Salubrius Challenges Wikipedia's entry on the Levy Report

by Sally Zahav


Salubrius*, an indefatigable champion of Jewish rights in the Land of Israel, recently shared with me his frustration when he tried to address an article in Wikipedia on the Levy Report that was biased against Israel. The letter follows:

Dear Sirs,

Your entry on The Levy Report includes the following:

"According to the Jewish Daily Forward, the report's claim, contradicting the world community's interpretation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, is based on “an eccentric legal doctrine that’s been circulating for years on the fringes of the far right”. Its advocates assert that the resolution of the post-World War I San Remo conference which called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” retains its validity to the present day and constitutes a binding international commitment to make all of historic Palestine as under the British mandate into a Jewish state.^{[10]"[Salubrius's emphasis]}

However you have excluded from the entry the views of those who show that competing Arab-Israeli claims to the political rights to Palestine were adjudicated at the Paris Peace Conference and its extension at San Remo according to many distinguished lawyers with whom I, a lawyer,  agree.  These opinions show that the WWI Principal Allies recognized World Jewry's ownership of the political rights to Palestine.  What you have included is based on a single sentence of ad hominem that those who credit the Mandate as providing for a Jewish National Home as a prelude to a reconstituted state are those "espousing an eccentric legal doctrine that has been circulating for years on the fringes of the far right".  You ignore the citations to a memorandum of the British Foreign Office dated September 19, 1917 showing that the Balfour policy (and later the mandate) was to set up a trust for the political rights recognized as belonging to World Jewry so that no immediate sovereignty would be recognized, but that the sovereignty would be vested only after the Jews in Palestine attained a population majority.  

You ignore the views of Dr. Jacques Gauthier in his monumental work "Sovereignty Over the Old City of Jerusalem: A Study of the Historical, Religious, Political and Legal Aspects of the Question of the Old City", Thesis no 725, University of Geneva, 2007; lawyer Howard Grief's comprehensive legal tome of 732 pages and 1300 citations entitled "Legal Foundations and Boundaries of Israel under International Law"  Mazo Publishing;  Salomon Benzimra, The Jewish People's Rights to the Land of Israel, Amazon-Kindle, November 2011, Dr. Cynthia D. Wallace "Foundations of the International Legal Rights of the Jewish People and the State of Israel" Creation House (2012) and the Levy Report of former Israeli Supreme Court justice Edmund Levy, former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker and former deputy president of the Tel Aviv District Court Tchia Shapira.  My own legal opinion reaches the same conclusion although it relies on equity jurisprudence to a slight extent.

In other words, you credit a single sentence of ad hominem in a left wing magazine, admittedly affiliated with the Socialist Party of America, written by a journalist who has no legal qualifications whatsoever, over the published opinions of many lawyers citing credible sources for their major and minor premises, and showing reasoned conclusions.   Your action casts great doubt on the objectivity of your publication,.

Cordially,

Wallace Edward Brand

*Salubrius is the nom de guerre of Wallace Edward Brand, retired attorney living in Virginia.

Salubrius subsequently tried to add the following text to the entry:

"Other views

There are many lawyers who believe that in 1967 the Israelis "liberated" Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem rather than "occupied" them. This was because the Jews have been owners of the political rights to Palestine since the WWI Allies decision on the claims of the Arabs and the Jews to the political rights to Palestine. The adjudication on this issue commenced at the Paris Peace Conference and it was disposed of at a further meeting in San Remo in April, 1920.
At that meeting the WWI Principal Allies decided to recognize world Jewry as the owner of the political rights to Palestine but also decided to put them in trust. That was because at the time the Jewish population of Palestine was only a small minority and to give them immediate sovereignty would create an antidemocratic government. The trust was intended to last until the Jews by their development of Palestine permitted immigration from the diaspora that would permit the Jews to attain a majority of the population and to become just as capable of exercising sovereignty as any modern European state. This intention is shown in a memorandum of the British Foreign Office on July 19, 1917 by Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier. The memo's principal purpose was to defend the proposed Balfour Policy against charges by critics that it would establish a minority government that would be antidemocratic. The Foreign Office responded to the criticism by saying it agreed in principal that it would be antidemocratic to set up a minority government, but as it was proposed to be applied the criticism would be "imaginary". That was because the political rights to Palestine were to be given in trust to Great Britain or the US who would exercise legal dominion over them until the Jews in Palestine had attained a population majority and were deemed capable of exercising sovereignty. See Duncan Campell Lee, "The Mesopotamian Mandate". May, 1921 The trust agreement or "mandate" for Palestine gave the trustee power to legislate and administer and enforce law in Palestine during the term of the trust.
The San Remo Resolution adopted the Balfour Policy in 1920 and was confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 and by the US in 1922 by a joint resolution of Congress and in 1924 by a Treaty, the Anglo American Convention. This recognition of political rights by the League of Nations and the US was preserved on the demise of the League by Article 80 of the UN Charter.
England abandoned its trust responsibilities in 1948. In 1947 the UN voted to recommend partition of Palestine between the Jews and the Arabs. The Jews agreed to give up some of their political rights to Palestine preserved in Article 80 of the UN Charter. The Arabs rejected the recommendation and went to war against the newly created state of Israel. The Partition recommendation therefore had no continuing force and effect except to show that the UN deemed that the Jews were capable of exercising sovereignty. By 1950 the Jews had attained a population majority within the Armistice lines.
Currently the Jews have an 80% majority of the population within the Green Line. Should it annex Judea and Samaria, and grant citizenship to all the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, its majority would decline to 66% according to Ambassador Yoram Ettinger based on studies by the Begin-Sadat Center in Jerusalem.
This legal opinion is my own, but it adopts with only very minor differences, the legal opinion of Jacques Gauthier in his 13,000 page doctoral thesis, the opinion of Howard Grief in his comprehensive some 600 page "Legal Foundations and Boundaries of Israel under International Law", a shorter book setting forth the historical facts on which this opinion is based by Salomon Benzimra published in November, 2011, by Amazon on Kindle, The Jewish Peoples Rights to the Land of Israel, the legal opinion of Cynthia D. Wallace in "Foundations of the International Legal Rights of the Jewish People and the State of Israel" and the Levy Report, the opinion of former Israel Supreme Court Justice Levy and two other distinguished jurists. See also, the legal opinion of Professor Eugene Kontorovich in his lecture, "The Legal Case for Israel".http://www.torahcafe.com/professor-eugene-kontorovich/the-legal-case-for-israel-video_33fb484b5.html My own opinion may be found published in greater detail in a two part Op Ed in a conservative newspaper published in Israel. Part 1: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11408 Part 2: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11412
The Arabs continue to claim, in massive public relations campaigns that they own Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem if not all of Israel. Ronn Torrossian, "Arab Nations Hire Ten More PR Firms Since Last Year"http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ronn-torossian/arab-nations-hire-10-new-pr-agencies-since-last-year/ "

