The World Court at the Hague has loudly told the global community that terrorism and an average legal argument will spell victory at the World Court. By omission, the Court told Palestinian Authority Muslims who make human bombs of their own children, in order to kill other children, that they have every right to do so, because they are "occupied" by Israel. The World Court decided Israel has no right to defend herself by erecting an anti-terror wall to keep out suicidal, genocidal killers.
Was the Muslim slaughter of Jews in Hebron, or in Jerusalem, in 1929 due to the anti-terror wall of 2004?
The Palestinians have become the Chosen and the Jews have become the Condemned. The path of the barrier, according to the court opinion read by Judge Shi Jiuyong of China, "gravely" violates Palestinian rights, "and the infringements from that route cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order."
The World Court decided that the Holy Land with its Arab olive groves, grapes and rocks are more important than the lives of Israeli citizens. How many Arab olives are worth one Jewish child? How many Arab grapes are worth one Israeli soldier? How many Arab rocks are worth one Jewish family?
The only surprise about the World Court's decision would be if anybody is surprised. No one is surprised in Israel, or in the Middle East; not in America, in Canada, Latin America, Australia, India, Asia or Europe. How normal is it to expect to be treated unfairly, cynically and with prejudice? The democratic, human- rights abiding World Court has sent the undemocratic PA Muslims a silent and clear message: you have the right to murder and maim Jews wherever you find them and we, who are pimping for Palestine, have no ruling if you choose to murder your own children in order to murder Israeli children, because we find the Wall of 2004 to be an obstacle to "national security or public order."
The Western world is digging its own grave. When Muslims loudly and often declare, "Thanks to your democratic laws, we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws, we will conquer you," does anyone believe these Islamic invaders and conquerors will listen to the esteemed World Court at the Hague?
The Palestinians have become the darlings of a cruel, perverted, leftist Western mentality. This decision by the World Court reveals the reason the citizens of Israel should become more independent. If the West is drowning in self-hatred, how much more do they hate the Jew and blame him for their own self-loathing.
There is nothing Israel can do about a self-loathing Western World. If more Israelis could only see their own beauty, their own humanity, their own very talented, kind and brilliant souls, we wouldn't have to constantly throw ourselves on the mercy and goodwill of the West, which is dangerous to our own survival as a nation and a people. The result of our obsessive, neurotic, insecure dependence can only be the rage and wrath of the world. Are we setting the stage for another Shoah?
A damning report by Palestinian legislators, which has been seen by the Telegraph, concludes that Mr Arafat did nothing to stop the deals although he publicly condemned the structure as a "crime against humanity".
The report claims that the cement was sold with the knowledge of senior officials at the Palestinian ministry of national economy, and close advisers to Mr Arafat. It concludes that officials were bribed to issue import licences for the cement to importers and businessmen working for Israelis.
One of the report's three authors, Hassan Khreishe - an independent legislator and long-term critic of Mr Arafat - last night called for the Palestinian cabinet to resign.
"Wealthy Palestinians with connections at the highest levels have been making millions helping Israel build this wall while Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have been urging people to fight against it," said Mr Khreishe, a council member from the West Bank city of Tulkarm.
"Why Arafat did nothing about it, we just don't know. These people are traitors who have brought shame on us, and they should be punished."
An official in Mr Arafat's office said: "We will not comment because this file has been closed and it is now in the hands of the attorney general."
Growing resistance to corruption in the Palestinian Authority is posing the most serious internal challenge to Mr Arafat's leadership. Last week, gunmen staged a number of kidnappings and attacks on security buildings in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated about high-level corruption and the appointment of Mr Arafat's cousin, Moussa Arafat, as security chief in the Gaza Strip.
The report reveals that the cement originally came from Egyptian companies which supplied it at a huge discount of $22 (£12.50) a ton to help rebuild dilapidated Palestinian houses or buildings bulldozed by the Israelis.
Between September 2003 and March this year, 420,000 tons of cement were allegedly sent to three big Palestinian companies. According to the report, however, only 33,000 tons were sold in the Palestinian market. The vast bulk was transported to Israel on trucks owned by the three firms. According to Mr Khreishe, the cement was then sold with a mark-up of at least $15 a ton - and possibly as high as $100 - making profits of well over $6 million (£3.4 million) for company executives.
The Legislative Council launched an investigation after Egyptian journalists stumbled upon business links between a German Jewish businessman and the Palestinian companies.
According to the report, on November 9 last year a letter was sent to Mr Arafat by the Palestinian Authority comptroller, revealing that open-ended import licences for the cement had been signed by Maher al-Masri, the economy minister.
