Severe Human Rights Violations in Gaza.

 

Navanethem Pillay
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Esteemed Commissioner Pillay,

I wish to call your attention to egregious violations of human rights in Gaza, and to the part played by the UN as an accomplice after the fact in those violations.

The United Nations has maintained an incessant barrage of complaints regarding alleged Israeli violations of human rights in Gaza, allegations of a dire humanitarian crisis and impending disaster. Under the direct pressure of the United Nations, Israel recently transferred a large sum of money to the Hamas government in Gaza, ostensibly to pay salaries.

A part of this sum was used to finance a grotesque and barbaric public humiliation of the hostage (or "Prisoner of War") Gilad Schalit. The allegedly starving people of Gaza turned out en-masse to view this passion play elaborately staged by the Hamas masters of Gaza. This spectacle was no doubt watched by Schalit's parents and relatives, and very likely by Schalit himself, and could not fail to produce its intended effect: bottomless humiliation and agony.

Hamas treatment of Schalit has violated very norm of human decency as well as conventions regarding prisoners of war. No agency of the United Nations has done anything to secure his release or his treatment according to the Geneva conventions. Nor, for that matter, has the UN done anything whatever about the rain of missiles that are shot indiscriminately from Gaza on Israeli targets.

If the Gaza regime has rights under law, then they also have obligations and if so, Schalit is a prisoner of war and must be treated as such. If the Gaza regime are just barbarian criminal gangsters, then they need to be treated as such.

Under the terms of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War please note the following:

Article 3

....To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

...(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;


...
Article 71

Prisoners of war shall be allowed to send and receive letters and cards...

Article 72

Prisoners of war shall be allowed to receive by post or by any other means individual parcels or collective shipments containing, in particular, foodstuffs, clothing, medical supplies and articles of a religious, educational or recreational character which may meet their needs, including books, devotional articles, scientific equipment, examination papers, musical instruments, sports outfits and materials allowing prisoners of war to pursue their studies or their cultural activities.

Given that the UN has taken great pains to ensure the welfare of the Hamas regime in Gaza, they have, instead of being custodians of human rights, become accomplices after the fact in grotesque barbarities. This inhuman behavior, in disregard of every civilized norm is possible only because of resources and funds supplied to the Hamas government at the express insistence of the United Nations. If there was any justice in the matter, every UN official implicated in justifying or supporting the Hamas regime, accepting Hamas claims without substantiation and insisting on "humanitarian" support for this regime, would be tried as a war criminal.

Could you kindly explain why the United Nations has done nothing whatever to ensure the enforcement of these provisions of the Geneva Convention in the case of Gilad Shalit? Why has the United Nations done nothing to bring about cessation of bombardment of Israeli civilians as well as outrages committed by Hamas against its own subject population, including persecution of Christians and political opponents?

Doesn't it behoove the United Nations to maintain at least the verisimilitude of fairness in the handling of human rights issues?

Sincerely,
Ami Isseroff

Addresses:
InfoDesk@ohchr.org
Press-Info@ohchr.org
Postal address:
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Original content is Copyright by the author 2008.

UN's obsession is grotesque and Orwellian

By Jeff Jacoby

 

THE PRESIDENT of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, has denounced the policies of a certain Middle Eastern nation. They are "so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era," he said, "that the world must unite against them, demanding an "end to this massive abuse of human rights" and isolating the offending nation as it once isolated South Africa: with a punishing "campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions."

Of which country was he speaking?

Was it Saudi Arabia, where public facilities are segregated by sex, and where a pervasive system of gender apartheid denies women the right to drive, to dress as they choose, to freely marry or divorce, to vote, to appear in public without a male "guardian," or to give testimony on an equal basis with men?

Was it Jordan, where the law explicitly bars Jews from citizenship and where the sale of land to a Jew was for decades not only illegal, but punishable by death?

Was it Iran, where homosexuality is a capital crime — at least 200 Iranian gays were executed last year - and whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asserted at Columbia University that there are no homosexuals in Iran?

Was it Sudan, where tens of thousands of black Africans in the country's southern region, most of them Christians or animists, have been abducted and sold into slavery by Arab militias backed by the Islamist regime in Khartoum?

It was none of these. The General Assembly president, a radical Maryknoll priest who served as Nicaragua's foreign minister during the Sandinista regime in the 1980s, was not referring to any of the Middle East's Muslim autocracies and dictatorships, virtually all of which discriminate against ethnic and religious minorities. He was speaking of the Jewish state of Israel, the region's lone democracy, and the only one that guarantees the legal equality of all its citizens - one-fifth of whom are Muslim and Christian Arabs.

D'Escoto's call for Israel to be shunned as a pariah and strangled economically came on the UN's Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an annual occasion devoted to lamenting the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in the 20th century, denouncing the national liberation movement — Zionism - that made that rebirth possible, and championing the cause of the Palestinian Arabs. The event occurs on or about Nov. 29, the anniversary of the UN vote in 1947 to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. There are impassioned speeches, in which Israel's sins are enumerated and condemned, and the statelessness of the Palestinians is bewailed. Unmentioned is the fact that Palestine's Arabs would have had their state 60 years ago had they and the Arab League not rejected the UN's decision and chosen instead to declare war on the new Jewish state.

