Benzion Netanyahu and the All Important UN Clause to Save the Jewish State
Benzion Netanyahu, who died Monday in Jerusalem at the age of 102, has been widely scrutinzed this week for his myriad contributions to the history of Zionism in Israel and the United States. Yet arguably the most important one has been overlooked. After World War II, Benzion Netanyahu, along with Irgun activist Peter Bergson, nephew of Mandatory Palestine Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and liberal American Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, drafted an article for inclusion in the United Nations Charter that could yet save the Jewish state.
The article became known as the "Palestine clause" for the protection it afforded to the right of Jewish settlement throughout the Land of Israel west of the Jordan River. Article 80 extended the guarantees to Jews afforded by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine following World War I. The Mandate had recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and "the legitimacy of grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country." Jews were guaranteed "the right of close settlement" throughout Palestine.
Bin Laden Lessons for Israel
When President Obama, a reserved family man, announced his intention to convene a late-night press conference, everyone held their breath. Some people attributed his quick action to his rush to salvage his sinking prestige ahead of the upcoming presidential elections; others spoke of his great sensitivity and incredible humanism in informing relatives of 9/11 victims without delay that the monster had been nabbed and hurled into the sea, in order to prevent a gravesite that would have drawn zealous Islamic pilgrims.
As the United States and its allies celebrated the superb operational and intelligence achievement, which took years to plan and execute, the sense of satisfaction was doubly great as the arch-terrorist who became a martyr (after educating an entire generation to do so before him) swore to undermine the West, fight the Jews (not the Israelis or Zionists) and bring a new Holocaust upon them.
Murder at Tomb Illustrates the Future of Jewish Holy Sites in a Palestinian State
Today's [April 24, 2011] attack on Jewish worshippers at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus [Shechem] needs to be understood as something more significant than just another unfortunate instance of violence between Jews and Arabs. It is nothing less than a warning of what will happen once Palestinians [sic] achieve full sovereignty, as the Obama administration appears to be demanding, over all of the West Bank [Judea and Samaria].
The incident occurred when a group of religious Jews, members of the Breslov hasidic sect, visited the Jewish holy site this morning unaccompanied by Israeli soldiers. The tomb is located in the city of Nablus, a place that is completely under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Twice a month Israel coordinates a visit by those Israelis who wish to pray there but religious Jews believe, not without reason, that restricting Jewish worship at the site in this manner is wrong and often attempt to go on their own. But rather than merely accommodate the presence of a few Jews in an Arab city, the Palestinian Authority police attacked the group that arrived today, killing one and wounding two others.
UN Must Help Block Terrorist Plan to Run Israel's Gaza Blockade Disguised as Humanitarians
The United States and Israel have called on the United Nations Security Council to take a stand against a fresh try to break the naval blockade of Gaza. The world body must do so in no uncertain terms.
Pro-Palestinian [sic], anti-Israel activists plan to set sail in May in as many as 15 ships, proclaiming that their only goal is to deliver humanitarian supplies to residents of Gaza. This is a lie.
The true aim is to provoke a confrontation that serves as a rallying point in a drive to portray Israel as an amoral, oppressive force.
Scholars the World Over -- Your Expertise Is Needed!
[The following is an important message reposted from the Temple Mount Sifting Project Web site to scholars around the world.]
As part of our research in preparing to publish the finds of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, one of our great challenges is identifying and dating special artifacts since they have been found out-of-context. With our acquaintance with the material culture of Jerusalem and of the land of Israel throughout its generations, we manage to identify and date most of the finds, but many others are only partially identified or remain a total enigma. Since our current research is dealing with archaeological finds from the Temple Mount — these finds being the only material from the Temple Mount that is accessible for archaeological study — we concluded that, in order to increase our ability to identify them, we should enlist the help of the world wide community of scholars via the Internet. Therefore, we have established a Web site in which we will upload from time to time images of artifacts about which we need more information.
What Has Happened To Us?
