My Letter is in the Jerusalem Post

A bit edited from the original but it's finally in:-

You can't 'occupy' your own home

Sir, - I suspect that Amnon Rubinstein has allowed personal political ideology to overcome principles of jurisprudence and rational thought. In writing "Settling Jews outside of Israel proper is... illegal in international law and defective morally," while basing himself on the Fourth Geneva Convention, claiming that document "prohibits such settlements," he is misrepresenting facts ("The folly at Givat Ze'ev," March 25).

Firstly, that convention, like any contractual obligation, applies to those who are signatories, defined as the "High Contracting Parties." As there was no "Palestine" when the convention was produced, Israel cannot be considered as occupying its territories.

Secondly, David Ben-Gurion, in a Knesset statement on December 3, 1949, declared that the UN resolution of November 29, 1947 - the Partition Plan - no longer had any moral force and was null and void.

Taken together with the reality that the official representative bodies of the Arab community of the British Mandate refused to acknowledge the plan, the area administered currently by Israel since 1967 - what Rubinstein refers to as "occupied" - is, in essence, still part of what the League of Nations Supreme Council defined on July 24, 1922 as the area to be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people.

A state institution representing the Jewish people - Israel - cannot be an "occupier" in its own country.

Moreover, Jews moving to places such as Givat Ze'ev and Shiloh are fulfilling the principle established in the League of Nations decision which guaranteed them the "right to immigration to and close settlement on the land" (paragraph 6). Therefore, even if Israel is not actively encouraging such acts, individual Jews surely maintain those rights up to this day.

Thirdly, since Jews lived in, owned and tilled property in those "territories" for hundreds of years prior to the wars of aggression in which Arabs, local and foreign, sought to eliminate the State of Israel in 1947-49 and 1967, they are only returning home.

Certainly Jews must protect the civil liberties of the non-Jewish population (note: the term "Arab" appears nowhere in the text of the Mandate decision because the international community and its law did not recognize any specific Arab ethnic or national right to the area of the Mandate). But that does not affect Jewish rights as stated above.

YISRAEL MEDAD
Shiloh

Rude Rubinstein

This appeared in the Jerusalem Post, composed by Professor Amnon Rubinstein:-

Settling Jews outside of Israel proper is - it is submitted - illegal in international law and is defective morally. The fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has signed and ratified, prohibits such settlements. True, the Knesset has not translated these provisions into Israeli legislation, but in the opinion of this writer such an act of domestic reception is unnecessary as the convention by its very definition relates to occupied territories which lie outside the limits of Israeli law and jurisdiction.

My response:-

With all due recognizance of my lack of an academic degree in international law, I suspect that Professor Amnon Rubinstein errs and has, perhaps, allowed personal political ideology to overcome simple principles of jurisprudence and rational thought. In writing that "Settling Jews outside of Israel proper is...illegal in international law and is defective morally", while basing himself on the fourth Geneva Convention, claiming that thast document "prohibits such settlements" ("The folly at Givat Zeev", Mar. 25), he is expressing a defective logic and misrepresenting facts.

In the first place, that convention applies, as does any contractual obligation, to those who are signatories who are defined as the "High Contracting Parties". As there was no "Palestine" when that convention was produced, Israel cannot be considered as "occupying" another entity's territories, an entity that is not a party to that contract. Secondly, it was David Ben-Gurion, in a statement pronounced in the Knesset on December 3, 1949, who declared that the UN resolution of 29th November no longer has any moral force and is null and void. Taken together with the reality that the official representative bodies of the Arab community of the British Mandate refused to acknowledge that 1947 decision, in essence, the area administered currently by Israel since 1967, what Rubinstein refers to as "occupied", is still part of what the League of Nations Supreme Council defined on July 24, 1922 as the area to be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people. A Jew and a state institution representing the Jewish people, such as Israel, cannot be an "occupier" in its own country.

Moreover, Jews moving in to places like Givat Zeev and Shiloh are fulfilling the principle established in that Mandate decision which guaranteed them the "right to immigration to and close settlement on the land", paragraph 6. Therefore, even if the state of Israel was not actively encouraging and aiding such acts, individual Jews surely maintain those rights even unto this day.

Third, and last, since Jews lived in and owned and tilled property in those "territories" for hundreds of years prior to the wars of aggression by which Arabs, local and foreign, sought to eliminate the state of Israel, both in 1947-49 and in 1967, they are only returning home. Surely, they must protect the civil liberties of the non-Jewish population (and note: the terms "Arab" appears nowhere in that document becuase the international community and it law did not recognize any specific Arab ethnic or national right to the area of the Mandate). But that does not affect the right of a Jew or group of Jews or an entity like the state of Israel to facilitate those actions.

Amnon Rubinstein Bashes Left

In case you missed it, here are excerpts from Amnon Rubinstein's op-ed. Rubinstein is is a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a former minister of education and MK representing first Dash, then Meretz, and the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law:-

Homemade Israel-bashers

Shortly after I began teaching at Columbia University, I was taken aback to hear that the Iranian ruler Ahmadinejad had been invited to speak on campus...three kipot-wearing students from Hillel House...organized a demonstration in front of the hall where the Iranian president was to speak, and all without any outside help.

I spoke at the demonstration, where I discovered that almost all the participants present were local Orthodox Jewish students. The number of secular Israeli students could be counted on the fingers of one hand - with fingers to spare.

Inside the hall sat an Israeli student who applauded Ahmadinejad. I asked another Israeli who witnessed this behavior to tell me about her. I asked: How can she applaud someone that wants to exterminate her?

His matter of fact reply: "She's known to be a leftist."

In other words, "leftists" applaud a tyrant, a Nazi, a persecutor of minorities, oppressor of women, stoner of "adulterers," and executioner of homosexuals. If he protests the oppression of the Palestinians, then he must clearly be a member of the "left" and should therefore be cheered.

...I am a professed and impassioned secular Jew. My Judaism is national and cultural. I believe that my approach is in no way inferior to the Orthodox or haredi one. It contains neither temptations of paradise, the punishment of hell, nor the revival of the dead. It is filled with a rich, multifaceted and wondrous Jewish-Hebrew culture. I also believe that secular humanism is the right answer for us as individuals and as a nation.

But if I had to choose between the kipa-wearing Jews at Columbia and the representatives of what is known in Israel as the radical Left - I know where my heart is.

...the story of the anti-Israeli squadrons in the Israeli academia...I always believed that their "post-intelligent" anti-Israeli claptrap would eventually climax in an paroxysm of extremist mumbo-jumbo lunacy, after which there would no longer be anything to argue about. They'd be exposed.

Ben-Dror Yemini provided me with just that evidence (Ma'ariv, January 11), in an article in which he tells of a research project carried out by graduate student Tal Nizan at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research question was: How is it that, contrary to the accepted practice among other occupation armies, the Zionist occupation army does not rape?

The researcher had two explanations: First, IDF soldiers do not rape Palestinian women because for them, these women have been dehumanized, and "consequently, a sexual act cannot be carried out with someone that is perceived as less than human." Second, the soldiers refrained from raping the Palestinian women in the service of a higher, demographic goal, because the rape could cause pregnancies that would subsequently increase the numbers of our enemies. In other words, not only are there no rapes, there are no condoms either.

The significant aspect is not this surreal research project. It is not unusual. Incitement against Israel can be found on the lowest level in some of the social science departments in Israel's universities...The interesting thing is that this "research" project won a prize from a sociology association, with a number of distinguished professors voting in favor of granting the researcher a prize.

It would be interesting to hear how these professors propose that Israel amend this serious flaw, that IDF soldiers are not serial rapists. Does that fact that female tourists are not raped mean that they too have been dehumanized?

These professors are wrong. It's not true that there is no rape. There is - the rape of the academia, of science and of the students forced to listen to these professors' drivel.

Amnon Rubinstein Speaks

An excerpt from his interview with Ari Shavit:-

Could it be that you are the one who has changed? It's not only your attitude toward the Supreme Court that surprised people - in the past few years you have expressed centrist and even nationalist opinions. You used to be an enlightened liberal, but now you often support the "forces of darkness."

"I do not support the forces of darkness. I support the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. I am a Zionist. I am a national and liberal Jew. Basically, I have not changed my stance. In contrast, part of the left wing has changed its stance. So don't ask me what happened to me; ask the people on the left what happened to them. My feeling is that when I went to sleep I was part of the camp, but when I woke up in the morning I discovered that I was outside the camp. I remained in the same place, but the camp moved."

When did you sense this? When did you realize that you and the left are in two different places?

"When I read the Geneva [Initiative] understandings. I left Meretz because of those understandings. There were a great many things in them that I found unacceptable. I could not accept the compromise on the right of return. But there is one statement there that is totally inconceivable: the obligation to compensate the Arab states for having hosted the Palestinian refugees for 60 years. This, without so much as a word about what they did to the Jews, and even though it is clear that they held the refugees as hostages and educated them to hate Israel and to advocate its destruction. When I saw that clause I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. At first I thought that maybe I had gone mad, wasn't seeing right, couldn't understand what I was reading, but then I understood that my good friends in Meretz had gone off the rails. And they went off the rails because of their need to placate the Palestinians; in every case and in every situation, always to placate the Palestinians."

What is the basic cause of your argument with the left in the past few years? On what are you divided?

"I will tell you on what we are not divided. We are not divided on the need to establish two states for two peoples. We are not divided on the disaster of the settlements and the need to evacuate them. We are not divided on the need to try to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the earliest possible time. But the point of departure of the Zionist left is a strong Israel. My friends constantly tell me: What are you worried about? Israel is the strongest power in the Middle East. Whereas my underlying assumption is the reverse of that. I see Israel as a weak state in the Middle East. I think Israel is weak, vulnerable, hanging by a thread. Yes, absolutely hanging by a thread.