Like so much of what takes place at the UN, the obsession with demonizing Israel and extolling the Palestinians is grotesque and Orwellian. More than 1 million Israeli Arabs enjoy civil and political rights unmatched in the Arab world — yet Israel is accused of repression and human-rights abuse. Successive Israeli governments have endorsed a "two-state solution" - yet Israel is blasted as the obstacle to peace. The Palestinian Authority oversees the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich, and wants all Jews expelled from the land it claims for itself - yet Israel is labeled an "apartheid state" and singled out for condemnation and ostracism.

Make no mistake: In likening Israel to apartheid-era South Africa, the UN is engaged not in anti-racism but in anti-Semitism. In the 1930s, the world's foremost anti-Semites demanded a boycott of Jewish businesses. Today they demand a boycott of the Jewish state.

"No good German is still buying from a Jew," announced Hitler's Nazi Party in March 1933. "The boycott must be a universal one . . . and must hit Jewry where it is most vulnerable." Seventy-five years later, the president of the General Assembly urges the world to throttle Israel's 6 million Jews with "boycott, divestment, and sanctions." There is no significant difference between the two cases — or the animus underlying them.

When the UN adopted its odious "Zionism is racism resolution" in 1975, US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan minced no words. "The United States," he declared, "does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act." Where is such a voice of moral outrage today?

 

Jeff Jacoby

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

 

"The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law"

By Howard Grief

 

 

 The Only Book That Clearly Explains Israel's Legal Right To Its Land, According To Modern International Law!

 

 The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law offers a comprehensive and systematic legal treatment of Jewish national and political rights to all of the Land of Is rael.  The author, Howard Grief, is the originator of the thesis that de jure sovereignty over the entire Land of Israel and Palestine was vested in the Jewish People as a result of the San Remo Resolution adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference on April 24, 1920.

 Hard Cover, 732 pages, USD-$49, GBP-29.95, NIS-199 (plus s/h)

 

 

Introduction

 

This book is the culmination of 25 years of serious study and analysis of Israel’s legal foundation and rights to the Land of Israel under international law. My researches on this subject began=2 0in 1982 after I had met in New York with the late Dr. Paul Riebenfeld, a legal scholar on the subject of Transjordan, with whom I had subsequently, throughout the 1980s, many discussions on Israel’s legal rights and status in regard to Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Prior to my first meeting with Dr. Riebenfeld, I had followed intensely from my home city of Montreal the events unfolding in Israel ever since my teenage years when the Sinai War of 1956 was headline world news. Between 1956 and 1982, I had acquired a considerable store of knowledge of the politics, history and geography of Israel through voracious reading of newspapers and books and attending lectures, both at McGill University and in public forums. Some of the books I read that captured my interest on Israel were ones written by Leon Uris – “Exodus”, Richard Meinertzhagen – “Middle East Diary”, and Shmuel Katz – “Days of Fire”, all of which made an indelible impression on me. Another book, not surprisingly, was the Hebrew Bible, the root and backbone of Judaism and the Jewish People. The stories of the Bible always fascinated and inspired me, ever since my days as a schoolchild. In 1980, I was asked to become the representative in Canada of the newly-formed Tehiya party of Israel, a task I gladly accepted. I then proceeded to form a group to represent it in the Canadian Zionist Federation, which had the distinction of being the first official branch outside Israel.

0A

 

As a practicing attorney in Montreal since 1966, it was natural for me, sooner or later, to interest myself in Israel’s legal foundation and in the rights of the Jewish People to Palestine and the Land of Israel. This became a matter that required great attention after the Six-Day War of June 1967, since Israel’s legal position in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan and Sinai were topics of daily debate and acrimony. Israel was constantly being assailed in the 1970s, as it still is today, for its “occupation” of Arab territories, the implication being that it had no right to the territories it had repossessed or liberated from enemy occupation in the Six-Day War. To my sorrow, no satisfying legal rebuttal was forthcoming to offset this false accusation, even by committed advocates of Israel’s cause. The best response offered was that either Israel had a better “claim” to these territories than did the surrounding Arab states, or that in any case everything would be eventually settled in future peace agreements and that in the meantime the status quo could continue. Not a single jurist ever voiced the opinion, with supporting evidence, that Israel, as the agent and assignee of the Jewish People, was the actual sovereign of Judea, Samaria and Gaza or that the Golan was really an historical part of the Land of Israel rather than of Syria=2 0illegally ceded to France in a 1922 agreement that took effect the following year or finally that the Jewish People’s long connection with Sinai dating back to the days of Moses, as confirmed in the Torah, gave Israel a right to retain Sinai, a territory which historically was never a part of Egypt except by virtue of conquest during various periods in history.

 

In addition, the true importance of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 as encapsulated in the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920 was not understood or realized. In fact, no single book contained an organized and systematic presentation of Israel’s legal rights to the entire Land of Israel, not just the area included in the State of Israel, but to all the land east and west of the Jordan, north and south of the Yarmuk, and, separately, to Sinai and the territory of what is today Southern Lebanon. The latter is geographically an extension of Upper Galilee, that historically was part of ancient Israel and therefore should have been included in the boundaries of Mandated Palestine, had it not been for French obstinacy and imperial designs. It was to rectify this glaring omission that I set myself the task of composing the present book. I devoted day and night to writing it from October 2001 to March 2003, and in the succeeding years made constant additions, revisions and updates to reach the point of publication. The book thus required seven years before it was ripe for publication.

