Jabotinsky - a la Beinart

A shortened version of this article appears

in the Summer edition of Fathom Journal

___________________

In his recent infamous Jewish Currents essay, Peter Beinart, seeking to minimize the element of the demand for a Jewish state amongst Zionist lumanaries, includes this snippet as reflecting the thinking of Ze’ev Jabotinsky as regards the requirement for Jewish statehood:

As Jabotinsky explained in 1909, “The full pathos of our ideal was never focused on sovereignty, but rather on the idea of a territory, a compact Jewish society in one continuous space . . . not a Jewish state but a Jewish collective life.” 

The original Russian text

with thanks to Ira of the Jabotinsky Institute

That excerpt, which he - or rather one of the three research assistants he employed – found in an article by Dmitry Shumsky, would be fairly surprising for those familiar with the Jabotinsky who demanded a Jewish State. Beinart uses it to buttress his agreement with Shumsky that “the demand for a Jewish state did not define Zionism until the 1940s”.(Shumsky, who promotes a historic revisionism focused on "nonstatist Zionism", is problematic and as Alan Arkush notes: "evidence presented by Shumsky the historian seems to be tailored to substantiating the thinking of Shumsky the polemicist"). He could have also referred to a 1918 booklet entitled ‘The Jewish Nation’ in which Jabotinsky proposed a formulation of an administrative government in Palestine, writing,

“our friends as well as enemies…think that we claim an independent Jewish State – which of course, we do not, and most emphatically not … . A “Jewish state” is so premature”.

But, as is obvious, from the wording, Jabotinsky did not reject a Jewish state in principle but rather was expressing his judgment that the time and conditions were not ripe for a declaration of independence. He could have been echoing how David Lloyd George explained the British thinking behind the Balfour Declaration to the Peel Commission in 1937:

when the time arrived for according representative institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile responded to the opportunity afforded them by the idea of a National Home and had become a definite majority of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish Commonwealth.’ 

Statehood surely and always defined Zionism while less-than-statehood defined their pragmatic practical politics to attain that goal.

Without specifically referencing the 1942 decision taken at the Biltmore Hotel Conference, Beinart is suggesting that it was only the Holocaust that tipped the scales, forcing Zionists to pursue statehood rather than other paradigms as here:

“The belief that Jews in the land of Israel risk genocide without a Jewish state is central to what it means to be a Zionist today.”

I would suggest, if anything, what galvanized a policy change, not a fundamental political alteration, was the reneging of the British government in its 1939 White Paper and its volte face from the idea of a Jewish state, or homeland, or commonwealth.

He depends on Jabotinsky further on to support his outlook that not only was the Holocaust the catalyst to demand a state but that Arab violence was not comparable to Nazi Holocaust activity and quotes from Jabotinsky’s 1923 Iron Wall article:

“prominent pre-state Zionists themselves depicted Palestinian resistance not as genocidal but as understandable. ‘Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized,’ wrote the hawkish Jabotinsky in 1923. ‘That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing’.”

But in the JTA 1940 obituary of Jabotinsky, we read:

Addressing a convention of the New Zionist Organization in Prague two years ago, Jabotinsky declared that the whole of Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan, had to become an independent Jewish State which would then decide its future connection with Britain.

These are two examples of what I have previously noted is Beinart’s hallmark: arguing with Beinart is frustrating because almost every source to which he refers is corrupted, is incomplete, lacks background and, in addition, he has a sophistic method of argumentation. As Daniel Gordis has observed, Beinart displays “an astonishing array of sleights of hand and misrepresentations” and his ‘piece [is] so intellectually dishonest—and manipulative.” (And CAMERA deals with Beinart corrupting more recent history.)

To return to the quotation from 1909, Jabotinsky’s article from which those words are extracted appeared in seven parts from mid-January to mid-March 1909. In order to grasp the context, one need recall that after several years of struggle, the Young Turks succeeded on July 24, 1908 in forcing Abdul Hamid to restore the constitution. They were nationalists and for all intents and purpose, their rule was nigh martial. Any attempt to propagandize in Turkey for an independent Jewish state would have been the end of Zionism in Turkey in those existing circumstances. 

Jabotinsky had been in Constantinople since 1908. He had been commissioned by a St. Petersburg newspaper to cover the revolution in Turkey and the Berlin Executive office of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) had appointed him its agent there. He became editor-in-chief of a new pro-Young-Turkish daily newspaper La Jeune Turc and other pro-Zionist periodicals including a weekly, L’Aurore, the Ladino El Judeo and a Hebrew weekly, Ha-Mevasser.

As noted by Tudor Parfitt, Yulia Egorova and Jacob Landau [in their studies] there, “Regarding Palestine, [Ha-Mevasser] argued that Zionist settlement to Palestine was economically favourable for the development of the Ottoman empire…[and] rebutted claims circulated by other contemporary press outlets (such as Alemdar), which stated that Zionism was anti-Turkish.

