The facade cracks
The BBC Trust Editorial Standards Committee has censured its Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen for breaching the BBC’s rules on impartiality and accuracy in his coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The ruling was in response to a formal complaint filed by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and a similar complaint filed independently by a member of the UK’s Zionist Federation about two specific reports.
The first point to note is that, using the narrowest possible criteria to judge the items in question, the Trust found only relatively minor failings – conclusions which managed with singular obtuseness to ignore the real sting of what Bowen had said. For example, in his report to mark the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, ‘How 1967 Defined The Middle East’, the committee concluded about Bowen’s reference to ‘Zionism’s innate instinct to push out the frontier’
that this statement had been unqualified and, as a result it had not been clear and precise and that there had been a breach of the guideline on accuracy in this respect.
‘Unqualified’ seems to be a reference to differing views about the ‘innateness’ of Zionism – including the absurd justification by Bowen that, since the first Zionists had started with one kibbutz, the frontiers had clearly been pushed out to found the state itself! But since the history of Zionism has demonstrably involved not a pushing out of the frontier but a successive pulling back of the frontier – with the British first shrinking the putative Jewish homeland in Palestine by some 75 per cent, and then proposing to cut it in half, and with Israel subsequently giving up Sinai and Gaza and having offered to give up most of the West Bank in 1967 and in 2000 -- to criticise this statement for being merely ‘unqualified’ and not ‘clear and precise’ seems, to put it mildly, understated to the point of obduracy.
On Bowen’s statement that Israel showed a ‘defiance of everyone's interpretation of international law except its own’, the Trust found that
‘everyone’ was a loose use of language. It would have been perfectly possible to have qualified this as ‘nearly everyone’ or ‘the vast majority’, and that would have been acceptable.
This was a nod towards the fact that noted experts in international law, such as former U.S. Under-Secretary of State Eugene Rostow who was instrumental in drawing up the seminal UN Resolution 242, have said not only that the settlements are legal but have drawn attention to the fact that under still-binding Mandatory law Jews have been legally entitled to settle throughout the West Bank and Gaza for the past six decades.
What the committee chose completely to ignore was the innate (to coin a phrase) bias involved in focusing upon Israel’s alleged illegal actions while ignoring altogether the sustained illegality of the Arab states and the Arabs of the territories in maintaining their belligerency against Israel’s existence – in conspicuous defiance of international law since 1948; indeed, one might say since the 1920s – not to mention perpetrating acts of terrorism and promoting genocide. If the BBC’s Middle East Editor is fulminating against breaches of international law in the Middle East, doesn’t the most conservative interpretation of the word ‘impartiality’ in the BBC’s handbook necessarily mean that the Arabs’ egregious breaches of such law – the actual cause of the Middle East conflict -- should be acknowledged in such a report?
On Bowen’s statement that
the Israeli generals, hugely self-confident, mainly sabras (native-born Israeli Jews) in their late 30s and early 40s had been training to finish the unfinished business of Israel’s independence war of 1948 for most of their careers
the Trust found
that the phrase ‘hugely self-confident’ was used in this context to characterise the different attitudes to war between the native-born generals and the older, largely immigrant, politicians;
that this was a generalisation and that it would hold even if some of the generals had episodes of doubt or fear; and
that there had been no breach of the guideline on accuracy.
ii) On ‘unfinished business’
that, although the Middle East Editor stated that he had meant it to be understood that he was referring to the capture of East Jerusalem, it would have been impossible for a reader of the article to know which ‘unfinished business’ had been meant; and that there had been a breach of the guideline on accuracy with regard to the use of ‘clear, precise language’ in this respect.
To say that this language wasn’t ‘clear ‘or ‘precise’ enough is a judgment of quite perverse marginality. To accuse the Israelis in 1967 -- fighting a defensive war which they certainly had not sought; indeed, they were petrified of losing it and thought their end had come -- of trying to ‘finish the business’ of the previous war of self-defence they had fought in 1948 implies that both these events were wars of Israeli aggression rather than, as they actually were, defensive wars against annihilation. It’s as if Britain’s generals, after war was declared against Nazi Germany in 1939, stood accused of having been ‘training to finish the unfinished business of the fight against German aggression in 1914-18 for most of their careers’. As CAMERA observed at the time of Bowen’s report:
It is nothing short of shocking to read this last quote on the Web site of a mainstream media organization, as it absolutely turns reality on its head. It was not Israel, but rather the Arab world which by its own admission had sought to take care of the ‘unfinished business’ it had failed to achieve in 1948 — the destruction of Israel. This view was epitomized by Iraqi president Abdel Rahman Aref, who shortly before the war declared: ‘The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948.’
What was so outrageous about Bowen’s article was that it rewrote history and inverted victim and belligerent to suggest Israel was the aggressor in 1967, was stronger than the Arabs and had a lust for war. As Sir Martin Gilbert pointed out to the committee, this was simply historically wrong:
The Arabs were not ready for combat …but they were in a stronger position overall so it’s not an accurate reflection… To say ‘the Jewish Goliath had never been stronger…’ was not true – it was well armed to DEFEND itself against attack. I would disagree with that quite strongly.
But the reason the committee's criticisms of Bowen were so muted was that time and again it disregarded the opinion of Sir Martin Gilbert in favour of revisionist historian Avi Shlaim – Israel’s equivalent of Jon Pilger with a chip on his shoulder the size of Iraq against the Ashkenazi world.
The second point to note, however, is that although the complaints against Bowen were only partially upheld the wave of reaction from the Israel-bashers to this limited censure of such obscenity has been enormous. This is because, regardless of the details, any finding of bias or inaccuracy by the BBC Trust against its most senior Middle East journalist is of the greatest significance. It is the first time the BBC has acknowledged specific bias in its Middle East reporting -- thus itself puncturing the assiduously created myth that any claims of such bias are merely a reflection of the absence of objectivity amongst those Jews who claim this to be so. The reputation of BBC News as a global kitemark of objectivity is accordingly badly tarnished – all the more so because, to fend off precisely such accusations of bias towards Israel (which led to the commissioning of a report on the BBC’s Middle East coverage by Malcolm Balen, publication of which the BBC has actually gone to court to prevent and which remains secret to this day) Bowen was appointed Middle East editor in order to remove any accusations of bias.
Hence the foaming fury amongst the Israel-bashers, whose edifice of lies is maintained by casting critics who dare to call this by its proper name as a supremely manipulative lobby merely peddling their own paranoid propaganda -- and whose nefarious power is supposedly proved in turn by their very protests. Indeed, calls by Jews for this committee’s findings to lead to further action -- along with criticism of the BBC's own attempt to paper over the crack that has now opened up in its own facade -- are being seized upon by the Israel-bashers as further confirmation of the World Jewish Conspiracy, just as criticisms by Jews of the committee’s findings as weak are being seized upon as further confirmation of the World Jewish Conspiracy.
In the Independent, Robert Fisk appeared to be at risk of an aneurysm as a result of the committee’s report. The ‘cruelly named’ Trust was
pusillanimous, cowardly, outrageous, factually wrong and ethically dishonest... pitiful... preposterous... nauseous (sic)
all because it offered highly circumscribed criticisms of a perspective that to Fisk cannot be gainsaid in any way, shape or form because the Original Sin of Israel is the Revealed and Perfect Truth. Just think what would have happened to poor Fisk’s health had the BBC Trust upheld the complaints in full!
Indeed, so completely and utterly unbelievable is it that the Bowen /Fisk axis of propaganda can be faulted on anything at all that seemingly there can be only one explanation for what has happened. The BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee members are apparently incapable of having reversed the axis of the earth like this all by themselves. To Fisk, they have been manipulated into doing so by the evil of evils, the Israel lobby, which clearly has truly demonic power to take hapless BBC committee members, shut down their brain function and turn them into zombie-like pawns of the Zionazi conspiracy. It is the Protocols of the Elders of Portland Place.
Truly, Fisk is a national treasure. If there was ever any doubt that Israel and the Jewish people were up against a truly malevolent and irrational force, Robert Fisk repeatedly lays it to rest.
Bowen and Fisk -- the Mutt and Jeff of the Israel-bashing media world.
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Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist. She also writes for the Jewish Chronicle and is a panellist on BBC Radio Four's Moral Maze. Her most recent book is 'The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power', published by Encounter.
For a complete set of Melanie's articles click here
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hadrian
April 16th, 2009 11:56pmAnything that gives Fisk apoplexy has to be significant and Bowen's uncovering has had its very satisfyingly predictable effect!
Let's face it- to these guys nothing short of ethnic cleansing of the whole nation of Israel will do. Shame on them.
Jack
April 17th, 2009 1:32amAstonishing that a body connected with the BBC could possibly find anything amiss with the egregious Bowen. Is change afoot? Perhaps it will moderate the extremes of his mindless partiality in the future, though one must wish this is the beginning of the end for Bowen, Orla G, & the rest of them. As Guido Fox has so ably demonstrated this week, cosy relationships (read: pusillanimous) between 'journalists' and their clients are coming under some scrutiny, and it would be good if this translated into action for the interminable BBC's bias against Israel. Then again, in UK breaching this cosy relationship with the lobbyists only results in cutting off of leads, not heads.
gary ashton
April 17th, 2009 1:44amthe comments section under fisk's report sums up why it's pointless to even argue the case for israel. the line has already been drawn, those that want it destroyed, those that support it. the pointless pros and cons just etch the line deeper.
this imaginary zionist lobby, that exists in europe seems remarkably selective in it's influence over the media with it's imagined authority. after all one could look back at the last few years and wonder where were they, when israel needed you. it seems now any legitimate defense of israel is now a zionist conspiracy. when will people learn history is cyclic. here it comes again and what have we really learnt?
Philip Horowiitz
April 17th, 2009 7:38amMay I suggest your readers also look at the disturbing letters published in response to Fisk's article. Most are deeply hostile to israel and a few are plainly anti-semitic - explicitly attacking and threatening English Jews. I did like one poster, though, who pointed out that having Fisk for a defender was effectively a proof of Bowen's lack of impartiality!
Bill Corr
April 17th, 2009 7:49amBBC impartial and truthful? Ho Ho Ho! Look! There's a flying pig!
Older readers might care to try recalling what the BBC reported about the following:
Rhodesia [before it became Zimbabwe]
South Africa [before the immense political change]
Northern Ireland [before the I.R.A. leaders decided to play at being sane political leaders]
British politics, with especial regard to such issues as immigration, multiculturalism and the growth of support for the B.N.P.
In practice, most BBC reporting might as well have been in the hands of those adolescent Student Union Trotskyists, Dave Spart and Ken Slabb.
Plus the undeniable fact that in recent years every day has become woman's day and every hour has become woman's hour.
The Law
April 17th, 2009 7:56amJeremy Bowen said “Forty years on, Israel has settled around 450,000 people on land occupied in 1967, in defiance of everyone's interpretation of international law except its own”.
Here are some other opinions:
The British Government: “We are working for an end to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank: The UK government’s position on settlement activity is clear - it’s illegal and completely undermines the peace process”.
The EU: “The EU continues to oppose Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Territories as being illegal under international law and damaging for the Peace Process as they prejudge the outcome of the Final Status Negotiations”.
The United Nations Security Council: “The Security Council…1. Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East”.
The International Court of Justice: “the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law”.
President George W Bush 2002: “Consistent with the Mitchell plan, Israeli settlement activity in occupied territories must stop, and the occupation must end through withdrawal to secure and recognized boundaries, consistent with United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338”.
US President Jimmy Carter in 1980: “Our position on the settlements is very clear. We do not think they are legal”.
US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance 1980: “U.S. Policy toward the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is unequivocal and has long been a matter of public record. We consider it to be contrary to international law and an impediment to the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace process…Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention is, in my judgment, and has been in judgment of each of the legal advisors of the State Department for many, many years, to be. . .that [settlements] are illegal and that [the Convention] applies to the territories”.
US Ambassador to the United Nations William Scranton in 1976: “Substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under the convention and cannot be considered to have prejudged the outcome of future negotiations between the parties on the locations of the borders of states by the Middle East”.
Israeli Foreign Ministry legal adviser Theodor Meron in a 1967 legal opinion to the Israeli government: “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. (Meron, who is now a leading a leading international jurist, said in 2007 “I believe that I would have given the same opinion today”).
This last quote shows that Israel defied even its own interpretation of international law.
Ros
April 17th, 2009 8:18amBut will he get his comeuppance? Unlikely.
As an aside. Did you know that Hamas has been invited to the House of Lords? Lord Alderdice, care of the delightful Clare Short, is inviting the throng to a 'Talk with Hamas' at 6.30pm on the 22nd April in the Grimond Room at Portcullis House. Khalid Meshaal will be 'available on a video link' to explain and answer questions.
Presumably, as Hamas is a proscribed terrorist party, he wouldn't be allowed into the country. However, simply bypassing this rule by video link? This is jaw-dropping stuff.
elixelx
April 17th, 2009 8:58amDoes this mean that neither Bowen's prognathous jaw, nor his unmasticated prose, will dis-grace our screens in the future?
Four words, four little words, is all it has taken to slap-down Bowen. It must be driving the Israel-haters wild...Tee hee!
Frances
April 17th, 2009 9:22amA small but significant victory. Congratulations to Jonathan Turner for his perseverance throughout the outrageously protracted BBC investigation of his complaint.
This outcome demonstrates that the BBC cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
francois
April 17th, 2009 9:56amMelanie this is quite simply the best piece on the BBC/Bowen story, thank you
phil
April 17th, 2009 10:42amThe comments in the independent on the fisk rant showed what a waste of time it is to try to persuade those that hate Israel and in fact Jews too ,to have a change of mind. So many know nothing of the history of the middle east,but enjoy spewing hatred and we will not stop them ,shortly I have no doubt the loveable hazlittt will be here to give his verdict which will be typical of the mindset of the bashers -I smile and get on with life .its taken me a long time to realise I write for my own satisfaction and that I cannot change this world for the better ,so for hazlitt and carl jones et al -I do not care what you think .
hippiepooter
April 17th, 2009 10:56amA question I have never heard posed is, while western hostages were being taken left, right and centre in Beirut in the 80's, how come Robert Fisk manage to live there totally unscathed? I think the answer is obvious.
Wm. Hazlitt
April 17th, 2009 11:04amWould that Melanie Phillips were held to the same high journalistic standards that Jeremy Bowen maintains in the face of constant shrill sectarian spite.
Would that Melanie Phillips would read the historical record honestly.
Clap Hammer
April 17th, 2009 12:10pmRos - 'However, simply bypassing this rule by video link? This is jaw-dropping stuff.'
But typical of the rabid Israel haters.
I would wonder who can ask questions at this meeting?? Many would like to ask Haled Mashal questions about the infamous Hamas Charter. And Gilad Shalit
phil
April 17th, 2009 12:12pmhazlitt on cue -what a ridiculous man
NM
April 17th, 2009 12:13pmWm. Hazlitt: If Melanie Phillips were the Middle East correspondent of a major mandatorily-funded public broadcasting corporation, I certainly would expect her to do just that. But she is not - she is writing a blog, hosted by a commercial magazine. Can you tell the difference
Clap Hammer
April 17th, 2009 12:13pmHazlitt. Melanie Phillips does not get her money from the tax payers pocket. If the Spectator don't like what she says, they can fire her.
logdon
April 17th, 2009 12:15pmIf a week in politics can upend the whole status quo, what a week!
OK, the caveated BBC acknowlegment that all was not well in the bent world of Bowenland was in real terms and reality a mere crumb but the sheer tenacity of Jonathan Turner in the face of total Beeboid obstruction was nothing short of a miracle. Dark arts of delay then declaring him timed out in the complaint process suggests that the methods of McBride and co have leached across to al-Beeb and now it's there for all to see. What was it about every journey starting with one step?
logdon
April 17th, 2009 12:35pm"elixelx
April 17th, 2009 8:58am
"his unmasticated prose"
Shouldn't that read'masturbatory prose' from that pompous, self regarding idiot? It just reeks off him as he delivers what he obviously sees as a service to mankind in demonising the hated zionists in favour of the poor, downtrodden Palis. Ask him where all the money went, starting with the kleptomaniac who was Plett's beloved and wept over Arafat? Ask him to look at footage of wartime Warsaw next time he emotes his twisted moral equivalence. The man is a complete charlaton and a stain on the term journalist. And why are lefties so dour? PJ O Rourke, Tom Wolfe and plenty of others all produced and continue to turn out brilliant insight into what's going on but at least after reading their stuff you don't harbour thoughts of gas ovens and your own head.
Ellien
April 17th, 2009 12:50pmFisk is in love with Lebanon and the Arab world and hates Israel. During his reporting in July 2006 on the Israel/Hizbollah war it was plainly evident, as it continues to be. This split is a kind of derangement which must reflect some significant emotional deficits in his childhood. Pity for him, but a danger to the public to whom he preaches.
Yisrael Medad, Shiloh, Israel
April 17th, 2009 1:01pmHaving met Robert Fisk, the true wonder is how he manages to write and compose sentences despite the imbibing of significant quantities of clear Scotch stream water, slightly distilled with grain.
andy
April 17th, 2009 1:54pmEllien, Yisrael
Lovely posts. One claims Fisk is an alcopop and the other that he was damaged as a child.
When lost for arguments, there's nothing like a bit of character assassination to keep your peckers up is there?