The Palestinian Authority comptroller asserted in the letter that the cement was destined for the wall.
The letter was allegedly received and seen by Mr Arafat on the same day that he urged people to demonstrate on the first international "Day against the Wall". According to Mr Khreishe, Mr Arafat took no action to stop further imports, which continued for another five months.
Ministry officials said that Mr al-Masri was unavailable for comment. The minister was quoted on a Palestinian news website challenging the claims, although he conceded that some cement had been transported to Israeli businessmen. "There is an exaggeration," he said. "The goal is to distort my reputation."
He said that his own investigative committee found that only 14,500 tons of concrete were transported to Israel. He conceded that two ministry officials carried out some "suspicious administrative violations" in relation to the permits, and that there was not full co-ordination between the economy and finance ministries regarding the cement quota. The ministry had issued permits for 233,000 tons, he said, and had then cancelled permits for 65,000 tons.
The revelations in the report are highly embarrassing for Mr Arafat, who has been pushing the international community to condemn the 425-mile barrier, of which about one quarter has been built. Israel says that the barrier is vital to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and terrorist attacks. Palestinian leaders argue that it is designed to deprive them of a state, and is cutting off Palestinians from their land, schools, doctors and relatives.
Last week, the United Nations condemned the barrier and demanded that it should be torn down.
The failure of the 15 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to fully examine the international legal status of the West Bank is an error of monumental proportions which has fatally flawed the advisory opinion it has given to the United Nations on Israel's right to erect a security fence in the West Bank.
The ICJ appears to have been totally ignorant of the existence of Jewish rights in the West Bank arising under international law created by Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres 1920 and the Mandate for Palestine 1922.
These rights have been preserved by article 80 of the United Nations Charter, which stipulates the continuing validity of earlier international instruments such as the Mandate for Palestine.
It is hard to believe that a Court composed of such eminent jurists could have acted in such an incompetent and reckless manner to the detriment of the Jewish people.
150 members of the United Nations have now shown their gullibility by blindly accepting the ICJ decision and in so doing are themselves in breach of the United Nations Charter that they cynically claim to uphold.
Israel's presence in the West Bank extends far beyond that of being a military occupier since 1967. Israel also has the right in international law to facilitate the settlement of Jews in the West Bank for the purpose of reconstituting the Jewish National Home in that area.
Any action taken by Israel in the West Bank must accordingly be considered from this dual perspective, which both the ICJ and the UN General Assembly has failed to do.
Ironically only Judge Elaraby, an Egyptian judge whose presence on the Court was unsuccessfully objected to by Israel, was prepared to state that "the international legal status of the Palestinian Territory merits more comprehensive treatment" than the Court gave to this fundamental issue.
Judge Elaraby identified the need for such a review saying: "A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on one or more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently sidestepped."
The failure of the ICJ to adopt this principled stand before reaching its decision is inexplicable and is deserving of the strongest condemnation. Its judgment, as a result, is not worth the paper it is written on.
Any UN General Assembly resolution based on that decision is similarly flawed and of no consequence.
Judge Elaraby said: "The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain" by the League of Nations.
Rather than examining the terms of the Mandate document and articles 94 and 95 of the Treaty of Sevres, both the Court and Judge Elaraby incorrectly asserted that the Mandate for Palestine was established under paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.
Paragraph 4 of the Covenant provided that "certain communities, formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone."
Article 94 of the Treaty of Sevres clearly indicated that Paragraph 4 did apply to the Arab inhabitants living within the areas covered by the Mandates for Syria and Mesopotamia, which were created at the same time as the Mandate for Palestine.
Article 95 of the Treaty of Sevres however made it abundantly clear that paragraph 4 was not to apply to the Arab inhabitants living within the area covered by the Mandate for Palestine. This Mandate was to be of a unique character and nature unlike any other Mandate established by the League of Nations.
Unlike the Mandates for Syria and Mesopotamia,
(i) the Mandate for Palestine was not established under paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations
(ii) did not consider the Arab inhabitants as an independent nation that could be provisionally recognized
(iii) At best promised local autonomy to the Arab inhabitants if circumstances permitted
What the Mandate for Palestine recognized in clearly expressed terms was
(i) the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting the Jewish National Home in that country provided that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non- Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
(ii) the authority of the Administration of Palestine to facilitate Jewish immigration and to encourage close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes, whilst ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population were not prejudiced.