Quite simply, and even more obviously, Jabotinsky realized he needed a more pragmatic approach to the ruling clique to advance Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Young Turk leadership was becoming more sympathetic to Zionism as long as it was still in its practical phase (see p. 75 here). Yet, Jabotinsky came to the conclusion that Palestine could
not become a Jewish state as long as the Ottoman Empire existed and the attitude of the regime was anti-minority. Anyone reading the original Russian would grasp that Jabotinsky, throughout those seven sections, was deliberately avoiding any phrasing of Zionist aims that could prove disastrous for Zionism while yielding on as little as possible for the future development of the growing Zionist presence in then Palestine both demographically and agriculturally.

There is a second backdrop element which was the publication of a book by Jacobus Kann on his impressions of his 1907 visit to Ereẓ Israel. He had sent it to Young Turk parliamentarians and it included a demand for a Jewish autonomous home rule in Eretz Israel. This aroused strong criticism from Jabotinsky who at the time headed of the Zionist press in Istanbul who claimed it had damaged the cause of Zionism in the Ottoman capital. As described:

Jabotinsky had orders from [WZO President David] Wolffsohn to push a very soft line to the new masters of Turkey: Zionism did not mean a Jewish state, only free immigration to Palestine and cultural autonomy. But suddenly, without warning to either Wolffsohn or the Constantinople office, Jacobus Kann, a banker who administered the finances of the Dutch royal family and a member of the Actions Committee, published a travelogue, in German, of his recent trip to Palestine. In it, he reiterated the traditional Herzlian line that Turkey should set up an autonomous Zionist state there.

This affair provides greater insight into Jabotinsky’s thinking contained in the article quoted and it becomes quite clear, as Evyatar Freizel found, that he was agreeable that

For tactical reasons, official Zionism was cautious in explaining its ultimate aims, especially when addressing public opinion. Terms other than ‘state’ were used in diverse political documents and official Zionist utterances: Heimstatte, nationale Heimstatte, Jewish national home, commonwealth, Jewish commonwealth. However, the accepted view is that the ultimate aim of the mainstream Zionist movement was to recreate a Jewish state in Palestine. It remained open how best to reach that goal. A widely accepted position supported an evolutionary path, ‘practical Zionism’, meaning a gradual process of economic, social and institutional development

Moreover as Jan Zouplna writes:

It had to be clear to everyone that the first and ultimate goal of Zionism was the establishment of a Jewish majority in Palestine. It was yet to be decided what form of autonomy the state should possess. Like Herzl before him, Jabotinsky did not insist on immediate national and political independence…The only legitimate terms to be used were either Jewish majority or an administrative and political self-government. Jabotinsky claimed that the term “national home” was nothing else than an invention of a hostile Mandatory administration…Jabotinsky had a vision with a positive cultural content as well. As the above-mentioned ideas suggest, his vision, unlike the one of Herzl, does not stand in opposition to Ahad Ha’am and his concepts, but in opposition to his self-appointed interpreters, mostly associated with the Brith Shalom group.

Shmuel Katz in Volume One of “Lone Wolf”, p. 100, describing the affair, quotes Jabotinsky from his Autobiography as ruefully admitting that it was ironic that he, of all people, took the position to downplay the demand for statehood but given the time and place. He wrote that despite his “lov[ing] State Zionism…I love logic more”. Was Jabotinsky “guilty” as charged by Beinart? Not really, especially if one does not review and weigh the circumstances of that time and place when the article was written and not subject the article to a close reading of the actual text as opposed to relying on and interpreter such as Shumsky who, as I have shown, mistranslates Jabotinsky.

Later, in 1934, Jabotinsky's definition of Revisionist Zionist was a program that:

"The aim of Zionism is a Jewish state. The territory – both sides of the Jordan. The system – mass colonisation. The solution of the financial problem – a national loan. These four principles cannot be realised without international sanction."

Even then he was still aware of the tension between political goals and practical achievement.

One need not to be sympathetic to Jabotinsky to realize that Beinart was being imbalanced and plainly unfair in how he treated that quotation. Beinart has done this before in his Crisis of Zionism book seeking not to argue with him but rather to mischaracterize him and even demonize him. He didn't like that Jews carried a moral message (p. 100).  He held to a "racist" view (p. 101).  Nationalism, which he "revered", "bred" in him. (p. 103).

On page 101, Beinart, who describes Jabotinsky a page earlier as “brutal” and as one who of the Jews did not like “their belief that they carried a moral message”, quotes a 1910 article of Jabotinsky so:

“Only in the Bible is it written: “You should not wrong a stranger nor should you oppress him; for strangers you were in the land of Egypt”. Contemporary morality has no place for such childish humanism”.

In the first place, the second sentence in that article, “Homo homini lupos”, should more properly be

In our contemporary code of morality there is no room for this type of slobbering love and childish humanism of fellow man it would seem”.