[Some things never change. This commentary, originally written in 1983/5743, is as applicable today as it was then. Nothing in it has changed except for replacing the name of Reagan with Obama and the settlement of Yamit with Gush Katif.]
Jabotinsky compared it to a stagecoach, its coachman thrown from his seat and the horses racing wildly towards the edge of a terrible chasm. In the coach sit people, eating, drinking, laughing, oblivious to the terrible rush to destruction. One man alone looks in horror at the revelers. "Do something," he cries. "Stop the horses! Quickly, do something before we perish!"
[Ze'ev] Jabotinsky spoke of the coach and blind passengers in the years just preceding World War II. The coach was Europe and the blind revelers were the Jews and they saw, heard, and understood nothing. And all of Jabotinksy's pleas availed him nothing. The horses raced to the edge, plunged over and carried six million passengers to their doom. Only then — at the final moment — did they understand. It was too late.
The Settlements Issue: Distorting the Geneva Convention and the Oslo Accords
Palestinian [sic] representatives at the UN have prepared a draft resolution that will seek to declare that Israeli settlements are "illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of peace." The issue of the legality of Israel's settlements policy has long been a central issue on the agenda of the international community.
It is claimed that settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians (1949). But both the text of that convention, and the post-World War II circumstances under which it was drafted, clearly indicate that it was never intended to refer to situations like Israel's settlements. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Article 49 relates to situations where populations are coerced into being transferred. There is nothing to link such circumstances to Israel's settlement policy.
Arabs Obstruct Path to Lasting Peace
Last week, the festival of lights [properly interpreted festival of dedication--ed], or Hanukkah, began on December 1. And what did the Palestinian Authority do to coincide with the Jewish holiday? They published a report that attempted to deny the Jewish connection to the Western Wall. It is actions like this from the Palestinians [sic] that continue to stall progress in the Middle East.
The Western Wall is located in the Old City, or eastern Jerusalem. The Wall surrounds the Temple Mount, a revered site for all the Abrahamic religions, but particularly Judaism. They [the Jews] believe that this is the site where God created Adam and where the biblical patriarch Abraham was asked to sacrifice his only son, Isaac [Genesis 22.1-19]. The Wall surrounded the second Jewish Temple, which was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE, according to The Jerusalem Post. Today the Wall—where visitors often pray and place notes of prayer—is considered the second holiest site in Judaism. A visit to the Wall is considered a very somber and sacred experience. The Palestinian Authority should respect this sort of reverence but instead they take another, inflammatory route.
Hate Crime Stats: Where's the 'Islamophobia'?
Islamist pressure groups have spent years pushing the meme that Muslims in America face ever-increasing violence at the hands of their fellow citizens, but new statistics on hate crimes reported to the FBI once again undermine such claims.
Just-released data covering 2009 (summarized in this important table) include 107 anti-Islamic hate crime incidents against persons and property, involving 128 offenses and 132 victims. These numbers are a hair above the post-9/11 lows of 2008 (105 incidents, 123 offenses, and 130 victims). Anti-Islamic hate crimes have been falling steadily for a decade, with 2009 figures down more than three-quarters from the 2001 spike.
Is Islam Really a Religion of Peace?
[This post is a report from Tom Gross, a journalist and international affairs commentator specializing in the Middle East. It is a follow-up to a story we reported in the weekly ENS report titled, "As Britain Embraces Islam, Students Taught Sharia Law". The video of the program can be viewed at the end of this post. The video of the program can be viewed at the end of this post. (Note this post was not written especially for ENS; Tom Gross posted it on his regular mailing list.) —ed]
The BBC is to be congratulated on its prominent report this week highlighting the fact that school children in Britain are being taught anti-Semitic and homophobic propaganda. (News of this has been reported elsewhere for years, including on several occasions on this e-mail list.)
The BBC's "Panorama" program, broadcast on Monday, has sparked significant media interest on the subject in Britain and abroad.