Kenny
April 17th, 2009 2:31pmJeff certainly has the same sort of moustache Jeremy Bowen often sports - perhaps he modelled it on him.
http://www.inkwellimagesink.com/pages/cartoons/MuttAndJeff.shtml
Paul Milson
April 17th, 2009 2:42pmWould that this pretentious poster would have poster under his own name and not adopted the name of the famous essayist Wm. Hazlitt.
Speaking of dishonesty....
The real Hazlitt is turning in his grave as we read this
Neil Craig
April 17th, 2009 2:50pmAll of these oversight organisations are there to downplay any lie that serves the government concensus. I have yet to see the BBC report that "almost everybody" agrees that NATO's war against Yugolsavia was criminal under international law (& a breach of its own charter); that the BBC were less than 100% honest when they said the ex-Nazi Bosnian Moslem leader, openly committed to genocide of all Christians & Jews was "moderate"; or indeed that our openly genocidal Albanian allies had been engaged in any sort of expansionism.
Hypocrisy as normal then.
stanley Jerusalem
April 17th, 2009 3:14pmPaul Milson
April 17th, 2009 2:42pm
Paul I have been saying that for weeks but would anyone listen?
A nechtige tug!
Raymond Joseph Douglas
April 17th, 2009 3:29pmMelanie, I don't know about Robert Fisk being a national treasure, but you certainly are ! By the way, this Baptist Christian, totally rejects your critic on the Baptist times, some funny looking libeal -lefty. I forget his name.
Wm. Hazlitt
April 17th, 2009 5:17pmNM
Indeed.
I was expressing a wish that Melanie Phillips be held to some standard of accuracy, balance, and truthfulness. But of course she writes a blog and comment pieces, and so, as you point out, is under no obligation to meet the same high journalistic standards or to read the historical record honestly.
Jeremy Bowen as you point out (thank you, I would have missed it otherwise) works for an organization that does hold him to such standards. After much effort on the part of the complainants and the Committee, Jeremy Bowen was found guilty of what precisely?
Wm. Hazlitt
April 17th, 2009 5:31pmPaul Milsom
To use a pseudonym when posting on a blog is dishonesty?
If you read Hazlitt's political works, you will find he was zealous against tyranny and oppression, which unfortunately is what Israel now visits on the Palestinian Arabs.
I am sure you wanted to make a point but couldn't quite think of one.
Beware of becoming like those other posters who can raise no point of fact, nor sustain an argument, but fall back on abuse, or snickering at the back of the class at private jokes, or making maudlin statements that all they want is for all the little children to live in peace (if only their parents would let Israel enjoy in peace what it has taken from them), or saluting all the other posters similarly bereft of facts or arguments.
I am sure you are better than that.
Wilhelm M.
April 17th, 2009 5:36pmphil - congratulations on the accuracy of your self-knowledge/description and finding a category that fits you so well - "So many know nothing of the history of the middle east,but enjoy spewing hatred". Well done. And even better you realise that you "write for my own satisfaction and that I cannot change this world for the better" How true.
Indigo121
April 17th, 2009 5:45pmI think that everyone that read that Fisk piece really saw a glimpse of what the Independent usually tries to disguise as intellectual rhetoric- 3hich is Fisk's evil and vile hate- he spewed the word "Zionist" in that article like it was a curse word.
This highly stemmed "reporter" claims Hizbollah isn't a terror organization. If that is not biased, I don't know what is. And Bowen? He's just a Fisk in a fit-for-TV package.
Neil
April 17th, 2009 6:11pmThe thing is though, how many (normal) people out there in the UK care or even know about this decision? I suspect the answer is very, very few.
The British public, by and large, care very little about the Middle East. And rightly so, one might say. We have more important things to worry about.
C. Gee
April 17th, 2009 7:41pmThe Law,
Yes, we know that political expediency has produced certain opinions by governments and the United Nations that Jewish settlement is illegal. Settlement is the Arab political bargaining chip for cessation of terror and recognition of Israel. The "international community", including misguided Israel, in its determination to support the Arab states' implacable hostility to Israel, has decided that Arabs are legally entitled to territories free of Jews, but that Israel must have a majority Arab population. International hypocrisy does not make international law.
In any case, there are many expert jurists who have held that the Geneva Convention is not applicable to Israeli settlement. There is no other "International Law" - not even UN security council resolutions, which may rise to the status of international law in that they are enforceable directives (though not always enforced) - that could apply to makes Israeli settlements illegal.
International law is not some kind of universal Constitution. And even if it were, there is no 'disinterested' authority equivalent to the Supreme Court to establish its meaning. International declarations and conventions, treaties between and among states are created from time to time as political circumstances demand, then are abandoned, changed or breached, as history moves on. Israel has abided by its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.
By the way, there are even claims (by Richard Falk, UN rapporteur, among others)that there is an "international right to resistance," cut from whole cloth to fit Israel. The BBC subscribes to this fallacy and it underlies much of the fanciful talk of "illegal" settlements.
George Laird
April 17th, 2009 8:17pmDear All
Here is the important part of Melanie's piece.
"the Trust found only relatively minor failings".
You have to get passed the hysteria of this piece before you find something worth mentioning.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Simon Koncz
April 17th, 2009 8:45pm"The Law:"
Why are you merely regurgitating flawed "judgements" and opinions?
David Guy
April 17th, 2009 9:24pmThe BBC Trust chose a mainstream historian and an alternative historian as references. One wonders which Troofer they would reference in a complaint on the destruction of the New York Twin Towers on Sept 11th?
AisA
April 17th, 2009 9:55pmMelanie cites a statement which apparently states that "Jews have been legally entitled to settle throughout the West Bank and Gaza for the past six decades".
Maybe so. But what about moral entitlement? Many an act may be legally permissible whilst at the same time being morally indefensible.
And then:
"...the Arabs’ egregious breaches of [international] law – the actual cause of the Middle East conflict..."
Surely the 'actual' cause of the Middle East conflict was the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people in 1948 who were gifted large tracts of land without a thought about how that might go down with the indigenous people who had lived and farmed there for hundreds of years?
Arab suicide bombers and terrorists are utterly beyond the pale by any moral reckoning, but don't say that they are the 'cause' of the Middle East conflict. They are a terrible and somehow horribly inevitable result.
And please don't call me a 'hater' just for pointing this out. It's impossible to have a debate when any view that is not entirely sympathetic to Israel is hysterically denounced as 'Anti-Zionist' or 'Jew-hating'. You can differ with people without hating them.
I wouldn't know about Robert Fisk however.
LB
April 17th, 2009 10:40pm"The Law" posts a lot of quotes. Just as many can be found to counter those. More to the point, there is context to each of those quotes, which Law leaves out, such as which specific settlements are being discussed and under what circumstances they must be removed, e.g., when terror stops.
But here's the bigger picture: people like Fisk are apoplectic that Jews would dare build houses next to Arabs. They say nothing when Arabs build houses in Israel, never mind the West Bank.
Fisk and Bowen fulminate about Jews building houses but find it perfectly understandable that Arabs would blow up Jewish children to stop it.
Even "moderate" Palestinian factions like Fatah have not brought themselves to accept the existence of a Jewish state and maintain the right to intentionally target and murder innocent children as a means for gaining political aims. Fisk is not angry about this.
There were Jews who didn't recognize Jew-hatred in the 30's, and Jews who don't recognize it today. There were Jew-haters in the 30's who pretended they had no problem with Jews, just the dirty ones. Just like today.
Anyone who wants a moral universe where compromise is considered immoral and unyielding hatred is considered moral, has heroes in Bowen and Fisk.
LB
April 17th, 2009 10:49pmHazlitt: You ask what was Bowen found guilty of?
That explains a lot. You should read the report before commenting.
Like Bowen, Phillips is held to her own organization's standards of accountability. Unlike Bowen's, Phillips' reports are accurate and written from a perspective of wanting peace and equality.
Martin
April 17th, 2009 10:57pmThe BBC is a political entity with an agenda. It is not anti Jewish, it is anti Israel & pro Muslim.
Especially pro any Muslims who occupy European lands. Bowen is a typical BBC product, & individual words & tone of voice proclaim this.
Until a Government is prepared to demand a stop this naked bias, we will all be forced the Guardian every day of the year via the license fee.
Martin.
Disturbed
April 17th, 2009 11:35pmOh dear....
It’s as if Britain’s generals, after war was declared against Nazi Germany in 1939, stood accused of having been ‘training to finish the unfinished business of the fight against German aggression in 1914-18 for most of their careers’.
Well, Mel, you have a surpassed yourself. Surely YOU can see the difference.......YAWN.
Why can't we have another Passover so we don't have to suffer this interminable, dreary, extremist drivel.....
LB
April 17th, 2009 11:37pmAisa - Your opinion is clear. Arabs have a right to be angry that Jews dared move in next door. You understand this. You empathize with those who don't want to live near Jews.
That, plain and simple, is bigotry.
Richard Lilley
April 18th, 2009 12:25amWelcome back oh wonderful Mel (forgive the familiarity) - still trying to find any appropriate coverage of this on the BBC myself....
C. Gee
April 18th, 2009 5:09amAisA,
Most of the Arab population you claim is "indigenous" arrived in Palestine as the Zionist immigrants created a thriving economy there. The Arab population itself is "indigenous" to the Arabian peninsula. Thanks to Islamic imperialism they conquered and settled the "Holy Land" in the 7th century. Despite the destruction of the temple in AD 70 by the Romans, dhimmitude under Ottoman rule and massacres from time to time by Crusaders and Arabs there has been a continuous presence of Jews in Palestine. The cause of the conflict in 1948 was the declaration of war by the Arab states (most of them recent creations).
If you look at the "right of return", you will see that the Arabs acknowledge that many of the Arab refugees were recent arrivals in Palestine, because they accord the right of return to those who were in Palestine a mere few days before they left. Their presence from "time immemorial" is a myth, as much as the pastoral paradise of olive farms and goat herds they claim to have left behind and desire to return to.
Do you feel as badly for the other displaced populations of the twentieth century as you do for the Palestinians? How about the 600,000 Jews from Arab countries?
Barbara
April 18th, 2009 5:22amAsia,
One can certainly disagree with people without hating them - I don't hate Stanley and wish him nothing but well, even though I suspect that he and I agree on very little.
You, however, by your words, simply prove that you live in denial about your prejudices and bigotry. Or perhaps you are just ignorant, and prefer living in denial of that. Either way, I prefer Stanley to you.
Larry
April 18th, 2009 6:20amRobert Fisk is one of Osama bin Laden's favourite journalists, Bin Laden calls him "neutral", and the most notorious neo-Nazi in America David Duke praises Fisk to the skies. All this begs the question - how come one of the world's most notorious Muslim extremists and one of the West's most notorious neo-Nazis praises the same journalist Robert Fisk, who is popular and revered by so many Leftists around the world? Oh wait the question answers itself.
Barry Larking
April 18th, 2009 8:35amThis 'correction' only goes so far and falls short of impartiality as much as Mr Bowen's own reporting.
We are in the landscape of the 'committed' journalist (pace John Pilger) and its magnetic attraction for those who wish for celebrity status. Once BBC journalists were largely amateurs. A recent BBC Four programme on Panorama's reporting in the year 1959 demonstrated this very well. Now they are full time presenters and occasional thriller writers.
Bowen however is a symptom. The larger problem is with the BBC itself. It still believes itself to have been humiliated over the Gilligan Affair and that it, not the elected government, should have been the arbiter in Britain's response to Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq.
The BBC's reporting on these conflicts has to my mind been beyond mere anti-war in its stance on the long war against the west; it has unconsciously, but nevertheless effectively, supported the war aims of the other side.
Si, N
April 18th, 2009 8:38amApart from padding for a poor analysis, what the hell has Robert Fisk got to do with Jeremy Bowen's bulletin and the BBC Trust's judgement of the reporter’s words? Bowen and Fisk chiming alike is the sound of honesty; their having lived and spent time alongside the oppressed and all. So, like all attentive people, Fisk is outraged by the craven ‘Trust’ and is moved to express his outrage – I should be surprised if the fine journalist – such a ‘treasure’ - is cheap enough to respond to MP’s petty-mindedness.
In these trying times you really need to get a grip.
Roy
April 18th, 2009 9:26amIt is welcoming to hear that a crack has appeared in the BBC's facard. This should be welcomed by all who respect the truth. Too many, it would appear care very little for the truth. They would blindly follow this blundering media monstrosity choose what it's spin to the public amounts to. As if representing an order for Grimm's Fairy Tales it dispenses news for which the truth of the matter is of little moment.
Wm. Hazlitt
April 18th, 2009 9:59amLB
I have read the report. As Melanie Phillips is disappointed to have to acknowledge Mr. Bowen was found guilty of very little. The Committee accepted that the substance of what he said was accurate.
Melanie Phillips may well be held to her organization's standards of accountability.
phil
April 18th, 2009 11:42amWilhelm M was your observation flattery or an insult? it certainly adds knowledge to our debate.
R Mitchum
April 18th, 2009 12:32pmWhy anyone with a desire for accuracy would view or listen to the BBC News output is beyond me. I cannot comment on the Bowen report as I am not a student of the Middle East, but the corporation's biased reporting generally since Labour came to power is a scandal. It is a state sponsored purveyor of propaganda and should be reformed or shut down. Given its other programs are puerile it really is a basket case. I worked for them for many years when it was a employer to be proud of - decades ago!
MD
April 18th, 2009 2:59pmThe Law, Melanie made the point that Rostow was actually engaged in bringing UN242 into effect. He was therefore well qualified to clarify what its intentions were. Trotting out the revisionist Jimmy Carter and ICJ and EU declarations made well after the event by those in thrall to middle eastern oil money completely fails to counter this. Hugh Foot / Lord Caradon, the UK’s Ambassador to the UN at the time, backed Rostow up. You may wish history to have been different. Prejudice and money can change the course of history, but they can’t change history, itself. I’d recommend everyone to read Eli Hertz’ discussion of UN242 on http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/10/Resolution-242.pdf.
Another thing I’d advocate is to spend a moment thinking about the “The truth may not always win, but it is always right” strapline that he uses. It’s an idea which runs counter to much of the “don’t enquire too deeply, it’s right if it makes me feel good” spirit of the times. It’s also the antithesis of so much triumphal Islamist posturing (we’re in the overwhelming majority/it’s just a matter of time/it’s inevitable that…we will win). Its implicit reference to consequences ought to make anyone want to question the side they take in a debate. But with his brain and Mel’s, and with her public voice, there is a chance that justice will, after all, beat the odds.
Dixon
April 18th, 2009 3:04pmRe the person who refers to themselves as "The Law" (!), 2 million people of Pakistani origin have settled in the UK, does that mean that Pakistan is "occupying" British soil?
The "reasoning" of "The Law" is clearly facile.
Dixon
April 18th, 2009 3:06pmLets not forget the bottom line: the BBC budget is half the size of NASA!What do we get in return?
Dixon
April 18th, 2009 3:10pmYisrael Medad, Shiloh, Israel
April 17th, 2009 1:01pm
Having met Robert Fisk, the true wonder is how he manages to write and compose sentences despite the imbibing of significant quantities of clear Scotch stream water, slightly distilled with grain."
That explains why he looks all red and blotchy. I just thought it was a skin condition brought on by continually suppressed rage.
logdon
April 18th, 2009 3:41pmYisrael Medad, Shiloh, Israel
April 17th, 2009 1:01pm
Maybe we should call him Pisk? As a newt could be added to avoid any confusion.
max
April 18th, 2009 3:54pmThe Law, Melanie made the point that Rostow was actually engaged in bringing UN242 into effect. He was therefore well qualified to clarify what its intentions were. Trotting out the revisionist Jimmy Carter and ICJ and EU declarations made well after the event by those in thrall to middle eastern oil money completely fails to counter this. Hugh Foot / Lord Caradon, the UK’s Ambassador to the UN at the time, backed Rostow up. You may wish history to have been different. Prejudice and money can change the course of history, but they can’t change history once it's made. Check Eli Hertz’ discussion of UN242 on http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/10/Resolution-242.pdf.
Something else to think about is the “The truth may not always win, but it is always right” strapline that he uses. It’s an idea which runs counter to much of the “don’t enquire too deeply, it’s right if it makes me feel good” spirit of the times. Its implicit reference to consequences ought to make anyone want to question the side they take in a debate. But with his brain and Mel’s, and with her public voice, there is a chance that justice will, after all, beat the odds.
YA
April 18th, 2009 6:25pmNot only BBC but majority of media is practically controlled by jihadis.
Partly this is work of oil money, and partly intimidation.
Propaganda is two-fork.
On the one hand, it is aimed at weakening government, first-foremost law-enforcement. Here everything goes, non-stories about "torture", "heavy-handed police", and all possible useful idiots are used, all these g20-animal-rights-global-warmings bums.
On the other hand, all efforts are made to plant jihad as a dominating part of the multicultural shuffle. That is done via intimidation and "cultural" penetration. Intimidation campains are sometimes open (Gaza hate fests and riots), and sometimes they go via veiled threats ("radicalization").
Also, media organized all-out indirect support of foreign jihad ("Gitmo", "bombing Pakistani villages", "Israeli war crimes", "Hindu extremists", etc.).
