Dear Jess

Dear Jess,

I read your letter to Lorde, published in The Jewish Chronicle.  

I would just want to make one comment. (I was published also in TheJC awhile ago.)

You write 

"Israel’s illegal settlements break the Geneva convention, which is true".

No, Jess, they do not.

Let me explain it to you briefly and concisely.

A.  The League of Nations Mandate of Palestine, which was to reconstitute the Jewish people's national homeland through the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, guaranteed, Article 6, to "encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."

In other words, the act of "settlement" in and of itself, is not illegal.

B.  And where was this settlement activity to take place?

If we look to Article 25, we read

In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions

So, as you probably know your geography, all the area west of the Jordan River is the territory in which settlement by Jews is permitted, nay, encouraged.

C.  Until the creation of the Palestine Mandate, Jess, no state called Palestine existed.  It was a region, an area.  The Ottoman Empire ruled it, having conquered it from Mamelukes who conquered it from Crusaders who had conquered it from Arabs (who first came to the area of Palestine in 638 CE) and who had conquered it from the Byzantine Empire.

And you surely know, Jess, that "Palestine" is the Latin name given by the Romans to Eretz-Yisrael, the Land of Israel, the Jewish homeland since around 1200 BCE or so, three-thousand years ago.  You see, Jess, when the League of Nations wrote "historic connection", this is all that they were referring to, all these foreign peoples preventing the Jews from reestablishing their national home in Eretz-Yisrael.

And the Arabs living in the area called themselves Southern Syrians and demanded at first that the British reunite "Palestine" with Syria.

D.  At the end of the Mandate period, during which the Arabs consistently rejected all forms of compromise, they all went to war against Israel.  Jews who had lived in the areas now known as the "West Bank" had been ethnically cleansed by the thousands from that area either by Mufti-led riots in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936 and then during the war of aggression the Arabs launched following the November 29, 1947 Partition Plan mentioned above.

They lost.  And the territory that the United Nations intended to become the Arab State in Palestine was conquered and occupied, illegally, by Jordan which later annexed it, also illegally.

E.  In 1967, after years of continuous Arab terror, by at first the fedayeen in the 1950s and then the PLO/Fatah from 1964 when hundreds of Israelis were killed, the Arabs declared war against Israel. Jordan fired artillery shells into Israel and part of its army invaded Jerusalem.

Israel defended itself.  Legally.

So Israel became the belligerent occupier of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.  And it quite legally continues to administer those areas until a peace treaty is eventually signed, if the Arabs ever decide to negotiate in good faith.

In fact, the famous UN SC Resolution 242 demanding Israel's withdrawal from territories - and to who should those territories be "returned", as it were?  To Jordan which illegally occupied them?  242 doesn't even mention any "Palestinians".

F.  Now, according to the Geneva Convention you mention, III, can you point to a specific "crime" of "settling"?  No.  It doesn't exist.  All point to Para. 49 which reads:

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive

No one has forced me or my neighbors to live here in Shiloh or other Jewish communities established since 1967.  In fact, some of us are now in places where their parents or relatives lived prior to the 1948 war.  No one transferred me here.  No one deported me to here.

We're here quite legally.

In fact, even the US State Department isn't sure exactly how illegal, supposedly, "settlements" are.

Jess, those using that paragraph have twisted its meaning and intent and applicability.

E.  And Jess, are we "illegally occupying" Jerusalem, the Jewish People's eternal capital?  That's ridiculous, correct?

Jess, write to Lorde again and update her what you learned.