Trump must honour Bush-Congress deal with Israel

[Published 18 May 2017]

President Trump’s historic visit to Israel on 22 May presents the perfect opportunity for him to deliver on the promises he made to Israel during last year’s Presidential election campaign.

Trump’s broad-ranging foreign policy speech on 27 April 2016 highlighted the disgraceful way Israel had been treated by the Obama Administration:

“Israel, our great friend and the one true democracy in the Middle East has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity.

President Obama has not been a friend to Israel.”

Trump’s claim was certainly justified.

Obama — aided and abetted by his two Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry — had deliberately undermined the written commitments made to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by President Bush on 14 April 2004 and subsequently endorsed overwhelmingly by the Congress by 502 votes to 12 (“Bush/Congress Commitments”).

Trump promised:

“To our friends and allies, I say America is going to be strong again. America is going to be reliable again. It’s going to be a great and reliable ally again. It’s going to be a friend again. We’re going to finally have a coherent foreign policy based upon American interests and the shared interests of our allies.”

The shared interests of Israel and America became inextricably entwined after the Bush/Congress Commitments had:

1. secured Israel’s total disengagement from Gaza and a part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) in 2005

2. promised President Bush’s stalled 2003 Roadmap proposing the two-state solution a real chance of coming to fruition.

The Bush/Congress Commitments were also crucial to Israel’s agreement to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority as publicly declared by Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the international conference called by President Bush in Annapolis in 2007:

“In the course of the negotiations, we will use previous agreements as a point of departure. U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map, and the letter of President Bush to the prime minister of Israel dated April 14, 2004.”

Obama’s treachery in derogating from the Bush/Congress Commitments was compounded when he refused to veto Security Council Resolution 2334 passed during the dying days of Obama’s Presidency on 23 December 2016.

Trump needs to repeat this part of his 2016 message loudly and clearly in Israel:

”... your friends need to know that you will stick by the agreements that you have with them. You’ve made that agreement, you have to stand by it and the world will be a better place. “

Sticking by the Bush/Congress commitments will sound a clear warning to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Arab League that PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas will become irrelevant if he continues to:

1. press for a complete withdrawal by Israel from Judea and Samaria (West Bank)

2. refuse to accept Israel as the nation State of the Jewish people

3. maintain a claimed right of return to Israel for millions of refugees and their descendants contradicting the unequivocal terms of the Bush/Congress Commitments.

Trump - as only he can — has put Abbas on notice this could well happen:

“We have to look to new people because many of the old people frankly don’t know what they’re doing, even though they may look awfully good writing in The New York Times or being watched on television.”

Bipartisan Congressional support will welcome Trump honouring the Bush/Congress Commitments - confirming Trump’s bold vision:

“We need a new rational American foreign policy, informed by the best minds and supported by both parties, and it will be by both parties—Democrats, Republicans, independents, everybody, as well as by our close allies.”

Integrity always trumps betrayal.

United Nations web of deceit snares International Court of Justice

[Published 10 May 2017]


The United Nations publication “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” (“Study”) has falsely misrepresented that the Mandate for Palestine was a class A Mandate — deceiving the International Court of Justice and many other reputable sources.

The Study has been published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The Study falsely asserts without substantiation:

“All the mandates over Arab countries, including Palestine, were treated as class ‘A’ Mandates, applicable to territories whose independence had been provisionally recognized in the Covenant of the League of Nations”.

The Study then erroneously concludes:

“Only in the case of Palestine did the Mandate, with its inherent contradictions, lead not to the independence provisionally recognized in the Covenant, but towards conflict that was to continue six decades later.”

However the 1937 Peel Commission Report comprehensively debunks the Study’s concocted claims:

“The Mandate [for Palestine] is of a different type from the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon and the draft Mandate for Iraq. These latter, which were called for convenience “A” Mandates, accorded with the fourth paragraph of Article 22. Thus the Syrian Mandate provided that the government should be based on an organic law which should take into account the rights, interests and wishes of all the inhabitants, and that measures should be enacted ‘to facilitate the progressive development of Syria and the Lebanon as independent States.’ The corresponding sentences of the draft Mandate for Iraq were the same. In compliance with them National Legislatures were established in due course on an elective basis. Article 1 of the Palestine Mandate, on the other hand, vests ‘full powers of legislation and of administration,’ within the limits of the Mandate, in the Mandatory.”

The Study for reasons unknown completely ignores this detailed Peel Commission rebuttal.