Cultural expansion goes mostly under the banner of "religious sensitivities". Criticism of the Koran and PBUH is absolutely absent in the media. Also all means are applied to muddy the waters. For example, Geert Wilders was recently named by the BBC as "controversial politician with antisemitic views", freeing Somali hostages by French forces was called "an assault", Basra soldiers were greeted as "extremists" by Muslim mobs - and that was pushed on TV screens ad nauseum. Certainly automatic dehumanization of Jews ("Israeli forces kill people") is a thing that already goes unnoticed.
And BTW all hysterical talks about degenerate UK population, "broken Britain", "child pregnancies", "alcohol abuse", "disappearing family values" - all these are also not so innocent since it damages national pride. It raises the question - if really Western way of life is worth fighting for, and maybe "Islam is the solution".
It becomes harder and harder to avoid mountains of that shameful slippy crap, it just comes from everywhere. This is creeping jihad, this is how dhimmitude starts, and this is only beginning.
Henry Sidgwick
April 18th, 2009 8:43pmI have been struck by the attempts to demonstrate either that international law supports Israel's claim to what was Palestine under the Mandate, or that international law is irrelevant, or that international law does not exist. I think the hope is that one of these options will prove sufficient to see off critics,it is just not clear which.
There are a couple of minor points I would like to comment on first. We are told to bow to the authority of Eugene Rostow, who was Under-Secretary of State in 1967. He has apparently attempted to justify Israeli settlements on the West Bank by claiming that the US did not assure King Hussein that Resolution 242 required Israel to evacuate all the occupied territories (apart from minor adjustments mutually agreed). George W. Ball, who was also an Under-Secretary of State at the time, has pointed out that Rostow's account is contradicted by Dean Rusk and by Henry Kissinger (who has been, as everyone must acknowledge, a great friend of Israel). The official US line was reiterated as late as 1983 by Secretary Schultz on behalf of President Reagan. In US political parlance, Eugene Rostow simply mis-spoke.
The other minor matter is the use of arguments from the study of population such as were made briefly popular by the hoax perpetrated by Joan Peters. Such arguments are without merit. There is no denying that there was an indigenous population. (I note one poster talking about the Arabs objecting to Jews moving in "next door"! - as in moving into the Arabs' house and relegating them to the outside toilet.)
The question of international law and what leverage it has on Israel is, I accept, worthy of more serious consideration, which I propose (threaten) to give it...
Augustus
April 18th, 2009 9:06pmIn 1920 the San Remo Conference awarded all of the Ottoman province of Palestine, including Trans Jordan to the Jews. But Great Britain, whose duty it was to execute this decision, violated it, and instead awarded Trans Jordan, which amounted to 77% of the lands given to the Jews, to Abdullah bin Hussein. Thus Jordan was born at the expense of the Jewish homeland. In 1922 what was left of the original award was incorporated into the Palestine Mandate. Not only had the League of Nations recognized the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land, but it also recognized that this was grounds for reconstituting their national home there. It therefore recognized the right of Jews to recreate their ancient homeland in Judea and Samaria. This flies totally in the face of Arab claims to the land. Furthermore, the 'non-Jewish communities', i.e. Arabs and Christians, were protected as to civil rights only, not political rights.
hadrian
April 18th, 2009 11:24pmMr Hazlitt-
Just so that we're all crystal clear, could you please tell us what should become of the State of Israel and her Jewish inhabitants? What sort of fate would satisfy you that 'justice' had been done?
Ya- whilst I agree with many of your sentiments- not least on the threat of gradual dhimmitude, a concept most Westerners remain willfully ignorant of- I cannot agree that we should downplay the degraded moral condition of our nation at present. Of course Islam is no answer to that - its crude ideology of submission by intimidation can never effect true moral and spiritual revival which can only come through the persuasive power of the Word convincing and convicting at an individual level.
Deborah
April 19th, 2009 12:56amAdvice to the BBC. Please head hunt a certain Mr M Butcher from Sky News . His reporting is thoughtful, well researched and balanced .
YA
April 19th, 2009 1:27amHenry Sidgwick: yes international law is irrelevant.
We live in the time of changes, and what is legal or illegal will be defined afterwards, when the dust settles - defined by the winner.
Just to remind you that Auschwitz was absolutely legal, as well as GULAG.
Just to remind you that shooting women for adultery was legal under Taliban.
Just to remind that Muslim no-go areas ("settlements" if you wish) mushrooming in the heartlands of Europe today, and de-facto controlled by jihadis, are still legal.
Just to remind that diverting EU taxpayer's money to foreign terrorist organizations is still legal.
Just to remind that paying jizziya (AKA "license fee") to Islamofashist BBC is still legal.
So let us be optimistic. Lot of things will change for the better - "tomorrow, when the world is free".
Pip
April 19th, 2009 2:06amURGENT:
Melanie,
I have just been over to your other blog, there is a ERROR MESSAGE on your site, it may have been compromised?
Marcus from the USA
April 19th, 2009 3:41amThe main attendees of the San Remo Conference were Britain, France, Italy and Japan.
I guess folks like Augustus have no problem with foreign powers determining the fate and destiny of the middle east.
In a sense the fight against Zionism is also a fight against imperialism and colonialism.
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English and France to the French"
- Mahatma Gandhi
Robert
April 19th, 2009 7:57amAnd thanks, Melanie, for publicizing the CAMERA site. Well worth looking at.
C. Gee
April 19th, 2009 8:03amHenry Sidgwick,
No, no, no. Do not attempt to turn political objections to Jewish settlements beyond the armistice lines into legal arguments about the meaning of 242. That resolution most emphatically does not make the armistice lines the border. The border issue is one to be negotiated, and that has been recognized by all US governments.
As for your denigration of population arguments: that there was a huge expansion of Arab immigrants - or comings and goings of population as seasonal labour requirements and other economic conditions fluctuated, but with a net increase - into the area West of Jordan is not in doubt. There is no need to go to Joan Peters. British demographic statistics of the Mandatory period will suffice.
And you say "there is no denying there was an indigenous population". My point was that "indigenous" is not meaningful in this context. The population is the result of many movements of peoples. Some ancient peoples have disappeared. The Jews have stayed on as a remnant. Of course, there were people living on the land, in villages and towns, but their allegiance was not to a state -or the land seen collectively as the territory of a nation (except perhaps to notions of a Greater Syria)- but to localities dominated by clans. These are not to be confused with Native American tribes. The history of land purchase by early Zionists - much of it from absentee Arab and Ottoman landlords - belies the eviction myth. Wherever do you get the "outside toilet" idea? Are you referring to Gaza?
By the way, there was, for many centuries, a thriving Jewish community in Gaza , and in Hebron. They were "evicted" by hostile incomers.
Do, please, look into international law and its "leverage" on Israel, and also the Palestinian factions, not to mention Iran.
stanley Jerusalem
April 19th, 2009 9:39amMarcus from the USA
April 19th, 2009 3:41am ' "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English and France to the French"
- Mahatma Gandhi'
So now we are taking lessons in ethics from an Indian of South African origin, educated in London before turning the British Empire upside down by instructing the hundreds of millions of Hindus who would listen to him into civil disobedience. Perhaps he had the same advice for Jews in Nazi Germany and the rest of Europe during the period after 1933. He certainly displayed little liking for Jews in general. I suppose as a member of an opressed minority even he had to find someone that he could hate safely. He showed absolutely no sympathy to the plight of European Jewry post 1945 and I see no reason whatever to give his sayings any devotion or credence. Your quotation was clearly his justification for India for the Indians, even though he was unable to distinguish his Indians into peace-loving and belligerent[toward each other]. His subsequent intransigence led to the Kashmir, Bangladesh mess that the sub-continent has inherited to this day so all in all not the best adviser.
Scratch the surface of these 20th Century saints and we frequently find real people underneath with the same failings as the rest of us.
He was good in the film though, wasn't he?
phil
April 19th, 2009 10:41amMarcus from the USA --"Israel belongs to the Jewish people and the many other races who reside there -phil" ------
you can please yourself what you think mahatma said -I am telling you the truth ok ?
Jenny
April 19th, 2009 11:25amMel, come back to the Mail tomorrow.
It's not much fun without you, Richard Littlejohn and Quentin Letts.
stanley Jerusalem
April 19th, 2009 11:33amphil - They just want everybody to love them, don't they? Even if you slapped him on the nose with a rotten kipper he probably wouldn't recognise that either. You know; "Don't confuse me with facts. My mind is made up."
Wm. Hazlitt
April 19th, 2009 11:49amHadrian,
As I have said many times, the people of Israel have the same rights as everyone else. Given the current mess, the least unlikely route to peace is a two state solution that gives the Palestinian Arabs a viable economy and gives refugees some compensation for the expropriation of their property. To be "crystal clear", I would never deny the existence of the state of Israel and I would never deny the rights of its citizens. This is no reason to deny rights to the Palestinian Arabs. The only genuine peace will be one negotiated in good faith. I hope that is a satisfactory answer to your question.
Henry Sidgwick
April 19th, 2009 12:07pmC. Gee,
Thank you for your comments.
I am well aware that I may well be missing Melanie Phillips' point in citing Eugene Rostow and his interpretation of 242, and I would appreciate clarification. I took the point to be that, if his interpretation of what the drafters intended is correct, 242 is no obstacle to settlements on the West Bank. Conversely, since he is wrong, 242 is an obstacle.
As for population, of course there were inflows and outflows (latterly often depending on the prosperity of the Jewish community). There was also a net inflow of Jewish immigrants. My point was simply that there was a population that indisputably had been resident in the territory for generations. I am not aware that they needed to be citizens of a sovereign state founded on self-determination rather than subjects of an empire to have some basic rights. Your puzzlement about eviction is baffling. And it does your argument no good to assert that "indigenous" has no application in the circumstances: is there some date prior to which the population flows are not relevant, thus allowing the Jews to claim to be the original population? Again, I would appreciate clarification.
Henry Sidgwick
April 19th, 2009 1:30pmYA,
I think you should bear in mind the purpose behind the efforts since the late 19th century to establish a body of truly international law. It has long been the case that the powerful do what they want and the weak do what they have to. This has produced endless conflict between the powerful and endless misery among the weak. International law is intended to begin the long process of bringing some civilization to international relations, at least the beginnings of an international civil society. You may think your stance is simply an acknowledgment of the hard realities of life, but it seems to me to accept the unacceptable too readily - something that perhaps comes easily because all of us who post here are among those protected by the powerful.
Oberon
April 19th, 2009 2:15pmThe BBC really have to get their act together. The rest of the world is looking on agog. The BBC have an ongoing problem with their Middle East journalists. Adam Hart and his rampant anti-semitism was ludicrous ... Non will forget his claims that he could have single handedly prevented the Six Day War.
http://adamholland.blogspot.com/2008/09/alan-hart-israel-kidnapped-alan.html and
http://adamholland.blogspot.com/search/label/BBC
No wonder he had to self-publish his book; no publisher would touch it. To state he is "dotty" is to be too kind.
As for Fisk. He stated that every journalist needed a good history text of the Middle East. Why didn't he use one ... in his case, even a primer would have helped. And let's not forget his flights of fantasy, such as his turgid prose in describing him personally witnessing the old royal archives of Iraq destroyed by fire - an event which never occurred.
C. Gee is absolutely correct. Regarding Resolution 242:
Whilst calling on Arab States to make peace with Israel, the Security Council quite deliberately did not say that Israel withdraw from “all” the territories occupied since the Six-Day War. Those who drafted the resolution confirmed this:
On October 29, the British Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons that withdrawl did not envisage from “all” territories.
Later, Lord Carandon stated: “It would be wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because these positions were undesirable and artificial.”
US Ambassador, Arthur Goldberg, explained: “The notable omissions - which were not accidental - in regard to withdrawal are the words “the” or “all” and “the June 5, 1967 lines” ... the resolution speaks of withdrawal from the occupied territories without defining the extend of withdrawl.” ...the parties were to make ... “territorial adjustments in their peace settlement encompassing less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories, inasmuch as Israel’s prior frontiers had proved notably insecure.”
In Resolution 424 there is no requirement that Palestinians be given political rights or terroritory; they are only alluded to in the second clause of the second article which calls for “a just settlement of the refugee problem.”
Arab States, whilst accepting 242, defined it as requiring Israel’s total, unconditional withdrawal from the disputed territories.
phil
April 19th, 2009 2:42pmEven if you slapped him on the nose with a rotten kipper he probably wouldn't recognise that either.OH STANLEY -I had a dream
gary
April 19th, 2009 3:34pmIn Australia & Canada land rights for the indigenous people is determined by the songs and stories related to the land. Jews have carried the songs and tales of their land for a few millennia, reliably passing them on through many generations. Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, which is sometimes called Palestine.
C. Gee
April 19th, 2009 3:34pmHenry Sidgwick,
The point about 242 is that it did not fix the borders, so that it follows that it did not prohibit Jewish settlement beyond the armistice lines. Israel itself has passed laws regarding settlement, and some settlements are regarded as illegal. There is no "international law" that would make settlement in any of the territory held by Israel illegal. There are, of course, political objections to it, but attempts to ground these in international law are not reasonable interpretations of the "law" which is often not applicable in any case.
As for the population discussion, I wish to correct one point in my prior post. British demographical data from the Mandatory period, and Ottoman regitration records will NOT suffice to give a true picture of immigration. But it is not necessary to rely on Joan Peters. See Gotttheil, The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration into Palestine 1922 -1951. I am glad you recognise that there was immigration into Palestine and intra-Palestine migration. Arabs were prepared to move from one spot of that territory and resettle in another spot (particularly around cities prospering due to Jewish investment). They also immigrated from Egypt, Turkey, Syria etc. Two points follow from this. For many refugees there is no tie of loyalty to either a particular spot of land, or to a larger, national territory. They could be assimilated into, say Syrian, Egyptian, or Lebanese society. Living on a spot of land for one, two or hundreds of generations, confers no rights that can supersede property holding laws, dispossession in war, changing sovereignty, mandatory dispositions, all or a combination of which have shifted whole populations willy nilly from one spot of earth to another. Few sovereigns permit return of a hostile population, or provide compensation. The Arabs who lived within the territory that was Ottoman or British are not uniquely entitled to that spot of earth no matter how much they mythologize. As I have said before, why are these people more to be pitied than any other group of displaced persons of the 20th century?
YA
April 19th, 2009 4:10pmHenry Sidgwick: it isn't about weak and powerful, it is about destiny. As Albert Camus said: "I love justice; but I'll fight for my mother before the justice". Fight of the West is the "fight for mother".
J.
April 19th, 2009 7:17pmMelanie, you need to advert people to this emblem of UN hypocrisy:
“Durban II Dispatch: Libya on Trial”
Geneva, Switzerland
“Libya was chosen in 2007 to chair the preparatory committee for the UN Durban Review Conference–notwithstanding the irony of an egregious human-rights violator chairing a human rights conference. For the past three days, the committee has been holding sessions to finalize the conference’s draft statement, upon which many countries will base their decision whether to attend the conference this week. On Friday, the last day, NGOs were given 30 minutes to weigh in.”
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/04/19/durban-ii-dispatch-libya-on-trial.aspx#comments
Henry Sidgwick
April 19th, 2009 9:36pmYA,
...?...I take it when you get what you want, it is Destiny; and when you don't get what you want your Destiny requires you to keep fighting for it until you do - and because its your Destiny, you can use whatever means you deem necessary.
Henry Sidgwick
April 19th, 2009 10:40pmC. Gee,
I am afraid I find your reasoning obscure on both 242 and population flows.
We will have to accept that the wording of 242 is ambiguous, and ambiguous on purpose - otherwise the US and USSR, the Arab states and eventually Israel, would not all have signed.
However, the major ambiguity, the one winked at by the US, and exploited by Israel ever since, exists only in the English version, and only on a reading of the words that ignores their primary meaning:"Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." Now, in normal English, that phrase refers to those territories occupied in the conflict. In Israel's strained interpretation it means only some of those territories.
Israel particularly needs this ambiguity because the preamble affirms "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war..." Israel used the ambiguity in an attempt to ignore the clear consequence of this affirmation by insisting that in fact the wording of clause 1 part 1 allowed it to keep some of the territories so acquired.
Before we finish the game of quotation, I would like to add one more. In 1983, Secretary Schultz wrote to King Hussein on behalf of the President to reiterate the US interpretation of 242: "The President believes, consistent with Resolution 242, that territory should not be acquired by war. He believes as well, however, that Resolution 242 does permit changes in the boundaries which existed prior to June 1967, but only where such changes are agreed between the parties." (This is a good place to point out that for Palestinian Arabs 242 stinks - it is a stitch-up between Israel and Jordan and Egypt, none of whom wanted to acknowledge their existence.) Secretary Schultz then added a significant sentence: "The United States considers Jerusalem part of the occupied territories." This statement has two interesting implications: first, that the US, and all the other signatories other than Israel, expected Israel to withdraw to the boundaries that existed before June 1967; and, secondly, that if Jerusalem was "occupied territory" then so was the rest of the territory beyond the June 1967 boundaries. Settlement on occupied territory is prohibited under international law.
You say there is no international law that applies. This is simply wrong. The only legal title Israel has to any of the territory of Palestine is the title bestowed by Britain through the UN as successor to the League of Nations. That title does not include the West Bank, contrary to the frequent assertion on this site. This title only has meaning if the authority that bestowed it, and the laws promulgated by that authority, are recognized. In other words, Israel cannot pick which parts of international law it will abide by. Of course, Israel may assert its sovereign right to do what it pleases, as sovereign states have always done. The US has coined a phrase for such states in the current set-up - they are "rogue states". However, we can discuss this another time.
