What’s wrong with U.N. Resolution 2334? Recommends outlaws Israeli settlement,

What’s wrong with U.N. Resolution 2334?

Posted on 29 December 2016by anneinpt

After all the brouhaha at the nasty surprise we received at the hands of the Obama Administration who refused to veto UNSC Resolution 2334, followed by John Kerry’s nasty attack on Israel, putting all the blame for the failure of the “peace process” on Israel and the settlements,  it’s a useful exercise to examine exactly what is so wrong with this resolution.

Just to remind you, Resolution 2334 outlaws ALL Israeli settlement, construction, residence in ANY AND ALL areas captured, or rather liberated, in 1967. This includes “East’ Jerusalem, which itself includes the Jewish Quarter, the Temple Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – and the Western (Wailing) Wall, aka the Kotel, which is the holiest site at which Jews are permitted to pray. For now.

Below is Israeli Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, explaining exactly what is wrong with it, and how it goes further than Resolution 242 which was voted on in 1967 after the Six Day War.

One of the most succinct and clear answers that I have read appeared on the Quora website, a site where members can ask questions on any subject, and anyone who feels qualified (or even not!) may answer. Gail Ellis, who lives in Israel, wrote the following answer to the question “Why should the US have vetoed Resolution 2334?“:

Because, in characterizing the West Bank as “Palestinian territory” and the Israeli settlements as ‘illegal’ the resolution both lying and contradicting longstanding US policy (as well as its signed legal obligations).

And in passing it, not only has the UN tried to usurp powers it is NOWHERE granted in its charter and violated its own charter, it has demonstrated that the international community (separately and collectively) will not uphold its signed agreements. None of which is going to bring peace any closer.

…

Here are the historical and legal facts in support of the above:

Jewish National Home Determined by San Remo Conference (1920)

• In 1910 the legal sovereign of the area that became the Mandate for Palestine was the Ottoman Empire. (No one disputes this).
• After the allied powers defeated the Ottomans, the Ottomans transferred the sovereignty of the area to the victorious allied powers, in the treaties of Sevres and Lausanne. (No one disputes this).
• In 1920 the Balfour Declaration was incorporated into international law in the San Remo Resolution, adopted by the victorious allied powers, this being a binding international agreement. (No one disputes this).
• In 1922 the San Remo Resolution was implemented as the Mandate for Palestine, and ratified by the League of Nations, this ALSO being a binding international agreement. No one disputes this. Or, rather, I should say (since the effect of this UN Resolution is to ignore or attempt to nullify, the provisions of the Mandate, in violation of its own charter) no one disputes that the League of Nations Mandates were binding legal documents that set valid borders for the states that emerged out of them in the case of any OTHER of the MANY instances of them).
• The MANDATE of the Mandate for Palestine WAS the creation of a Jewish national home (understood by all signatories at the time to be a Jewish commonwealth in the event that Jewish immigration was sufficient to permit this) in the area defined as the Mandate (and that included the West Bank and Jerusalem).
• In 1924 the US and Britain ratified the Anglo American treaty (which contained a carbon copy of the Mandate), this ALSO being a binding international agreement. In becoming party to this agreement the US became party to article 5 and 6, in both it and the Mandate (see below)
• Article 6 of the Mandate IS THE ONLY TIME THE WORD ‘SETTLEMENT’ IS MENTIONED IN A BINDING INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENT REGARDING PALESTINE.It states: “The Administration of Palestine … shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land”Article 5 of the Mandate specifically states “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.”THE US IS PARTY TO THESE CLAUSES AS WELL VIA THE ANGLO AMERICAN AGREEMENT.
• Article 80 of the UN charter PRESERVES the rights granted by Mandates.
• The 1948 partition plan was a UNGA resolution (i.e. a non binding suggestion of compromise, as all UNGA resolutions are nonbinding). IF both the Jews and the Arabs had accepted it, AND had signed a treaty by which the Jewish people relinquished part of its rights (promised in the Mandate) to future sovereignty over the area, THEN the borders suggested by UNGA 181 would have become the legal borders. The Arab side rejected the compromise (with an invasion by 5 armies). Therefore the borders proposed by UNGA 181 have the same legal validity as any other rejected offer: NONE. And NOTE – even if you assume (for the sake of argument) that UNGA 181 was legally binding (which it was not), under its terms Jerusalem was supposed to be a corpus separatum, belonging to neither party.So how did Jerusalem suddenly legally become “Palestinian territory” ? (NO ONE has an explanation for this.)
• At the end of the War of Independence, the ‘green line’ was established by the 1949 Armistice agreement, whichspecifically states (because it was the ONLY THING both the Jews and Arabs agreed on) that it is not a permanent political border.
• Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank. Jordan’s annexation was not recognized by anyone except the Brits AND the PLO which stated in article 24 of its original 1964 charter “This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.”So how did the West Bank suddenly become ‘Palestinian Territory’? (No one has an explanation for this).
• The Oslo Accords (which transfer a kind of partial sovereignty to the Palestinian Authority in Areas A and B (basically all powers except the preservation of external security in Area A, and a joint responsibility for security in Area B) give Israel FULL administrative control over Area C (including the right to build). The Oslo accords specifically state that settlements are an issue that will be resolved ONLY in the final agreement.