The Study’s unchallenged statements - seemingly authentic bearing United Nations imprimatur — appear on many websites including:

1. The Rights Forum — which claims to strive for a rights-based policy of the Netherlands and the European Union with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On 10 December 2009, the International Day of Human Rights, The Rights Forum was launched by its Chairman former Dutch Prime Minister Andreas van Agt - assisted by an Advisory Council of former Ministers and Professors in International Law.

2. The Global Education Project — which states it adheres to rigorous standards and strives for an impartial and comprehensive presentation of the most relevant information necessary for both accurate and adequate education.

3. ProCon.org — which asserts it is America’s leading source for non-partisan information and civic education - serving more than 25 million people each year including teachers and students in more than 9000 schools in all 50 states and 90 foreign countries. It claims that 34 US state governments,17 US state Departments of Education, 23 foreign governments and 22 US federal agencies have cited ProCon.org materials.

4. A large number of anti-Israel sites and books have also embraced these Study’s false claims.

However the biggest fish snared in the Study’s web of deceit is the United Nations own primary judicial branch — the International Court of Justice — which In paragraph 70 of its Advisory Opinion of July 9, 2004 stated:

“Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the First World War, a class ‘A’ Mandate for Palestine was entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations, pursuant to paragraph 4 of Article 22 of the Covenant. ...”

The Study’s fabricated narrative has certainly reaped — and continues to reap - huge dishonest dividends.

United Nations Fabricated Arab Narrative Deceives Academics

[Published 3 May 2017]

The United Nations publication “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem 1917-1988” (“Study”) has deliberately misrepresented the actual wording of General Assembly Resolution 181 passed on 29 November 1947 - deceiving many academics who have disseminated the Study’s false message.

The Study has been published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

The offending statement in the Study misleadingly declares:

“After investigating various alternatives the United Nations proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized.”

The actual wording of Resolution 181 stated:

“Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence in Palestine…."

The Study omits to mention that 78% of Palestine had already become an independent Arab State in 1946 and been renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan

The Study’s claim that Resolution 181 called for an "independent Palestinian Arab State” was not accidental but deliberately done to deceive and mislead.

Resolution 181 had denied the existence of any distinctly identifiable Palestinian people in 1947.

The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine had also only spoken of the “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” in 1922.

“Palestinians” were first defined in the 1964 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Charter to mean Arab citizens normally resident in Palestine in 1947 and their descendants. Jewish and non-Arab Christian residents were excluded under this racist and apartheid definition.

The PLO also claimed that Palestine was the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people - even though Resolution 181 clearly did not.

That the Study deliberately changed the actual wording of Resolution 181 to advance these fictitious PLO claims — or perhaps others unknown - for spurious reasons - is scandalous.

This false rendition of Resolution 181 has been repeated verbatim in many books including:

1. Handbook of Ethnic Conflict: International Perspectives - Dan Landis and Rosita D Albert

2. Youth Citizenship and the Politics of Belonging - Madeleine Arnot and Sharlene Swartz

3. Bridges Over Troubled Waters - Dahlia Moore and Salem Aweiss

Richard Cummings PhD propagated this false statement during a lecture to the Arab Society of Princeton University on 21 February 2002.

This falsehood again appears in “Shaping Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis: The Role of International Law and the State Department Legal Adviser written by Michael Scharf and Paul Williams.

Their book grew out of a series of meetings with all ten of the living former U.S. State Department legal advisers from the Carter administration to that of George W. Bush.

Both authors are law professors and formerly served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the US Department of State.

That two such eminent lawyers apparently accepted this official United Nations document as being unerringly accurate speaks volumes for those who have been similarly deceived because they didn’t take the time to verify what they were disseminating.

Many other academics have swallowed this duplicitous Study hook line and sinker to form hostile anti-Israel views - especially regarding Israel’s claims in Judea and Samaria - geographical place names actually used in Resolution 181 and for 3000 years continuously until the Arabs renamed those areas the “West Bank” in 1950.

The Roman Empire used the same ploy in 135 AD — changing the name of its conquered province from “Syria Judaea” to “Syria Palestina”.

Change the name - change the game.

Correcting this fabricated United Nations Arab narrative is urgently required.

Israel Ensures European Union Swallows Poison Pill

[Published 30 November 2015]


The European Union’s (EU) discriminatory and racist labelling requirements for Jewish goods and products originating from Judea and Samaria has now seen Israel effectively label the EU as “persona non grata” in the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap.

The EU finds itself in this sorry position following Israel’s decision to reassess the involvement of EU bodies in that diplomatic process and to suspend contacts with the EU and its representatives until that reassessment is completed.

The labelling requirements reflect the EU’s political position that settlement by Jews in Judea and Samaria is illegal in international law. This claim has never been the subject of any binding authoritative legal decision.