But more importantly, that section is not referring to Jews. Jabotinsky is writing, foremost, about the situation in the United States after the race riots that year and of simply a “hate of one race against another, a devious hate, wide-open for all our eyes, arbitrary, without reason and without cause” which he denounces. It is “a sickness” just like the Kishniev pogrom and anti-Kurdish attacks. He then notes that the same German who sought freedom just a few years later is now persecuting Poles seeking the same goal and observes “Would the same German patriot of 1860 who shed tears when listening to village school pupils singing songs of a united Germany also have taken a strap to the Polish youngsters who refused to study religion in German?” It is here that his “only in the Bible…childish humanism” words follow. No Jews.

In fact, Jabotinsky adds: “the Poles see the Jews – and they do not hide this – as material to be exploited to strengthen their rule in the country” to illustrate how this process goes on and on as those who gain strength from a struggle then seek to stifle other struggles of weaker people, and the Jews are the weakest as he describes there.

That “childish humanism” was written in a rhetorical deprecatory, disdainful fashion. 

A corruption of the original content and intent. Indeed, on p. 104, in opposition to he trying to paint Jabotisnky as not wanting a Jewish state, Beinart writes that the Revisionists, the party Jabotinsky established in 1925, as being "feverently opposed any restraints on the Jewish pursuit of statehood".

On page 102, he returns to this, writing, “whereas Jews mocked the idea that Jews have a special responsibility to the stranger as ‘childish humanism’”. A second time he prevaricates. Indeed, anyone who has read Jabotinsky’s “Arab Angle – Undramatized”, in his Jewish War Front, knows how Beinart has perverted Jabotinsky.

A short excerpt, starting at p. 188, will suffice:

1. Civic Equality

1.1. Providing nothing be done to hinder any foreign Jew from repatriating, and, by doing so, automatically becoming a Palestinian citizen, the principle of equal rights for all citizens of any race, creed, language or class shall be enacted without limitation throughout all sectors of the country’s public life.

1.2. In every Cabinet where the Prime Minister is a Jew the vicepremiership shall be offered to an Arab, and vice versa.

1.3. Proportional sharing by Jews and Arabs both in the charges and in the benefits of the State...

2. Languages

2.1. The Hebrew and the Arabic languages shall enjoy equal rights and equal legal validity...

3. Cultural Autonomy

3.1. The Jewish and the Arab ethno-communities shall be recognized as autonomous public bodies of equal status before the law ...

3.2. Each ethno-community shall elect its National Diet with right to issue ordinance and levy taxes within the limits of its autonomy...

On page 103, Beinart terms Abba Ahimeir and Avraham Stern, who rejected Jabotinsky and who Jabotinsky had to rein in, at times unsuccessfully, as his “disciples”, as if he is directly responsible for their thinking. On the next page, he asserts Jabotinsky sought that the Arabs be “militarily and psychologically crushed”, a misleading use of language. On page 36, he quotes Stephen Wise in 1935 denouncing Jabotinsky’s Zionist Revisionist camps as “a species of fascism”, a charge untrue which, however, political rivals found it convenient to bandy about. But for Beinart, Wise is a divinity and why need he research that calumny?

In fact, in support of his new idea to denude the Jewish state concept, he could have attempted to misinterpret Jabotinsky. As Yitzhak Conforti has highlighted in his 2011 article,

“In a draft of a constitution which he proposed at the end of the First World War in 1918, he spoke of complete national equality between Jews and Arabs: ‘Both Jews and Arabs would enjoy from the start a complete autonomy equal to that of an independent nation.’”

However, Jabotinsky

“insisted that Palestine be recognized in a peace conference as the national home of the Jewish people and that emigration to Palestine be allowed for Jews from all over the world, with no limitations.” 

A crucial difference.

Can we trust Beinart to present us unvarnished Zionist history? In his "Crisis of Zionism", he wrote this on p. 51:

"There are to be sure, left-wing activists and Islamist militants who oppose Israel's existence as a Jewish state. But they are marginal compared to the much broader and more influential swath of people who seek to 'delegitimize' not Israel, but its occupation".

Eight years later, Beinart has become part of that swath, no longer believing in a Jewish state.

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Collection of Posts on Legality of Jewish Residence in Judea and Samaria

Summary of posts on the subject:

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Enjoy.

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Are Palestinians Philistines?

Here is a Philistine artifact found in the Land of Israel:

No Arabic you'll notice.

Here is an inscription from Tel Arad left by the people known as the Jews in the Hebrew language from the same period

So, no. Arabs are not descended from the Philistines but Jews are descended from those who spoke and wrote in Hebrew. Indigenous.

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Fake News

I saw this

but not trusting headlines, I read further:

According to the Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Bethlehem (CAWSB), the High Planning Committee of the Israeli Civil Administration approved the construction of 164 housing units in Neve Daniel settlement in southern Bethlehem.

Let's get that on a map:

All clear now?

Not "in" at all.

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Palestine or Syria?