There is not a person on this earth who can give the name, date and signatories of ANY binding legal agreement which transferred the right to full sovereignty over the West Bank and Jerusalem from the last legal beneficiary thereof (the Jewish People, via the Mandate) to the Palestinian people.

As there is NO SUCH DOCUMENT, consequently, the West Bank is NOT Palestinian territory (as the resolution claims).

In addition, NOWHERE in the UN charter is it granted the power to set the borders of one of its member states OR to nullify existing treaties setting them.- which this resolution does.

…

…  apparently precedent works differently when it comes to Israel – as there is not ONE instance of the UN invoking the fourth Geneva convention in any other ongoing occupation, such as Turkey’s of North Cypress, China’s of Tibet, Morocco’s of Western Sahara, Russians of the Ukraine etc. Nor is there ONE instance of a border dispute between countries arising out of the mandate system in which the borders set by the mandate were not held to be the legal borders.)

Gail draws the very obvious, harsh conclusions of the effect of this resolution:

• To encourage the Palestinians not to negotiate (which is the only way sovereignty can be legally transferred to them), because they know the UN will LIE, USURP POWERS IT DOES NOT HAVE AND VIOLATE ITS OWN CHARTER on their behalf whatever they do
• To encourage Israel not to negotiate as it clarifies that Israel can not expect the international community to uphold any future signed agreements, as it has (separately and collectively) demonstrated that it will not uphold past signed agreements.

That is why the US should have vetoed it.

That response should be bookmarked and used every time someone questions Israel’s right to build in Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem, the Golan, or even questions Israel’s very right to exist.

It should also be sent to John Kerry next time he feels a speech coming upon him.

January 29, 2012

The Arab-Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood

By Michael Curtis

A debatable aspect of modern thought is the thesis that the full truth is unknowable and that the interpretation of historical events and present behavior is a "narrative" reflecting the interests of the group that creates it.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the narrative created by the Arab-Palestinians and their supporters -- a narrative which is used as the basis of an ideological campaign aimed at condemning the State of Israel and undermining its moral fabric.

The building blocks of this narrative are the "original sin" of the creation of Israel, the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948; the belief in Israeli responsibility for violence and the various wars in the Middle East; the conviction that Israel deliberately created the Arab-Palestinian refugee situation by preventing their return to the homeland; and the supposed indignities and injustices done to Arab-Palestinians who have become victims of Israeli aggression and colonialism. 

All of the elements in this false narrative have become instrumental in the campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and even to call for its elimination.  But it is the last point, the concept of Arab-Palestinian victimhood, which has fueled international support for the Arab-Palestinian cause.  It accounts for the obsessive concentration on the Israeli-Arab Palestinian conflict by so many who view it as the world's most important and dangerous encounter, disregarding the millions killed or oppressed in other countries today.

The narrative of victimhood uses myths and symbols as well as a controversial interpretation of events and actions.  Its language at times becomes wildly extreme.  Arab-Palestinians are termed the "new Jews" suffering a "new Holocaust."  Jews are the new Nazis.  Excessive rhetoric and idiosyncratic judgments of this kind are rarely, if ever, applied to the truly despotic and authoritarian regimes in the world that commit crimes against humanity and violations of human rights that are not censured.

The narrative denies Jewish historic national identity.  The Arab-Palestinians have gone so far in efforts to bolster the argument against Jewish connection to the land as to destroy the archaeological evidence of the ancient kingdom of Judea.  Nor do they accept the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a Jewish historic site.            

The formulation of the Arab-Palestinian narrative of victimhood is pernicious in a double-sense.  It poisons the attitude to Israel and prevents any kind of accommodation or possible negotiation between Israel and the Arab-Palestinians to reach a peaceful settlement of the long conflict.  It also reinforces the Arab-Palestinians' rejection to take positive action to help resolve their problems and becomes an excuse for the failure to develop an infrastructure for their own society or to take advantage of opportunities to found a sovereign state of their own -- opportunities going back as far as the Peel Commission of 1937.

Equally important is the fact that Israel is the political canary warning of the presence of poisonous political traits that intimate impending danger to the world, particularly to the United States and Western democracies.  When Western critics concur in the validity of the Arab-Palestinian narrative, they take on the stance of moral relativism.  They become appeasers with a mindset that has as its outcome an inability or refusal to defend the West against contemporary threats and the clear and present danger to its culture and way of life.  At its worst, this leads to the view that the West is in decline, that the "war on terror" is unwinnable or should not be fought, or that the West is to be eternally found guilty for its past colonial empires and activity.