Yet the Court makes not one mention at all of these Jewish rights to settle in the West Bank created by an international instrument to which Members of the United Nations were parties and of the obligation of the United Nations to ensure that these rights were preserved for the benefit of the Jewish people in accordance with the obligations imposed on member States by Article 80 of its own Charter.
Who within the ICJ undertook the legal research, which resulted in the ICJ delivering a judgment which failed to identify and consider the existence of those Jewish rights in the West Bank and their relevance to the issues before the Court?
Was such researcher influenced by unsubstantiated material appearing on sites such as palestinefacts.org or palestinerembered.com, which contain similar erroneous statements that the Mandate for Palestine was created under paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations?
The ICJ urgently needs to disclose who carried out the research to enable its judgment to be so formulated and the facts justifying it to come to such an unrealistic conclusion.
Had the Court been aware of and considered such Jewish rights in international law, it would have been patently clear that the United Nations General Assembly had consistently sidestepped the rule of law in the many resolutions it had passed on the illegality of settlements established by Israel in the West Bank and on Israel's right to build a security fence in the West Bank.
Why too did United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, omit to include copies of the Treaty of Sevres and the Mandate for Palestine in the extensive dossier of documents given by him to the Court? Was he guilty of misleading the Court by withholding material documents bearing on the issues relating to the advisory opinion being sought? Did he have an obligation to highlight Article 80 of his own Charter and seek the Court's opinion on the relevance of that Article to the legal opinion being sought by the United Nations?
The ICJ's failure to properly consider the legal status of the West Bank in international law has amounted to a gross miscarriage of justice, which will have serious repercussions for resolving the ongoing struggle between Jews and Arabs over the sovereignty of, and the rights of Jews to reside in, the West Bank.
The decision will give credence to the perception of a biased and anti-Israel United Nations and a Court that cannot be trusted to properly consider legal issues referred to it by the United Nations in a fair and impartial manner.
The decision will certainly encourage those websites continually proclaiming that Jews have no legal rights to settle in, let alone claim sovereignty in any part of the West Bank, to continue their campaign of vilification and hatred against Jews.
The Jewish People has since 1922 consistently indicated its preparedness to forego its legal rights in part of Palestine but the Arabs have always rejected such overtures. For the Arabs it has always been all or nothing at all.
The ICJ's decision will only encourage the hardening of such a view and weaken those voices within the Arab community who want to see an end to the murder and killing visited on both Jews and Arabs in the last 120 years.
No amount of disinformation, lies or propaganda can change the legal right of the Jewish people to live in the West Bank and to take all reasonable measures to protect their lives from deadly attacks involving ambushes, drive by shootings, home invasion and suicide bombings carried out by their Arab neighbors contrary to the right to life of every human being.
The fact that the ICJ failed to spell out that message loudly and clearly because of its own perceived incompetence and failure to consider the legal status of the West Bank in international law, will be the lasting legacy of a decision which binds no one yet has the power to affect so many.
Two recent documents – the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague and a report of the International Development Committee of the British Parliament – both purporting to base their conclusions on legal grounds, actually show how abysmally ignorant of the most rudimentary facts of law and history these bodies are.
For decades now, the Palestinian Arabs have been repeating, mantra-like, the claim that their terrorist war against Israel is a legitimate war of liberation, a struggle most freedom-loving people would approve. Israel has done little to challenge this falsity, even after Oslo, when over 95% of Palestinians became subjects of the Palestinian Authority.
True, Israel occasionally invaded parts of the PA, but only temporarily in response to terrorist atrocities that the PA either did not bother to stop or actually encouraged. No one could, legally or otherwise, brand such temporary incursions, designed to capture terrorists, not to acquire territory, an "occupation."
The Big Lie is that Israel is guilty of stealing or occupying Palestinian territories. Before Oslo, Israel occupied indeed disputed territories that are in small part (about 7% of the area) inhabited by Palestinians. After Oslo it occasionally invaded them. But this is, legally, a very far cry from the claim that there were actually at any time Palestinian territories that Israel illegally occupied, violated, or "stole."
And yet, two bodies that claim that they respect the law falsely accuse Israel of violating international law because it does this or that to so-called occupied "Palestinian Territories."
A little history: Until the end of World War I, the territories that were to become the Palestine British Mandate were a deserted province of the Turkish Empire. As Bernard Lewis noted, "From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name of Palestine was not a country "
In the post-WW I agreements that settled the disposition of former Turkish lands, 99% of the Middle East's Turkish territories were assigned to the Arabs, on condition that 1% will be designated a Jewish national home.
