A Civics Lesson for Adar Cohen

by Salubrius

Adar Cohen currently superintendent of civics education in the Education Ministry was dismissed for promoting post-Zionist textbooks.

One book says that "The establishment of Israel in 1948 turned the Arabs in the territory of Palestine-Israel from a majority into a minority." It reportedly states elsewhere: "A relationship based on control could harm the freedom and equality of those who do not belong to the majority. This is especially true when the majority espouses a selective demographic policy, which entrenches its status over time." This passage is seen as critical of Israel's Law of Return.

So the questions arise "did the establishment of Israel in 1948 turn the Arabs from a majority into a minority, and if not, what did? Also, was it the Jewish majority who espoused the policy of the Law of Return that entrenches its status over time?

It appears that Mr. Cohen hasn't learned as much Israeli history as befits the superintendent of civics education. He overlooked facts that show it was the British who in 1917 thought it was desirable to turn the territory of Palestine from an Arab to a Jewish majority and why. And the entrenching the status of the Jews over time, is a political goal evaluated as fair and necessary by the British in 1917, by the Principal Allies of WWI in 1920, by the League of Nations in 1922, by a joint resolution of the US Congress in 1922, and in a Treaty of the UK and the US in 1924.

• The “Law of Return” is part of the plan conceived in 1917 to give World Jewry exclusive political rights over Palestine because of their historic attachment to Palestine. . A “National Home” was intended as Step 1 in a two step procedure ending up with the Jews exercising sovereignty in a reconstituted Jewish State. Giving the Jews immediate sovereignty after WWI was thought to be antidemocratic. That was not a bad view. That is because in 1917, although the Jews in Palestine had had a plurality in Jerusalem since 1845 and a majority since 1863, in all Palestine they were only about 60,000 out of 600,000. The French gave the Alawite minority sovereignty over Syria and look at the mess now. Hafez Assad, the father of Bashir Assad the current Syrian President also had to massacre other Syrians to keep control when he was President.

So, the question was how to give the Jews the exclusive political or national rights to Palestine without being antidemocratic? The answer was to give them the political rights in trust, not to vest until the Jews had a population majority. England and America were the possible trustees contemplated in a memorandum of the British Foreign Office dated September 19,1917. Giving them the political rights in trust meant that the trustee had a legal interest and could exercise sovereignty, while the Jews had only a beneficial interest — destined ultimately to vest when the tacit condition of population majority had been attained. That is why the mandate called for a National Home, step one in this two part process. That would give the Jews time to build up the country and attract though immigration from the diaspora, the majority needed for exercise of sovereignty just as any other modern European nation-state. What the British contemplated at the time was very much like the Arabs contemplate for their own state in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. That would be step one, but the “Greater Goal” as referred to by Abbas Zaki, a member of the Central Committee of Fatah not long ago in an Al Jazeera program, would be to wipe out Israel within the Green Line too.

To facilitate the Greater Goal of the Balfour Declaration, the trustee or "mandatory power was forbidden to cede any of the political rights to “foreign powers” but it promptly did so, first temporarily suppressing close settlement on the land in Transjordan and then ceding it to Abdullah and his tribe, recently marched up from the Hejaz in the Arabian Peninsula. This was expressly prohibited by the trust document, the “mandate”. The trust document also required the trustee to facilitate Jewish immigration. So the “law of return”, favoring the immigration of Jews from the diaspora, simply carries out the original intent of the framers of the Balfour Declaration. It distinguishes between immigration of Arabs and immigration of Jews and favored the immigration of Jews to carry out the plan of granting exclusive political rights to the Jews, but in a way that would not be antidemocratic.
You can find a statement of this plan in a memorandum of Arnold Toynbee and Louis Namier of the British Foreign Office dated September 19, 1917, shortly before the Balfour policy was published. It agreed that immediate sovereignty of a minority of Jews was antidemocratic in concept, but when it was carried out by granting the rights in trust, not to be exercised until a population majority was achieved, the antidemocratic argument was “imaginary”.

This was predicted in 1917. Is there any question that it was not actually carried out? In the 1948 UNSCOP hearings, the Arabs complained that what was intended would deny the people of Palestine the rights of self government until the Jews constituted a majority of the population in Palestine and that an Arab delegation to London after WWII was told this by Winston Churchill. Again, in the Paris Peace Talks, David Lloyd-George said this was exactly what was intended — to give the Jews a chance to build up the country and the population so that they would end up with a reconstituted state.

The Plan conceived by those framing the Balfour policy was a reasonable way of attaining a grant of exclusive political rights to the Jews without being anti-democratic. The plan is operative only for a for a temporary period — until Jewish population in CisJordan, Palestine West of the Jordan, constitutes a majority of total population. In 1917 the British did not think it unfair. In 1920 the principal WWI Allies did not think it was unfair. In 1922, the League of Nations did not think it was unfair. In 1922, a joint resolution of the US Congress approved of it, and in 1924, the UK and the US entered into the Anglo-American Convention that conferred on it the status of domestic British and American law as well as International Law.

Through 1948 when the British abandoned their trusteeship, the Jews had only about one third of the population. But with the mass voluntary exodus of some 700,000 Arabs without ever seeing a single Jewish soldier, and with the influx from survivors of the Holocaust, and some 800,000 Sephardic Jews from the neighboring Arab state that had been driven out of their homes of many centuries before the Arab arrived there, by 1950 the Jews had attained a majority within the Armistice boundaries.

According to Ambassador Ettinger, it would continue to have a majority of 66%, down from 80% even after annexing Judea and Samaria. But the Law of Return is still needed so that eventually, Israel can annex Gaza too. When it does so, it will still have only 22% of the political or national rights originally intended.

Salubrius

Source: Middle East and Terrorism

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