I wanted to mention just two points about population flows. First, as far as I can see, inflows and outflows of Arabs have no bearing on the argument one way or the other. The settled population of Palestinian Arabs does. It remains unclear to me why immigrants from Europe have greater claim on the land than its current occupants. My second point has to do with the two points you say do in fact follow from the facts of immigration. It seems to me that when you say that Arabs can be "assimilated" elsewhere and when you say "living on a spot of land for one, two, or hundreds of generations confers no rights that can supersede..." (and then you give a list of things you believe have superior force). It seems to me these two points could be turned against you. It seems to me also that your argument comes down to the assertion that the Palestinian Arabs have been relieved of their land by imperial diktat and by military force.
Yehuda
April 20th, 2009 12:04amHenry Sidgwick's obsessively persistent speciousness, distortions and misrepresentations in the face of rational, objective evidence mark him as a person who desires the Jews eternally to be subservient to host nations.
The very idea of Jewish national self-determination is anathema to him.
Henry Sidgwick
April 20th, 2009 10:10amYehuda,
We have had this conversation before. Howls of righteous indignation may drown out rational debate, but are no sustitute for it. As I have told you before, it seems to me obvious that the state of Israel exists and everyone has to deal with it, and that the Israeli people have the same rights as everyone else.
alanadale
April 20th, 2009 12:30pmMelanie, may I shoot down an obstinate ‘canard’? You know and I know that nowhere in the Mandate document or anyother does it give the Jews political title to the whole of Mandated Palestine for their National Home. On the contrary, the first article of the 1920 San Remo Conference Resolution, which prepared the ground for the Mandate, reiterated the Balfour Declaration’s concern for Arab rights, stressing that the setting up of a Mandatory Power would only be acceptable if it did ‘not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’ The principle that Arab land was to be held in trust as prescribed by Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter - which outlines the Mandate’s mission to safeguard the interests of native populations until such time as they were ready and able to govern themselves - remained paramount.
As for claiming that ‘the British first [shrunk] the putative Jewish homeland in Palestine by some 75 per cent, and then [proposed] to cut it in half, and with Israel subsequently giving up Sinai and Gaza and having offered to give up most of the West Bank in 1967 and in 2000’ as justification for a claim on the ‘rump’ of Palestine, what a convenient conceit! I couldn’t imagine Jews ever volunteering or accepting to settle in the nether regions of the Jordanian desert in this ‘putative Jewish homeland’ to which the Palestinians are apparently to be consigned. And if as you disingenuously maintain the Palestinians had no identity and could thus be lumped together with other Arabs the better to clear them from the remaining land the British had so ungenerously confined the Jews to Judge Buergenthal the US member of the International Court had some pretty trenchant things to say about Israel’s obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention in his dissenting Opinion on the Court’s ruling on Israel’s defensive wall.
As to Bowen’s solecisim: clearly it was technically inaccurate to say ‘everyone’ opposes Israel’s interpretation of international law but it really is everyone as near as damn it.
Can you produce any serious jurist outside the US who actively supported Israel’s expansionist interpretation of Resolution 242?
That there should have been people in the US who would is unsurprising given America’s settler history and the fact that so many of those actually partaking in the legal debate on Israel Palestine were of Jewish immigrant stock… of which Eugene Rostow was one. If as Rostow appeared to maintain Jews have the right to settle the whole of Palestine ‘under still-binding Mandatory law’ then why don’t Palestinians have the right to settle in Israel? Or has the creation of Israel taken 78% of the territory out of the equation? What a convenient Catch 22!
Of course there have been many jurists of Jewish origin in the US (and indeed Israel), Judge Buerghental amongst them, who have not gone along with Rostow’s neo-colonialist interpretation of international law.
Rostow may have helped draft Resolution 242 but it bore Lord Caradon’s imprimatur. And you will of course be aware of Lord Caradon’s explanation of why Resolution 242 did not stipulate precise borders and his rider: ‘Nonetheless, it is necessary to say again that the overwhelming principle was the ‘inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’ and that meant that there could be no justification for the annexation of territory on the Arab side of the 1967 line merely because it had been conquered in the 1967 war.’
And that, Melanie, is still the state of things.
Henry Sidgwick
April 20th, 2009 2:39pmPalestine was a Mandate under Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant. In other words, it was a trust. The beneficiaries of the trust were the people resident in Palestine. The trustee, the Mandatory Power, was Great Britain. Palestine was classified as one of those Mandates "provisionally" recognized as an independent nation but nevertheless in need of "administrative advice and assistance". The trust for Palestine differed from other Mandates in also stipulating in some detail the establishment of a Jewish Home in Palestine, which added considerably to the difficulties of the advice and assistance it could offer.
The League of Nations was dissolved in 1946. Its duties regarding Mandates were assumed by the United Nations. The Palestinian Mandate remained intact, just as a trust does even if the supervising judge or trustee changes.
Great Britain informed the UN of its intention to relinquish its trusteeship. Under the common law developed through the years of the League of Nations' existence, Great Britain could only relinquish its trusteeship if it left the people of Palestine in a position where self-government was viable.
In consultation with the Trusteeship Council of the UN, Great Britain argued that it could not leave Palestine as a unitary self-governing state (its preferred option) but only aa two separate states. On the question of the allocation of territory, Great Britain argued that the division should not reflect the actual numbers of Jews and Palestinians living in the territory because the Jews as an ethnic/religious community had a right to invite surviving victims of the Holocaust. (In other words, Palestinians were to pay for the heinous crimes of Europeans.) The proposed partition plan therefore gave substantially more territory to teh Jewish State than was warranted.
The General Assembly adopted the partition resolution 181 (after extraordinary backstairs blackmail and with a "majority" that reflected representation of much less than half of the world's population). Resolution 181 also provided for an independent international mixed status for the city of Jerusalem.
This resolution is the first. last and only legally authorized demarcation of the Israeli-Palestinian borders. It is legally authoritative not because it took the form of a UN Resolution, but because it served to ratify the British proposal to divide the Mandate and leave its governance to its people. In other words, the legal power resided in Great Britain as trustee, not the UN. As trustee, it had the power to partition the Mandate if and only if it considered it the best way to provide for future self-government. The General Assembly did not derive its legal powers from the UN Charter but as surrogate for the League of Nations as it devolved it powers to the UN. Legal title to the land was not conferred by Resolution 181 but by Great Britain's acceptance of it. The State of Israel owes its entire legal existence to the proper exercise by Great Britain of its League of Nations Mandatory Power over the territory of Palestine. It owes nothing to the UN and cannot claim any further rights from the UN. As soon as Resolution 181 was passed, the borders of Israel and Palestine were irrevocably fixed. The Security Council has no power to change international borders.
I will stop there for now, but there are interesting consequences for the subsequent history of Palestine, and some interesting reflections to be made on the foundation of the State of Israel in Balfour's letter to Rothschild.
By the way, this is the legal opinion of a professor of law and supporter of Israel.
alanadale
April 20th, 2009 4:07pmThank you Henry Sidgwick for your highly enlightening post. Await your next instalment with eager anticipation.
stanley Jerusalem
April 20th, 2009 4:31pmalanadale
April 20th, 2009 4:07pm
"Thank you Henry Sidgwick for your highly enlightening post."
Yes but does he know how he wants it to end. it all seems so cut and dried. The Arab part of the two-part state was called Jordan in 1947. has that escaped anyone's notice?
At this stage of the Sidgwick Docudrama one wouldn't wish to anticipate the part played by the British officers in the Royal Jordanian Army after May 194,nor the territorial entitlements as spoils of war of the victors of that and other battles fought on various Levantine territories between May 1948 and the next cease-fire.
Henry, our breaths are duly bated.
Paul
April 20th, 2009 5:21pmThe usual hysteria from Melanie.
The BBC said that Bowen should have said "almost no-one" instead of "no-one" thinks Israel has the right to build settlements on the occupied territories. It still makes them wrong.
And Bowen was right the Israeli Generals were confident of victory in 1967. Yes they didn't start the sabre-rattling with Egypt but they certainly weren't petrified of losing (and by the way they didn't deserve to - Nasser and the other Arab warmonger leaders deserved a hard slap)
Ariel Sharon said "For me, the most difficult thing was the loss of confidence. We, the commanders in the field, had plenty of confidence. We trained the forces well… There was an atmosphere of fear and anxiety in the public, and what bothered me and bothers me ever since was how a nation with such military might can suddenly lose its confidence about its ability to fight back and win, when war becomes inevitable." The Israelis won the war in a day (the other 5 were mopping up) which says everything about who was militarily stronger. Gilbert is an "unreliable witness".
And of course Zionism has desired to push out the frontier - forget the boundaries of Jordan (which has never been part of Palestine in the common use of the name). Do a map of Jewish settlements over time and it will show you a desire to push out and expand. What Bowen could have made clear is that this desire is not boundless, they want the West Bank not Sinai or Jordan. Apart from that it is a fair statement. One could say of British imperialists or US settlers 'innate desire to push out the frontier' you wouldn't argue, "no they didn't have that desire - look at how much of Africa they DIDN'T take and anyway they gave it back later" Or "the fact that they didn't take over Canada or Mexico proves they weren't expansionist."
Henry Sidgwick
April 20th, 2009 6:25pmIsrael's legal title to land in Palestine comes from Britain as Mandatory Power appointed by the League of Nations.
This ancient legal history has some contemporary consequences.
In the war of 1948 Israel more than doubled the territory under its control. In 1967 it acquired yet more. In the aftermath, the Security Council exercised its powers under chapter 7 of the UN Charter and passed Resolution 242 calling for withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict. As previously discussed, Israel chose to ignore the obvious meaning and insisted that the UN only required it to withdraw from some of the territories, and therefore allowed it legally to remain in some, and indeed to build settlements.
This is plain wrong as an interpretation of 242. However, whether right or wrong, it is beside the point. The Security Council does not have the power to take land from one to give to another. Resolution 242 could never give Israel the legal right to annexe any of the land acquired by conquest. No-one other than the five permanent members would have voted for the UN Charter if the Security Council had such powers. Nothing in the Charter gives any power or entitlement to the Security Council to change international boundaries. Resolution 242 calls only for a withdrawal of forces. Any changes to boundaries are only by mutual consent. Israel has no right to de facto annexation by building settlements. The settlements are illegal.
The notion that territory can be acquired by military conquest had long since been explicitly outlawed by the Kellog-Briand Peace Pact of 1928 and the gloss on it by the Nuremberg Tribunal. No matter who the agressor is, international borders cannot be changed by war. Resort to war is illegal. Self-defense cannot cover wars of aggression (or pre-emption). In other words, the legal boundaries of Israel are still as delineated in Resolution 181 in 1947.
The Palestinians are offering negotiations on the boundaries before June 1967. In other words they have explicitly renounced their legal claim to the territory lost in 1948, although compensation for refugees will have to be part of any agreement. The Palestinians are offering Israel legal title to 78% of Mandate Palestine. Israel has refused to deal. It has kept the territory illegally acquired in 1948. It has kept the territory illegally acquired in 1967. It intends to keep all it wants. How has it got away with this? - its own military power and the patronage of the US. To continue to defy international law, it will have to continue to devote an excessive proportion of GNP to the military and the settlers; and to continue to depend on financial and military aid from the US, and its diplomatic protection.
So much for international law as explained by a professor of law.
To conclude, I can't help wondering at the nature of Israel's legal title. It is founded on a League of Nations Mandate. We all know from our high school history that the League of Nations was the legal and diplomatic fig-leaf for an imperialist carve-up by Britain and France. The defeated Ottoman Empire provided the spoils of conquest. Britain had obvious strategic interests in the Middle Eastern bits. Its preferred method of imperial control was to install pliant puppet regimes (Lord Curzon was particularly explicit in explaining this modus operandi). Britain wanted Palestine to reinforce its control of Suez.
It also introduced the notion of a Jewish Home (for a variety of reasons, including the preference for pliant puppet regimes). The form of words used by Balfour in his letter to Rothschild (which completed the double-cross of the Arabs once they had kept their side of the bargain) was cut and pasted into the documents produced at San Remo, and into the League of Nations Mandate.
But then by what possible legal right did Balfour in 1917 promise a Jewish National Home in the part of the Ottoman Empire we know as Palestine? Was he saying: when we acquire this territory by military conquest (illegally) we will give you some of it (illegally), and we will dress it up in grand terms as part of the foundation of the new world of the rule of international law!
(And by the way, if Balfour was so explicit in giving everything to the Jews including Transjordan, why was Weizmann distraught that the wording was "A National Home" and not "THE National Home"?)
But all this is ancient history now. Its only relevance today is if it persuades Israel to a little more humility. The foundations of the state are Ruritanian. Most states get away with this because their formation takes centuries. Israel suffers from being a recent artificial construct. It should treat its neighbours with less arrogance and negotiate in good faith a peace settlement that requires compromise from both sides.
YA
April 20th, 2009 6:30pmHenry Sedgwick on Destiny - just don't forget about such little thing as morality. Your Destiny can't be separated from what your mean by good and evil. You write "..you can use whatever means you deem necessary". The key word is "you can" - in some cases I can but I won't because that won't be my Destiny anymore. It is strange that such trivial things should be explained.
phil
April 20th, 2009 6:59pmstanley Jerusalem I see the sherriff is back no doubt having pulled the arrow from his toches he is able to sit and type his rubbish again .who does he think cares what he thinks -I think man u will win the FA cup ,just about as sensible as alandale and his mate friar tuck -they live in a land beyond time .
Yehuda
April 20th, 2009 10:08pmWhy do Henry Sidgwick's posts remind me of the sort of mentality that became particularly evident in 1930's Europe, as well as the kinds of anti-Jewish accusations that were fabricated by it?
Henry Sidgwick
April 20th, 2009 10:18pmYA,
If there were such a thing as Destiny it would not be trivial. Yet I still need it explained what you can possibly mean by your Destiny.
C. Gee
April 21st, 2009 8:35amAlanadale,
The rights "hitherto enjoyed" of the non-Jewish population of Palestine which were to be protected under Balfour and the Mandate, are civil and religious rights, not national rights, which did not exist. Article 22 of the League of Nations, despite dicta to the contrary in the advisory opinion of the ICJ on Israel's wall, does not recognise the national rights of "Palestinians". The "Palestine" in the Mandate is a geographical area, not a designation of a people. The only national rights recognized were those of Jews'. It was in order to establish a Jewish homeland that the Mandate was formed. Jews immigrated to 'Palestine', even after the establishment of Jordan on 75% of the territory of the Mandate of Palestine. 'Palestine' became the name of the Arab portion of the territory after the creation of the state of Israel.
The Palestinians Arabs have not been "consigned" anywhere. If they were in Transjordan when it was created for England's pet potentate, they stayed there. Eventually they became Jordanian citizens. If they were in Gaza, they stayed there when Egypt occupied it. If they were in the West Bank, they stayed there when Jordan occupied it. If they were in Israel, and did not leave, they became Israeli citizens. The population of Arabs that left (whether by flight or expulsion) forfeited that citizenship together with their property, though Israel has taken some refugees back, and has paid and offered to pay further compensation. Their refugee status does not confer a 'Palestinian' nationality upon them. As for the Arabs living in the areas taken by Israel in 1967, they are no more a nation under Israel occupation than they were under of Jordanian occupation. How about placing the West Bank and Gaza under a new UN Mandate to "safeguard them until they are ready and able to govern" themselves? Is Hamas - which has explicitly said that it wants an Islamic state not a Palestinian one - ready to govern? Is the PLO/PA offering a better national idea for self-determination? Not if their ever-diminishing popularity means anything. No doubt the new Mandatory will protect civil and religious rights of the Jews living in the West Bank and no doubt the Jews will participate as full citizens of the new Arab state.
As for your discounting of jurists you disagree with because they are Jewish, and Americans because they are settlers themselves, this is bigotry. And where would that argument leave Arabs, who sided with the genocidal Germans?
Finally, Lord Caradon's statement of the principle that it is inadmissable to acquire land by war is amusing, given the context, and applies only to Israel's defensive war, and to no other nation's aggressive one!
Henry Sidgwick
April 21st, 2009 8:43amYehuda
Since there is no similarity whatsoever, I doubt that it really does remind you. You are using a standard technique of misdirection (again). When faced with argument and evidence,and bereft of rational response, accuse your opponent of something foul. I notice Melanie Phillips adopts the same tawdry trick. Barely a week goes by without the cry of Jew hater, anti-Semite, Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy, Blood Libel, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Holocaust Denier... It is indecent to spray such accusations at those who offer reasoned contributions for rational debate.
C. Gee
April 21st, 2009 9:21amHenry Sidgwick,
I can see that you do indeed find my arguments obscure as you repeatedly misstate them. I am not sanguine that the "professor of law" you refer to has not similarly been misstated.
Please tell Hamas that Resolution 181 "irrevocably fixed" Israel's - and, you say, 'Palestine's' - borders. A good dose of your garbled international law may help them to negotiate in good faith, with humility and with a willingness to compromise. Just as you hope it will for Israel!
C. Gee
April 21st, 2009 9:34amHenry Sidgwick,
The beneficiaries of the "trust" of the Mandate were not "the people resident in Palestine". The beneficiaries were the Jews, only some of whom resided in the territory of the Mandate.
Yehuda
April 21st, 2009 10:49amHenry Sidgwick's posts strongly resemble 1930's Germans' (and other Europeans') accusations that the Jews are thieves, that they flout the law, that they are arrogant aggressors.