 

I had for more than a decade prior to writing this book prepared the ground for it by composing a series of articles and papers on legal questions affecting the Land of Israel. Many of these articles appeared in the Hebrew bi-monthly publication of Nativ, where I stressed the San Remo Resolution as the principal founding document of the State of Israel. My thesis was that the Jewish People were recognized under international law as the de jure sovereign over Mandated Palestine ever since the adoption of the San Remo Resolution. This view contrasted sharply with that of other jurists who propagated the theory that there existed a “sovereignty vacuum” for Judea, Samaria and Gaza or that these regions had the legal status of unallocated (or unallotted) territories of the Mandate for Palestine. At the time this view was propounded, it appeared to many to favour Israel’s interest. However, it actually damaged Israel’s legal case, since not only did it ignore the importance of the San Remo Resolution, which had created Palestine for the exclusive national benefit of the Jewish People, but also opened the door to the local Arab inhabitants of the Land of Israel to claim ownership of the so-called “unallocated territories” for themselves and t hereby acquire national and political rights over them that they were never meant to have under the San Remo Resolution and the Mandate for Palestine. I came to the conclusion that since all of Palestine had already been allocated to the Jewish People at the San Remo Peace Conference that issued the San Remo Resolution, the Arabs therefore had no national rights whatever to any part of the territory of formerly mandated Palestine under international law, though they, together with the other inhabitants of the country, naturally enjoyed civil and religious rights. It was in the mid-1980s that I began to formulate my view that de jure sovereignty had already been vested in the Jewish People over all of the Land of Israel dating from the 1920 San Remo Resolution and then devolved upon the State of Israel upon its re-establishment. I then explained this view to Dr. Paul Riebenfeld of New York. He advised me that no one had previously expressed this position. I also mentioned my view in an article I wrote in 1989, published in The Jewish Press of Brooklyn, New York, on “the Question of Sovereignty and Final Status of Judea, Samaria and Gaza” (August 4, 1989, p.4). In that article I stated that at a meeting of the Supreme Council of the victorious Allied Powers at San Remo, Italy, on April 25, 1920 “Palestine was specifically set aside and given to the Jewish People for the establishment of a National Home… The establishment of a Jewish homeland meant eventual statehood20and hence the transfer to the Jewish People of sovereignty to all parts of the homeland including Judea, Samaria and Gaza”.

 

Over a year after I made aliya in August 1989, I was appointed by Professor Yuval Ne’eman, leader of the Tehiya party, then serving as Minster of Energy and Infrastructure in the Yitzhak Shamir Government, to be his legal adviser on Eretz-Israel. In January 1991, he asked me to prepare a paper for him on Israel’s legal foundation and rights to the country, since he was scheduled to deliver a speech in a month’s time on this subject at the Carnegie Foundation in the United States. I compiled a 93 page paper for this purpose. Professor Ne’eman not only accepted my thesis, he used what I wrote for him to very good advantage on his speaking tour before American audiences and followed this up with an article published in the journal Global Affairs (Fall 1992, Vol. VII, No. 4). In his article, he cited my work as the legal authority for his statement that “it is… at San Remo that the State of Israel draws its legal existence” and that “sovereignty over an area that would later be defined as the Palestine mandate was thereby bestowed on the Jewish People”.

 

The briefing paper I had authored for Professor Ne’eman became the impetus for the present book. However, I could not undertake this task immediately, because as a new oleh still new to the country, I had to seek employment in order to provide for my family. I was obliged to leave the Ministry of Energy when Tehiya lost its Knesset representation and Professor Ne’eman resigned his position as Minister even before the June 1992 elections and the Labour Party’s assumption of power. With the signing of several accords between Israel and “Palestine Liberation” Organization, I felt compelled to challenge the legality of these accords in the Israel Supreme Court, and for that purpose I filed a total of five petitions or applications on behalf of distinguished Israeli citizens. The Court, however, always refused to hear these petitions on their merits, because of what it determined to be the political nature of the agreements made with the PLO, as if the question of the legality of such agreements was outside the scope of its jurisdiction, thus giving the Government of Israel a blank cheque to do whatever it desired, regardless of several existing Israeli laws that prohibited the ceding of territory to any foreign state whatsover, and by natural deduction to any lesser entity, particularly to a criminal and terrorist organization.

Finally, in 2001, I started to compose the present book at the urging of my good friend, Mr. Yoel Lerner, an educator and linguist in Jerusalem, who recognized the importance of putting down in writing the legal knowledge I had gained over the years on the subject of Israel’s legal rights to the Land of Israel. It was a proverbial “labour of love” from beginning to end. To present Israel’s legal case I have relied on all the basic documents, agreements and acts formulated in the critical period between the years 1915-1925 that shaped the modern Middle East as it is today. As already indicated, the base document for the founding of Israel was the San Remo Resolution, as it was also for Syria and Iraq. I take pride in the fact that I have preached this point for the last two decades and that it has now become a widespread and accepted idea, directly attributable to myself as confirmed by Professor Yuval Ne’eman himself.

