress I called unto the LORD, and He answered me.
2 O LORD, deliver my soul from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.
3 What shall be given unto thee, and what shall be done more unto thee, thou deceitful tongue?
4 Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of broom.
5 Woe is me, that I sojourn with Meshech, that I dwell beside the tents of Kedar!
6 My soul hath full long had her dwelling with him that hates peace.
7 I am all peace; but when I speak, they are for war.
That
is why the State of Israel has been making a mistake ever since it was
established when it makes so-called peace its top priority as an
attainable goal, instead of decisively defeating the enemy that sees
peace as only a strategy to improve their ability to destroy us.
Islam is rife with concepts involving deception such as Hudna and Tahadia which are proof of Mohammed betraying the tribe of Qurayish and his treachery against the tribes of Jews at Khayber as a symbol of his ethics in dealing with my people, the people of the Book.
To this
very day the Battle of Khaybar serves as source of inspiration for
Moslem soldiers in their wars, especially against Israel. During the
first intifada the demonstrators shouted slogans like “Khaybar Khaybar
ya yehud, Jaish Mihammad sa-yaud” meaning “Remember Khaybar, Jews,
Muhammad’s army will yet return” or “Khaybar, Khaybar Jews, to Palestine
we will yet return”.
Therefore one cannot sign any peace treaty
with followers of Muhammad. No hudna or tahadia can be the basis of
negotiations. Who in the Jewish side negotiating even tactically on the
basis of these concepts can assume responsibility for the consequences
of these so-called agreements, such as for example, the peace treaty
with Egypt which is collapsing now with a great crash.
Peace is not a strategy.
In
conclusion, I will relate in brief to the status of the Jewish people
in the Land of Israel under international law. This is in complete
contradiction of the false and malicious propaganda that is poisoning
the entire world as though the Jewish people, acting through its
representative the State of Israel, is acting in violation of
international law.
It began with the Balfour Declaration in 1917
through the Weizmann-Faisal Agreement in 1919, which is the only
Jewish-Arab peace agreement, then to the important resolutions of
the San Remo Conference in 1920 where the international community gave
the Jewish people a national homeland which included both banks of the
Jordan River.
Great Britain, acting according to its standard
norm, betrayed this idea in 1922 and tore off the east bank of the
Jordan from the Jewish national homeland. Even after this deed of
“perfidious Albion”, the resolution was approved - that the entire west
bank of the Jordan belongs to the Jewish people as a national home.
According
to senior jurists, this decision is in effect and binding to this very
day. It was ratified among other places in Article 80 of the UN charter
which recognized all of the resolutions that under the Mandate had given
rights as binding resolutions.
In contrast, the 1947 partition
plan was a recommendation of the UN Assembly only and remained a
recommendation which was even rejected by the Arabs who responded by
launching a war against Israel that very day to annihilate it. This is
what caused the refugee problem which they carefully preserve to this
day to use as a weapon against the state of Israel and the Jewish people
and to rob the public funds.
The claims that the State of Israel
is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention under which one is prohibited
from expelling a population and settling another in its stead are
propaganda slogans with no basis in law. As one of the top legal experts
in the world has said, this is the irony of the absurd, because Israel
expelled no one from the occupied territories of a state.
The 'settlers' went joyfully to settle in their own land as part of the Divine process of Redemption ...
Those
who call themselves Palestinians are not a people and they have no
state. No one displaced them. Indeed, the opposite is true – Israel
rehabilitated them and gave them a chance to live normal lives. The only
ones in the Middle East who live this way, in what is known the Arab
space, act in submission to incitement and extreme ingratitude, and use
their usual culture of falsehood to fight Israel.
The Middle East has indeed collapsed.
The San Remo agreements fell because the artificial states that were created as a result of the temporary victory of the Allies in World War I was obliterated by everything that happened in the Middle East.
States like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq are in various stages of disintegration mainly because of their own tribal rivalries and internal religious wars.
The West did manage to maintain the situation for some one hundred years through a system of bribery. But now the end has come, together with the Arab Spring.
It is still not clear what will happen in Egypt except for chaos, but the West bears heavy responsibility for what is happening in Syria and Iraq. The fall of the Qadaffi regime has repercussions all over Africa and is causing continued bloodshed that no one can solve. The UN as usual shows itself to be a factor that encourages wars and not a peace maker.
Let the Arab and Moslem nationalists return to their national habitat, and the Jews to theirs, as Abraham divided the lands between himself and his nephew Lot and between Ishmael and his brothers, and peace and truth may you love for the sake of G-d's name.