(Remember how Hitler warned European Jewry that, if the Jews started a war, it would lead to their annihilation?)
It is gratifying to read those posts which have exposed Henry's devious tactics of misrepresentations, half-truths and deliberate omission of relevent facts, as well as the numerous gaps in his knowledge of the history of the conflict.
Will Henry now yet again complain that I am making personal attacks?
You bet I am.
C. Gee
April 21st, 2009 11:13amPaul,
Sinai was returned to Egypt in exchange for recognition of Israel and (a cold) peace. "Land for Peace." It is hardly the war-cry of expansionism. And seeing what happened after the Israel's withdrawal of settlements from Gaza, I would drop it as the basis for negotiating with caliphate-building Islamists, or corrupt Marxist despots. No, a really clever expansionist Israel should exercise its right to take more land while it pretends to 'negotiate' an agreement to limit itself to proportionate reprisals for rockets, suicide bombings, kidnappings, shootings, knifings etc.
By the way, I thought the old Marxist notions about Israel being the colonialist storm front of Western imperialism had become old hat. The cutting-edge thinking is that Israel should be the first post-state, leaving Jews free from territorial shackles, morally pure, identity free.
Henry Sidgwick
April 21st, 2009 12:14pmC. Gee
I would be grateful (genuinely) if you could tell me which of your arguments I misstated.
I certainly think Hamas should be told (do you suggest it because it is in fact correct?) I doubt Israel would like them to be told: the Palestinians, even Hamas, have proposed negotiations based on the pre-1967 boundaries.
I would also be grateful if you could tell me which part of the international law cited is garbled.
And no, the beneficiaries of the trust were not just the Jews. That is simply false.
Temu
April 21st, 2009 1:06pmi read the article and a few comments, sadly i am unable to see any perspective here (apologies to any later commenters).
Surely it is justified for people to campaign on both sides, for instance i can see how Bowen's language was amatuerish and misleading so should be reviewed. It seems the consensus here is he should be sacked immediately?
Opinions like that legitimise extremists on the other side who think the BBC should have been demolished after refusing to run the red cross advert (because they do not make political statements as a matter of policy).
Gaining perspective would be beneficial for both sides, i have heard so many normal people say that they feel the situation that Palestinians live in is appalling, but they do not hate Israel. Surely the most political beneficial strategy is to form an alliance with these people, not to lose perspective and move towards an 'us and them' situation.
Henry Sidgwick
April 21st, 2009 3:31pmYehuda
I can see at least one flaw in the logic of your analogy (as opposed to the flaw in rhetoric in your descent into bathos). Your analogy only really works if you equate the Zionists/Yishuv/State of Israel with the Jews.
I look forward to reading some of "those posts which have exposed Henry's devious tactics of misrepresentations, half-truths and deliberate omission of relevent facts, as well as the numerous gaps in his knowledge of the history of the conflict." When are they to be written?
alanadale
April 21st, 2009 3:35pmThank you Henry Sedgwick for the most enlightening 'take' on the conflict I've read in ages. I’m indebted for your explanation of the legal situation vis a vis the 1947 Paritition Plan
I suppose the point is as you say most countries' legal structures evolve with the institutionalisation of power.
You say ‘By what possible legal right did Balfour in 1917 promise a Jewish National Home in the part of the Ottoman Empire we know as Palestine?’ Presumably because the Great Powers that made up the League of Nations said so. The implementation of law is the gift of he who can dispense it. It has always been thus. At a national level the people have had to seize power from their kings just as empires have inevitably ceded to nationalism.
Israel took advantage of an obsolescent legal framework (the League of Nations) to lay claim to Palestine without consideration for the indigenous population. Had Zionism taken root a century or even a half century earlier (a highly speculative notion as the good offices of the Western powers is central to the whole endeavour) the Jews could have established legal title to whatever lands the powers that be were moved to grant or sell them without reference to the inhabitants - in the same way absentee landlords cleared the Highlands in the 18th century without thought for their tenant farmers and crofters. Had the Zionist enterprise come to fruition a half century or more later it would never have got past first base because international human rights law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention, would never have allowed it to gain a foothold.
It therefore exists in a legal limbo. Zionism would have succumbed to Arab nationalism had not the Second World War intervened. Israel thus owes its existence to the Holocaust but at the same time is constrained from realizing all its goals by the international system the Second World War inspired. In a real sense the music stopped with the establishment in 1945 of the UN. It was created by the Americans to ensure another Nazi type regime was never again able to threaten the security of the world and one of its central tenets, more specifically emphasized than in previous regimes, was the inadmissibility of acquiring territory by war.
This has been a major impediment to Zionist expansionism. The only way that Israel can legally acquire land is to ‘persuade’ Palestinians’ to sign it away either through making life so unbearable that they pack their bags and leave (but whence?) or settle for whatever the Israelis are prepared to give them. And of course resistance to this oppression and the illegal expropriation of lands (often through ‘legal’ Israeli processes) invites even more repression.
Ironically, although Israel owes its legitimacy to UN recognition and declared on becoming a member to accept ‘unreservedly …the obligations of the UN Charter’ it has the worst record of any state of abiding by UN resolutions. It is the subject of over 100 UN Security Council Resolutions most of which it has chosen to ignore.
I don’t know the significance of any particular US administration’s position on the question of Israel’s total withdrawal. Suffice it to say positions can be reversed as did George W Bush in April 2004 when, to encourage Ariel Sharon to withdraw from Gaza, he for the first time explicitly stated that Israel would not be required to withdraw to its 1967 borders. The furore this change of position generated is testament to the importance the international community attaches to this principle. It will be interesting to see if Obama falls back into line on this one.
alanadale
April 21st, 2009 3:37pmC Gee writes:
Article 22 of the League of Nations, despite dicta to the contrary in the advisory opinion of the ICJ on Israel's wall, does not recognise the national rights of "Palestinians".
Ego contra mundum!
I think you’ll find Article 22 outlines the Mandate’s mission to safeguard the interests of native populations until such time as they were ready and able to govern themselves.
I challenge you to find any reference anywhere to the Jews being explicitly given sole political rights to the whole of Palestine.
YA
April 21st, 2009 10:27pmalanadale: futile. you have no chance to prove to me that my current existence and freedom are illegitimate and I should become your slave, or someone like you, or die.
please note I don't demand from you anything like this. just withdraw these vile demands and leave me alone.
Yehuda
April 21st, 2009 11:35pmHenry Sidgwick has failed to convince a majority of the posters on this site that he is right and they are wrong, so he pretends that they don't exist.
He should appear before the U.N. He would be far more successful there. He'd have a captive audience who would be charmed by his glibness, unlike the "stiff-necked" posters here, who refuse to be gulled by his nonsense dressed up as argument.
alanadale
April 22nd, 2009 12:25amWell YA I have a very simple solution to your problems. Get the Israelis out of Palestinian territories asnd stop persecuting them.
alanadale
April 22nd, 2009 9:26amBy the way YA your bathos is unedifying. No one is trying to prove your 'current existence and freedom are illegitimate' but just get off the Palestinians' patch, stop playing the bully and as Henry Sidgwick has pointed out show a little humility. The Palestinians have made a historically generous offer. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
alanadale
April 22nd, 2009 11:10amI would just like to pick up on this comment by C Gee.
‘As for your discounting of jurists you disagree with because they are Jewish, and Americans because they are settlers themselves, this is bigotry. And where would that argument leave Arabs, who sided with the genocidal Germans?’
I was not discounting jurists simply because they were Jewish and Americans because they were settlers themselves but simply stating the obvious that their cultural heritage – particularly the concept of manifest destiny – coloured their perception of the law. It is common practice that a judge should recuse himself if there is the slightest question of personal interest that might cloud his impartiality.
Don’t you think it odd that Dennis Ross, who cofounded the biggest and most powerful Israeli lobby group in America, Aipac was chosen to manage the Oslo Peace Process? Could you imagine the hullabaloo if someone with the name Mohammed had been appointed to that post? And Ross is now charged with managing America’s relations with Iran!Touch of the fox being left in charge of hte chicken coop!
That said there were American Jewish jurists like Buerghantal who have opposed Israel’s position as there have been gentiles who have supported it. Stephen Schwebel comes to mind although his support of Israel’s claim to the West Bank over Jordan’s did not address the claim of the Palestinians.
Finally don’t get too hot under the collar about ‘Arabs, who sided with the genocidal Germans’. Avraham Stern and Yitzhak Shamir put their signatures to a letter exploring a deal with the Nazis that would have given the Jews Palestine in 1941 when the Nazis appeared to be winning the war. Desperate times demand desperate measures.
Henry Sidgwick
April 22nd, 2009 11:28amYehuda, It is also a standard ploy in rhetoric to "refute" some obviously false assertion your opponenent did not make.
I am well aware that most of the contributors here do not agree with me (and I have no problem with that - it would be a very tedious debate if everyone agreed). However, you promised me posts which "have exposed Henry's devious tactics of misrepresentations, half-truths and deliberate omission of relevent facts, as well as the numerous gaps in his knowledge of the history of the conflict." They have not yet been written, but I look forward to reading them when they appear.
Henry Sidgwick
April 22nd, 2009 11:34amYA I see you continue to contibute here. I would truly like to know what you mean by "Destiny".
Linda Smith
April 22nd, 2009 11:41amHenry Sidgwick: I notice that you referred to Resolution 181. Of course Resolution 181 declared that Jerusalem and its environs should be under international control and that all religious places should be maintained and accessible to all (including Jews of course). Contrary to Resolution 181, the Arabs insist that Jerusalem be the "Palestinian" capital and have destroyed Jewish religious cites. I would be interested to read your views on these points (also those of Alanadale.)
Yehuda
April 22nd, 2009 1:45pmHenry Sidgwick's most recent post proves beyond all doubt that his debating tactics are devious and dishonest: he claims that I "promised" to specify those posts on this site that refute his erroneous contentions.
I did no such thing. I simply pointed out that they are here.
Henry Sidgwick
April 22nd, 2009 3:55pmYehuda, Doh! Impervious as ever to irony, and an unwitting self-parody. Okay, let us spell it out: show me where these posts are which do what you claim. I would be interested to read them. Finally, a plea for a better quality of comment: your blend of righteous indignation and fatuity is wearisome.
Henry Sidgwick
April 22nd, 2009 4:14pmLinda Smith, Are you saying that Israel accepts Resolution 181, it is the Palestinians who continue to insist its terms are unjust?
You can no doubt correct me, but do the Palestinians not demand EAST Jerusalem.
And are you truly protesting at the Palestinians vandalising Jerusalem? If you are, it is a gross impertinence after all the Israelis have done.
YA
April 22nd, 2009 6:53pmHenry Sedgwick and alanadale - I am individualist. My Destiny is my own business. I reserve for myself the right for empathy or caution or indifference towards others. I believe that acceptable judgment on these issues must be rational, well informed, and moral. My Destiny is my freedom to know truth, develop myself and help others. However, I am ready to cooperate with those who share my views in the case of danger or aggression from the side of those who don't. It names self-defense. Please don’t heave so hard, your attempts to water down the cultural integrity of West by introducing barbarism under disguise of “justice” or “diversity” or “culture” are very transparent. Nobody in the West gives damn for those miserable terrorists of Gaza, their masters, proud Iranian monkey-owners, as well as Taleban the Whip of Women, and other blossoms of Islamic paradise. They are just considered as another natural disaster, that’s it. I ensure you, in Israel and everywhere, the self-defense of the West will be your user interface until your give up aggression. That won’t be pleasant and even might be dangerous for your health, but.. that is Destiny you dared to choose.
alanadale
April 22nd, 2009 8:14pmI think YA you've gone a little too heavy on the Koolaid.
YA
April 22nd, 2009 8:55pmalanadale: subject is crap I agree. but it is not my fault. my problem is I can't even hear the news without getting that constant injections of mohammedanism. by writing "you" I don't mean you personally. But look attentively at the side you defend - is it really OK to bribe or bully free press, demand privileges, oppress women and homosexuals, riot on the streets? By the way, how do you qualify 7/7 bombings - was it in your view justifiable operation? natural reaction? martyrdom? any relation to terrorism?
Yehuda
April 22nd, 2009 9:46pmHenry Sidgwick typically rationalises, and shifts his ground when caught out in yet another blatant misrepresention.
Linda Smith
April 23rd, 2009 2:45amHenry Sidgwick: You say the Arabs demand East Jerusalem. The only time that the eastern part of Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, and that was because Jordan occupied the area and forcibly expelled all the Jews.
At the time of partition, a thriving Jewish community was living in the eastern part of Jerusalem, an area that included the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This area of the city also contains many sites of importance to the Jewish religion, including the City of David, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
In one of your earlier posts, you asserted "..the legal boundaries of Israel are still as delineated in Resolution 181 in 1947." You are clearly a stickler for "legality" as you're always blathering on about it.
The Arab demand for East Jerusalem is inconsistent with Resolution 181 which states that Jerusalem and its environs must be under international control.
Resolution 181 says that religious sites must be maintained and access granted, not just in Jerusalem. The Arabs barred Jews from religious sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere under Arab control. The Arabs destroyed Jewish religious sites, notably Joseph's tomb.
Is it only Jews who you require must act in accordance with international law? Does your insistence on "legality" extend to Arabs? Do you ever condemn Arabs for their actions? Or do you always excuse Arabs and condemn Jews as I observe in your posts here?
C. Gee
April 23rd, 2009 6:26amAlanadale,
You respond to my accusation of bigotry with more of the same! Dennis Ross (a Jew) is a fox in charge of the hen-house! That he was chosen is "odd" you say, hinting no doubt at a Jewish lobby conspiracy.
There is no analogy to be made to a disinterested judge in a court of law. Name a single human being whose 'cultural heritage' would make him unbiased in issues relating to religion, nationality, or politics.
And it is no protection from my charge of bigotry to name Jews with whom you agree. No doubt some of your best friends are Jews. Some of Hamas' best friends are Jews.
Yes, there were even Jews intimidated into working with the Nazis - but do not insinuate that Shamir and Stern were among them. The idea that Zionists made deals with the Nazis has been thoroughly discredited. It is disgraceful to air that calumny here.
And what, precisely, is the "historically generous" offer made by Palestinians? And which Palestinians are they?
Yehuda
April 23rd, 2009 10:41amThe only resolution of any authoritative international arbiter relating to the reconstitution of the Jewish State is the 1922 League of Nations Council resolution, which recognised and endorsed the Jewish claim to a state in The Land of Israel, which included at least the entire territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, including Jerusalem.
This resolution guaranteed Arabs civil rights within the putative state, where Jews would constitute the majority of the population, hence, "Jewish state."
The leading Arab leader of the time, the Emir Faisal, welcomed this prospect until he was betrayed by Britain.
All the subsequent manoeuvrings which have consistently sought to whittle down legally recognised Jewish rights in The Land of Israel have not been the products of the pursuit of justice or equity; they have been the products of cynical political expediency and appeasement of the Arab / Muslim lobby, which controls much of the world's oil.
The 1947 UN General Assembly Resolution was a non-binding recommendation only, so it did not supersede the League of Nations' Council determination of 1922. The Jews accepted it despite the injustice it did to them, but the Arab/Muslim world rejected it.
In 1967, in a war of self-defence, on the eve of which the entire Arab world gleefully proclaimed the imminent demise of Israel, Israel reconquered those parts of its land which Arab armies had illegally conquered and occupied for the previous 19 years.
alanadale
April 23rd, 2009 11:12amC Gee
You seem to be accusing me of bigotry because I have a different point of view.
I think someone being the son of a holocaust victim dealing with the rights and wrongs of Israel’s creation as a state and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians does call for a certain reticence in giving legal opinions, don’t you?
You haven’t addressed my point about the hullabaloo that would have attended an overt supporter of the Palestinians being appointed to run the Oslo peace process.
In this regard think back a few weeks to the furore created over the proposed appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the influential US National Intelligence Council whose main sin seems to have been that he advocated a more balanced position vis a vis Israel. Nor has it been denied that he was the victim of a smear campaign orchestrated by a former Aipac official Steve Rosen who is currently under indictment for spying for Israel.
Nor is it insignificant that an article in the New York Times earlier this week reports wiretaps ordered by the Bush administration reveal House Intelligence Committee member Jane Harman agreed to seek lenient treatment for Rosen and a codefendant in return for help in persuading other party leaders to support her election to head this important committee.
The article continues: ‘In return, the caller promised her [Harman] that a wealthy California donor — the media mogul Haim Saban — would threaten to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was expected to become House speaker after the 2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence post.’
As regards the Shamir Stern initiative I haven’t seen an authentic rebuttal, so would welcome one.
Finally regarding Palestinians’ ‘historically generous’ offer, I refer you to Henry Sidgwick’s excellent post on April 20th, 2009 6:25pm. The only boundaries of Israel recognized in law are those defined in Resolution 181. The Palestinians have offered to give up the lands Israel conquered in its War of Independence, ie reducing their share of the cake from just under half of Mandated Palestine to 22%. That sounds like an extraordinary generous deal.
And as to your query 'Which Palestinians are they?' reflect on the significant number of 'goyem' Israelis who have arrived in the past two decades under the aegis of being related to dubiously Jewish immigrants from Russia?
alanadale
April 23rd, 2009 11:20amYehuda writes:
'The only resolution of any authoritative international arbiter relating to the reconstitution of the Jewish State is the 1922 League of Nations Council resolution, which recognised and endorsed the Jewish claim to a state in The Land of Israel, which included at least the entire territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, including Jerusalem.'
