European Union shamefully denies Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria

[Published 5 June 2020]

The frenzied rush by the European Union (EU) to condemn Israel’s restoration of Jewish sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) reflects poorly on an organization which has adopted an exceptionally confrontational approach to the Jewish State.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has led the charge:

“We strongly urge Israel to refrain from any unilateral decision that would lead to the annexation of any occupied Palestinian territory and would be, as such, contrary to International Law”

So many false statements appearing in such a short sentence by this high-ranking EU official is breathtaking:

1. Israel’s action is not unilateral

Such action is being taken in tandem with President Trump following the outright refusal by the PLO to enter into negotiations with Israel on the basis of Trump’s detailed plan released on January 28, 2020.

70% of Judea and Samaria awaits the PLO - or any other Arab interlocutor such as Jordan—prepared to step up and negotiate on its future sovereignty.

2. Israel will not be annexing occupied Palestinian territory contrary to international law

“Annexing occupied Palestinian territory” means taking territory belonging to someone else to which Israel has no entitlement.

“Contrary to international law”: Israel will be applying sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria pursuant to vested legal rights to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in this specific area conferred on the Jewish people by:

• The San Remo Resolution and the Treaty of Sevres 1920
• The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine 1922
• Article 80 United Nations Charter 1945

The EU’s attempt to trash these existing Jewish legal rights in Judea and Samaria is extremely disturbing - since 20 of the 27 current member States of the EU – plus former member the United Kingdom - were among the 51 member States of the League of Nations that had unanimously included Judea and Samaria as part of the area in which the Jews were entitled to reconstitute their biblical Jewish homeland after 3000 years.

Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine - approved on July 24, 1922 - had provided for the provisions of the Mandate relating to the establishment of the Jewish National Home to be postponed or withheld “In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined”.

Judea and Samaria (West Bank) - was clearly being reserved for the Jewish National Home.

Minutes of the Council of the League of Nations held on September 16,1922 (below) confirmed this decision.

78% of the territory of Palestine originally proposed for reconstitution of the Jewish National Home east of the Jordan River in 1920 had thus been denied to the Jewish people by 1922—but Judea and Samaria clearly was not excluded.

Those 20 EU member States who actually voted in favour of creating these Jewish rights in 1922 were:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden

These reasons help explain the EU’s strenuous opposition to Israel’s sovereignty move:

“first, [Israel] is proudly nationalist;
second – thanks to the ideological cover provided by the KGB’s propaganda offensive of the 1960s and 70s—[Israel] can be falsely portrayed as colonialist and racist, thus providing the Europeans a way to assuage their guilt for their own colonialist and racist past;
third, [Israel’s] local enemies are Muslims, providing a way for Europe to pay jizya to its own uneasy Muslim minorities; and finally, [Israel’s] a Jewish state—and here no further explanation is necessary.” 

 Europe’s antipathy to Jews is becoming fashionable once again. 

The EU has acted shamefully.

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. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog.

Trump consigning Russia-PLO collusion to dustbin of history

[Published 1 May 2019]

President Trump’s inexorable march towards releasing his “deal of the century” has seen his decisions on Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the PLO undermining 55 years of Russia-PLO collusion aimed at eliminating the State of Israel and establishing Russian supremacy in the Middle East.

Russia-PLO collusion has caused the deaths of millions of Jews and Arabs, leaving millions more with permanent and debilitating injuries deeply impacting their lives and the lives of their families.

Front-line states seeking Israel’s elimination - Lebanon, Egypt, Syria Jordan, Libya and Iraq - have seen their societies and public assets adversely affected by war and civil insurrection.

Claire Berlinski has detailed how Russia-PLO collusion began:

“Following the defeat of the Egyptians in the Six Day War, the Soviets came to a second realization: A conventional military confrontation with Israel, and by extension the West, carried too great a risk of escalating into nuclear war. A change of tactics was required. Gen. Alexander Sakharovsky, then head of the KGB’s intelligence arm, explained this to his East European colleagues: “[T]errorism should become our main weapon.” Sakharovsky boasted that airplane hijackings were his own invention; he decorated his office with a world map, covered in flags, each marking a successful hijacking. Though the PLO managed to unite various terrorist organizations, “the supreme headquarters of the whole network was, of course, the Kremlin,” Stroilov writes, and “the evidence accumulated at this point leaves no doubt that the whole system was invented by Moscow as a weapon against the West, and the PLO was a jewel in their crown.”

The PLO – born in 1964 – expressly disavowed any separate claims to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In 1968 the PLO reversed its position – claiming statehood in these very same areas that had been unified with TransJordan in 1950 and renamed Jordan - remaining part of Jordan until their loss to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

Jordan and Israel were identified by the PLO in 1964 as one indivisible territorial unit to be liberated by the PLO. The PLO unsuccessfully tried to takeover Jordan in September 1970.