 

I sincerely hope that this book will be used in the future as a teaching and educational tool to inform those who know little of the depth and strength of Israel’s legal case for retaining in its possession the territories liberated in 1967 that still remain under its rule and even for the recovery – one day – of those territories already illegally given away. Arguments based on legal facts and evidence are needed to counter the enormous lies and mis-information put out by Israel’s detractors, both at home and abroad, who urge the State “to end its occupation” of territories that rightfully belong to Israel. Such facts and evidence are provided in this book. The State of Israel is entitled to rule all the lands encompassing the Land of Israel with which it has incomparable historical, geographical, religious, economic and security links.

 

A concise summary of the main points of this book has been published by the Ariel Center for Policy Research in its Policy Paper No. 147, entitled “Legal Rights and Title of Sovereignty of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel and Palestine under International Law” (ACPR Publishers, April 2003). To that source I refer interested readers who may wish to have a quick review of the main points of this book. I have also discussed the approach I have taken in presenting Israel’s legal case, as compared to that of others, in two letters I sent to Professor Ne’eman in 2004, which are reprinted infra in Appendix III.

 

Professor Ne’eman had originally intended to write his own introduction to the book, but his untimely decease in=2 02007 has made that impossible. However, the letter he wrote to a prospective publisher expressing his enthusiastic endorsement of the book is reproduced in that appendix as a substitute for the intended introduction. I have also included in Appendix IV a juridical assessment of the book composed by the late Dr. Ya’akov Meron, Professor of Moslem Law and Adviser on the Law of Arab Countries at the Ministry of Justice, who sadly passed away in the spring of 2008. He read this book in its entirety and characterized it as “a forceful and erudite pleading for the respecting of the letter and spirit of the law, not only Israeli law but also international law that came into existence in the wake of World War I”. It is certainly a great honor to receive the support of such eminent figures as Professors Ne’eman and Meron for the book as now finally published.

 

Finally, I have included in Appendix V the correspondence I had with the late Joel Carmichael, the celebrated long-time editor of Midstream, a monthly Jewish review based in New York. I had written to him concerning a article penned by one of his contributors. This article was based on my original thesis as stated above, that de jure sovereignty over all of Palestine had been vested in the Jewish People as a result of the decision taken at the San Remo Peace Conference to cre ate the new mandated state of Palestine in accordance with the Balfour Declaration and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, though the writer of the article, having learned of this thesis directly from me, neglected to attribute it to me, nor was he authorized to make it public until I had done so in a systematic manner. Nevertheless he posted it on the internet, thus giving it widespread publicity. Mr. Carmichael accepted my analysis most eagerly, and in follow-up correspondence even requested that I submit an article for publication in Midstream, which he said he would publish as the leading article in a future issue. Unfortunately, Mr. Carmichael retired from his position as Editor of Midstream before the article was ready. The article, never published in its original format to this day, is included in Appendix V. The penning of the article marked the precipitate cause that set me on the path to the compilation of the present book, the idea and contents of which having been swirling around in my mind ever since I first presented my legal paper to Professor Ne’eman in 1991. The book is thus the final rendition of that long chain of thoughts.

 

The comments I have received on my earlier writings on the subject, as expressed in various letters and articles, give me cause to hope that the book may prove in the long run to be of=2 0actual benefit to the Jewish People and the State of Israel in their on-going process of reclaiming and repossessing all of the Jewish National Home and the remaining parts of the Land of Israel^*.

 

 Howard Grief, - Jerusalem, June 2008

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

 

 

^*The Jewish National Home and Mandated Palestine were originally meant to be synonymous terms under international law, and were supposed to correspond to the historical or biblical frontiers of the Land of Israel in the First and Second Temple Periods. However, when the borders of Mandated Palestine were finally drawn in 1920 and 1922 by Britain and France, they illegally excluded various areas comprising the Land of Israel in the definition of Palestine, thus creating an unwarranted distinction between what bec ame Palestine and what historically was the Land of Israel. Paradoxically, the distinction between Palestine and the historical Land of Israel was not reflected in the law of Palestine during the period of the Mandate, since the term used in Hebrew to designate the country was Eretz-Israel, even though certain historical parts of it were not included.

 

The Myth of Arab Innocence

 

By Elliott A. Green

 

Mr. Green is a writer, researcher, and translator living in Jerusalem. His work has previously appeared in Midstream [New York], Nativ and the Jerusalem Post [Israel], and other publications. He was assistant editor of Crossroads, a discontinued social sciences quarterly published in Jerusalem. References for the quotes in this piece are found in his article in Midstream (September-October 2008).

The myth of Arab innocence throughout history --particularly concerning Jews-- has long haunted British and American writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Professors Walt and Mearsheimer put it as follows in their anti-Israel tract:

...in the Christian West... Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy of Anti-Semitism... But ... the creation of Israel involved additional crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

This article seeks to disprove that false claim and demonstrate instead the systemic, juridical oppression, exploitation, and humiliation of non-Muslims --including Jews--in Islamic society. Further, whereas it used to be commonly believed that Islam was benign toward Jews, the article shows that Jews were at the bottom of the social barrel in the Islamic domain generally--although conditions varied with time and place. Moreover, this was true in Jerusalem specifically. Indeed, the famous Jewish philosopher Maimonides believed that Jews were worse treated under Islam than in Christendom. He was in a position to compare conditions in both zones because he conducted correspondence with Jews in far flung places.

