UN discrimination against Jews traps Unilever and J Street

 

The United Nations (UN) false designation of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem as the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” (OPT) has seen the sorry spectacle this week of:

• A multinational corporation — Unilever PIC (Unilever) — discriminating against the sale of ice cream to Jews who live in those areas by its wholly owned subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s and
• A Jewish organisation — J Street — defending Unilever’s decision.

The term “Occupied Palestinian Territories” ignores the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that saw every Jew living in those territories prior to 1948 being:

• driven out and expelled from their homes and businesses by the invading army of Transjordan and
• prevented from returning to resume life there until the conclusion of the Six Day War in 1967.

Moreover this loaded anti-Jewish term papers over the destruction, damage and vandalizing of Jewish synagogues, cemeteries and properties during the 19 years those areas remained Judenrein.

Had the UN any intellectual honesty in presenting a fair and balanced account of what happened between 1948 and 1967 — it would be calling these territories the “Re-occupied Disputed Territories”. Its continuing failure to do so indicates the disturbing anti-Jewish bias that permeates the United Nations and its agencies.

Ben & Jerry’s’ press release headlined “Occupied Palestinian Territory” (below) has clearly influenced Unilever’s decision to justify its policy of discriminating against Jews living there — whilst being more than happy to continue selling its ice cream to those Jew-haters who:

• Forcibly evicted and expelled all the Jews living there between 1948 and 1967
• Murder and maim Jews living there now on an ongoing basis and are financially rewarded for doing so.

Strange values indeed for a multinational organisation to embrace — values that are leading Unilever into growing commercial challenges internationally by those decent enough to not share Unilever’s perverse values.

Even more disturbing and reprehensible is this J Street defence of Unilever’s anti-Jewish discrimination policy:

J Street gets it very wrong in relying on false and misleading decades-old UN propaganda when making the following claims:

• The battleground is not the “Israeli-Palestinian debate” — it is the “Jewish-Arab conflict” - begun 100 years ago with the 1920 San Remo Conference and Treaty of Sevres and still unresolved - when there were no “Israelis” or “Palestinians” — only “Arabs” and “Jews”.
• The “Palestinian people” was not defined until 1964 — a racist and apartheid Arabs-only definition that excludes all non-Arabs and Jews who lived in Palestine after 1917.
• The “rights and freedom of the Palestinian People” specifically excluded any claim by its sole spokesman — the Palestine Liberation Organisation - to sovereignty in “the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” - or the right to establish a separate State there — in addition to Jordan — which occupies 78% of former Palestine.
• “Illegal settlements” are “legal” under article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter.

Words do count.

J Street’s readiness to defend Unilever’s decision is appalling. No self-respecting Jewish organisation espousing “our Jewish values” should ever defend decisions discriminating against Jews.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN — Yehuda Blum – confronted the UN General Assembly and trashed its treatment of the Jewish-Arab conflict on November 16, 1978:

“The history of international conflicts, and particularly those with complex historical origins, can only be properly written by objective historians who enjoy complete academic freedom. The practice of writing and rewriting history according to the transient interests of a political body is of course characteristic of certain regimes. It is regrettable that the United Nations has now been drawn into that pattern.”

Unilever and J Street have seemingly swallowed the UN’s pernicious rewriting of history to justify discrimination against Jews because of where they live.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Lapid-Bennett consensus buries Biden's renewed two-state solution bid

 

The likelihood of President Biden being the American President finally overseeing an end to the 100 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews — promisingly advanced by President Trump’s Abraham Accords — was dashed this week when Israel’s Foreign Minister — and its next Prime Minister in 26 months’ time —Yair Lapid — told the EU Foreign Affairs Council:

“A future Palestinian state must be a democracy that seeks peace with Israel”

Israel's current Prime Minister - Naftali Bennett - shares Lapid's opinion:

“Self-determination also depends on democracy so that the people are able to determine what they want. Almost none of neighbours enjoy democracy and if they did they would cease to be.”