I stumbled across this 1928 publication of a Missionary society that was founded in 1854 as the Turkish Missions Aid Society and later it was named the Bible Lands Missions Aid Society and is now called Embrace the Middle East.

It contains a map of the Middle East.

Here:

No "Palestine".  Just Syria.

Yes, it reads "Bible Lands" but countries do have modern names, like Bulgaria.

It is 1928.

Why no "Palestine"?


(H/t=YL for drawing my attention to the archive resarch site)

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From Revenant to Demonym

Ever since I began promoting the term "revenant" to replace "settler" back in 2004, and see Tilley's letter here, there were those who could not make the switch.

Revenant means one that returns especially after a long absence, from revenir in the French.

Walter Scott employed it in Ivanhoe published in 1819

We Jews have returned to our historic homeland after an ethnic cleansing operation organized by Arabs under the leadership of the Mufti during the Mandate years of 1920-1948, carried out through a campaign of muderous terror, and then for another 19 years under the illegal occupation of the Hashemite Kingsom of Jordan which illegally occupied and annexed the area.

Well, I have a new one:

demonym

A demonym is a term for people who live in a particular place, a nationality word. It 

defines a person geographically.  As in:

"we are resident demonym Jews of Judea and Samaria"

And no, it is not pronounced with a dee but a deh.

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I Intend to Decolonize

I have read here that

Decolonization is the process of deconstructing colonial ideologies of the superiority and privilege of Western thought and approaches....decolonization involves dismantling structures that perpetuate the status quo and addressing unbalanced power dynamics...decolonization involves valuing and revitalizing Indigenous knowledge and approaches and weeding out settler biases or assumptions that have impacted Indigenous ways of being.

Decolonization is defined as restoring the Indigenous world view; the culture and  traditional ways; and replaces Western interpretations of history with Indigenous perspectives of history.

In practice, that could take this form:

Campaigners have asked Uganda’s parliament to order the removal of monuments to British colonialists and to rename streets commemorating imperial military forces.

Or this one:

in the United States, the Museum of Man, in San Diego, recently hired a Navajo educator as its “director of decolonization” and announced that it would no longer display human remains without tribal consent. 

At the  American Museum of Natural History, demonstrators have trooped through the museum on an Anti–Columbus Day Tour. They chant, drum, dance, and unfurl banners: rename the day. respect the ancestors. decolonize! reclaim! imagine!.

Of course there is a connection to the issue of "Palestine":

Whether seeking a two-state solution, a confederation, or a single “Jewish” state over the entire Land of Israel, a “conflict resolution” approach does not address the wider need for decolonization. A settler colonial perspective restores the original and underlying problem of settlement that began in the late 19th century — one which asserts its claim to the entire country of Palestine. This is not to say that the occupied Palestinian territories are not occupied under international law, but that occupation is a sub-issue that must be addressed in the context of a wider process of decolonization, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return.

The authors take their analysis one step further, writing there:

Settlers come with the intent of not just living in another territory but taking it over — to thoroughly replace the existing society and to supersede it in a normalized settler state. Through myths of entitlement invented to legitimize their seizure of the land, the settlers strive to become the natives — that is, they assert their indigeneity — while rendering the real indigenous people invisible. 

But hold out hope for the eventual:

integration of the settler population into a society of equals.

Even though he is knwlingly devious, admitting to his real goals:

the majority of Israeli Jews will never be active partners in a struggle for the decolonization of Palestine. As settler colonials they have no motivation to decolonize, which they view as a form of national suicide. The best we can aim for strategically is to “soften” them through an inclusive plan of decolonization

Jeff Halper expands here (pardon the pun). 

Now, here is Israel's Permanent Representative of Israel to the United NationsYeuda Blum at the United Nations December 21, 1978:

(a) In 1917 there was no such thing as a separate "Palestinian people". The Arab nationalist movement had barely begun, and particularist national movements in the Arab provinces of the former Ottoman Empire were virtually unknown. The dominant view among local Arabs at the end of the First World War was that the Arabs living in Palestine were part of the Syrian people and the greater Arab nation. Indeed, in 1919 and 1920, Arabs in Palestine objected to the Palestine Mandate, inter alia, on the grounds that they should not be separated from their brethren outside the area of the Mandate.