In the empires resulting from the Arab and Muslim conquests, Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians--and later, Hindus and others-- were subjects far inferior in law to Muslims as a class. Tolerated non-Muslims, called dhimmis, were required to pay annual tribute, jizya, for the privilege of living another year. This is grounded in Qur'an 9:29 and remains part of Islamic law to this day, although formally abolished in the Ottoman Empire in 1855. Islamic law still views dhimmis as an occupied population to be "brought low" (9:29 & 2:61). The rules of dhimmi status, dhimma, also provide that dhimmis should not bear arms, that their garments must differ from Muslim garments, that they show deference to Muslims, such as dismounting when encountering a Muslim on the road. Since a horse is a noble animal, a dhimmi must not ride one. Further, a dhimmi's testimony in court is worth half of a Muslim's, etc.

The Danish traveler, Karsten Niebuhr, visiting Egypt in 1761-1762, described dhimmis dismounting in humiliation from donkeys when encountering horse-mounted Muslims on the street. Niebuhr visited Egypt four decades before Napoleon, which is significant because Edward Said argued that similar reports made after Napoleon's Egyptian expedition were invalid since tainted with imperialism.

Moshe Gil found in the Cairo Genizah, a medieval archive of Jewish writings, accounts of impoverishment and suffering caused to Jews in Israel by collection of the jizya and other taxes:

...if you saw who paid all those moneys you would have been astonished and lamented over them and say of them: Could such a large `onesh [=punitive tax, exaction] have come from those poor people?

Jacob Barna'i examined ledgers of the Jerusalem Jewish community in the late eighteenth century. He found a situation strikingly similar to that found by Gil for the pre-Crusades period. Besides jizya, Jews paid unofficial taxes, fees, exactions, mandatory bribes, etc. The rapacious were not only Ottoman officials but local Muslim notables and strong men. Of course, Christian dhimmis too could be oppressed this way. Jews differed by being low man on the Islamic totem pole. Israeli historian Moshe Sharon argues:

...the fact that the Qur'an singled them [Jews] out as the enemies of the Muslims... institutionalized their inferior status in comparison to the Christians.

The Arab writer Al-Jahiz explained this by the political resistance of the Jews in Medina to Muhammad. The Hamas takes inspiration for its Judeophobia from early Islam, citing the hadith fable about Judgment Day in its charter (Article 7):

...the Muslims will fight the Jews who will hide behind rocks and trees. The rocks and trees will cry out: O Muslim! A Jew is hiding behind me. Come kill him...

Francesco Gabrieli, the Italian historian of Islam, wrote:

...the name "Yahudi" [=Jew] acquired on Muslim lips the same odor of hostile scorn for the Jews that the term "Jew" had in the Western world, more hostile and scornful than that of the epithet "Nasrani" [=Christian].

This judgment is supported by a British envoy sent to the Levant in the 1830s. John Bowring reported Muslim resentment of improved treatment for dhimmis there by their ruler Muhammad Ali of Egypt:

The Mussulmans deeply deplore the loss of that sort of superiority which they all & individually exercised over ... the other sects... a Mussulman... believes ... that a Christian --and still more a Jew-- is an inferior being to himself.

This pecking order was confirmed by a nineteenth century Turk objecting to equalizing measures in the Ottoman Empire (quoted by Bernard Lewis):

... whereas in former times... the communities were ranked... the Muslims first, then the Greeks, then the Armenians, then the Jews, now all... were... on the same level. Some Greeks objected... saying: "The government has put us together with the Jews. We were content with the supremacy of Islam."

The above quotes demonstrate that the Jews were generally at the bottom of Arab-Muslim society. It thus stands to reason that this was true of Jerusalem too. Yet this should and can be demonstrated by sources.

In the late Mamluk period (ca. 1500), the chief Roman Catholic official in Jerusalem, Francesco Suriano, hated Muslims, but appreciated how they treated Jews:

I wish you to know how these dogs of Jews are trampled upon, beaten, and ill-treated, as they deserve... They live in this country in such subjection that words cannot describe it... in Jerusalem where they committed the sin for which they are dispersed throughout the world [the crucifixion-EAG], they are by God more punished and afflicted than in any other part of the world. And over a long time I have witnessed that.

Some 300 years later, in Ottoman Jerusalem, the French writer Chateaubriand found the Jews still on the bottom. A Greek monk, Neophytos, described the situation until the 1830s. Illustrating Muhammad Ali of Egypt's magnanimity toward dhimmis, he writes that it extended even to Jews. They formerly "did not even dare to change a tile on" their synagogue roof, yet "now received a permit to build."

Next comes a surprise witness, none other than Karl Marx:

Nothing equals the misery and suffering of the Jews at Jerusalem... the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins." [New York Tribune, 15 April 1854]

To be sure, Marx was never in Jerusalem. But his report in Horace Greeley's Tribune is mainly taken from a book by the French diplomat and historian, Cesar Famin, who served in the Ottoman Empire and had access to French diplomats, churchmen, and foreign ministry records.