The International Court of Justice decision on 9 July 2004 was only an advisory opinion sought by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and not a legally binding precedent.

That opinion was itself deficient since the Court was never asked by the Secretary-General to consider the legal effect of two territory-specific pieces of international law applicable to Judea and Samaria. Those provisions - article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter - vested and preserved the legal right to “close settlement by Jews” in Judea and Samaria for the purposes of reconstituting the Jewish National Home.

At best the EU’s longstanding position - that influenced its labelling laws - is only an opinion — and nothing more.

The EU should think very carefully before imposing any retaliatory trade action against Israel for freezing the EU out of the peace process — since Israel still has some more bitter medicine for the EU to swallow:

1. Forbidding the transfer of EU funds to non-government organisations in Israel engaged in activities designed to advance the interests of the Israeli Arab population and to interfere in the internal affairs of a member State of the United Nations.

2. Ending all co-operation with the EU in Area C in Judea and Samaria by terminating existing development and infrastructure programs for the benefit of the Arab population and forbidding any such EU activities there in the future.

The EU’s labelling laws contravene the joint statement issued by the Quartet — America, Russia, The European Union and the United Nations - on 10 April 2002:

“We reiterate that there is no military solution to the conflict and call on the parties to move towards a political resolution of their disputes based on UNSCR 242 and 338, and the principle of land for peace‚ which formed the basis for the Madrid Conference of 1991. We reaffirm our support for the objective expressed by President Bush and spelled out in UNSCR 1397, of two States, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side within secure and recognized borders.”

Attempting to influence any political resolution regarding secure and recognized boundaries - using its labelling requirements to pressure Israeli territorial concessions - could spell the death knell for President Bush’s Roadmap and its “two-state solution"

The EU is free to pursue any policy it wants — but also must take full responsibility for the consequences of its reprehensible labelling laws and Israel’s rapid response.

Should the EU now gracefully bow out of the Quartet due to its clearly revealed conflict of interest and one-sided bias — or does it have to be told to go packing by the other members of the Quartet if their impartiality in the peace process is to be maintained?

The EU cannot remain a member of the Quartet whilst implementing labelling requirements that favour Arab claims over Jewish claims.

The EU now faces swallowing a poison pill of its own making.

United Nations must trash false information on Arab-Jewish conflict

[Published 27 April 2017]


The United Nations Study titled “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1988” (“Study”) has coughed up yet another piece of false information following that exposed in my last article - which indicates increasingly that the United Nations has been complicit in disseminating false information on the Arab-Jewish conflict for almost the last forty years.

The Study was published in June 1978 by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat (DPRUNS) for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIARPP)

I had only reached the third paragraph of the 275 page Study when the following statement caught my attention:

“The decision on the Mandate [for Palestine] did not take into account the wishes of the people of Palestine”

I could scarcely believe this dishonest statement had actually originated in a United Nations official publication – especially as the evidence contradicting this falsehood was sitting in the United Nations own archives.

That evidence comprises:

1. Meetings of the Palestine Arab Delegation (Delegation) with the recently appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies - Winston Churchill - on 12, 22 and 23 August 1921

2. Letters from 21 February 1922 to 23 June 1922 between the Delegation and the Secretary of State for the Colonies during which the Delegation was housed in the Hotel Cecil in London.

The letters disclose that:

1. The Delegation failed to persuade Britain to abandon the Mandate for Palestine providing for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

2. The British Government had adopted a fresh definition of policy to finally allay the Delegation’s apprehensions as to the scope and purport of British policy.

The Study’s failure to disclose this evidence is breathtaking.

DPRUNS and CEIARPP clearly sought to hide this evidence to create the false impression that the Palestinian Arabs had been unfairly treated and never been consulted in contrast to the Zionists who had.

This false statement has been repeated verbatim as gospel on many web sites including:

1. “politics.ie” - which claims to be one of Ireland’s leading politics and current affairs discussion websites with more than 600,000 visitors a month attracting one of the most engaged, respected and influential politics and current affairs communities.

2. “Academia.edu” - which claims to be a platform for academics to share research papers and to accelerate the world’s research with 50,841,190 academics having signed up adding 18,234,570 papers and 2,051,915 research interests – attracting over 36 million unique visitors a month.

3.“iasexamportal.com” – which describes itself as “India’s Largest Online Community for IAS, UPSC, Civil Services Exam Aspirants.”

4.“UK essays” - which claims to use over 4,000 thoroughly vetted experts with the qualifications and experience to write you the best possible essay.