The world has been through this before.  Those who ardently accept the Arab-Palestinian narrative of victimhood are like the people who willingly believed the Nazi and Stalinist narratives, equally blind to the realities of those horrific totalitarian regimes.  Some of those people were well-meaning, but they were of the kind that Lenin once called "political idiots."

To gain a sense of how events are manipulated to create the Arab-Palestinian narrative, it's useful to look at some particular examples.  Rachel Corrie, who worked with the International Solidarity Movement, was accidentally killed in Gaza in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer that she was deliberately trying to block.  She quickly became a symbol of heroic defiance against Israel.  The narrative has penetrated the literary, artistic, and theatrical worlds.  In her eight-minute play, "Seven Jewish Children," produced in London in 2009, Caryl Churchill builds the plot around the alleged bad treatment by Israelis of Arab-Palestinian babies, evoking the historic blood libel charge against Jews.

The Arab-Palestinian narrative has benefited from a fanciful, romantic presentation of the superior virtue of Arab-Palestinians, regardless of their actual behavior.  In this fairy tale, the Arab-Palestinians are seen as the embodiment of "the wretched of the earth," the phrase used by Franz Fanon to justify the Algerian struggle against France.

By proclaiming their lack of human rights and their victimhood, the Arab-Palestinians have been able to enlist political, economic, military, diplomatic, and propaganda support from individuals and groups who are sympathetic to those they see as subjugated.  They have become the main symbol of the oppressed of the world, to the misfortune of Israel. 

Using Jews as scapegoats supposedly responsible for most of the problems of the world is a trope of traditional anti-Semitism.  By tortuous logic, Israel has become the scapegoat for racism, oppression, and colonialism in the contemporary world.  Jewish nationalism is identified as imperialist and racist, while Arab-Palestinian nationalism is the nationalism of "the oppressed."   

The Arab-Palestinians face real problems, as does Israel.  It is time to state forthrightly that the Arab-Palestinian narrative as presently conceived, with its inherent anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, does not lead to equity for the Arab-Palestinians or to steps towards peace.  Peace between Israel and the Arab-Palestinians can be achieved only when the Arab-Palestinians abandon their fallacious narrative and are willing to accept the existence and legitimacy of a Jewish state.

Michael Curtis is a distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University and the author of the forthcoming book Should Israel Exist?: A sovereign nation under attack by the international community.

A debatable aspect of modern thought is the thesis that the full truth is unknowable and that the interpretation of historical events and present behavior is a "narrative" reflecting the interests of the group that creates it.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the narrative created by the Arab-Palestinians and their supporters -- a narrative which is used as the basis of an ideological campaign aimed at condemning the State of Israel and undermining its moral fabric.

The building blocks of this narrative are the "original sin" of the creation of Israel, the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948; the belief in Israeli responsibility for violence and the various wars in the Middle East; the conviction that Israel deliberately created the Arab-Palestinian refugee situation by preventing their return to the homeland; and the supposed indignities and injustices done to Arab-Palestinians who have become victims of Israeli aggression and colonialism. 

All of the elements in this false narrative have become instrumental in the campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and even to call for its elimination.  But it is the last point, the concept of Arab-Palestinian victimhood, which has fueled international support for the Arab-Palestinian cause.  It accounts for the obsessive concentration on the Israeli-Arab Palestinian conflict by so many who view it as the world's most important and dangerous encounter, disregarding the millions killed or oppressed in other countries today.

The narrative of victimhood uses myths and symbols as well as a controversial interpretation of events and actions.  Its language at times becomes wildly extreme.  Arab-Palestinians are termed the "new Jews" suffering a "new Holocaust."  Jews are the new Nazis.  Excessive rhetoric and idiosyncratic judgments of this kind are rarely, if ever, applied to the truly despotic and authoritarian regimes in the world that commit crimes against humanity and violations of human rights that are not censured.

The narrative denies Jewish historic national identity.  The Arab-Palestinians have gone so far in efforts to bolster the argument against Jewish connection to the land as to destroy the archaeological evidence of the ancient kingdom of Judea.  Nor do they accept the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a Jewish historic site.            

The formulation of the Arab-Palestinian narrative of victimhood is pernicious in a double-sense.  It poisons the attitude to Israel and prevents any kind of accommodation or possible negotiation between Israel and the Arab-Palestinians to reach a peaceful settlement of the long conflict.  It also reinforces the Arab-Palestinians' rejection to take positive action to help resolve their problems and becomes an excuse for the failure to develop an infrastructure for their own society or to take advantage of opportunities to found a sovereign state of their own -- opportunities going back as far as the Peel Commission of 1937.