On 2 July 1919, the General Syrian Congress adopted 10 resolutions, of which the eighth stated:

"We ask that there should be no separation of the Southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, nor of the littoral western zone which includes Lebanon, from the Syrian cr ltry. We desire that the unity of the country should be guaranteed against partition under whatever circumstances." (King Crane Commission Report in Foreign Relations of the United States: Paris Peace Conferenc 1919, vol. 12, p. 781)On 31 May 1956, Ahmed Shukairy, then a Saudi Arabia delegate to the United Nations and later head of the so-called PLO, told the Security Council:"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." (S/PV.724, para. 44)In March of 1974, President Assad of Syria stated:"Palestine is a basic part of Southern Syria." (The New York Times, 9 March 1974)Last year, Zuhair Muhsin, head of the PLO's so-called Military Operations Department, told the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw:"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese ... We are one people. Only for political reasons do we carefully underline our Palestinian identity. For it is of national interest for the Arabs to encourage the existence of the Palestinians against Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity." (James Dorsey, quoting Zuhair Muhsin in Trouw, 31 March 1977)Likewise, as recently as 17 November 1978, Yassir Arafat said at a rally held at Beirut by the Lebanese Ba'ath Party that "al-Assad said that Palestine is the southern part of Syria. I told him that Palestine is southern Syria and Syria is northern Palestine". (Voice of Palestine, 18 November 1978)(b) The reason why the Arabs in Palestine thought in these terms is that a political entity called Palestine had never existed. The term "Palestine" (Falastin in Arabic) was used throughout the centuries for a geographical area of uncertain limits, and not for a "defined territory". Under the Ottomans the area went through a bewildering series of administrative redivisions, and for the most part was governed from Damascus.

(c) It is also false to claim that Arabs in Palestine in 1917 were "a people rooted for centuries" in that country. A good part of the Arab population was made up of recently settled Bebouin from east of the River Jordan. Egyptians who came to Palestine in the nineteenth century in the wake of Ibrahim Pasha were also a significant element. Others could trace their not very distant roots to Morocco, and still others were recent arrivals from the Balkans, the Hauran and even Czarist Russia (Circassians) who came in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is interesting to note in this connexion that Circassian is still spoken in some "Arab'' villages in the north of Israel.

Moreover, far from being "deeply rooted", sizable numbers of Arabs were leaving Palestine by the end of the nineteenth century, in common with others from the region, and the problem of emigration was discussed by the "First Arab Congress", held in Paris in 1913.

If anything, it is the Arabs who have colonized "Palestine". It is they you should be the objects of a decolonization process.

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Other Minor Details

Minor Detail is Adania Shibli's new novel.  It anchors itself in a 1949 rape and murder of a young Bedouin in 1949.

The book, as reviewed, is

a highly sophisticated narrative that pitilessly explores the limits of empathy and the desire to right (or write) historical wrongs by giving voice to the voiceless.

It is based on an actual case as reported in Haaretz in 2003. The soldiers involved were tried and punished, inadequately I add. The main culprit received 15 years. 

There was no excuse for what happened.

I would, however, hope that other rape incidents would be served by a literary treatment as there were in the past. That is, of Jewish women raped by Arabs. Other minor details.

Like Salia Zohar. Like Jewish women in Jerusalem 1920 (p. 277). Like women in Hebron in 1929 although Hillel Cohen attempted to deny that. Like Ori Ansbacher.

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Semantic Subversion

Just one paragraph from this book by Shira Robinson, Citizen Strangers:

Shira Robinson

Credit

is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University. And she is well-connected to anti-Zionist groups. She was born in Israel, or "Palestine" as she prefers, and is the granddaughter of Batsheva Naimer, wife of Gus Naimer of Newark. More relevant, she was an associate at Human Rights Watch/Middle East during the 1990s. At about the same time, she was employed at Yedioth Ahronot.

To return to the extract above.

The new post-modern, post-fact narrative approach simply redefines any term so as to fit it to the predisposed political/ideological outlook.

Race, apartheid, whatever. Takes its original exact meaning and stretch it a bit so that your enemy is incuded, no matter how much you need fabricate.

By the way, conversion of Moslem Arabs to Judaism is not at all impossible. It happens. This female singing star. This Kuwaiti. This man.  Her "blood-based" charge is nonsensical. And a malignment.

Oh, and Israel is not a settler-colonial project.

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When are Territories "Disputed"?

When are territories "disputed"?

When they are not administered by Israel.

Example:

French President Emmanuel Macron says France will cooperate with Madagascar to find a solution for the Glorioso Islands, a tiny, uninhabited archipelago in the Indian Ocean which is disputed by the two countries....A joint commission on the issue will hold its first meeting next month.
Macron visited the Glorioso Islands Wednesday — a first for a French president. Located between the French overseas island of Mayotte and Madagascar, the islands used to be part of the French colonies.

Mayotte, moreover, is an overseas department and region of France, an integral part of France.

The five overseas departments and regions of France are:

French Guiana in South America;
Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean;

Mayotte and Réunion in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa.

All those are a very, very long way from France.

Example:

Mr Shukla said India faced a greater threat of a “two-front war” on its border than at any time in the recent past thanks to deepening economic and diplomatic ties between China and Pakistan, both of which accused India of changing the status of disputed Kashmir by bringing Ladakh under central government control last year. Islamabad and Beijing could use the two-front strategy “as a retaliatory measure to up the cost of any escalation by India, or if India activates Tibet”, for instance by declaring it a disputed territory, he said.