This was the one and only internationally approved legal dispensation by consent of these territories. Britain received a League of Nations mandate over Palestine (that included then Jordan) only because it undertook to establish a Jewish national home there.
In 1947 the UN recommended the partition of Palestine contingent on the parties' agreement. But the Arabs rejected the recommendation, rendering it null and void. Jordan then occupied and arbitrarily annexed the West Bank. So when in 1967 Israel ejected Jordan, the West Bank territories reverted, legally, to the status of disputed land, with the Jewish people having the prime legal claim to it.
The disputed territories were never Palestinian Arab – neither as national patrimony nor as private property. To this day, 93% of the land in Israel, in Jordan, and in the West Bank (the original area of the internationally legally sanctioned Jewish National Home) is not privately owned.
For centuries it belonged to the Turkish sultan, then the British Mandate, and subsequently to the State of Israel, in parts. The West Bank remains in legal dispute pending a settlement. Israeli settlements – occupying a mere 3% to 4% of government-owned land in the West Bank – cannot therefore be considered illegal.
THESE SIMPLE facts were ignored by the Hague judges, who condemned Israel for building its anti-terrorist protective fence on what they imagined were "Palestinian lands," and they were ignored by the learned members of the Commons Committee debating a report on "Occupied Palestinian Territories."
Much has already been written about The Hague's anti-Israel bias, so let us briefly examine the conduct of last April's Commons debate.
It opened with the usual disclaimer prefacing now all attacks on Israel by declaring Israel's right to exist etc., even its right to defend itself.
Few apparently notice (not even a warm and true friend like Prime Minister Tony Blair, who recently also reiterated this right of Israel to exist) what it denotes – that a mere six decades after the Holocaust, Israel, alone among the world's states, has to have its legitimacy confirmed and given assurances that it deserves to exist.
The MPs' protest that their report does not "give an iota of succor to suicide bombers" but object to suicide bombing not because it is wrong but because it is "a catastrophic tactic that has done great harm to the Palestinian cause." They spin a long litany of charges against Israeli offences without barely mentioning cause and effect.
Anyone reading the report would be convinced that the wicked Israelis "willfully destroy" and occupy Palestinian lands, starving, torturing, and killing its population, especially children, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
Only one participant in the debate, Conservative Party MP Quentin Davies, had the decency to remind the mostly Labor MPs (some Jewish, alas) who were condemning Israel alone that Israel was forced to react against a brutal terrorist war.
The MPs failed to mention that it was Arafat's war that brought ruin on what remained of the Palestinian economy and society after he and his gang of criminals despoiled it with corruption and plunder. It is a sad sight to see representatives of the great British democracy lobby so vehemently for Arafat's murderous dictatorship.
Blanket condemnation of Israel only is bound to justify what Israel's enemies do, including terrorism. It also perpetuates the Arabs' feelings of victimhood that prevents them from taking charge of their destiny.
British colonialism did some good. But it also had some disastrous consequences. It is therefore understandable why some British may feel guilty toward their former subjects, especially the Arabs who have to live with the horrible dictatorships that the British left behind and kept supporting. But is this reason to scapegoat the Jews once more?
What is different between the rest of the world's security fences and that of Israel? If a country wants to erect a security fence, few would object, and that country erects the fence ON ITS OWN LAND. The objections of the Palestinians and the ICJ is that Israel has the audacity to build the fence and taking acres and acres of Palestinian land, with it. Most of the route is built entirely on Palestinian land, trapping thousands of Palestinians in enclaves.Build it on the Green Line and nobody would have objected. The fact that Israel has crept so far into Palestinian land since 1967 should not mean that the Palestinians are the ones to be penalised. Surely those Israeli's living in contravention of internantional law are the ones in question?
What is different between the rest of the world's security fences and that of Israel? If a country wants to erect a security fence, few would object, and that country erects the fence ON ITS OWN LAND. The objections of the Palestinians and the ICJ is that Israel has the audacity to build the fence and taking acres and acres of Palestinian land, with it. Most of the route is built entirely on Palestinian land, trapping thousands of Palestinians in enclaves.Build it on the Green Line and nobody would have objected. The fact that Israel has crept so far into Palestinian land since 1967 should not mean that the Palestinians are the ones to be penalised. Surely those Israeli's living in contravention of internantional law are the ones in question?
The ceasefire lines of 1967 aren't borders, they're nothing.... and as I posted so many times, borders have yet to be agreed.... even though the early Mandates quite clearly state that the West Bank and Gaza belong to the Jewish state! _________________ He who is merciful with the cruel, will end-up being cruel to the merciful
- Kohelet Rabba 7:16
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