Equally important is the fact that Israel is the political canary warning of the presence of poisonous political traits that intimate impending danger to the world, particularly to the United States and Western democracies.  When Western critics concur in the validity of the Arab-Palestinian narrative, they take on the stance of moral relativism.  They become appeasers with a mindset that has as its outcome an inability or refusal to defend the West against contemporary threats and the clear and present danger to its culture and way of life.  At its worst, this leads to the view that the West is in decline, that the "war on terror" is unwinnable or should not be fought, or that the West is to be eternally found guilty for its past colonial empires and activity.

The world has been through this before.  Those who ardently accept the Arab-Palestinian narrative of victimhood are like the people who willingly believed the Nazi and Stalinist narratives, equally blind to the realities of those horrific totalitarian regimes.  Some of those people were well-meaning, but they were of the kind that Lenin once called "political idiots."

To gain a sense of how events are manipulated to create the Arab-Palestinian narrative, it's useful to look at some particular examples.  Rachel Corrie, who worked with the International Solidarity Movement, was accidentally killed in Gaza in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer that she was deliberately trying to block.  She quickly became a symbol of heroic defiance against Israel.  The narrative has penetrated the literary, artistic, and theatrical worlds.  In her eight-minute play, "Seven Jewish Children," produced in London in 2009, Caryl Churchill builds the plot around the alleged bad treatment by Israelis of Arab-Palestinian babies, evoking the historic blood libel charge against Jews.

The Arab-Palestinian narrative has benefited from a fanciful, romantic presentation of the superior virtue of Arab-Palestinians, regardless of their actual behavior.  In this fairy tale, the Arab-Palestinians are seen as the embodiment of "the wretched of the earth," the phrase used by Franz Fanon to justify the Algerian struggle against France.

By proclaiming their lack of human rights and their victimhood, the Arab-Palestinians have been able to enlist political, economic, military, diplomatic, and propaganda support from individuals and groups who are sympathetic to those they see as subjugated.  They have become the main symbol of the oppressed of the world, to the misfortune of Israel. 

Using Jews as scapegoats supposedly responsible for most of the problems of the world is a trope of traditional anti-Semitism.  By tortuous logic, Israel has become the scapegoat for racism, oppression, and colonialism in the contemporary world.  Jewish nationalism is identified as imperialist and racist, while Arab-Palestinian nationalism is the nationalism of "the oppressed."   

The Arab-Palestinians face real problems, as does Israel.  It is time to state forthrightly that the Palestinian narrative as presently conceived, with its inherent anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, does not lead to equity for the Arab-Palestinians or to steps towards peace.  Peace between Israel and the Arab-Palestinians can be achieved only when the Arab-Palestinians abandon their fallacious narrative and are willing to accept the existence and legitimacy of a Jewish state.

Michael Curtis is a distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University and the author of the forthcoming book Should Israel Exist?: A sovereign nation under attack by the international community.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/the_palestinian_narrative_of_victimhood.html#ixzz4UgQUjrHG 

The Narrative of Perpetual Arab-Palestinian Victimhood

by Shelby Steele
January 9, 2012 at 5:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2586/palestinian-victimhood-narrative

Shelby Steele, Robert J and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute, member of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order.

The following is excerpted from a speech delivered September 22, 2011 in New York City at the conference "The Perils of Global Intolerance: The UN and Durban III," sponsored by the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the Hudson Institute.

The Arab-Israeli conflict, is not really a conflict, it is a war – a war of the Arabs against the Jews. In many ways, this conflict has been a conflict between narratives. We who strongly support Israel have done a poor job in formulating a narrative which will combat the story spun by the other side. We can do better.

The Durban conferences, the request for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Arab-Palestinian statehood, and the general animus in the Middle East and elsewhere toward Israel and toward the Jews, what are they really about? Is the Durban conference and the claim that Israel is a racist nation really about reforming the people of Israel and curing them of their racism?

I think their real interest is to situate the Arab-Palestinian people within a narrative of victimization. This is their ulterior goal: to see themselves and to have others see them as victims of colonialism, as victims of white supremacy.

Listen to their language; it is the language of colonial oppression. Arab-Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claims that Arab-Palestinians have been occupied for 63 years. The word oppressed is constant, exploited. In this, there is a poetic truth; like poetic license, in a poetic truth a writer will bend the rules in order to be more effective.

I will give you one example of a poetic truth that comes from my group, black Americans. We make the following claims: America is a deeply, intractably racist society. It may not be as conspicuous today as it was before. Nevertheless, it is still there today structurally and systemically, and it still holds us back and keeps us from achieving the American dream.