Example:

At least five dead in separate gun battles as number of rebels killed in disputed territory this year surpasses 100.
At least five people, including a six-year-old boy caught in the crossfire, have been killed in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Example:

Japan changes administrative status of disputed islandsJapan recently approved a bill to change the administrative status of a group of islands which have been claimed by both China and Japan, and has remained a point of disagreement for both the countries.Japan’s Okinawa city council approved the bill on Monday. The Ishigaki City Council will change the administrative status of the island group known as Senkakus in Japan, and as Diaoyus in China.

Example:

As Islamic State (ISIS) militants continue to launch attacks on Iraqi civilians and security forces, officials have been shuttling between Baghdad and Erbil to discuss a possible joint security mechanism to secure disputed territories of Iraq and prevent further instability. 
Iraqi Defense Minister Juma Inad arrived in Erbil on Thursday to discuss increased coordination between Iraqi forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces to fill the security vacuum in the disputed areas. Inad stressed the importance of “close coordination” between Iraqi forces and Peshmerga forces against ISIS in the disputed areas. 

Have I made my point?

In 1922, the international community in a legal act made by the countries which had liberated the regions conquered and occupied by the Ottoman Empire along with four dozen others, decided to recognize the Jewish historical connection to the Land of Israel and to recnstitute therein the Jewish National Home.  Part of tht territory, lying east of the Jordan River was separated and Jewish settlemnt activity was prohibited, although th actual language was simply "postponed".

Thus, all the area west of the Jordan River was to become the future Jewish state.

Due to Arab terror throughut the years of the Mandate, a first partition west of the Jordan River was made in 1937, rejected by the Arabs. In 1947, the United Nations recommended a second plan of partition, also rejected by the Arabs.

The area was subsequently illegally annexed by the Kingdom of Jordan, an act not recognized by any country except Great Britain.

No State of Palestine ever existed and in 1967, due to Arab aggression, following 19 years of further Arab terror previously practiced during the Mandate years of 1920-1948, Israel came to repossess that area.

It should be properly referred to as "disputed territory" even if you do not agree with me that it is liberated Jewish land, the regions of Judea and Samaria.

^

Is Yael Stein Wrong?

Here is Yael Stein in Haaretz:

Israel suspended land registration in the West Bank, declared some 1 million dunams (more than 247,000 acres) as “state land” and allocated them nearly in their entirety to the settlements...That declaration was based on a skewed interpretation of the law and carried out in violation of the basic tenets of due process. Moreover, even if this were in fact public land, it was meant for the Palestinians, not the settlers, who were not supposed to be there: The entire settlement enterprise is prohibited and constitutes a war crime – a point that Hayut ignored...the subordination of the lives of the Palestinians to the needs of the settlers.

Ms. Stein 

Photo: Tony Cross

is the director of research at B’Tselem.

Article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate decision reads:

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall 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.

That decision's preamble reads:

...the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish peopler...recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country;

In addition, Article 11 reads:

The Administration of Palestine shall take all necessary measures to safeguard the interests of the community in connection with the development of the country, and...shall have full power to provide for public ownership or control of any of the natural resources of the country ...It shall introduce a land system appropriate to the needs of the country, having regard, among other things, to the desirability of promoting the close settlement and intensive cultivation of the land.

Now, I ask you, is Stein correct in her assertion?

Or is she wrong?

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Yet Another Not-Published Letter

After reading Yossi Klein Halevi's op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, "Annexation Would Be a Mistake—and a Tragedy", I sent this 'Letter-to-the-Editor' in.

I cannot seem to find it published.

Yossi Klein Halevi, writing in his "Annexation Would Be a Mistake—and a Tragedy" (June 15), posits that "With every Palestinian rejection, the map of a potential Palestine has gotten smaller. Time is not on their side."  He adds: "Mr. Trump, they are effectively saying, is a useful idiot whose plan will serve settler interests now, and then fail to deliver on a Palestinian state later".

As regards the element of time, ever since 1922 when the Jewish National Home lost all areas of historic Palestine east of the Jordan River, and the 1937 and 1947 Partition Schemes which were to deny Jews more than 60% of the remaining territory west of the river, on through the 1968 Allon Plan, the 1977 Begin Autonomy Plan, the 2000 Camp David II Plan and the 2008 Olmert Plan, among others, how much time would Klein Halevi presume that Israel wait and waste for security and arrangements that will assure as much of a peaceful reality for Israel and its citizens as possible?

Moreover, if anyone will fail to deliver on a Palestinian state, it will be the Arabs-called-Palestinians who will not fulfill the very logical, rational and moral conditions for doing so that the Peace-to-Prosperity Plan sets out. As President Trump detailed in his January 28 remarks, "we are asking the Palestinians to meet the challenges of peaceful co-existence. This includes adopting basic laws enshrining human rights; protecting against financial and political corruption; stopping the malign activities of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other enemies of peace; ending the incitement of hatred against Israel — so important; and permanently halting the financial compensation to terrorists." 

Trump is certainly being useful here, but is far from being an idiot. I will avoid judging Klein Halevy on this matter.