If these accounts seem tedious, let's skip over the late Ottoman period, when conditions for dhimmis generally improved, to British rule when Arab pogroms against Jews resumed, with British acquiescence or encouragement. The 1929 massacre and "ethnic cleansing" of the ancient Hebron community (68 Jews murdered, hundreds removed) left special bitterness among Jews in Israel and abroad.

This was followed by participation of the chief Palestinian Arab leader, the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, in the Holocaust from his base in Berlin. To be sure, the Allies did not prosecute him at Nuremberg for genocide collaboration, although Yugoslavia wanted him tried for war crimes by his followers there.

The Walt-Mearsheimer view of Arabs generally and Palestinian Arabs specifically as "largely innocent" is blatantly false. Further, there is no longer an excuse for ignorance on the matters covered above. There are document collections covering Jews under Islam by Norman Stillman, Bat Ye'or, and Andrew Bostom, plus abundant books and articles. Moreover, there are works on Arab nationalist Nazi collaboration, Husseini's particularly, by Hirszowicz, Schechtman, Carpi, El-Peleg, etc. Yet the myth seems so deeply rooted among the press, academics, and State Department circles, that it is unlikely to dissipate any time soon if ever.

Elliott A. Green

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

 

The Hamas-Fatah War & Israeli Security

A briefing by Jonathan Schanzer

Jonathan Schanzer is the director of policy at the Jewish Policy Center, a Washington think-tank. Prior to joining JPC, he was a counterterrorism analyst for the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Mr. Schanzer also has held positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum. It was during his tenure with the Forum that he undertook initial research into the subject of his new book, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle For Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), which was also the topic of Mr. Schanzer's address to members of the Middle East Forum and the Jewish Federation of Philadelphia on November 3, 2008.

In Hamas vs. Fatah, Schanzer rejects the "constant narrative that the Palestinians are waiting for their state," an account that depicts the Palestinians as a passive factor in the state formation process. Instead, Schanzer argues that the Palestinians' troubled path to statehood is a product of their own political divisions. Schanzer believes that the problem had its roots in the outbreak of the first intifada in 1988. At that time, Arafat was exiled from the territories and living in Tunisia, so he and Fatah were unable to take credit for the Palestinian uprising.

Instead, it was Arafat's rival, Hamas, which "quickly eclipsed Fatah in terms of popularity with Islamists and refugees." Seeing his political relevance eroding, Arafat announced that he would accept in theory the state of Israel. Schanzer dismissed Arafat's declaration as merely "a ploy to get him back on the world stage. By simply recognizing the state of Israel," Schanzer explained, "the entire world [came] rushing to him thinking that perhaps he [could] end the uprising and bring Palestinian-Israeli peace."

The next seven years were the "Oslo Period." Although others saw the Accords as offering hope for a sustained peace, Schanzer believes that Arafat came to regret his involvement. By seeking the mantle of a statesman, Arafat found that he created a vacuum in the arena of "military struggle" that Hamas was able to exploit - as evidenced by the fact that during the 1990's, most terror attacks on Israel were perpetrated by Hamas.

For Hamas, attacks on Israel served a dual purpose. Every act of terrorism perpetrated by Hamas made Fatah look feckless to the outside world and undermined Arafat's overall strategy. On the other hand, terrorist attacks against Israel further cemented Hamas' popularity with the Palestinians, who increasingly looked to it as assertive, while Fatah was seen as submissive to the West.

This state of affairs lasted until 2000, when Arafat, seeing the damage that his reconciliation attempt had caused to the political relevance of Fatah, launched the second intifada. Schanzer said that Arafat's motivation behind this action was to "out-Hamas Hamas." Arafat promoted the conflict in a much more Islamist way than the first intifada; for example, calling the war the "Al-Aqsa intifada," after the historic mosque in Islam situated in Jerusalem.

In 2004, Arafat died and Mahmoud Abbas succeeded him as the leader of Fatah. In 2006, however, "in an absolute landslide…of the freest and fairest elections that we have probably seen ever in the Arab world," the Palestinians rejected Abbas and Fatah, and elected Hamas.

Along with the Hamas victory came what Schanzer declared the "Second Six-Day­-War," this one between Hamas and Fatah. In it, Palestinians fought each other and engaged in acts of violence such as "we've never seen in the Arab-Israeli conflict." With the election of Hamas - a terrorist organization – and the in-fighting between Hamas and Fatah, diplomacy with Israel came to virtual standstill.

The continued intervention of outside powers, which provide monetary and military support to one side or the other, further complicates the Fatah-Hamas split. Schanzer estimates that Iran provides Hamas with $35 million in annual support. The U.S. government supports Fatah mainly "so [Tehran does not] take over the Palestinian Authority as well."

Schanzer described the very separate nature of the two Palestinian territories today. The West Bank is "flourishing," due to the economic influence of Jordan. Meanwhile, Gaza, in which the Egyptians had failed to invest, is "the exact opposite" with people living in "squalor." Because of the geographic, economic and political differences between the two territories, Schanzer questions the potential for realizing a single Palestinian state.

But there are limits to the conflict between Fatah and Hamas. After all, both of their charters still call for the destruction of the State of Israel. However the conflict between Fatah and Hamas concludes, Schanzer asks, "With whom will the Israelis be able to make peace?"

Summary Account by Eric Bergel

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The United Islamist Nations

by Supna Zaidi

Last week, the attacks in India and the threat to New York City's subway system provided another stark reminder of the need for a united front against global terrorism. Yet instead of figuring out how to combat Islamic extremists, the United Nations is worried about offending them.

On November 24, 2008, the U.N. passed a draft resolution against the defamation of religion sponsored by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), where all U.N. members are being asked to pass domestic legislation against blasphemy. The resolution was originally introduced in 1999 by the OIC, asserting that "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."

In reality, terrorism happens in Islam's name, or more accurately, in Islamism's name. Islamism is a 20th century product arising from the writings of sincere Muslims such as Hasan al-Banna and Syed Qutb. Frustrated by the fallen status of Muslims vis-à-vis the West, they offered a new version of Islam as a totalitarian socio-political alternative to democracy and Western license. Disparate followers from Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah and Hamas to the Jihadis that waged war on Mumbai last week are not deranged or crazy. Rather, they subscribe to a worldview that is antithetical to most Muslims and the West.

The OIC nations charge critics of Islamic extremism with "racism" and "Islamophobia" to deflect attention from the fact that such violence originates at the hand of Muslim clerics born and bread in their lands. This is because they realize they can't control Islamism, or they tacitly agree with its message.

These Muslim clerics also export this ideology to the West to radicalize Muslim immigrants abroad, and reform-minded Muslims are usually the first victims.

Kadra Noor was beat up in 2007 for speaking out against "Islamic" female genital mutilation in Norway. In Sweden, cabinet minister Nyamko Sabuni proposed that honor killings be labeled a separate crime in the Swedish penal code and girls get mandatory gynecological exams to discourage female circumcision. She also told the Sunday Times that arranged marriages are not a part of Islam.

As a result, she was called an "Islamophobe" and instead of supporting her, 50 Islamic Swedish organizations petitioned against her appointment to the cabinet in an effort to suppress her growing influence in Swedish politics.

Pakistan, spokesman for the OIC, recently promoted a politician to minister of education after he defended the live burial of five girls in Balochistan as "tribal custom." It is not a stretch to argue that Pakistan is not an OIC member interested in reform.

The 2005 Danish cartoon controversy kick-started the OIC campaign to pass last month's resolution when it was cited as another example of increased discrimination against Muslims after 9/11. The "cartoon intifada" arose 5 months after the original printing of the images of Muhammad, but only weeks before the UNHCR was due to consider the OIC's resolution on "Combating Defamation of Religion."

Such a coincidence caused the National Secular Society to state in its Memorandum to the United Kingdom Parliament that "the Danish cartoon crisis was manufactured…to exploit sensitivities around racial discrimination and to promote (or even exaggerate) the notion of 'Islamophobia' in order to restrict possibilities for open discussion or criticism of Islam….[M]easures calling for legislation banning 'defamation of religion' …. aim[] to remove religion, especially Islam, from public scrutiny and public debate."

The OIC forgets that Muslims are already protected in the West. The U.S., for example, increases sentences on crimes ranging from assault and battery to murder if they are deemed "hate crimes," which includes crimes against a victim based on his or her religious identity.

So what is this 57-nation organization really pushing with this "anti-blasphemy" resolution at the U.N.?

In the Muslim world, anti-blasphemy laws are regularly used to suppress free speech by attacking fellow Muslims and non-Muslims who criticize the government or protest human rights violations. Such laws are also used as pretext against individuals in personal and business disputes. The mere allegation puts mobs before the accused before the police can arrive to investigate.

At the U.N., the OIC has manipulated the language of racism to make its anti-democratic agenda more attractive to "third world" nations recovering from their own genuine post-colonial struggles. Nations that voted in favor of the resolution or abstained were predominantly from Latin America or developing African nations.

A final version of the resolution is up for a vote this month. It would be a mistake for these U.N. members to fall for anti-colonial rhetoric once again. By aligning with Islamists, the U.N. would be supporting the stifling of free speech and the suppression of human rights, and crushing the goal of building tolerant democratic societies.

Supna Zaidi is the assistant director of Islamist Watch, a project at the Middle East Forum.

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

 

Senator John McCain's brother on The Jews & Israel.

 

There is a lot of worry popping up in the media just now -- "Can Israel

Survive?" Don't worry about it. It relates to something that Palestinians,

the Arabs, and perhaps most Americans don't realize -- the Jews are never

going quietly again. Never. And if the world doesn't come to understand

that, then millions of Arabs are going to die. It's as simple as that.

 

Throughout the history of the world, the most abused, kicked-around race of

people have been the Jews. Not just during the holocaust of World War II,

but for thousands of years. They have truly been "The Chosen People" in a

terrible and tragic sense.

 

The Bible story of Egypt's enslavement of the Jews is not just a story, it

is history, if festooned with theological legend and heroic epics. In 70

A.D. the Romans, which had for a long time tolerated the Jews -- even

admired them as 'superior' to other vassals -- tired of their truculent

demands for independence and decided on an early "Solution" to the Jewish

problem. Jerusalem was sacked and reduced to near rubble, Jewish resistance

was pursued and crushed by the implacable Roman War Machine -- see 'Masada'.

And thus began The Diaspora, the dispersal of Jews throughout the rest of

the world.