To contradict this claim, one can come forward with evidence to suggest that racism in America today is about 25^th on the list of problems facing black Americans. One can recount one of the great untold stories of America, namely, the moral growth and evolution away from that problem. This is not to say that racism is completely extinguished, but that it no longer prevents the forward progress of any black in the United States. There is no evidence to suggest that it does. Yet, this claim is still the centerpiece of black American identity – this idea that we are victimized by a fundamentally, incurably racist society.

Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does.

Why not? These narratives, these poetic truths, are the source of their power. Focusing on the case of the Arab-Palestinians, who would they be if they were not victims of white supremacy? They would just be poor people in the Middle East. They would be backwards. They would be behind Israel in every way. So this narrative is the source of their power. It is the source of their money. Money comes from around the world. It is the source of their self-esteem. Without it, would they be able to compete with Israeli society? They would have to confront in themselves a certain inferiority with regard to Israel – as most other Arab nations would have to confront an inferiority in themselves and be responsible for it.

The idea that the problem is Israel, that the problem is the Jews, protects Arab-Palestinians from having to confront that inferiority or do anything about it or overcome it. The idea among Arab-Palestinians that they are victims means more to them than anything else. It is everything. It is the centerpiece of their very identity and it is the way they define themselves as human beings in the world. It is not an idle thing. Our facts and our reason are not going to penetrate easily that definition or make any progress.

The question is, how do they get away with a poetic truth, based on such an obvious series of falsehoods? One reason why they get away with it in the Middle East is that the Western world lacks the moral authority to call them on it. The Western world has not said "your real problem is inferiority. Your real problem is underdevelopment." That has not been said, nor will ever be said – because the Western world was once colonial, was once racist, did practice white supremacy, and is so ashamed of itself and so vulnerable to those charges, that they are not going to say a word. They are not going to say what they really think and feel about what is so obvious about the circumstances among the Arab-Palestinians. So the poetic truth that Arab-Palestinians live by carries on.

International media also do not feel that they have the moral authority to report what they see. On the contrary, they feed this poetic truth and give it a kind of gravitas that it would never otherwise have.

Consequently, we need to develop a narrative that is not poetic, but literal and that is based on the truth. What would such a narrative look like?

It would begin with the presumption that the problem in the Middle East is not white supremacy but the end of white supremacy. After World War II, the empires began to contract, Britain went home, France went home, and the Arab world was left almost abandoned, and in a state of much greater freedom than they had ever known before.

Freedom is, however, a dicey thing to experience. When you come into freedom, you see yourself more accurately in the world. This is not unique to the Middle East. It was also the black American experience, when the Civil Rights bill was passed in 1964 and we came into much greater freedom. If you were a janitor in 1963 and you are still a janitor in 1965, you have all these freedoms and they are supported by the rule of law, then your actual experience of freedom is one of humiliation and one of shame. You see how far you have to go, how far behind you are, how little social capital you have with which to struggle forward. Even in freedom you see you are likely to be behind for a long time. In light of your inability to compete and your underdevelopment, freedom becomes something that you are very likely going to hate – because it carries this humiliation.

At that point formerly oppressed groups develop what I call bad faith. Bad faith is when you come into freedom, you are humiliated and you say, "Well you know the real truth is I am not free. Racism still exists. Zionism is my problem. The State of Israel is my problem. That is why I am so far behind and that is why I cannot get ahead."

You develop a culture grounded in bad faith where you insist that you are less free than you really are. Islamic extremism is the stunning example of this phenomenon. "I have to go on jihad because I am fighting for my freedom." Well you already have your freedom. You could stay home and study. You could do something constructive. But "No, I cannot do that because that makes me feel bad about myself." So I live in a world of extremism and dictators.

This is not unique to the Middle East. In black America we had exactly the same thing. After we got the civil rights bill and this greater degree of freedom, then all of a sudden we hear the words "black power." Then all of a sudden we have the Black Panthers. Then we have this militancy, this picking up of the gun because we feel bad about ourselves. We feel uncompetitive and this becomes our compensation. It is a common pattern among groups that felt abandoned when they became free.

This is the real story of the Palestinians and of the Middle East. They will never be reached by reason until they are somehow able to get beyond bad faith, to get beyond this sort of poetic truth that they are the perennial victims of an aggressive and racist Israeli nation.

Challenging their narrative with this explanation will enable us to be more effective. Until now, we have constantly used facts and reason and have not progressed.

Durban is a perfect example of bad faith because Durban is way of saying Israelis are racist and they are our problem. Durban really is a way of saying I am not free. I am still a victim. That is the real purpose of Durban. The Arab-Palestinian unilateral claim for recognition from the UN is also a perfect example of bad faith. If Arab-Palestinians proceed to the Security Council, they will very likely be turned down, and will respond by saying: "I told you we were victims. I told you the West is racist," and so on. It refuels the same sad identity.