Bennett and Lapid’s consensus democracy-demand is also supported by two former American Presidents:

• President Bush on April 30, 2003:

“A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty, and through Israel’s readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established”

• President Trump in his 2020 Peace Plan:

“The following criteria are a predicate to the formation of a Palestinian State and must be determined to have occurred by the State of Israel and the United States, jointly, acting in good faith, after consultation with the Palestinian Authority:

The Palestinians shall have implemented a governing system with a constitution or another system for establishing the rule of law that provides for freedom of the press, free and fair elections, respect for human rights for its citizens, protection for religious freedom and for religious minorities to observe their faith, uniform and fair enforcement of law and contractual rights, due process under law, and an independent judiciary with appropriate legal consequences and punishment established for violations of the law.

The Palestinians shall have ended all programs, including curricula and textbooks, that serve to incite or promote hatred or antagonism against its neighbours, or which compensate or incentivize criminal or violent activity.

The Obama-Biden administration — between 2009 and 2017 — failed to achieve any two-state solution— the creation of a new Arab state between Jordan and Israel for the first time in recorded history —betraying Israel in the process on December 23, 2016 by failing to veto United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 as the Obama-Biden administration was vacating the White House.

That UN decision — inimical to Israel’s interest — was described by Lapid as:

“dangerous and unfair, and Israel will not accept it”

Biden’s latest support for a two-state solution expressed in his telephone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah on April 7, 2021 — seems even further from being realised given Lapid’s four additional conditions for its creation — backed up by Bennett:

• “Israeli security should stay in Israeli hands” — enabling the army to enter Palestinian territory if they are aware of terrorists planning an attack on Israelis.
• The Jordan Valley remain in Israeli hands
• “There is no such thing as the right of return”—referring to the Palestinian demand to return to pre-1948 lands.
• Jerusalem remain undivided “because countries do not divide their own capitals.”

Bennet opposes any two-state solution – even one that is democratically-based:

“My option is that Palestinians have an ‘autonomy on steroids,’ and I’m open to ideas about how this materialises; it could be a confederation with Jordan, or local municipalities, or a central government.”

Biden’s renewed pursuit of the two-state solution — without stipulating there be a democratic outcome— is destined to end up in the garbage bin of history.


Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Abdullah-Biden meeting will not help resolve Jewish-Arab conflict

 

The meeting between Jordan’s King Abdullah and President Biden at the White House on 19 July seems set to achieve absolutely nothing towards resolving the 100 years-old conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Biden’s Press Secretary — Jen Psaki – has claimed:

“It will be an opportunity to discuss the many challenges facing the Middle East and showcase Jordan’s leadership role in promoting peace and stability in the region.”

The King has shown no leadership in resolving the conflict between Jews and Arabs over sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) [“Disputed Territory”] and Gaza – comprising the remaining 5% of the territory of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine where sovereignty still remains unallocated (“Unallocated Territories”).

Sovereignty in the remaining 95% of the Mandate territory was divided between:

• Jordan—78% – upon the establishment of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946
• Israel—17% – upon its establishment in 1948.

Concerted attempts over the last 25 years to create an additional Arab State in the Unallocated Territories for the first time in recorded history (“two-state solution”) have all failed. Abdullah has been a principal protagonist for this solution.

Jordan’s failure to take a leadership role in agreeing to an alternative solution — division of the Unallocated Territories between Jordan and Israel within the framework of their existing 1994 Peace Treaty – has gone begging during Abdullah’s 22 year reign.

The following historic, geographic and demographic realities bind Jordan with the Disputed Territory:

• Transjordan in 1948 conquered and occupied the Disputed Territory until 1967 – renaming the newly-merged territorial entity “Jordan” in 1950.
• The Arab residents of the Disputed Territory were Jordanian citizens between 1950 and 1988 and elected their own representatives to the Jordanian Parliament in Amman.
• Statements made by Arab leaders over decades have attested to the territorial and population ties between Jordan and the Disputed Territory

“Jordan and Palestine until 1945 were one state, actually. After the Second World War Churchill himself said ‘This is Transjordan and this is Palestine’. Before that, Jordan was an emirate, completely part of Palestine.” – Yasser Arafat New York Review of Books 25 June 1987