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The "It" Land

Four hundred years after it was invaded and occupied by the Ottoman Turks;

And six hundred years after it was invaded and subjugated by a force led by the Kurdish Iraqi Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub;

And eight hundred years after it was invaded by the First Crusaders from Europe;

And thirteen hundred years after the hordes of Muslims came out of the Arabian Peninsula to invade and occupy it; 

And sixteen hundred years after its Christian Byzantine and Persian Sansarian rule came to an end;

And eighteen hundred years after the Roman Empire quashed a second armed rebellion by its residents seeking liberation and named it Palestine;

It, the Land of Israel (Eretz-Yisrael), the Holy Land, the Province of Judaea, the homeland of the Jews for over three-thousand years, where the Jewish People's prophets, priests and princes practiced the first monotheisitic religions, developed the Hebrew Language and culture, after being liberated during World War One by the Principal Allied Powers, was declared by the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference's High Contracting Parties to have its administration entrusted to a Mandatory which would be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on the 2nd November, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. 

The Land was first partitioned in 1922 when the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined were excluded from the Mandate and applying the rights of Jewish immigration and close settlement were postponed and  withheld.

In 1937 another partitioned was made but two years later, was discarded and the whole idea of a Jewish National Home was scrapped.

In 1947, the UN recommended partition and the Jews agreed. Arabs declared war and fr the next 19 years after losing, carried on a terror campaign to eliminate the Jewish state.

Despite many other offers of partition, withdrawal and such including an autonomy plan, a disengagement, the Oslo Accords, a construction moratorium and much more, the Arab side is still declining to negotiate and refusing to pursue peace.

The "it" land is the Jewish people's legacy and it will remain under Jewish control.

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Checking A Footnote

I read this in an academic article, one not sympathetic to Israel, by Professor Emerita at Boston University Irene Gendzier based on her book, Dying to Forget Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East:

Michael Assaf, adviser to Ben-Gurion, had an acute sense of its long-term implications for Israeli-U.S. relations, and more generally for those of Israel and the West. What he wrote in an editorial in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz in 1951 was to prove prophetic. Assaf reviewed the precarious situation of Arab regimes in the face of nationalist movements, both secular and religious, concluding that the states in question were weak militarily. In this context, he considered the impact of Israel's strengthening, which he described as "a rather convenient way for the Western Powers to keep a balance of political forces in the Middle East. According to this supposition Israel has been assigned the role of a kind of watchdog." In that capacity, if the "Western powers will at some time prefer, for one reason or another, to shut their eyes, Israel can be relied upon to punish properly one or several of its neighboring states whose lack of manners towards the West has gone beyond permissible limits."47

Footnote 47 reads:

 47 "The Harlot from the Cities Overseas and We — Thoughts on the Eve of [Jewish] New Year 5712," Op-ed article, Ha'aretz, September 30, 1951, cited in Moshe Machover, "Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution," Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust Annual Lecture, November 30, 2006, pp. 13-14.

I looked it up.

It is not on pages 13-14. 

An article with that title is found on page 2.

It is written, however, not by Assaf but  by Gershom Schocken, the owner and publisher of Haaretz at the time. Since the 30th was the eve of Rosh Hashana but a Sunday, I checked the previous Friday and the following (Friday being the weekend edition) but not Assaf.

And yes, the passage appears so:

 משום כך חיזוק מסוים של

ישראל הוא דרך נוחה למדי בשביל

מעצמות המערב כדי לשמור על איזון

כוחות פוליטי במזרח התיכון. לפי סב-

רה זו נועד לישראל תפקיד של מעין

כלב-שמירח. אין לחשוש שהיא תפעיל

מדיניות תוקפנית כלפי מדינות ערב,

אם דבר זה יעמוד בניגוד ברור לרצונן

של אמריקה ובריסניה, אך אם מעצמות

המערב יעדיפו פעם, מטעם זה או אחר,

לעצום עין' אפשר יהיה לסמוך על כך,

שישראל תהיה מסוגלת להעניש ?ראוי

אחת או כמה מהמדינות השכנות שלה,

אה גבולות המותר. שחוסר הנימוס שלהן לגבי 

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The Tool That Is Twitter

In my Media Comment columns at the Jerusalem Post, wrttten conjointly with Eli Pollak, we have highlighted an aspect of Twitter that we see as harmful to objective and fair journalism which is the way it leads journalists to become personal and then strident and nasty in their conversation which spills over back into their reporting.

