Monday, October 24, 2011

Forget "Settler". The 'In' Word is: "Settlor"

I learned something about a term: settlor -

A settlor is someone who 'makes a settlement'. They do this by placing assets such as money, land or buildings in a trust. This is known as 'settling property'. Settlors can do this directly or indirectly, by giving the funds to someone else to set up a trust. They normally place assets in a trust when the trust is created, but can also do so later on.

I found it in an amazing article, do read it all, published hereby Stephen Kruger, a lawyer, a writer, and an editor who comments on legal matters. Excerpts:-

...Settlor, trust instrument and beneficiary

When God gave the Land of Israel to the Jews, as recited in the Bible, He did so in trust. In law, a settlor is an owner of specified property, such as a parcel of land, who gives the specified property to another person, but subject to a trust.

To do this, the owner of the property (the settlor) transfers ownership of the specific property (the corpus) to an entity (the trust) for the benefit of a named person (the beneficiary). The means of transfer is a document (the trust instrument).

The corpus is owned by the trust, and the corpus is managed by the manager of the trust (the trustee). It is the duty of a trustee fulfill the intention of the settlor, as expressed in the trust instrument. Utmost fidelity is required of a trustee toward the corpus of the trust and toward the beneficiary of a trust.

God is the Settlor of the trust, the corpus of which is the Land of Israel. Portions of the Bible are the trust instrument. E.g., Genesis 15:1-21; Numbers 21:21-22:1, 34:1-15; Deuteronomy 2:17-3:27. The trust is a concept expressed in the Bible, rather than an entity.

Terms in the trust instrument include the boundary of the Land of Israel, the transfer of the Land of Israel to Jews, the permanence of the possessory interest of Jews in the Land of Israel, and the permanence of the trust.

By default, the present trustee of the trust is the government of Israel. The beneficiaries of the trust are all Jews, throughout their generations.

The world does not accept those facts, because they are decisive to Jews. Without God and the biblical trust, there is no superior claim of Jews to the Land of Israel.

As trustee, the government of Israel is entirely without fidelity. The giving away by the government of Israel of swathes of the Land of Israel to Arabs, and the potential giving away by the government of Israel of more swathes of the Land of Israel to Arabs, stem from the contempt of the government of Israel for the Settlor of the trust, for the corpus of the trust, for the terms of the trust, for the Book in which it is written, and for the beneficiaries of the trust.

Instead of declaring and enforcing the rights of Jews, the government of Israel continues the touchy-feely policy toward Arabs put in place by left-wing Jews in Mandatory Palestine after World War I. The self-defeatism inherent in that policy caused the government of Israel to lose the peace in 1948, to lose the peace again in 1956, to lose the peace once again in 1967, and, in ensuing years, to cement its loss of the peace. Baseball has a rule: three strikes, you’re out. That rule should have been applied by the government of Israel in 1967, after the third major Israel-Arab war. It was not.

Denial of Jewish sovereignty

Creation of a “Palestine” was made possible by denial, by the government of Israel, of Jewish sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Aza. Denial created the condition precedent for entry of some other sovereignty there.

A population was needed. Creation of “Palestinians” was made possible by denial, by the government of Israel, of the right of Jews to live everywhere in the Land of Israel...

...There is no “international law” any more than there is an “international community.” The term “international community” is a euphemism for the totality of disparate, motley countries which fight endless wars of all against all. Thomas Hobbes wrote, in another context, that “. . . during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” Leviathan, ch. 13.

Actions of the government of Israel in line with “international law” are anomalous. Some countries other than Israel pay lip service to “international law.” Most countries do not even that. Lip service or no service, every country acts in accordance with its national self interest, because there is no “international law” and there is no “international community.”

The lowest common denominator of countries large and small is Jew-hatred. That explains widespread use of “international law” by the “international community” as a club with which to clobber Israel...

...create a “Palestine” out of Judea, Samaria and Aza, which are integral parts of the Land of Israel, is illustrated by application elsewhere of the concept of two states for the purpose of resolving a territorial conflict.

Suppose that a call were issued to Moslem Iraq and to Moslem Turkey to give away land for peace, to create a homeland. Suppose that there were UN resolutions expressive of the obligation, under “international law,” of Iraq to deny its sovereignty over Kurdistan, and of Turkey to deny its sovereignty over Anatolia, and for Iraq and Turkey to create ex nihilo, out of Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkish Anatolia, a homeland for Kurds, with Mosul as its capital.

There would be no two-state solution. No sonorous talk about a Kurdistan living side-by-side in peace and security with Iraq. No visionary sound-bites about mutually-beneficial relations between Kurdistan and Turkey. No road map; no international conferences; not a single meeting at Camp David. No shuttle diplomacy among Baghdad and Ankara and Mosul. There would be no establishment and endless funding of a United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Kurdish Refugees in the Near East (compare the UNRWA)...

Mindboggling.

But let's add Eli Hertz's comments to clarify that international law, whatever you think of it, is on our side:

Successive Israeli governments have failed to recognize the supreme importance of the "Mandate for Palestine" [24 July, 1922] a historical League of Nations document that set forth the irrevocable Jewish legal rights to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered by international law and valid to this day...the best legal weapon [we] will ever have...

...The [Balfour] Declaration was endorsed at the time by several of the Allied Governments; it was reaffirmed by the Conference of the Principal Allied Powers at San Remo in 1920; it was subsequently endorsed by unanimous resolutions of both Houses of the Congress of the United States; it was embodied in the Mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations in 1922; it was declared, in a formal statement of policy issued by the Colonial Secretary in the same year, 'not to be susceptible of change.'

Article 27 of the Mandate for Palestine states that the "consent of the Council of the League of Nations is required for any modification of the terms of this mandate." No such consent was ever passed.  Eleven successive British governments, Labor and Conservative...viewed themselves as duty-bound to fulfill the "Mandate for Palestine"...Article 80 of the United States Charter states that "nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states of any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties".  Thus, the Mandate for Palestine is still in effect today...

And Howard Grief's overview, here and see this additional collection of articles.

^

No comments: