Recently, much of the so-called "international community" has waxed apoplectic about a recent announcement by the Israeli government that it approved 1,300 additional apartments to be built and sold in Judea and Samaria (more commonly referred to as the West Bank).

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Given the well-documented (by CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, The Independent, etc.) outcry over the Israeli announcement, one would think that the Israeli government had announced its approval to build 1,300 additional Jewish cities or communities ("settlements") in Judea and Samaria, and not just 1,300 new apartments in existing Jewish communities.

That's right. At a time when Syria executed 24 people under the pretense that they were "arsonists," Iran is executing a gay couple for "adultery," at least 80 people were massacred during an Islamist terrorist attack in West Niger, the Nigerian government is violently waging war against the Igbo and with coronavirus deaths surging once again in Russia and China, much of the mainstream media and many American and European politicians were expressing great distress about 1,300 roughly 900-square-foot apartments being built in six existing Israeli cities in Judea and Samaria.

Perhaps to justify this disproportionate reaction to the building of fewer apartments than one would find in two to three buildings in downtown LA, the various news articles, talking heads on cable TV and numerous politicians spoke with tremendous certitude about two things: 1) how "illegal" these 1,300 apartments are under "international law"; and 2) how it's these apartments and presumably, really, the Jews who will have the temerity to live in them, that are the "obstacle to peace."

The problem is that both of these claims are complete and utter nonsense. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop many world leaders and many mainstream news networks from repeating these claims over and over again as if they are black-letter laws.

One such example occurred on Oct. 29 when Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was on CNN and pronounced that Jewish "settlements" "built on territories in the West Bank" are "illegal" under the "4th Geneva Convention" because it "forbids the transfer of civilians." In addition to making this assertion to CNN's entire audience, as if it was no more controversial than claiming that the earth is round, Coveney added that it is these "settlements" that are "making a two-state solution and a peace process more and more distant and more and more difficult."

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, which were the basis for these "international law" claims by the Irish foreign minister, were drafted to prevent the kinds of deplorable forcible deportations and mass transfers of peoples perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II. They are, however, completely inapplicable to how Israel came into control of Judea and Samaria.

Under the Fourth Geneva Convention cited by Coveney, in order for territory to be "occupied," it must be conquered by force from an existing sovereign state. But Judea and Samaria were never part of any recognized sovereign state because Jordan conquered it in 1949 as part of the Arab League's collective war to annihilate Israel in 1948 and Jordan's attempted annexation of Judea and Samaria (after it renamed the territory the "West Bank") was rejected by every country in the world, other than the British.

Moreover, even if Judea and Samaria was presently "occupied territory," Coveney's cite to the Geneva Convention for the proposition that Jews living in Judea is "illegal" (because Article 49 prohibits the "transfer of civilians" by the "occupying power") is simply wrong. Nowhere in Article 49 does it say that civilians can't voluntarily move to live in "occupied territory." Nor does it require "occupying powers" to make it difficult or burdensome for their civilians to reside in these territories.

That is particularly the case here, where Israel did not gain control of Judea and Samaria from any Palestinian Arab state or polity, but in a defensive war launched against Israel by Jordan. A war in 1948 that Jordan and the Arab League indisputably started and where Jordan literally ethnically cleansed all of the Jews from the territories it had conquered as a result.

To say that it would somehow be "illegal" for Jewish citizens of Israel to voluntarily move back into the homes, neighborhoods and villages that Jews had inhabited in Judea and Samaria before 1949 simply because Israel in 1967 gained control of that territory in a war started by Jordan would be a complete perversion of international law and the Geneva Conventions. That is especially so when you apply that perverted claim to assert that Jews can't even pray at their holiest sites in the Old City of Jerusalem or live in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, where Jews have lived for centuries until they were expelled from the Jewish Quarter by the Jordanian Army in 1949.

Moreover, even if the Fourth Geneva Convention didn't require land to be taken from a sovereign member of the Conventions in order to be considered "occupied," the repeated claim that Judea and Samaria and the Old City of Jerusalem are "occupied Palestinian territory" would be fallacious. To put it plainly, these lands were never – at any point in time in history – part of a Palestinian Arab country or polity of any kind. In fact, the last time these lands were even under the control of an Arab empire was in the 11th century. These territories are thus far more accurately described as "disputed territories."

Notably, when Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria and Egypt controlled Gaza, no one – not even the leaders of the Palestinian Arabs – called out for those lands to be "liberated." In fact, the PLO's original charter (in 1964) expressly disclaimed any sovereignty interest in either the West Bank or Gaza. Back then, the only land they claimed needed "liberation" was land that Jordan, Syria and Egypt had not been able to conquer and control in the 1948 war.

Why? How is land – when it is controlled by Egyptians governing from Cairo or Jordanians governing from Amman – not considered by the PLO (or by so many apparent international-law experts) to be "Palestinian territory," but it magically transformed into "Palestinian territory" needing "liberation" after it came under the control of Israelis governing from Jerusalem?

Finally, why is it that the Irish foreign minister and so many others in the "international community" feel so comfortable expressing the idea that Jews and Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are an "obstacle to peace" while nearly 2 million Arabs living in Israel are not an "obstacle to peace"? Why is it so clear for people like Coveney and so acceptable for his interviewer at CNN to hear that Jews living in Judea is what somehow makes peace impossible? Or that in order for there to be a first-ever independent Palestinian Arab state in the history of the world west of the Jordan River, it must first be Judenrein ("free of Jews")?

Sadly, I think almost everyone knows the answer to these questions. It is because everyone expects that Arabs can continue to live in peace and prosperity in democratic Israel (sadly, the only place in the entire MENA where Arab citizens have the right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.), though almost no one believes that a Jewish minority could live in peace and prosperity in any new Arab state that would be created out of the Palestinian Authority's and Hamas's war for control of the land.

The truth is that the "obstacle to peace" in the Arab-Israeli conflict before 1967 (before there were any "occupied territories") is the same "obstacle to peace" now. It is the same "obstacle to peace" that since 1937 has caused every Palestinian Arab leader from Nazi collaborator Haj Amin el-Husseini to current P.A. "president for life" Mahmoud Abbas to reject at least six different peace and partition plans that would have created the first independent Arab state west of the Jordan River. It's the Palestinian Arabs' collective intolerance for Jews living with sovereignty and self-determination anywhere in the land of Israel that is the true "obstacle to peace."

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After all, if the Irish foreign minister and the rest of the "international community" really believe that 500,000 Jews being in a new independent Arab state isn't possible while 2 million Arabs can continue to live in Israel without issue, then what does that say about their respective expectations for the tolerance, democratic values and peacefulness of this new country? And how could such a country be expected to live peacefully right next to Israel and not be immediately taken over by Hamas (just as what happened with Gaza in 2006)?

Of course, none of this likely matters to Coveney or others like him, as they would never have to live with the consequences of the creation of a state in Judea and Samaria controlled by Hamas, with the consequences of another failed terrorist state governed by Hamas but with this one sitting right on top of more than 50 percent of Israel's population, its three largest cities and its only major international airport. Jewish history has taught the Jewish people that we should never expect people like Coveney or the hosts at CNN to care about, let alone respond to, attacks on Jews from the likes of Hamas. And that is precisely why Israel should never take legal, military or diplomatic advice from the likes of these folks.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

The post The fallacy of 1,300 'obstacles to peace' in Middle East appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Scapegoating Jews for the problems in a society has always been a central feature of Jew-hatred.

Since well before the German agitator Wilhelm Marr first utilized the phrase "antisemitism" in the late 19th century (to make Jew-hatred sound race-based, scientific and academic), the formula for justifying antisemitism and inciting Jew-hatred has been to find what people hate, fear or are most upset about, and attach it to the Jewish people. Call it the "Jew-hatred incitement formula."

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In the Middle Ages, the Jews were blamed for the spread of the Bubonic Plague. They were accused of poisoning wells and breeding spiders and vermin to spread the disease among non-Jews. This led to ethnic cleansing and widespread attacks against Jews.

In Czarist Russia, deprivation and economic hardship were regularly blamed on Jews, often with deadly consequences. So common was the scapegoating of Jews that between 1880 and 1920, pogroms (riots aimed at massacring Jews) exploded over and over again. And while hard data about the numbers of casualties is hard to come by conservative estimates are that more than 100,000 Jews were murdered during this period, with at least three times as many being wounded.

Hitler and the Nazis took full advantage of the history of antisemitism in Europe, as well as of the Jew-hatred incitement formula, by blaming Jews for the Great Depression, Germany's loss in World War I, the shortcomings of capitalism, and, with no concern for the apparent contradiction, the spread of communism.

Now, in the 21st century, the Holocaust has become distant history for many people, and the Jew-hatred incitement formula is once again being utilized as a political tool by Jew-haters, including, sadly, many members of the US Congress.

Considering also the historic obsession with focusing hate on Israel, the only Jewish country, it should surprise no one that some of these representatives would use this formula to incite hatred of Israel. What should be surprising is that so many of their fellow Democrats have turned a blind eye to the antisemitism coming from members of their own party.

On May 13, in a speech before Congress, Representative Ayanna Pressley compared the Israeli army to "violent white supremacists."

Not the Chinese Army, which rounds up Uyghur Muslims in the dark of night and takes them to slave-labor "re-education" camps. Not the Iranian security police, who literally hang homosexuals. Not the Pakistani army, which regularly beats and oppresses the Baloch people. No other countries were referenced by Pressley as a parallel to the horror and stain of Jim Crow racism – only the one Jewish state is shoehorned into that mendacious comparison.

Perhaps Pressley was inspired by fellow "Squad" member Representative Rashida Tlaib, who just two days earlier, in a speech delivered in front of the State Department decrying Israel's response to Hamas rocket fire, claimed: "What they are doing to the Palestinians is what they are doing to our Black brothers and sisters here."

Who are "they" in this statement? And how is it that Tlaib can claim that the Israeli response to Hamas firing rockets on Israel is connected to the struggles of black people in the United States?

The answer is that no one in the Democratic leadership challenged her effort to attach the one Jewish state to the more than 400 years of racism in America.

Later, on Aug. 1, in a speech at the 2021 Democratic Socialist of America National Convention, Tlaib took her use of the Jew-hatred incitement formula to the next level when she said:

"We also need to recognize, as I think about my family and Palestine that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful black city that I grew up in. … [Y]ou know, I always tell people cutting people off from water is violence, from Gaza to Detroit. And it's a way to control people, to oppress people. And it's those structures that we continue to fight against."

It wasn't enough that Tlaib attached legitimate water concerns in Michigan to fraudulent claims about Israel denying water to Palestinian Arabs – she took her speech to the Democratic Socialists yet another step further:

"I know that you all understand the structure that we've been living under right now is designed by those that exploit the rest of us for their own profit. I don't care if it's the issue around global human rights and our fight to free Palestine or to pushing back against those that don't believe in the minimum wage or those that believe that people have a right to healthcare and so much more. And I tell people, those same people, that if you open the curtain and look behind the curtain, it's the same people that make money and, yes, they do, off of racism, off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money, and you saw it!"

Appropriately, Tlaib gave this trope-laden speech in Detroit, where Henry Ford laid the groundwork with his infamous "International Jew" pamphlets, scapegoating Jews and deploying classic antisemitic tropes.

Three days later, on Aug. 4, another Squad member, Cori Bush, took the antisemitic baton from Tlaib, and in a speech before Congress invoked the Jew-hatred incitement formula to blame American aid to Israel for the crime, homelessness and poverty in her hometown of St. Louis. Not the $2 trillion the United States spent in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, including over $90 billion for the now-defunct Afghan Army. Not the $3 billion per year on average that the United States has provided to Egypt and Jordan since 1979. Not the near $35 billion that the United States spent just between 2016 and 2019 on maintaining its military presence in Japan and South Korea. Nor anything else in the annual federal expenditure of over $5 trillion.

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According to Bush, out of the more than $5 trillion per year that the US federal government spends, the only part responsible for the crime, homelessness and poverty in her congressional district is the part that goes toward America's military aid package for Israel.

The irony is that unlike our aid packages to other countries, almost every dime of the US aid package with Israel is spent in the US on American-made products and benefits the United States in numerous other ways, including shared technological innovations. Blaming the less than one-tenth of 1% of the annual budget used in connection with the one Jewish state for domestic problems like homelessness, crime and poverty is a blatant use of the Jew-hatred incitement formula.

As with Pressley's and Tlaib's use of the formula, not a single Democratic leader stepped forward to rebuke, let alone formerly censure or sanction, Bush for her overt antisemitism. Instead, most of the Democratic Party leadership is silent in the face of this incitement to Jew-hatred.

When another Squad member, Representative Ilhan Omar, received well-deserved criticism for her use of antisemitic tropes – her "all about the Benjamins" or multiple "dual loyalty" claims, and her recent comparison of Israel to the Taliban (though she has been remarkably quiet about the Taliban lately) – the Democratic leadership in Congress quickly backed down from any effort to censure Omar for hate speech (in contrast with how the Republican leadership responded to Marjorie Taylor Green's use of antisemitic conspiracy theories).

Even worse, Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi actually supported the dangerous deflection promoted by other Squad members like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bush, that people were criticizing Omar because of her gender, faith and ethnicity rather than her inflammatory words.

The math is clear. Not only is there a Jew-hatred incitement formula, but also there is a different formula for how Jew-haters are treated depending on whether their hate speech comes from the perceived left or right.

While David Duke is universally and rightly vilified for his Jew-hatred, Louis Farrakhan's anti-Jewish remarks and conspiracy theories get a pass from many members of Congress and other so-called progressives, who refuse to criticize or distance themselves from him. A Republican congresswoman who promotes dangerous conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds is sanctioned almost immediately, while Squad members continue to get a pass for regularly employing antisemitic tropes and using the age-old Jew-hatred incitement formula to blame Israel and the Jews for problems including unclean water, homelessness, racism in America, police brutality and poverty.

The problem is that whether incitement comes from the left or the right, it always leads to violence against Jews. The political ideology of the person engaging in antisemitism should have no bearing on our response to it. When people believe Jews are the cause of their problems, violence against Jews will follow.

We often hear from many of the same progressives who defend the Squad that "silence is violence" or "silence is complicity." They're right. If only they would take their own words to heart when it comes to their own silence in the face of the consistent use of the Jew-hatred incitement formula. Hopefully, they will do so before the cancer of this incitement spreads any further.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Last week, anti-Israel forces went into overdrive regarding the Jerusalem District Court's decision authorizing the eviction of certain Arab families from homes in the "Sheikh Jarrah" neighborhood of Jerusalem. These critics have aggressively railed against Israel on social media and even started a trending hashtag, "SaveSheikhJarrah," all while claiming that what is happening in this Jerusalem neighborhood exemplifies the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

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And they are right. The dispute over "Sheikh Jarrah" does illustrate many of the principal features of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

For centuries, the Jewish presence in the area revolved around the tomb of Shimon HaTzadik, who was famously one of the last members of the Great Assembly (HaKnesset HaGedolah), the governing body of the Jewish people during the Second Jewish Commonwealth (after the Babylonian Exile). Shimon HaTzadik, whose full name is Shimon ben Yohanan, was so impactful that practically every Jewish kid going back 2,000 years learned his most famous verse in Pirkei Avot ("Sayings of the Fathers"), which was incorporated millennia ago into the Jewish morning prayers: "The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of God, and deeds of kindness."

Between 1936 and 1938, and then again in 1948, the British Empire assisted Arabs, incited by raw Jew-hatred, in ripping Jews from their homes in Shimon HaTzadik (and in Kfar Hashiloah). The Yemeni Jewish community was also expelled from Silwan, for "their own safety," by the British Office of Social Welfare. Essentially, the British preferred to force Jews out of their own homes rather than expend the resources to protect Jewish families and their property rights in Jerusalem.

Then, in 1949, after Transjordan (now Jordan) invaded Israel as part of an express attempt by the entire Arab League to destroy Israel and "push the Jews into the sea," Transjordan's British-created and British-led Arab Legion captured Judea and Samaria, all of the Old City of Jerusalem and many of its surrounding neighborhoods, including the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood. Then the Arab Legion either killed or ethnically cleansed every last Jew. Not one was allowed to remain. Not one. Even those whose families had lived in the region for centuries before the Arab invasion in the seventh century.

After Israel gained control of all of Jerusalem from the Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel passed a law that allows Jews whose families had been forced out of their homes by the Jordanians or the British to regain control of their family homes if they could provide proof of ownership and the current residents could not provide proof of a valid purchase or transfer of title. All of the homes that are the subject of these 2021 eviction proceedings, in addition to being on land purchased in 1875 by the Jewish community, were owned by Jewish families that had purchased those homes, and had deeds registered first with the Ottoman Empire (which governed the region from 1517 to 1917) and then with the British authorities (who controlled the area from 1917 to 1948).

These four houses, subject to the pending eviction notice, have already been the subject of extensive litigation in Israel, with appeals going all the way up to Israel's very liberal Supreme Court and with all parties receiving representation and due process. The court determined last week that these homes must be returned to their legal owners and that another four homes shall be returned to their legal owners by the end of the summer. The court further determined that the people currently living in these homes had been illegally squatting in these homes for decades without paying rent or holding proof of ownership.

This is how the current controversy and conflict surrounding the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood is emblematic of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict:

Shimon HaTzadik is an area that holds deep historical and religious significance to the Jewish people. It is a place where the Jewish people developed – as Ben-Gurion said in Israel's Declaration of Independence – their "spiritual, religious and political identity." It is a place where the Jewish people "first achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance." It is land that was part of the only independent state that has ever existed west of the Jordan River over the last 2,000 years (that wasn't part of some foreign colonizing empire). All of this, of course, also applies to every inch of the land of Israel.

Shimon HaTzadik is also where Jewish organizations purchased land and built homes during the Ottoman Empire and British Empire's control of the region. The Yemenite Jews who moved to the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood in the 1880s came with the dream of living in Zion and re-establishing the Jewish homeland. This applies to every Jewish community established in the land of Israel between 1870 and 1947.

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Shimon HaTzadik is a neighborhood where Jews and Arab could have lived side by side peacefully had Arabs – incited with antisemitic fervor by Nazi ally and collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini and then by five of the most powerful armies of the entire Arab League – not tried to ethnically cleanse all of the Jews living there. This also applies to every Jewish community established in the land of Israel before 1947.

In Shimon HaTzadik, Jews are trying to move back into homes that were purchased peacefully and legally by their ancestors on land that is part of the Jewish people's indigenous, historical and religious homeland. They are trying to move back into homes on land that was conquered by a foreign Arab army and renamed to erase the historic Jewish connection and character of the area. This, too, applies to every inch of the land of Israel before 1948.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Jewish Journal

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