This is just plain wrong. Nowhere does ‘the 1922 League of Nations Council [recognise and endorse] the Jewish claim to a state in The Land of Israel, which included at least the entire territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, including Jerusalem.’
Why do you keep insisting that it does? You will be trying to persuade us next the moon is made of cheese.
Yehuda
April 23rd, 2009 11:53amalandale is either genuinely ignorant of the content and intent of The League of Nations Council determination of 1922, or else is feigning ignorance.
Interested readers can read the document itself and decide for themselves.
alanadale
April 23rd, 2009 12:03pmYA. It might surprise you to learn that I am also concerned about Islamic extremism, just as I am concerned about religious fundamentalism of any kind and that applies equally to Jewish and Christian fundamentalism. The fundamentalists seem to have hijacked the debate and that is very dangerous. The only way to recover the initiative is to impose the rule of law impartially. A deal has been formulated by the international community in Resolution 242 which the Arab League and every other non Israeli party to the conflict have either explicitly or implicitly endorsed. Israel of course has its own idiosyncratic definition of Resolution 242 which is the stumbling block.
It may or may not be hardwired into your DNA (I presume you are Jewish) that Israel is entitled to the whole of Biblical Palestine but there are unfortunately people who have lived there for many generations who think otherwise. Supporters of Eretz Israel can’t in the long or even the medium term win so it seems to me dumb that Israel is not actively seeking a settlement while it is ahead.
I appreciate that for Israel to retreat now to its 1967 borders would ignite a civil war, which is why it will have to be brought down gently, as was South Africa, by its Western friends making it clear that if it wants to remain a member of the Western club it will have to abide by international law. Sporting boycotts did a lot to concentrate White South Africans’ minds, cultural and academic ones would have the same effect in Israel as would the withdrawal of US largesse.
alanadale
April 23rd, 2009 12:48pmYehuda.
Put your money where your mouth is and cite from the League of Natons mandate where it explicitly cedes the whole of Palestine to the Jews.
Henry Sidgwick
April 23rd, 2009 1:10pmYehuda, I will forgo comment on your shrill self-righteousness. I will not mock your po-faced self-parody. I will abjure all irony (wasted) and sarcasm (unworthy). I will simply ask, where are these blessed posts? I still look forward (although with increasing weariness) to reading them.
Henry Sidgwick
April 23rd, 2009 3:03pmLindsa Smith, I sense the slur of anti-Semitism coming my way (again).
If you read previous posts with some attention you will find criticism of Arab states, of the Palestinian leaders, and of Palestinian terrorism. I struggle to recall any comparable criticism of Israel from its many advocates here.
One of the Arab states I have criticised is Jordan, for its annexation of the West Bank. As I expect you know, Israel and Jordan colluded and, despite skirmishing to test each other out, negotiated and agreed an armistice which carved up the remains of Palestine between them. Israel reluctantly allowed Jordan East Jerusalem. I suspect Ben Gurion intended to do as he had with the UN partition plan: agree to it fully intending to adjust the "facts on the ground" later.
If you condemn Jordan, as I do, for its annexation, you must surely condemn Israel also. Do you?
I am surprised you raise the question of religious sites.
After 1948,Israel confiscated all the endowments belonging to the Waqf, with all the properties incorporated in them, and transferred them to the Custodian, then to the state, then sold them to Jewish public bodies and private citizens.
Most of the mosques were destroyed. Masjad al-Khayriyya is now under the city of Givatayim. The mosque in Sarafand near Haifa has provided stone for building work after being bulldozed. The mosques of Majdal and Qisarya were turned into restaurants. The Beersheba mosque was turned into a shop. The Ayn Hawd mosque was turned into a bar. That in Zib is now part of a holiday resort. The remains of the Ayn al-Zaytun mosque is a milk farm.
Mosques and churches that have survived are often rendered inaccessible to would-be worshippers. To worship at the mosque or the church of Suhmata worshippers would have to risk arrest for trespass on Israeli farmland. Similarly with Balad al-Shaykh mosque. The mosque of Khalsa is now located in the new town of Qiryat Shemona. The residents of Kerem Maharal refuse access to the mosque of what used to be Ijzim.
In the last 15-20 years, Nabi Rubin mosque was blown up; Wadi Hawarith mosque was ruined, just after its restoration by Muslim volunteers; The Maqam of Shakh Shehade was burned down: the Araba'in mosque was burned down; the al-Umari and al-Bahr mosques survived though badly damaged; the mosque of Hasan Beik is regularly stoned and has had the head of a pig with the name of the Prophet on it hurled into its yard; the al-Salam mosque was bulldozed, six months after it had been rebuilt;and the Maqam of Shaykh Sam'an was demolished.
Other mosques have been turned into Jewish places of worship, for example, the mosques of Wadi Unayn and Yazur, the mosque in the maqam of Samakiyya, and in Kfar Inan and Daliyya, and Abassiyya (later abandoned and daubed with the words "Kill the Arabs"). The most recent targets are the mosques in "unrecognized" villages, which are subject to arbitrary demolition.
When Israel conquered East Jerusalem, one of its first acts was to demolish the Arab quarter near Haram al-Sharif. I expect you know the details of Israel's town planning in Jerusalem and its environs since 1967, so I won't list the main acts of expropriation and their intended effect.
I am not sure whether you are genuine in saying that the Palestinians should adhere to Resolution 181. I suspect they would accept Jerusalem as an international enclave as a reasonable compromise. I suspect they would accept the whole of 181, grotesquely unjust though it is. Are you saying that Israel will also accept 181 (its only legal title to Palestinian land) if the Palestinians accept it?
You say, "You are clearly a stickler for "legality" as you're always blathering on about it." That is more revealing of your attitudes than you perhaps intended.
I think the point about the law is that no-one is above it.
Yehuda
April 24th, 2009 12:04amGenuine truth-seekers, unlike alandale and Henry Sidgwick, will consult the source document issued on 24 July 1922 by The Council of The League of Nations, which acknowledged the Jewish People's right to reconstitute their state in The Land of Israel, known also as "Palestine."
This document is available, e.g., in the collection of documents titled THE ISRAEL-ARAB READER, edited by Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin. My edition is Pelican, 1984.
The attempt by propagandists to deny the above truths is almost on a par with Holocaust denial.
In fact many of the deniers of the one also deny the other.
Genuine truth-seekers will also read there, in Article 25 of this legal determination that "Palestine" extends also east of the Jordan River.
Britain subsequently used its Great Power leverage to lever Jewish rights east of the Jordan out of the original determination.
alanadale
April 24th, 2009 8:44amYehuda. That's not good enough. I want actual quotes from identified source documents rather than someone's precis.
Henry Sidgwick
April 24th, 2009 9:15amYehuda,To dispute your interpretation of a legal document is "almost on a par eith Holocaust denial"? Such grotesque bathos shows a sad lack of judgement,
The preamble to the document you refer to confers Mandatory powers to Great Britain for "...the administration of the territory of Palestine...within such boundaries as may be fixed by them."
Article 6: "The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced..."
Article 7: The Administration will be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up permanent residence in Palestine."
Article 25: "In the territories lying between the Jordan andthe eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandate shall be entitled...to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories he may consider suitable to those conditions."
phil
April 24th, 2009 3:48pmYehuda why is such an intelligent man engaging with these two muck stirrers ?You will persuade them of nothing ,they do not want information ,just an argument.The sheriff of sherwood forest is in pain with an arrow stuck in his toches and is striking out in anger and the history man is stroking his ego by seeing his words in print ,save yourself for worthy posters
Linda Smith
April 25th, 2009 12:05amHenry Sidgwick: For you to "suspect" the Palestinian Arabs "would accept the whole of 181" is disingenuous. As you know perfectly well, the Palestinian Jews accepted 181. The Arabs rejected 181 and declared war on the Jews the day after it was published.
The Arabs are the authors of their own misfortunes.
Henry Sidgwick
April 25th, 2009 10:36amLinda Smith, As you know perfectly well the Yishuv had no intention of keeping within the boundaries demarcated in Resolution 181. Your simplification of history is disingenuous.
It was natural, if foolish, for the Palestinians, and the neighbouring Arab states, to refuse to participate in the Partition. Had they understood their military and diplomatic weakness, and listened to the declarations of Ben Gurion et al. about Israeli aggrandisement, they would perhaps have humbly accepted less than half of their land.
As I have said, 181 remains the legal foundation of Israel's claim to land in Palestine. Are you saying that Israel accepts 181?
I said I condemn Jordan's annexation. I asked if you condemn Israel's.
I note your sudden silence on religious vandalism.
I would like to know your views on legality.
Henry Sidgwick
April 25th, 2009 10:39amYehuda, I am sure you are silent not because you have scurried away from genuine debate, but because you have realised you had better read the Mandate before you say anything else.
Yehuda
April 25th, 2009 1:36pmPhil, I agree with your perception of the sheriff and his sidekick. The latter can't even be bothered to consult a readily available document relating to a subject on which he has pretensions to knowledge, but about which he makes asinine comments; the former does not realise that intelligent posters will go to the source document and not be content with his spoon feeding of selective, truncated quotes.
Don't you think, however, that other posters might welcome exposure to rebuttals(as in your and my posts, for instance) of spurious arguments which are often asserted by our adversaries?
Also, some posters, who are not as well-informed about the subject as they would like to be, might welcome references to useful resources like the one that I cited.
alanadale
April 25th, 2009 5:04pmLinda Smith writes: The Arabs are the authors of their own misfortunes for not accepting Resolution 181.Never mind that it was a monstrously inequitable deal as has been exhaustively explained. Never mind that Israel’s claim that the League of Nations Mandate gifted the whole of Palestine to the Jews has been exposed to be a sham and even if it had been so gifted the ‘legality’ of laws promulgated by four powers representing a fraction of the world’s population would have been challenged and thrown out under human rights law developed since World War II.
All it boils down to is a sense of entitlement that has allowed a certain group of people to march into another’s space and when challenged claim it is being attacked.
It has only been able to impose this perverse view of the conflict through milking the West’s guilt for the Holocaust and because the Zionist lobby has been so successful in leading the world’s sole superpower by the nose in its dealings with the Middle East.
But don’t necessarily count on this state of affairs lasting indefinitely. Netanyahu is now engaged in a truly existential struggle to persuade the US and the rest of the world that Iran has to be dealt with before peace with the Palestinians. Obama is advocating movement on a two state solution as a way to ease tensions with Iran. If Obama sticks to his guns and Israel attacks Iran unilaterally which I am reliably informed it is prepared to do and damn the consequences it risks rupturing its relationship with the US big time as the consequences of such an attack would be incalculable for America’s economic and geopolitical interests.
Perhaps then Linda one might reasonably conclude that Israel was the author of its own misfortune for not accepting Resolution 242.
Henry Sidgwick
April 25th, 2009 8:31pmYehuda, I suppose it is indeed prudent for you to decline proper debate, and to retreat to mutual nit-picking with your friend.
However, if the lack of intellectual stimulus begins to get too much, can I recommend some reading. Try "The Light That Failed: European International History 1919-1933" by Zara Steiner (one of the most distinguished historians of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, with no axe to grind). It may begin to give you a more realistic understanding of the Great Power diplomacy which provides the context for Balfour's letter and the Palestine Mandate.
Best wishes,
Henry.
Linda Smith
April 26th, 2009 2:05amHenry Sidgwick:
Your assertion "181 remains the legal foundation of Israel's claim to land in Palestine" is false. The Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate and San Remo Resolution predate it - specifying the setting up of a Jewish National homeland in Palestine and facilitation of Jewish immigration.
The British abrogated their responsibility by limiting Jewish immigration and admitting large numbers of Arab immigrants although Arab immigration is not mentioned. The British exacerbated the problems that arose by allowing in large numbers of Arab immigrants to territory designated as a Jewish National Homeland. The Peel Commission Report 1937 confirms that the Jews were responsible for the economic success from which the Arabs profited (and which encouraged large numbers of Arabs to immigrate). The Report also confirms that the Jews and Arabs were incompatible and the only solution was partition.
You posted "Are you saying that Israel accepts 181?" The Jews accepted 181 in 1947 when it was published.
If the Arab Palestinians had accepted 181, they would have had their own State in 1948 alongside Israel. Instead, the Arabs chose to reject 181 and five Arab countries declared war on the Jews with the expectation of slaughtering them and seizing all the territory allocated to the Jewish State. The Jews have been conducting a war of defence since 1947. The Arab intention has always been to destroy Israel. Israel acquired territory in battle, forced on them by Arab aggression, so I see no reason to condemn Israel for it. The victor dictates peace terms, not the loser. I haven't noticed the UK offering to give the Falklands to Argentina. The UK claims the Falklands as sovereign territory despite the fact that it's on the other side of the world bang nextdoor to Argentina. Funny that Israel is accused of being "imperialist".
Re the Waqf. The Waqf has systematically attempted to destroy all visible remains of Jewish history on the Temple Mount. Israel granted control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf - which they were under no obligation to do after the 1967 war. The Waqf violated agreements and abused their authority by closing the Mount to non-Muslim visitors and by destroying archaeological evidence of Jewish antiquity. Doubtless the Israelis can dredge up demolition lists to match yours.
In response to your request for my view on "legality": laws are based on the underpinning beliefs of the lawmakers. Frequently, the law is an ass - and so are the judges. Most things in human life boil down to power. The people who have the power make the laws. Sometimes the law is very cruel; I'm glad I'm not living in the Swat Valley.
By the way, do you know why Jews are barred from being citizens of Jordan. I can't find any evidence that that law has been repealed. Funny that Israel is accused of being "racist".
Linda Smith
April 26th, 2009 2:16amAlanadale posted: "All it boils down to is a sense of entitlement that has allowed a certain group of people to march into another’s space and when challenged claim it is being attacked."
They WERE being attacked.
PS don't give up the day job
C. Gee
April 26th, 2009 9:18amLinda Smith,
I feel a little bit sad that you disabused Henry Sidgwick of his notions about 181. (Alanadale is equally confused about who accepted and who rejected 242.) I was relishing the idea of the Sidgwick Initiative: informing Hamas that the borders of 181 are irrevocably fixed and only legal borders of Israel!
As for his bill of particulars about the destruction of mosques, not only was there desecration and destruction of Jewish holy sites, but Christian ones too. But granting that seven thousand wrongs do not make a right, I do not see why Henry is so outraged. He admits that some mosques were destroyed in the 1948 war. The destruction of some hundreds of abandoned and dilapidated mosques (and villages) is hardly a crime against humanity. The refugee Arabs were not going to return, nor did Israel want them to. (The Jews were not going to return to Arab countries either). Much of the world's "village landscape" has disappeared, as have many archeologically and architecturally important sites. Bulldozers and rebuilding have destroyed much of the classical and ancient past throughout the world. No doubt hundreds of parking lots cover important fragments of bygone civilisations. It is thanks to Jews and Jewish records that we know about the destruction of such sites in Israel and the territories. Many sites were preserved. Palestinians like to believe that the demolition of mosques was a mission to eradicate a culture - Islamicide, I suppose. As many Arabs remained in Israel and as their numbers have increased, as has the number of their mosques, including the recent mosques built on Haram al-Sharif (which has been under Waqf control before and after 1967), I do not think Israel succeeded, even if that was her intention. Some of the damaged mosques Sidgwick lists are standing in Arab villages. Presumably they could repair them. As for use of mosques as restaurants, shops, etc. So what? Churches are used as wallpaper warehouses, among many other things. Recycling is good. (By the way, the Jordanians built latrines out of Jewish gravestones).
In recent times Hamas has used mosques to shoot from, to hold hostage human shields , and to store weapons. We also know that their Imams like to preach death to Israel from them. Henry should not be more sentimental about their sanctity than the Palestinians themselves.
Be prepared. Henry Sidgwick likes to "bate"-and-switch. Having bated you with one anti-Israel slander, he will switch to another, at length, dumping smelly piles of Khalidi, or Electronic Intifada, or similar.
Henry Sidgwick
April 26th, 2009 9:40amC. Gee, I am interested to note that you run from serious objections to what you assert and then reappear to makes comments which, deliberately or not, entirely miss the point.
I have given a detailed account of the basis for 181 in the Mandate.
Linda Smith claimed righteous victimhood for the Israelis in the matter of religious sites. She seemed to imply that Israel's grievance was unique. I merely pointed out that the Palestinians have a similar grievance.
Your long tirade about demolition, urban development etc. misses the crucial distinction between what one does with one's own property and what one does with someone else's.
Henry Sidgwick
April 26th, 2009 10:01amLinda Smith, I have given a detailed account of the legal basis for Resolution 181 in Great Britain's mandate in an earlier post. I suggest you read it.
The British did not abrogate their responsibilities. I suggest you read all the articles of the Mandate.
There was no particular part of Palestine designated for a Jewish homeland until the Partition.
You still have not answered the question. The Yishuv accepted 181 while fully intending to disregard it. Does Israel still stand by the Yishuv's formal acceptance of 181?