The irony and the tragedy of all this is that it keeps these groups in a bubble where they never encounter or deal with the truth. This becomes a second oppression for all these groups. They have been oppressed once, now they are free and yet they create a poetic truth that then oppresses them all over again.

How are you going to have good faith if you are raised being told that the society in which you are trying to compete is against you, is racist? It is always the Arab-Palestinians who suffer, and will continue to suffer, because all of their energy is going into the avoidance of their situation rather than into being challenged by it and facing into it.

The strength of our argument is that it gives the Arab-Palestinians a way out. Development is the way out. The West can help you to compete. It may take a little while. But the alternative is a cycle of violence and hatred and poetic truths about constant victimhood.

The pattern of bad faith in certain places comes to embrace a kind of ethic of death. As Osama bin Laden claimed: in the West, you are all afraid of death, but we love death. Why would you love death? If you are not afraid of death then you are aggrandized; all of a sudden you are a big man. You are not a little, recently freed, inferior. Instead, you are somebody who manages, who conquers his world, who has power. For terrorism is power, the power of the gun. This poetic truth leads to a terrible, inconceivable fascination with death and violence and guns and bombs. It consumes a whole part of the world every single day – rather than the boring things that good faith requires, like going to school, raising your children, inventing software for instance, making money.

This is the way the narrative must be retold.

Comments:

Reframing the terms of debate and reversing the image of Palestinians as victims

Reader comment on: The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood

Submitted by Jeffrey Reiss, Dec 31, 2011 19:30

Arab-Palestinians as victims: a pedestrian steps in front of an oncoming vehicle, is struck, and apparently injured. Witnesses to the incident step forward and report what they saw: the pedestrian/accident victim deliberately stepped into the roadway into the path of the oncoming vehicle, the driver tried to stop and veer away from the pedestrian/victim. The pedestrian not only didn't jump back but thrust himself further into the path of the vehicle. Why would anyone thrust themselves into harm's way? Financial reward from the insurance companies, litigation, and disability payments; sympathy from family and friends from whom he had been alienated, escape from the harsher realities of their life, all of the above.

The question posed in your article is how to counter the image of the injured party as victim. First, dramatically and publicly create a series of public events, designed to attract media attention to this victim's aberrant behavior. Examples: choose several impactful messages, such as UNRWA's unprecedented support of fictional refugees, the complicity of the West in spending (rewarding) a purported victim, the self-inflicted nature of the Arab-Palestinian victimhood, the documented account of eyewitnesses present at the time of the accident (Nakba) and the absence of rewards to genuine victims/refugees: Sudan, Darfur, Kosovo, etc. So how do you get the media's attention: point the finger at the self-inflicted injury, the financial benefit, and the witnesses to the true behavior of the purported victim; not in articles, papers, or books, but through bold action. Hunger strikes, disruptive demonstrations, street drama, flash mobs, music videos, celebrity readings of contemporaneous documents that recorded the testimony of eyewitnesses. Rather than go on any further, let me step back a moment. A war of propaganda has been waged against Israel for over fifty years. During that time has Israel engaged in any battle in an attempt to win the propaganda war? No. Their response has been words, letters, and statements, but not viscerally impact-ful media warfare. Only recently Israel and its supporters have upped the ante, slightly. Months upon months after an incident, the Hasbara campaign would be undertaken to counter the lies, distortions and vivid images that have been driven into the hearts, minds, and emotions of the audiences to the propaganda lies. This is war, as important as the military wars Israel has fought in the past and fights to this day. Money, weapons, troops, training, strategic planners, and more should be developed and utilized, in real time to counter the outright lies and distortions of the images distributed throughout the world by the propaganda apparatus of the Arab-Palestinians and their Arab supporters and co-conspirators.

Much of what I have written is well known to many observers. What is new is the proposal to mount a counter campaign, well-financed, well developed, and well implemented. If there is any doubt as to how important this counter-propaganda campaign really is, listen to Elie Wiesel's recent speech, in which he stated that not since 1945 has he been so concerned for the Jewish people. That is a heck of an admission from a man as powerful and dedicated as Elie Wiesel. I want to be a part of the mobilization of the forces to attack aggressively and preemptively the propaganda that spews forth from the global media on a daily basis. I look forward to hearing comments on Israel's and the Jewish peoples decades long defeat in the war of images, lies, and distortions, and who is willing to join in a vital new campaign to counter attack and defeat our self-declared enemies. The alternative is delegitimization, or worse, becoming victims ourselves.