“Jordanians and Palestinians are indeed one people. No one can divide us. We have the same fate.”—Yasser Arafat Der Spiegel 1986

“The Jordanians and Palestinians are now one people, and no political loyalty, however strong, will separate them permanently… Small as Jordan is, our country is politically, socially, economically, militarily and historically inseparable from the Palestinian issue” - Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan Foreign Affairs Spring 1982

“Palestine and Jordan were both under British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Trans-Jordan, being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine” – King Hussein of Jordan Uneasy Lies the Head, New York 1962 p. 118

“This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area” – Article 24 Palestine Liberation Organisation Charter 1964

Jewish settlement — prohibited under article 25 of the 1922 Mandate document in what is today’s Jordan – was encouraged under article 6 in the Disputed Territory on State land and waste land not required for public purposes. That right is preserved until today under Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Jordan’s return to such part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as is agreed with Israel in direct negotiations remains the key to ending the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Jordan — part of the problem — must be part of the solution.

Abdullah will continue to hide behind the two-state solution in his meeting with Biden.

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.

Israel signals end to EU-funded unauthorised building in West Bank

 

Israel’s decision to evict all 53 Jewish families from the unauthorised settlement of Evyatar in the West Bank this week should send a clear signal to the European Union (EU) that its days of financing and facilitating the building of unauthorised Arab structures in Area C of the West Bank are over.

Area C comprises about 60% of the West Bank and has been under Israel’s full security and administrative control since the 1995 Oslo Accords were signed.

The following Table shows the annual number of targeted structures funded by the EU and EU member states up to July-December 2019 including information about incurred financial losses:

According to the Daily Mail: (See Chart Below)

• Locally, the villages are known as the ‘EU Settlements’, and can be found in 17 locations around the West Bank.

• They fly the EU flag and display hundreds of EU stickers and signs. Some also bear the logos of Oxfam and other NGOs, which have assisted in the projects.”

Relief Web reported in February:

• So far in 2021, the targeting of EU funded aid structures tripled compared with the monthly average in 2020
• 47 EU-funded structures were targeted in February.

Professor Hillel Frisch in 2019 summarised what the EU has been up to:

“Ever since a decision in January 2012, the EU has been expressly committed to the expansion of illegal Palestinian settlement in Area C in conjunction with the PA [ed: Palestinian Authority]. This is in blatant disregard of the Oslo accords, which the EU purports to uphold. The object is to create continuous Palestinian settlement throughout the West Bank and thereby isolate and strangle Israeli communities.”

Professor Frisch detailed the genesis of the EU’s unlawful involvement in the West Bank:

“In July 2011, a report entitled “Area C and Palestinian State Building” was produced by the EU. It was then brought to the European Parliament in December and approved by the European Commission in early January 2012…

In April 2012, the PA’s Ministry of Local Government (MoLG) published a strategic action plan entitled “Planning Support for Palestinian Communities in Area C.” The EU announced its support for this plan in an official document published in 2012 called “Land Development and Access to Basic Infrastructure in Area C.”

By 2016, the European Community had spent a total of 10.5 million euros to draw up and implement zoning plans for 90 Palestinian settlements and support land development projects in Area C in conjunction with the MoLG.”

Buildings — mainly modular in form — were transported to various areas during the night and erected by the next morning.

An apparently unauthorised Palestinian school located near Adam Junction in Area C - funded by the EU and flying the EU flag - is pictured below:

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s declaration in January 2020 — made before he was elected Israel’s Prime Minister — should now set off alarm bells in the EU:

“Our objective is that within a short amount of time, and we will work for it, we will apply [Israeli] sovereignty to all of Area C, not just the settlements, not just this bloc or another… We are embarking on a real and immediate battle for the future of the land of Israel and the future of Area C”

The EU then responded:

“Demolitions and seizures of humanitarian assets are contrary to Israel’s obligations under international law”.

Representing these EU-funded structures as “humanitarian assets” was deceptive and misleading. They are ”political structures aimed at stopping Israeli sovereignty being applied in Area C “.

EU intervention and meddling in Area C of the West Bank over the last ten years will seemingly no longer be tolerated by Israel’s new Government.


Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively for this article — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.