You say the the Palestinians would have a state if they had accepted 181. Not if Ben Gurion and the IDF had anything to do with it. They were quite clear about the extent of territory they needed for a viable state. However, at least Ben Gurion was more magnanimous than you in the sense that he understood the Palestinians' plight. He is on record as saying that, if he were a Palestinian, he would fight to the death against those who had taken his land. He would certainly not have accepted 181 without a fight. His acceptance of 181 was premissed on the assumption that the Palestinians would not accept. This is all a matter of the historical record. I suggest you extend your reading beyond the Zionist founding myth to the historical record, where the Zionists have left sufficient clues.
Your account of the war of 1948 is inaccurate. I believe you followed an earlier debate on who was aggressor.
By 1948 it was a long-standing principal that territory cannot be acquired by military conquest.
You miss the point of my recital of Israeli demolitions. You appeared to be claiming a unique grievance, yet Israel is at least as guilty of religious vandalism. (I doubt very much that Israel could produce a similar list.)
I have made the point elsewhere that the purpose of international law is to begin the slow process of civilizing international relations, so that the arbitrary rule of the powerful can be curtailed. The alternative for most of the world's population is a life that remains nasty, brutish and short. I suspect that you are comfortable with the notion that the powerful should continue to have free rein because you are protecetd (as I am) by one of the states currently powerful enough to dictate terms.
As you know, I have not defended Jordan. Nor have I joined the debate on whether Israel is a racist state.
phil
April 26th, 2009 11:35amYehuda our friend Adam B of course says that to ignore them gives them free licence to write nonsense ,but I think that to engage with them ensures more of the same.My feeling has always been that they like to see their "learned" words in print and that they get some strange kick from it -perhaps like dangling from a rope with an orange in their mouths or in the sherrifs case an arrow in the toches -who knows? personally I like the company of ladies ! .))
Linda Smith
April 26th, 2009 12:50pmHenry Sidgwick: re 181
'Cambridge Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice, a renowned expert on international law and editor of one of the 'bibles' of international law, Oppenheim's International Law, clarified that from a legal standpoint, the 1947 UN Partition Resolution had no legislative character to vest territorial rights in either Jews or Arabs....."..the coming into existence of Israel does not depend legally upon the Resolution. The right of a State to exist flows from its factual existence..." ....Professor Stone, a distinguished authority on the Law of Nations, added that Israel's '"legitimacy" or the "legal foundation" for its birth does not reside with the United Nations' Partition Plan, which as a consequence of Arab actions became a dead issue. Professor Stone concluded:
"...The State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan, but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable control".
......The UN Palestine Commission's February 16, 1948 report (A/AC.21/9) to the Security Council noted that Arab-led hostilities were an effort
"to prevent the implementation of the (General) Assembly's plan of partition, and to thwart its objectives by threats and acts of violence, including armed incursions into Palestinian territory".'
Note that contrary to Henry Sidgwick's assertion, the UN was in no doubt that the Arabs were the aggressors.
http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/10/Resolution-181.pdf
Sorry, cannot respond to your other lies/points right now as I'm off out dancing.
alanadale
April 26th, 2009 10:14pmLinda Smith writes, apparently with a straight face: ‘If the Arab Palestinians had accepted 181, they would have had their own State in 1948 alongside Israel.’ If she believes that she is either mightily disingenuous or living in cloud cuckoo land. There is no way the Zionists would have accepted half of Palestine; if so why are they now balking at settling for 78%?
Linda Smith writes.’ They [the Israelis] WERE being attacked.’ Well the work of the ‘New Historians’ has put a slightly more nuanced interpretation on this assertion.
Suffice it to say that she seems to be asserting the Jews were quietly minding their own business when those dastardly Arabs attacked them for no reason. And the beguiling logic then flows from this that because ‘They attacked first’, at once placing the Zionists in the role of victims, it absolves the Zionists from any obligation to desist from grabbing what they can by whatever means.
It is self evident that if you allow heavy immigration there will be social tensions. [I note Linda’s self serving analysis of the immigration problem, that Jewish success attracted unwanted Arab immigration. The fact is that the Jewish population at the time of the Balfour Declaration was less than 8%; by 1947 it had risen to over 32%] The Arabs reacted violently when they felt the British were favouring the Jews; the Jews vice versa when they felt the British were favouring the Arabs. Both engaged in terrorism; the difference being that the Jewish terrorism was more deadly and more directed. So cut this nauseating cant.
The Jews accepted the Partition Plan as a tactical setback. It was grossly inequitable giving them half the territory though they made up a third of the population. The Plan was unworkable because the Jews, who were mainly located in the urban areas, were given control of a disproportionate number of Arab villages that had no wish to be run by an alien culture imposed on them by Western imperial powers that had their own agenda to be rid of their own ‘Jewish’ problem. This, and the natural fear that the Jews were going to overrun them, was the real reason for the Arab ‘attacks’.
And then Linda Smith gives us another glimpse through the looking glass with the Jews’ legal entitlement to the whole of Palestine based on the monstrous conceit that the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Resolution and the League of Nations Mandate gifted the whole of Mandatory Palestine to them as their national home. It does of course do no such thing and neither has Linda nor anyone else been able to produce any citations from these documents that explicitly say that it does. How on earth can you extrapolate from the Balfour Declaration’s ‘His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ that it had earmarked (had it even been in its gift) the whole of Palestine to be a Jewish state? This is not the interpretation the international community has put on the Declaration and the Mandate in countless UN resolutions. Nor is it the view of the World Court which ruled UNANIMOUSLY that Israel’s Wall was illegal. It takes a lot of chutzpah to dismiss as misguided the considered opinion of the world’s highest legal authority.
It appears, though, Linda and I can agree on something. As she observes; ‘the people who have the power make the laws’. The Zionists have made the law because they have had overwhelming control of the agenda. However, Israel is fast losing control, partly because of its own actions – the occupation and the disproportionate and inhumane use of force in Gaza and the West Bank to maintain it - partly because Pax Americana is unravelling and partly because Israel’s hold over US policy is for the first time being challenged. It is why Israel is raising the ante with Iran. It can not afford for Iran to gain nuclear proficiency and for the heavens not to fall in. What then would all the fuss have been about in the first place? But Iran is not 1981 Iraq, the Iranian leadership is not Saddam’s monolithic Baathist dictatorship and destroying Iran’s nuclear capability will not be like taking out the Osiris reactor near Baghdad. Finally Israel can not rely on Uncle Sam to clear up the God awful mess that might result from such an adventure going wrong. This mess will be dumped on Israel’s doorstep.
stanley Jerusalem
April 27th, 2009 5:22amalanadale
April 26th, 2009 10:14pm
"Suffice it to say that she seems to be asserting the Jews were quietly minding their own business when those dastardly Arabs attacked them for no reason."[1948]
Long,long,long reasoned argument prefaced by this little jewel. Need one say more about alternate universes? And SO much to say too. Go back to the Sheriff of Nottingham Alan.
Henry Sidgwick
April 27th, 2009 9:26amLinda Smith, To quote mythsand facts as an authority or arbiter in any dispute about Israel/Palestine is not much better than simply quoting the Israeli government.
You cite legal opinions. I am not sure what weight you give these opinions. Are they to be given serious consideration because they support your assertions? Or are they just another example of why law has no place in international disputes, where the mighty dictate what is to happen?
I have read Lauterpacht's pamphlet and an article summarising Stone's opinion.
A polite reviewer said of one that a first class legal mind was clearly at work, but at work on a brief for the Israeli government. A less polite reviewer said of one that he is betraying a life of scholarship to peddle a political position.
I now understand why you harp on Jordan, although it is irrelevant, and insist that Israel's wars were all in self-defence, in defiance of the historical record.
The legal opinions you quote depend to a startling extent on the acceptance of the official Zionist version of history. This version of history is one of the points at issue. So in effect they beg the question (assume what has to be proved).
They also ignore much of international law developed in the last hundred years, and rely entirely on the old understanding of international law as exclusively law between nations. This was the standard legal gambit of the Israeli government before it realized just how easy it would be to suborn and corrupt the PLO and Yasser Arafat.
As long as the Palestinians could be treated simply as a large number of stateless people, they could be moved around and relocated among the states of the Middle East. As long as this was accepted, Israel was then willing to negotiate with other states about their fate, however indirect and tenuous their interest in the Palestinians.
The legal opinions you cite translate this finessing of the Palestinians into grandly legal terms, with plenty of Latin tags. International law applies only to nations, not to groups who are not nations. The Palestinians therefore have no status. Legally they do not exist. Israel, by contrast, has the same status and sovereign prerogatives as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt etc.
The next step is to use the illegality of Jordan's annexation of the West Bank, and the alleged nature of Israel's wars, to argue that Israel was perfectly entitled to take and keep the Occupied Territories. This opinion has found favour only among Israel's most fervent supporters. It has found no favour among the community of international jurists, and has been dismissed by the ICJ.
Just to be clear, it relies on an interpretation of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which is not simply tendentious, but wrong; and on an interpretation of history that ignores the historical record in favour of the Israeli official founding myth.
If I could just finish with a brief comment on your methods. It is demeaning to blurt out accusations of lying. I would have thought a modicum of self-respect would restrain you from abusiveness. Similarly, it does not further the debate simply to repeat the official Israeli line. A modicum of intellectual rigour would surely prompt you to demand more of yourself.
I have had experience of debating you before, and I have followed your debates with others. So I will let you have the last word now.
I hope your dancing was enjoyable.
Best wishes,
Henry.
stanley Jerusalem
April 27th, 2009 10:57amAnd isn't it odd that in today's news only the BBC has managed to avoid mentioning that a cruise liner attacked by armed Somali pirates was successfully defended by a crew of armed Israeli security men. Just the BBC. No-one else. Gosh, they're so impartial!
stanley Jerusalem
April 27th, 2009 11:07amHenry Sidgwick
April 27th, 2009 9:26am
"So I will let you have the last word now.I hope your dancing was enjoyable.
Best wishes,
Henry."
No you didn't!
While you are at it Heinrich, kindly explain Black September, though no doubt that's Israel's fault too.It's wonderful how you cite international law when it suits you and excuse its inapplicability when it suits you too. It's called having your cake and eating it. Anyone who can describe the period between Nov.1947 and the cease-fire of 1949 as a defensive action by the armies of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia must be an admirer of Lewis Carrol.We have met a genuine 24-Carat Frumious Bandersnatch, folks!
alanadale
April 27th, 2009 11:56amStanleyJerusalem writes: And isn't it odd that in today's news only the BBC has managed to avoid mentioning that a cruise liner attacked by armed Somali pirates was successfully defended by a crew of armed Israeli security men. Just the BBC. No-one else. Gosh, they're so impartial!
Bully for you StanleyJerusalem. Precisely what are you trying to say, that because of Israel’s public spiritedness in upholding the Law of the Seas we should somehow overlook its grubby little domestic pogrom in Gaza and the West Bank?
I copy a letter I have just received from my MEP.
‘Thank you very much for writing to me about Palestine and Israeli actions. I very much agree with you. Over recent months the news has been daily more horrific, as for example with the evidence of the 110 people forced into a house that was then shelled and 30 killed.
‘You may perhaps not know I am a member of the European Parliament’s Palestine Delegation. I was there a few months ago and saw for myself the cruelty of the wall and the impact of the financial and trade freeze on that country.
‘I was also in Gaza the day Israel previously resumed its indiscriminate bombardment there and I had earlier visited the main hospital with the WHO representative and seen the appalling wounds of men, women and children, including the evidence that experimental weapons had been used against them. The use of white phosphorous was also exposed by The Times. The actions of the Israeli government were and are wholly disproportionate, as they were when they conducted brutal assaults on civilian targets in Lebanon and in the whole ethos of the wall and the ghettoisation policy throughout Palestine. Tragically the same has now happened again and the innocents, including children lie dead and wounded.
‘I voted recently in the Parliament to take the proposal to enhance relations with Israel off the agenda and we were successful in this, although the Council of Ministers, including the British Government, tried to ignore this. You may want to write to them through your local MP. We need to be alert to the possibility that further attempts will be made to bring a new agreement forward - particularly in the coming months of the newly elected Parliament.’
May invite all readers on this blog to do so?
alanadale
April 27th, 2009 12:16pmStanley Jerusalem writes: ‘While you are at it Heinrich, kindly explain Black September, though no doubt that's Israel's fault too.’ What on earth has that got to do with the legality (or illegality) of Israel occupying Palestinian territory? And who said it was Israel’s ‘fault’? except that you conveniently break the link between cause and effect which might explain Black September without in any way condoning it.
As to what happened in ‘the period between Nov.1947 and the cease-fire of 1949’ may I suggest you read the (unjustly) sainted Benny Morris and the (unjustly) reviled Ilan Pappe. As Henry Sidgwick has pointed out until relatively recently we have only had Israel’s narrative of what happened in this crucial period. Read the New Historians and you quickly realize it wasn’t quite as black and white as it was painted in the Exodus.
phil
April 27th, 2009 12:57pmalanadale who is your mep,perhaps I could write to him too
stanley Jerusalem
April 27th, 2009 12:58pmalanadale
April 27th, 2009 11:56am
‘You may perhaps not know I am a member of the European Parliament’s Palestine Delegation. I was there a few months ago and saw for myself the cruelty of the wall'
What's his constituency, Auschwitz? The cruel wall has put an almost complete stop to brave,noble and innocent suicide bombers blowing up guilty schoolchildren and men and women going to work on buses. Any other observations from from your MEP, or maybe didn't you realise he/she was your MEP [with special responsibility for representing the European constituency of Gaza - which makes you a Gazan ]?
What an argument for closing down the lot of them. They are as much use as a Catholic Priest at a Brit Milah or pork scratchings at a Bar Mitzva.
phil
April 27th, 2009 1:07pmalanadale
April 26th, 2009 10:14pm you surely meant to finish that post with "oh please oh please !!!!"Do you honestly believe we do not know what your agenda is -your hatred is bulging out of my computer and you will surely do yourself a mischief-Israel will live in spite of you and your henchmen-we have survived greater haters than those hunched over laptops in darkened rooms ,so forgive me if I smile whilst picturing you with an arrow up your toches which you cannot reach .))
stanley Jerusalem
April 27th, 2009 1:10pmalanadale
April 27th, 2009 12:16pm
"Stanley Jerusalem writes: ‘While you are at it Heinrich, kindly explain Black September, though no doubt that's Israel's fault too.’ What on earth has that got to do with the legality (or illegality) of Israel occupying Palestinian territory? And who said it was Israel’s ‘fault’? except that you conveniently break the link between cause and effect which might explain Black September without in any way condoning it."
Firstly it's not Palestinian, if it were anyone's other than Israel's it would have been Jordanian - and let's not forget that they didn't want anything to do with Palestinians, especially considering that Black September was the name given by the Palestinians to the slaughter of about 30,000 of those nice Palestinians who tried to overthrow King Hussein's regime and were soundly beaten and driven out.
As for the defence of the innocent, and as yet uninvented Palestinians, by the combined forces of 5 Arab nations to express their opposition to the UN's having created the State of Israel and given it legal standing - some defence!
Still with us then, boys?
General Neguib, Glubb Pasha King Feisal [later murdered by saddam Hussein]- any offers? What were they defending - the partition settlement they refused perhaps. It takes quite a feat of the imagination to describe the Israeli War of Independence as a defensive action on the Arab part.
stanley Jerusalem
April 27th, 2009 1:15pmphil
April 27th, 2009 1:07pm
"so forgive me if I smile whilst picturing you with an arrow up your toches which you cannot reach .))"
Of course he can reach it phil. He talks out of it every time he opens his...
stanley Jerusalem
April 27th, 2009 1:18pmalanadale
April 27th, 2009 12:16pm
"Read the New Historians and you quickly realize it wasn’t quite as black and white as it was painted in the Exodus."
Tell that to Moses and to Aaron.
alanadale
April 27th, 2009 2:54pmStanley Jerusalem inhabits an anachronistic Edwardian world (when he is not communing with Moses and Aron) which would be harmless were it not that he tries to impose his weltanschauung on the rest of us which makes him a menace to society and a candidate for the men in white coats.
Henry Sidgwick’s post of April 27th, 2009 9:26am dealt comprehensively with Israel’s claim to the land vis a vis the Jordanians, based as it is ‘entirely on the old understanding of international law as exclusively law between nations’ and totally ignoring the development in the last half century of human rights law.
Palestine exists because the Palestinians see themselves as Palestinians, in the same way as Linda Smith quotes Professor Julius Stone as saying "...The State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan, but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable control".
However, Israel is doing everything in its power to stop Palestine gaining its independence – a form one might say of genocide as it is an attempt to abort the foetus before it comes to full term. It won’t succeed. Then witness the civil war in Israel when it is forced to withdraw to its 1967 borders and dismantle the settlements. Then StanleyJerusalem the Israelis may get a faint taste of what brought about Black September.
Linda Smith
April 27th, 2009 2:54pmHenry Sidgwick (26 April, 10.01am) posted "I have made the point elsewhere that the purpose of international law is to begin the slow process of civilizing international relations, so that the arbitrary rule of the powerful can be curtailed."
What does Henry mean by his phrase "civilizing international relations", ie who determines the underlying philosophy of the "civilizing" involved?
If the "arbitrary rule of the powerful" is "curtailed", who determines and enforces the "international law?
What Henry fails to realise is that law is toothless without the power to make and enforce it. When he acknowledges "you are protected (as I am) by one of the states currently powerful enough to dictate terms" he should thank his lucky stars that neither the Nazis, Japanese, nor Communist Russia became powerful enough to dictate terms - to make "international law" and enforce it. Instead of devoting his time to bashing Israel who poses him no threat, I would suggest that instead of acting as a Useful Idiot, Henry's own interests would be better served in criticising the global Islamic jihad and seeking ways to defend our Western freedoms against their intention to subjugate us by "the sword".