 

Their homeland destroyed, their culture crushed, they looked desperately for

the few niches in a hostile world where they could be safe. That safety was

fragile, and often subject to the whims of moody hosts. The words 'pogrom',

'ghetto', and 'anti-Semitism' come from this treatment of the first

mono-theistic people. Throughout Europe, changing times meant sometimes

tolerance, sometimes even warmth for the Jews, but eventually it meant

hostility, then malevolence. There is not a country in Europe or Western

Asia that at one time or another has not decided to lash out against the

children of Moses, sometimes by whim, sometimes by manipulation.

 

Winston Churchill calls Edward I one of England's very greatest kings. It

was under his rule in the late 1200's that Wales and Cornwall were hammered

into the British crown, and Scotland and Ireland were invaded and occupied.

He was also the first European monarch to set up a really effective

administrative bureaucracy, surveyed and censused his kingdom, established

laws and political divisions. But he also embraced the Jews.

 

Actually Edward didn't embrace Jews so much as he embraced their money. For

the English Jews had acquired wealth -- understandable, because this people

that could not own land or office, could not join most of the trades and

professions, soon found out that money was a very good thing to accumulate.

Much harder to take away than land or a store, was a hidden sock of gold and

silver coins. Ever resourceful, Edward found a way -- he borrowed money from

the Jews to finance imperial ambitions in Europe, especially France. The

loans were almost certainly not made gladly, but how do you refuse your

King? Especially when he is 'Edward the Hammer'. Then, rather than pay back

the debt, Edward simply expelled the Jews. Edward was especially

inventive -- he did this twice. After a time, he invited the Jews back to

their English homeland, borrowed more money, then expelled them again.

 

Most people do not know that Spain was one of the early entrants into The

Renaissance. People from all over the world came to Spain in the late

medieval period. All were welcome -- Arabs, Jews, other Europeans. The

University of Salamanca was one of the great centers of learning in the

world -- scholars of all nations, all fields came to Salamanca to share

their knowledge and their ideas. But in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, having

driven the last of Moors from the Spanish Shield, were persuaded by the

righteous fundamentalists of the time to announce "The Act of Purification".

A series of steps were taken in which all Jews and Arabs and other

non-Christians were expelled from the country, or would face the tools and

the torches of The Inquisition. From this 'cleansing' come the Sephardic

Jews -- as opposed to the Ashkenazis of Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe,

the sporadic violence and brutality against Jews are common knowledge.

'Fiddler' without the music and the folksy humor. At times of fury, no

accommodation by the Jew was good enough, no profile low enough, no village

poor enough or distant enough.

 

From these come the near-steady flow of Jews to the United States. And

despite the disdain of the Jews by most 'American' Americans, they came to

grab the American Dream with both hands, and contributed everything from new

ideas of enterprise in retail and entertainment to becoming some of our

finest physicians and lawyers. The modern United States, in spite of itself,

IS The United States in part because of its Jewish blood.

 

Then the Nazi Holocaust -- the corralling, sorting, orderly eradication of

millions of the people of Moses. Not something that other realms in other

times didn't try to do, by the way, the Germans were just more organized and

had better murder technology.

 

I stood in the center of Dachau for an entire day, about 15 years ago,

trying to comprehend how this could have happened. I had gone there on a

side trip from Munich, vaguely curious about this Dachau. I soon became

engulfed in the enormity of what had occurred there nestled in this middle

and working class neighborhood.

 

How could human beings do this to other human beings, hear their cries,

their pleas, their terror, their pain, and continue without apparently even

wincing? I no longer wonder. At some times, some places, ANY sect of the

human race is capable of horrors against their fellow man, whether a member

of the Waffen SS, a Serbian sniper, a Turkish policeman in 1920's Armenia, a

Mississippi Klansman. Because even in the United States not all was a Rose

Garden. For a long time Jews had quotas in our universities and graduate

schools. Only so many Jews could be in a medical or law school at one time.

Jews were disparaged widely. I remember as a kid Jewish jokes told without a wince - "Why do Jews have such big noses?"

 

Well, now the Jews have a homeland again. A place that is theirs. And that's

the point. It doesn't matter how many times the United States and European

powers try to rein in Israel, if it comes down to survival of its nation,

its people, they will fight like no lioness has ever fought to save her

cubs. They will fight with a ferocity, a determination, and a skill, that

will astound us.

 

And many will die, mostly their attackers, I believe. If there were a

macabre historical betting parlor, my money would be on the Israelis to be

standing at the end. As we killed the kamikazes and the Wehrmacht soldaten

of World War II, so will the Israelis kill their suicidal attackers, until

there are not enough to torment them.

 

The irony goes unnoticed -- while we are hammering away to punish those who

brought the horrors of last September here, we restrain the Israelis from

the same retaliation. Not the same thing, of course -- We are We, They are

They. While we mourn and seethe at September 11th, we don't notice that

Israel has a September 11th sometimes every day.

 

We may not notice, but it doesn't make any difference. And it doesn't make

any difference whether you are pro-Israeli or you think Israel is the bully

of the Middle East. If it comes to where a new holocaust looms -- with or

without the concurrence of the United States and Europe -- Israel will lash

out without pause or restraint at those who would try to annihilate their

country.

 

The Jews will not go quietly again.

 

Joe McCain

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