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We shall consider: ”Anyone in Israel considering the surrender of Jewish territory is treason and must be prosecuted”

We shall consider: ”Anyone in Israel considering the surrender of Jewish territory is treason and must be prosecuted”

Clipping from Saint Petersburg Times (approximately 1946)

Washington - (UP) - Britain's treaty grafting independence to Trans-Jordan violates agreements with the United States, the United Nations and the Old League, as well as the rights of the people of Palestine, Senator Francis J. Myers, Pennsylvania democrat, charged yesterday.

Echoing the words of Senator Claude Pepper, Democrat, Florida, who flayed U.S. foreign policy, Thursday, Myers asserted that Trans-Jordan is not ready for the statehood and "illegally granted". And in offering that goal of all dependencies, he added Britain has acted "in contempt of the senate of the United States." 
* * *
"WHY THIS HASTE and Stealth?" he asked in a floor speech. "The British government which has fought all attempts at freedom, all movements for independence in the Middle East, is now discovered in the gracious role of liberator.

"Are there perhaps some hidden resources, mineral wealth or oil which are involved?"

He demanded that the state department explain its failure to protest the treaty violation, and urged that the senate demand all the facts.

Pepper charged that the United States had become a guarantor of British Imperialism, and that the British-Trans-Jordan agreement was but a "subterfuge" so long as his majesty's troops are allowed to remain in that country. He also asserted that the United States and Britain were ganging up on Russia, and added:

"WHAT I DECRY is the international hypocrisy, sham and pretense. If the British people want the Russians to get their troops out of Iraq, let them get their troops out of Trans-Jordan. Let them get their troops out of Lebanon and Syria, and let them get their troops out of Palestine."

Myers picked up that tune, changing only the words. In angry mood, the dark-haired Pennsylvanian told his colleagues that:

1. The territory of Trans-Jordan is contained in the original mandate for Palestine, and under its terms, the mandate could not be unilaterally altered.

2. Under the Anglo-American Convention of 1924, Britain could not change the mandate's terms without the consent of the United States.

3. This violation of the treaty with the United States also "strikes at the charter of the United Nations adopted at San Francisco" which "specifically states that no change can be made in the status of mandated territories without the approval of the Jewish people in Palestine and UNO's general assembly."

Myers asserted that there was no more justification for separating Trans-Jordan from Palestine then there was for "the separation of the United States into two nations: Trans-Mississippi and Cis-Mississippi."

"Aaron Burr tried to do that to our nation" he said. "He was tried for treason".

We shall consider: ”Anyone in Israel considering the surrender of Jewish territory is treason and must be prosecuted”
Posted by YJ Draiman

Know Your History: Jewish Revival Of ‘Palestine’ (National Geographic, Dec 1938) By Aussie Dave

Know Your History: Jewish Revival Of ‘Palestine’ (National Geographic, Dec 1938)

By

 Aussie Dave

 -

December 22, 2016

A series where I use history to debunk common misconceptions about the Middle East conflict.

In December 1938, before WWII and the establishment of the modern state of Israel, National Geographic ran a photo essay entitled Change Comes To Bible Lands. Besides looking at places such as Egypt and Iran at the time, it also looked at the area then known as “Palestine.”

Once again, it is a fascinating read. Note the following:

• How the Jews transformed Tel Aviv “in a few short years from empty sands”
• The constant references to the Jewish history of the land
• Mention of the land as the Jewish “national home”
• The Arab violence at the time (pre-state)

Note: I cannot provide a link to the full article since it is only available to those who have purchased a National Geographic subscription. But I have provided the screenshots. As usual, click on the screenshots to enlarge.

Support more stories like this.

Israel Is Not Up For Grabs

By

 Zahava Englard Shapiro

 -

December 22, 2016

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There is much noise surrounding our little land. The clamor of rival claims to the Land of Israel from the podiums of terrorist leaders ruling over a conjured up Palestinian people reverberates through the unhallowed halls of the United Nations. It is perpetuated by an Islamic cartel, anti-Israel NGO’s and an ill-educated and profoundly biased mainstream media.

As if the aforementioned were not galling enough, we are forced to contend with Jews who are stuck in a mindset of pleasing the enemy to the point of discounting their own identity, devaluing their own nation’s status, and consequently surrendering their heritage to the Land of Israel.

Many of these Jews go as far as placing the “sensitivities” of our sworn enemies before the lives of their own people and vociferously join anti-Israel NGO’s such as New Israel Fund, J Street, Jewish Voice of Peace, Peace Now, B’Tzelem, Yesh Din and Breaking the Silence. These Jews have chosen to stand with those who wish to deny the rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. A form of Stockholm Syndrome, if you will, left over from too many years of persecution and oppression under a myriad of unfriendly host countries.

But I’m not writing to argue against enemy narratives that are based on a deliberate and malevolent revision of history. Nor am I going to attempt in this missive to explain the Diaspora induced mental anarchy in the minds of some of our fellow Jews. Too limited a venue for the latter. I prefer only to state the obvious. The simple truth. With no apologies or drawn out explanations or justifications: The Land of Israel, in its entirety belongs to the Jewish Nation.