Can Henry Sidgwick suggest how "international law" can protect us from Islamists. Was Henry Sidgwick on the road 60 miles from Islamabad throwing his law books at the Taliban over the weekend? Thought not; silly Henry.
alanadale
April 27th, 2009 4:22pmLinda Smith asserts we should thank our lucky stars that ‘we’ are not governed by the ‘Nazis, Japanese, nor Communist Russia’. No doubt there a number of Latin American states which would wish for like protection against the oppressive ministrations of Uncle Sam; certainly the Palestinians would from the Israelis; it all depends on your point of view. She seems to be arguing that we should back off Israel because Israel is ‘one of us’ and that there are far greater threats to ‘our liberal democracy’ than a little local difficulty with the recalcitrant Palestinians. As if wife beating is tolerable in the case of a generous benefactor and pillar of the community.
What I find spooky and particularly objectionable about Linda Smith’s (and others’) positions is that the Palestinians don’t feature, because in the Zionist narrative they are not supposed to be there; and as non persons they do not enjoy the same rights as fully paid up ‘members of the club’. The specious appeal to the Islamist menace to justify this relative morality is the most odious aspect of this whole affair. It ignores the fact (because it would mean Israel having to withdraw to the 1967 borders) that affording the Palestinians their rights and giving them justice would more than anything defuse the Islamist threat. It is why Melanie, Linda et al, by seeking to distract attention from the plight of the Palestinians, menace our security and should be exposed.
Linda Smith
April 27th, 2009 5:34pmAlanadale creates an alternative universe in which the poor defenceless Arabs were at the mercy of the Jews. Alanadale's codswallop is negated by the historical record:
"The (British) Government of Palestine fear that strife in Palestine will be greatly intensified when the Mandate is terminated, and that the international status of the United Nations Commission will mean little or nothing to the Arabs in Palestine, to whom the killing of Jews now transcends all other considerations....."
(United Nations Palestine Commission. First Monthly Progress Report to the Security Council. A/AC.21/7, January 29, 1948)
No mention of fear of Jews killing Arabs.
Put a sock in it, Alanadale. You're boring.
Linda Smith
April 27th, 2009 5:35pmAlanadale posted "...affording the Palestinians their rights and giving them justice would more than anything else defuse the Islamist threat..."
The Islamist goal is to create a world wide caliphate. The Palestinian Arabs are useful pawns. Alanadale is another Useful Idiot.
phil
April 27th, 2009 5:42pmStanley I think the arrow is festering and furthering the brain damage -did you hear of a civil war in Israel ? and did you know of "zionist" narrative that disregards the Arabs who formerly resided in the Ottoman empire ,part of which is now Israel ?I think the sheriff is writing a new play ,amusing but stupid as usual.Perhaps he should be reminded that Israel favours a two state solution but cannot find a partner for peace ,maybe he and sidgewick will come forward as the new saviours of the people who now call themselves Palestinians but who were only found when Jordan excluded them .I am not happy in any way with their awful position ,I want to see them settled in a viable and peaceful state as I am sure you do, but until the sheriff and his pals stop stirring up the hatred that will never happen ,but do they care ?I think not ,hatred is their game and the poor sufferers do not matter in that game .
phil
April 27th, 2009 5:52pmalandale ,you are aware I really abhor addressing you but you cannot get away with this one "It ignores the fact (because it would mean Israel having to withdraw to the 1967 borders) that affording the Palestinians their rights and giving them justice would more than anything defuse the Islamist threat"" A more stupid assessment would be hard to find anywhere than this ,I will remind you of Mumbai ,Darfur ,Bali ,Iraq.Afghanistan ,Pakistan ,enough? do you think Israel has anything to do with those atrocities ,how you can publish such blatant nonsense is beyond me ,but I suppose you do it every day so I should not be so surprised ,maybe we could persuade you to keep in touch with the newly exposed rippon and go and study hitlers good points -I feel sure your caddy otis blue will carry your bags for you .
C. Gee
April 27th, 2009 6:27pmAlanadale,
So, we "afford Palestinians their rights" by returning to 1967 borders (or 181 partition borders according to the Sidgwick Initiative ) and "give them justice" by allowing the refugees to return with full citizenship. Israel will disappear as soon as the Palestinians vote for a one-party Islamist state, no doubt an election pronounced "free and fair" by Jimmy Carter and Richard Falk. Once that happens, the left will no longer be interested in Palestinian's (worsening) plight. So, let us "diffuse the Islamist threat" by creating Islamist states! Pakistan for the Taliban. Israel for Palestine. Palestine for Hamastan. Burkas on and bombs away!
alanadale
April 28th, 2009 12:58amGosh I’ve really raised a hornets’ nest judged by the level of vituperation. I’ve clearly hit home.
Linda Smith. We’ve been round the track several times and you’re still wittering on about ‘no fear about Jews fearing Arabs’ in 1948 no doubt to feed the myth that the Jews were minding their own business after all. But as I said the pendulum swings and when it swung against the Jews they could dish out as good as the next guy if not better as poor Count Bernadotte found out.
Phil. It’s a revelation to hear that Israel favours a two state solution. Israel has a partner in peace: the Arab League and all the other players in the conflict have accepted a two state solution based on Resolution 242 either explicitly or implicitly. By the way even the Telegraph today reports Ahmadinejad supports a two state solution, so that has to be true doesn’t it? I want to know what ‘viable and peaceful state’ you envisage for the Palestinians – some reservation in the boondocks?
America’s blind support of Israel’s expansionist policies and its own imperial ambitions in the region (namely the desire to control oil supplies) have been mutually self supporting. They led to the invasion of Iraq which has hugely compromised America’s power and prestige in the Middle East and incited Islamic extremism. And don’t give me the bull that 9/11 preceded America getting heavy handed; Bin Laden objected to American troops in Saudi Arabia as did many other Saudis in 1990. Now they want them out of ALL the Middle East and that’s what we have to be working for if there is ever to be regional stability. Palestine is the litmus test of America’s intentions.
C Gee. Don’t be childish. No one is suggesting Israel return to the Partition borders. If the Palestinians vote for an Islamic government that’s what you will have to deal with. After all, the Palestinians have had to deal with Sharon and now Netanyahu and Liebermann. Would Israelis like anyone interfering with their sovereign right to choose racists or former terrorists? And Israel by its intransigence helped spawn Hamas, don’t forget.
Anyway, it’s not what I think that matters folks: It’s what happens in the big wide world and the days of holding the world to ransom with your confected paranoia in order to neutralise the Palestinians are numbered. Olmert said in a recent interview that the battle for world public opinion was manageable so long as the Palestinian conflict was as seen as a rerun of the Algerian war of independence but as soon as it became a rerun of the Apartheid struggle in South Africa the game for Israel was up. The crass, thuggish invasion of Gaza – encapsulated by pipsqueak Ehud Barak extolling the bravery of Israeli fighter pilots about to embark on a dangerous mission to bomb the living daylights out of defenceless Gazans – has given the shift in world perception a huge fillip.
If as I fervently hope Obama doesn’t blink and insists on movement on Palestine to defuse the problem with Iran, the game will be up for you crazy bunch of Dr Strangeloves. The power to impose law is the ultimate arbiter – so long as the power remains strong enough to wield the power. But with Pax Americana unravelling we need an international consensus. International law is vital in this transition as well as doing much ‘to begin the long process of bringing some civilization to international relations’ as Henry Sidgwick puts it and eliminating the ‘endless conflict between the powerful and endless misery among the weak.’
Your cod, antediluvian self serving legal arguments have done much to trash this principle. Islamic extremism, like all religious fundamentalism is a menace. What you advocate is the road to perdition.
phil
April 28th, 2009 10:21amalandale was that rant a new scene from" springtime for hitler ?"I can see your arm rising and foam spouting from here -the posters here are on the whole peace seekers rather than militant nutters which is the image that emerges of you when you lecture us -do you think the independent/guardian would be a happier spot for you to do your screaming -I do
Linda Smith
April 28th, 2009 12:01pmAlanadale: "Ahmadinejad supports a two state solution, so that has to be true doesn't it?"
False.
Ahmadinejad said he would support the Palestinians' decision - whatever they decided, the decision was theirs to make.
As Ahmadinejad backs Hamas and Hezbollah who are dedicated to the destruction of the "Zionist Regime", and Iran is busily getting on with its nuclear programme, it is evident that the Palestinian decision he envisages does not include peace with the Jewish State of Israel.
Ahmadinejad speak with forked tongue - like you Alanadale.
Linda Smith
April 28th, 2009 12:05pmApparently Henry Sidgwick has jumped ship!
Come in no 9, your time's up!
Wm. Hazlitt
April 28th, 2009 12:48pmC. Gee, Once again, you ride out, in righteousness triumphant, to tilt at an argument no-one has made. I am truly curious to know what purpose you think this serves. It leaves the debate precisely where it was before your intervention, yet gives the impression, whether accurate or not, that you are bereft of good arguments, thus weakening your case.
Wm. Hazlitt
April 28th, 2009 1:24pmLinda Smith, Henry Sidgwick can look after himself I know, but in scanning through this debate I notice he politley, if wearily, offered the last word to you.
Can I just make some points about your post addressed to Henry Sidgwick before I too allow you the last word.
You suggest that "civilisation" is relative i.e. what we in the Classical-Judeo-Christian West think of as civilized, Amazonian tribesmen or Tibetan herdsmen (or whoever) would find puzzling, irrelevant, offensive (or whatever). There are, however, some basic ethical principles that are universal and can be translated into rules of conduct in international relations. "Do unto others as you would be done by" is one; or to put it another way, "Apply the same principles to yourself as you impose on others".
You also talk of the threat, historical and contemporary, of the likes of the Nazis, Stalinists, or Islamists conquering us and dictating what is to be considered law. Nothing I have said, and nothing in international law, precludes the use of force in self-defense. It follows that nothing I have said denies that states must maintain their defences.
Hitler had a genuine, if brief, chance of conquest, although it remains debatable how long he could have maintained it. Stalin had no chance and no inclination. Islamists are a small minority in a Muslim community they have failed to persuade of the rightness of their cause. They would lose a great deal of the traction they do possess if the Muslim world were to be treated more equitably by the West (no doubt we could argue about the history behind that assertion, but, as I say, I will give you the last word). No-one seriously denies that Islamists are a threat to the West. But they are very far from being the main threat to Western supremacy. The constant harping on Islamism here is interested. Islamism has been introduced into the Palestine/Israel conflict (partly by outside "supporters" of the Palestinians and partly by Israel's cack-handed attempts at "divide and rule") to the detriment and danger of both sides.
You end with some silly rhetoric. As it happens, I think the Taliban would be seriously bad for the people of Pakistan, and in the circumstances for us too. Yet again, the West's policies have had unforeseen disatrous consequences. The US created the Muhajideen. The US winked at Pakistan making nuclear weapons. The US bombed Afghanistan and hired one of the warring factions to do its dirty work after 9/11. If the US had taken its responsibilities seriously under the treaties on nuclear disarmament, and had supported the proposals of the international nuclear agency to allow civil uses of nuclear technology while guarding weapons-grade material, the Middle East could have been a nuclear-free zone. It still might be with a bit of statesmanship on all sides. Is this pie-in-the-sky? Very possibly. But it provides a better direction for policy than haplessly dropping bombs on people in the hope that they will do what we want. This only works when you have overwhelming force, the scope to use it without qualms or outside restraint.
It is not clear to me what positive proposals you have.
stanley Jerusalem
April 28th, 2009 1:49pmWm. Hazlitt
April 28th, 2009 1:24pm
Sir,
I am aware of the theory of 'divide and rule' but I have never before experienced your take on it which appears to be 'confuse and rule.'
Over-simplification is not a recipe for clarity, only for misunderstanding.
C. Gee
April 28th, 2009 6:37pmWm. Hazlitt,
Here I come, righteousness triumphant, to point out that somehow, a little something of my point trickled into your subconscious, prompting your musings on Islamism. Unlike Alanadale, you do not think it childish to think about the plight of people living under Islamism. Like him, though, you like to make Islamism the West's, or Israel's fault. Perhaps you agree with him too that if people choose their own oppressors, they forfeit pity, and can just lump the awfulness of their lives. Alanadale does not want to have his attention distracted from the poor Palestinians - until, that is, they are governed by genocidal, religious maniacs, puppets of Iran. Iran, by the way, was permitted energy generation nuclear capacity, but is within a year of the Bomb, which America is again about to blink at. Perhaps your and Alanadale's attention will be forced back into that region when Israel is dead, but Egypt has to defend itself against Hamastan which has the Bomb. Who will you side with then? By then, Britain's own Muslims will be making foreign policy, but the dilemma still stands for them. Arab despotism v. Persian Islam ?
My case is Melanie's: the logical conclusion of demonizing Israel is its eradication. Will the true dark imperium that follows Israel be the object of such hate and contempt, or provide the excuse for the same moral preening?
My case is that hating Jews on the basis of slander is deeply part of our culture. Since WWII, there has been a psychological requirement to legitimize Jew hatred by turning Jews into Nazis and creating the Palestinians as the new Jews. This is merely the updated, guilt-burying version of the old blood libels, the old Protocols stereotyping, by which whatever troubles Jews suffer, they bring upon themselves.
The "debate" will not be moved forward by my, or anyone's, intervention, as you call it. I like to expose moral vanity, especially when it is lipstick on the pig of bigotry.
C. Gee
April 28th, 2009 6:50pmAlanadale,
The Palestinians do not deal, they posture and renege. Israeli intransigence did not spawn Hamas - Islamist puritanism did, and that wants no Israel at all, not even 242 Israel, even though the Arab reading of it, and the Arabs' insistence on the right of return would amount to the same thing. No, Israelis do not like anybody interfering with their sovereign rights: to exist being the prime one.
Wm. Hazlitt
April 28th, 2009 10:00pmC. Gee, ...as I said, only in this instance even less coherent, and with no sign anywhere of addressing an argument that anyone has actually made, and then the phantasmagoria, and the unmeaning slander! Breath! There is a real world out here.
alanadale
April 29th, 2009 10:36amC. Gee. I find your constant misquoting of me tiresome. I never said Israeli intransigence spawned Hamas; I said it helped to spawn Hamas, and it did so because the Israeli government thought that by initially promoting Hamas it could wear down the PLO and make it more amenable to the kind of ‘solution’ envisaged in Israel’s first insulting offer at Camp David in 2000. It is the only time that Israel has ever put on the table what it had in mind. The Israelis never intended to deal even handedly with the Palestinians; they intended to slice and dice them into a series of Bantustans.
I never said I thought it ‘childish to think about the plight of people living under Islamism’. Nor did I say I’d ‘like to make Islamism the West's, or Israel's fault.’ Islam has a very real and deep rooted problem in coming to terms with modernism; it also has its quota of religious fanatics as do Judaism and Christianity viz the former Chief Rabbi and at the time leader of the Shas party which held the balance of power in the Knesset, Ovadia Josef, who called on his flock to annihilate Arabs. What I do say is that the manifest and outrageous injustice being meted out on the Palestinians is providing a pretext for Islamicist hotheads and nutheads and helping to politicise (because politics has so self evidently failed to provide the justice Palestinians crave) what should remain strictly in the religious domain.
By the way if as you seek to have me say ‘people choose their own oppressors, they forfeit pity’, what of the Palestinians who did not choose their oppressors?
You say ‘My case is Melanie's: the logical conclusion of demonizing Israel is its eradication.’ You really need to distinguish between criticizing fiercely what Zionism has become – what you call demonizing Israel – and wishing its eradication. No sane person would now wish its eradication in the sense you would imply – the physical annihilation of a people. But Israel mainly because it has failed to address the issue of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians has become a very sick society thinking only of resolving problems by eradicating them with brutal overwhelming force – the Lady Macbeth syndrome. It is breeding a racist, intolerant society – can you imagine, and leave aside the daily obscenities meted out on the Palestinians, blood being thrown away because it was donated by Falashas?
Ronald Reagan wanted Communism ‘to disappear from the pages of history’; that did not mean he wanted to exterminate a 150 million Russians. Your attempt to conflate Zionism as currently practised in Israel with survival of the Jewish race just doesn’t wash. Israel will ultimately have to earn its keep and place in the world like any other country and its acceptance in the region will depend on what it brings to the table and whether it accepts withdrawal to its 1967 borders as prescribed in the deal that has been on that table since 2002. There is risk involved as there is in anything in life; Israel for instance will have to offer a far better deal on the Right of Return than it is currently doing if only to recognize the historic wrong done to the Palestinians. But with the third/fourth most powerful military in the world and the continued support of the West (provided it does not forfeit that support by continuing its present bankrupt policies) will ensure Israelis will not be driven into the sea any time soon as Melanie’s soulmate Barbara Amiel once luridly predicted would trigger the Samson option.
Wm. Hazlitt
April 29th, 2009 11:37amC. Gee, Thank you, but I did not need your reasoning or your rants to realise that radical Islam is pernicious. I agree with Winston Churchill that liberal democracy is the worst of options except all the others. An Islamic republic, a state and a political system founded on a fundamentalist interpretation of a religion, is not consistent with the principles of liberal democracy which I support.