But, according to Salubrius, "My addition didn't last very long. Wikipedia  quickly removed it   Now they have added more ad hominem from some other left wing organizations and one left wing lawyer spouting even more ad hominem."   He suggests to "tell that guy who claims to be a lawyer for Yesh Din that as of April 25, 1920, the date of the meeting at San Remo, the question of whether the Arabs or the Jews owned the political rights to Palestine was res judicata and if he doesn't know what that means, tell him to ask a real lawyer.   If he is a real lawyer and knows trust law, he should be asked  of what was Great Britain trustee?  What was the trust res?  And he should answer  'the political rights to Palestine'.  Then he should be asked, if so, 'who was the beneficiary of the trust'.  And it is pretty clear that it is World Jewry that was the beneficiary and that the Jewish National Home that was created was the term that referred to the prelude to the Jewish state while the trustee still held dominion over the political rights.  The Jews now have an 80% population majority. If they had read the citations I gave them, they would have learned what the contemporary understanding of the Balfour policy and the Mandate were:"

"In the British cabinet discussion during final consideration of the language of the Balfour Declaration, in responding to the opposition of Lord Curzon, who viewed the language as giving rise to the presumption that Great Britain favored a Jewish State, Lord Balfour stated: "As to the meaning of the words 'national home', to which the Zionists attach so much importance, he understood it to mean some form of British, American, or other protectorate, under which full facilities would be given to the Jews to work out their own salvation and to build up, by means of education, agriculture, and industry, a real center of national culture and focus of national life. It did not necessarily involve the early establishment of an independent Jewish State, which was a matter for gradual development in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution." The key word here was 'early'; otherwise, the statement makes it quite clear that Balfour envisaged the eventual emergence of an independent Jewish state. Doubtless he had in mind a period somewhat longer than a mere thirty years; but the same could also be said of Chaim Weizmann."[38]

Salubrius continues:

"According to Lloyd George, one of Churchill's contemporaries, for example, the meaning was quite clear:

There has been a good deal of discussion as to the meaning of the words 'Jewish National Home' and whether it involved the setting up of a Jewish National State in Palestine. I have already quoted the words actually used by Mr. Balfour when he submitted the declaration to the Cabinet for its approval. They were not challenged at the time by any member present, and there could be no doubt as to what the Cabinet then had in their minds. It was not their idea that a Jewish State should be set up immediately by the Peace Treaty without reference to the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants.

On the other hand, it was contemplated that 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. The notion that Jewish immigration would have to be artificially restricted [as it was in 1939] in order to ensure that the Jews should be a permanent minority never entered into the heads of anyone engaged in framing the policy. That would have been regarded as unjust and as a fraud on the people to whom we were appealing."[39]

If there is any further doubt in the matter, Balfour himself told a Jewish gathering on February 7,1918: "My personal hope is that the Jews will make good in Palestine and eventually found a Jewish state. It is up to them now; we have given them their great opportunity."

This ends Salubrius's communication on the subject. To find out more about how information is accepted or rejected by Wikipedia, I searched for the phrase "who controls Wikipedia". Most results mentioned that anyone can enter information, and that there's not an army of verifiers investigating every claim or every data point.  

One of the results of my search, "Zionist Control of Wikipedia", especially caught my eye. Judge for yourselves, in light of the above information, whether Zionists are controlling Wikipedia.


Sally Zahav

Source: Original Post at Middle East and Terrorism

Copyright  - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.