This unquestionably includes Yehuda and Shomron, in English, Judea and Samaria. It is an eternal gift from G-d. It is not up for debate. It is a truth not to be suppressed or obscured, especially in this twisted politically correct era we find ourselves in, where everything is all-inclusive to an insensible and perverse degree.

People are not all the same, neither are our legacies, and our differences ought to be respected, honored and celebrated rather than rejected. The Land of Israel does not belong to two different nations. It does not belong to the Arab people who are indigenous to Arabia. It does not belong to the Muslims. It does not belong to the Christians. It does not belong to the world of nations to do with it what it wills.

The Land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people. Plain and simple.

Our historical record buttresses our Divine right to the Land of Israel that is deeply ingrained in the Jewish heart.

Generally known as the father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, a secular Jew who, after coming face to face with Jew hatred during the Dreyfus trial in 1894, revitalized the imperative for the Jewish people to settle the Land of Israel. He may have coined the term Zionism, but he didn’t take it out of thin air. Although secular, he knew that the word “Zion”, straight out of the Torah, stood for Jerusalem, as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole, and that settling Zion was inherent to our nation status. It may have taken the chants of “death to the Jews” to awaken his Jewish soul, but once it did, he naturally and instinctively turned to the Land of Israel with the intention of rejuvenating our homeland.

“Our attitude toward the land of our fathers is and shall remain unchangeable.” – Theodor Herzl

We don’t need fancy promotions or catchy slogans to defend our Divine right to the land. Nor do we need any gimmicks to prove we are indigenous to the land. To all of it. Judea and Samaria are not separate from the land. It is our heartland. It is the cradle of Jewish civilization.

The only thing necessary is the courage to proclaim the truth.

That it belongs to us is a basic truth rooted in our faith and authenticated by our history. It is that simple truth that defines us as a nation, the nation of Israel that is one with the Land of Israel. One entity. Inseparable.

It is an enduring, simple truth that has strengthened the Jewish nation throughout two excruciating millennium of relentless persecution until we prevailed in once again taking ownership of what is rightfully ours. Current political frolics notwithstanding, Israel, with our heartland of Judea and Samaria, and with Jerusalem as our eternal capital, is ours.

Apropos to our upcoming Hanukah holiday, where we celebrate our victory over Hellenist Jews who sought to dilute our religion with heathenism, enable the Greeks to contaiminate our Temple in Jerusalem, corrode our belief system and undermine our nationalist pride, we must today, once again and unapologetically take ownership of our heritage. We must peel off the layers of 2000 years-worth of recrimination, denunciation and contempt from the nations of the world and retrieve our self-respect. We, therefore, must strongly proclaim our rightful ownership of the Land of Israel with the honor and dignity it deserves, and with confidence in whom we are as a nation, asserting in no uncertain terms our biblical and indigenous rights to our land.

In the same vein, we owe no one any apologies, nor do we need to defend calling our country the Jewish State of Israel. We are not here to emulate other countries. We have no need to mimic others. Our God-given code of laws stands on its own and distinguishes us from the rest.

We are not obligated to define ourselves according to the sensitivities of others. While there is freedom of religion for all in the Jewish State of Israel, our country’s national holidays are Jewish – not Christian and not Muslim.

Respecting other religions and cultures does not necessitate embracing them.

Neither must we compromise our national symbols, be it the shield of David on our country’s flag, the lion of Judah as the official emblem of Jerusalem, or the menorah with olive branches as our official State emblem.

The menorah design from the Arch of Titus that once stood for the destruction of the Jewish state in 70 CE, now symbolizes rebirth with the return of the menorah as the official emblem of the reestablished State of Israel. It is a testimony to the eternity of the Jewish people in our land, where we, despite all odds, continuously maintained a presence, and we embrace our national symbols with the pride it deserves. We damn well earned it.

In just a few short months, the Jewish nation will celebrate the jubilee anniversary of the liberation of our heartland from a long line of foreign occupiers, the last one being Jordan. Rather than become fatal victims in the 1967 war where the Arab armies from all fronts aimed to annihilate us, we met this threat head-on and miraculously defeated our enemies in six days.

Judea and Samaria is, at long last, in the hands of its rightful owners.

We never lost hope, as our national anthem attests. For 2000 years, our hope stood the test of time with all its adversity to be a free nation in our own land.

We, the Jewish nation, the children of Israel, are one with the Land of Israel, in its entirety.

It’s not up for grabs. It belongs to us. End of discussion.

Know Your History: Jewish Revival Of ‘Palestine’ (National Geographic, Dec 1938)

By

 Aussie Dave

 -

December 22, 2016