In this June 8 NYTimes article, there is revealed another aspect, one in which the reporter feels obliged, because of the mass feedback that Twitter generates in an intoxicating fashion, to respond to what his/her audience wants to hear:

The central vein for reporters, producers, activists and a vast national audience was Twitter, which had already begun subtly shifting the power dynamic innews. It steered coverage. When John Eligon of The Times published a largely sympathetic profile of Mr. Brown that described him as “no angel,” it setoff outrage on Twitter as a symbol of a style of journalism that seemed too ready to explain away police violence. “They had a point” about the phrase, Mr. Eligon recalled last week. Twitter “did make it feel like you’re more accountable to a broader audience and a more diverse audience.”The platform also gave the younger reporters “freedom to establish their own stilts in ways we didn’t have without someone handing us the keys,” said Trymaine Lee, then 35 and reporting for MSNBC. “Before you’re at the whim of the newsroom,’’ said Mr. Lee. Buton Twitter, the young journalists received “positive reinforcement,they’re getting thousands and thousands of people saying, ‘Yes, we do like that.’”

To borrow radical progressive political terminology, this is media weaponizing in support not of social or economic or political change and improvement but in support of revolution while jettisoning any normative ethical professionalism.

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The Palestinian Authority and the US Peace To Prosperity Plan

President Donald Trump announced his so-called Deal of the Century on January 28 this year.

It is quite beneficial for the Arab side. Since then, what has been done or said by the Palestinian Authority?

The next day they had people take to the streets as part of a "day of rage". Saeb Erekat said the Trump administration had simply "copied and pasted" the steps that Mr Netanyahu wanted to see implemented. "It's about annexation, it's about apartheid.

Mahmoud Abbas declared "We say a thousand times, no, no, no. We rejected this deal from the start and our stance was correct."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas said he is ending "all agreements" with Israel and the United States 

The Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said it would be “buried very soon.”

At the UN in early February, Abbas announced,  "we will not accept this plan; we will confront its application on the ground.”

In May, Abbas notified all that “The Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] and the state of Palestine are absolved, as of today, of all the agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments and of all the commitments based on these understandings and agreements, including the security ones.” Note: he did that last July and two years earlier.

Terror attacks continue. That the PA is creating an atmosphere of terror and war for the Palestinian street is documented.

I think things are quite clear.

So does Jared Kushner keep pushing? Was Jason Greenblatt smart to get out?

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The Key is Reducinig The Four-Year Period

How to prevent the establishment of a second Arab state (well, third if we include Gaza) even though Israel has indicated acceptance of the Peace for Propserity Plan?

Simple.

Reduce it.

What four years?

Here is President Trump on January 28:

Perhaps most importantly, my vision gives the Palestinians the time needed to rise up and meet the challenges of statehood.  I sent a letter today to President Abbas.  I explained to him that the territory allocated for his new state will remain open and undeveloped for a period of four years.  During this time, Palestinians can use all appropriate deliberation to study the deal, negotiate with Israel, achieve the criteria for statehood, and become a truly independent and wonderful state.

President Abbas, I want you to know that if you choose the path to peace, America and many other countries will — we will be there.  We will be there to help you in so many different ways. 

How to reduce those four years?

Here are the preconditions Trump set out:

To ensure a successful Palestinian state, we are asking the Palestinians to meet the challenges of peaceful co-existence.  (Applause.)  This includes adopting basic laws enshrining human rights; protecting against financial and political corruption; stopping the malign activities of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other enemies of peace; ending the incitement of hatred against Israel — so important; and permanently halting the financial compensation to terrorists. 

No basic laws? Time reduced from the four years.

Continued financial corruption? No halt in pay-for-slay compensation for imprisoned terrorists? Time taken off those four years.

Terror continues?

Incitement continues? 

No negotiations (as at present)? Time reduced.

UPDATE EDIT

I was sent by LBD back to the full text of the plan itself so, as in Section 22,

If the PLO and the Palestinian Authority shall not refrain from any attempt to join any international organization without the consent of the State of Israel; or act, and not dismiss all pending actions, against the State of Israel, the United States and any of their

citizens before the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and all other tribunals, more time can come off.

Those four years will become a few months or even weeks. In fact, over four months have already passed and the map has not yet been converted from a conceptual one.

This time Mr. Trump needs to hear: no four years!

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Antifa in Mandate Palestine

“Antifa” was a group founded by the International Communist League in Mandate Palestine in 1934 to promote radical socialist ideas as well as to oppose Revisionist Zionism. Its members were extreme moderates (pro-Havlaga restraint policy during Arab riots 1936-39) who sought compromise with nationalist Arabs and eventually went on to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War.

Some images

 See here

An article in the pro-Irgun Polish-language monthly Jerozolima Wyzwolona, June 30, 1939 

A notice in the Palestine Post August 23, 1937

From the JTA, February 10, 1937

A delegation including a Jew and an Arab-Morris Efrom and Najib Yusuf – have arrived in New York as representatives of the Antifa Committee of Palestine for a tour of the United States sponsored by the American Antifa Committee, which includes Roger Baldwin, Prof. Morris R. Cohen, the Rev. John Haynes Holmes and Ernst Toller.

And six days later:

Could this be that Morris Erem? Seems he was first in Borochivian Workers List then in Poelei Tzion Smol.

A Hebrew-language report on Najib Yussef on the trip in the Revisionist HaYarden.

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