Terrorist attacks by the PLO against Israel included:

1. November 1969 - armed attack on the El Al office in Athens, leaving 1 dead and 14 wounded;

2. May 1972 - Ben Gurion Airport attack, leaving 22 dead and 76 wounded;

3. December 1974 - Tel Aviv movie theatre bomb, leaving 2 dead and 66 wounded;

4. March 1975 - Tel Aviv hotel attack leaving 25 dead and 6 wounded;

5. May 1975 - Jerusalem bomb, leaving 1 dead and 3 wounded;

6. July 1975 - bomb in Zion Square, Jerusalem, leaving 15 dead and 62 wounded;

Berlinski explains:

“The code-name for this operation against Israel, according to Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the Soviet Bloc, was “SIG” — Sionistskiye Gosudarstva, or “Zionist Governments.” In a National Review article, Pacepa recalls a conversation he had with KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, who envisioned fomenting “a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world. … We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were ‘fascist, imperial-Zionist countries’ bankrolled by rich Jews.”

The Jew-hating PLO has forced itself undemocratically on the Palestinian Arabs for five decades except for one vote in 2006 – which the PLO refused to accept.

International support and recognition afforded the PLO by the United Nations and UNESCO has exacerbated the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict – not help resolve it.

President Trump will be doing the cause of world peace a great service if his peace proposals finally consign this demonic Russia-PLO cabal to the dustbin 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. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog

Palestine - Time To Tell The Truth

[Published 15 December 2011]


Republican front runner for next President of the United States - Newt Gingrich - has done himself and his campaign great credit in branding the Palestinians as an invented nation.

Gingrich stirred up a real hornets’ nest when he said in an interview with the Jewish Television Network:

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire. I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic"

Gingrich has subsequently refused to back down and has now gone even further in stating:

"The fact is, the Palestinian claim to a right of return is based on a historically false story. Somebody oughta have the courage to go all the way back to the 1921 League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland, point out the context in which Israel came into existence, and “Palestinian” did not become a common term until after 1977. This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage. And we refuse to tell the truth when the other side lies. And you’re not gonna win the long run if you’re afraid to stand firm and stand for the truth."

This propaganda war has been successfully waged by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since its creation by the KGB in 1964.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service in an interview with Front Page Magazine on 1 March 2004 spilt the beans on the PLO and its connection to the Soviet regime when he said:

"The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Then there was the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created by the KGB in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro, which was soon deeply involved in kidnappings, hijackings, bombings and guerrilla warfare. In later years the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks on the “Palestinian territories” occupied by Israel, and the “Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia,” created by the KGB in 1975, which organized numerous bombing attacks against US airline offices in Western Europe.

In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow."

The language used in the 1964 version of the PLO Charter was slick - designed to establish that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians”. Who could possibly disagree with that motherhood statement - especially if it was repeated ad nauseum?

The problem was that the Charter’s definition of “Palestinians” included only the Arab residents of former Palestine and a limited number of Jews.

"Article 6. The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian parent after this date whether in Palestine or outside is a Palestinian.

Article 7. Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine."

It didn’t take long for this gratuitous acceptance of some Jews to virtually vanish when the 1968 edition of the Charter declared:

"The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians."

Non-Arab Christians and non-believer residents of former Palestine were totally rejected as being Palestinians. Their descendants as well as the descendants of any of the Jews who had lived in Palestine since the beginning of the Zionist invasion were persona non grata in their homeland of their birth.

If that seems like racism,smells like racism and is still contained in the PLO Charter today - then it is racism.

Article 24 in the 1964 version of the Charter also excluded any claim by the Palestinians to the West Bank and Gaza - and by inference to Jordan - which together had comprised about 80% of former Palestine

"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."

This article was subsequently deleted from the Charter following Jordan’s loss of the West Bank and Egypt’s loss of Gaza in the Six Day War in 1967.

The significance of that deletion - and indeed the invention of the Palestinians in 1964 - was underscored when the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Zuhair Mohsen told the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.

“For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”

Total rejection of international law by the Palestinians was also part and parcel of this invented nation - since the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1946 had already recognized the legitimate right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine whilst the United Nations had admitted Israel as a member on 11 May 1949.

Article 17 of the 1964 Charter expressed this view in the following manner:

"The Partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are illegal and false regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the wish of the Palestine people and its natural right to its homeland, and in violation of the basic principles embodied in the charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination."

By 1968 Article 17 had been excised and replaced by Article 20 which declared:

"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

Gingrich’s statements are indeed the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The PLO has seen its propaganda campaign succeed to a stage where “Palestine” has been admitted as a member “state” of UNESCO in apparent contravention of the UNESCO Constitution, the Montevideo Convention and customary international law..

The PLO’s stated intention of liberating and replacing both Israel and Jordan in the United Nations as its 192nd member still remains unrevoked in the PLO Charter.

Seventeen years of fruitless PLO negotiations with Israel have now been virtually abandoned - with the two-state solution envisaged by the Oslo Accords and advocated by President Bush in his Roadmap now in its death throes.

Gingrich’s message to the PLO is clear - return to the negotiating table and hammer out a deal with Israel or face the consequences if this has not happened and Gingrich becomes America’s next President.

The PLO cannot say it was not warned.