5. Many virulent Jew-hating and anti-Israel websites that I will not dignify by naming.

False statements such as this take on a life of their own and can influence people in forming their views of the Arab-Jewish conflict. That this disgraceful example should have emanated from the United Nations is outrageous.

DPRUNS and CEIARPP were clearly engaged in creating a false Arab narrative from the Study’s very inception - based on fiction – not fact.

Surely after almost 40 years of this intellectual fraud - the UN Secretariat needs to clean up its act, thoroughly review the Study and correct such errors.

The damage has been done, minds and opinions have been poisoned but the United Nations cannot continue to lend its name to this Study in its current form.

United Nations Secretary General - António Guterres - over to you.

United Nations rewrites Balfour Declaration parliamentary debate records

[Published 24 April 2017]


An official United Nations document published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat contains a deliberately altered record of a 1922 parliamentary House of Lords debate on the Balfour Declaration.

The Balfour Declaration — dated 2 November 1917 - called for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people — it being clearly understood that nothing would be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The Balfour Declaration was subsequently written into international law after being incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine on 24 July 1922.

The upcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration has prompted a concerted international campaign calling on the British Government to apologise for another Government’s decision taken 100 years ago.

Baroness Anelay — Minister of State (Foreign Commonwealth Office) - told the House of Lords on 3 April 2017 that no such apology would be forthcoming.

The UN’s rewriting of Parliamentary debate records actually came to light whilst I was researching the source of a quote appearing in four articles by Stuart Littlewood provocatively headlined

“Who will Finally Heal the “Running Sore in the East”?

“Will the Royal Family Celebrate 100 Years of Shame by Endorsing Israel?”

“Despicable Balfour: A story of betrayal”

“Jeremy Corbyn: the antidote to the Blairite “virus” and Zionist snake-bite”

All four articles contained the following quote purportedly made in 1922 by a bitter opponent of the Balfour Declaration — Lord Sydenham:

“The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country… may never be remedied… What we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

My research eventually led to a United Nations Study titled “The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1988” - the Foreword stating:

“This study has been prepared by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat for, and under the guidance of, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in pursuance of General Assembly resolution 32/40 B of 2 December 1977.”

This UN Study claimed Lord Sydenham had said:

”... the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country - Arab all around in the hinterland - may never be remedied ... what we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

However Hansard records Lord Sydenham actually saying on 21 June 1922:

“What we have done is, by concessions, not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, to start a running sore in the East, and no one can tell how far that sore will extend. Zionism will fail, the experiment to which the noble Earl referred will fail, but the harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country — Arab all round in the hinterland — may never be remedied.”

Deliberately rewriting Hansard raises the distinct possibility there may be other similar such instances in this UN Study. A full investigation by the United Nations Secretariat to discover the reason is urgently required.

An immediate retraction, correction and apology must be made by the UN Secretariat.

European Union declares diplomatic war on Israel

[Published 6 April 2017]


Ambassadors to Israel representing 28 European Union States (EU) behaved most undiplomatically in ambushing the recently appointed Director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador to Australia - Yuval Rotem - at a meet and greet function Rotem had organised at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv last week.

Instead of the pleasant banter over drinks and canapes usually associated with such events on the diplomatic cocktail circuit - the function erupted into an explosive EU protest against Israel’s plans to evict Arab squatters from 42 structures that had been illegally erected between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem at the strategically narrowest point in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) known as E1.

Lars Faarburg-Andersen - the EU Ambassador to Israel — took the opportunity to read out to Rotem the following one-page document which had been approved by the EU political-security committee - in which all 28 member states are represented.

This gauche and uncivilised behaviour was certainly uncalled for and not conduct that one would ever expect to come from refined and cultured Europeans.

Reading this carefully-crafted statement at the function was a cavalier action aggravating the already strained relationship between the EU and Israel following the EU’s introduction on 11 November 2015 of labelling requirements for goods produced in Judea and Samaria entering Europe.

The statement revealingly exposes the hypocrisy of the EU for the following reasons:

It was presented as a “demarche” — a diplomatic or official initiative — a protest normally delivered through diplomatic channels — not at a cocktail function.

The statement confirms EU members were involved — without Israel’s approval - in the funding of these particular illegal structures located in Area C of Judea and Samaria — where Israel has sole administrative and security control under the 1993 Oslo Accords.

This is not the first occasion the EU has sought to impose itself in Area C by supporting illegal Arab building activities where it has no legal right to be present or involved.

On 13 December 2016 the EU Representative and the EU Heads of Mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah issued a statement acknowledging that humanitarian structures provided by the EU and EU Member States in 2016 worth approximately EUR 536,000 had been either destroyed or confiscated.

The EU then claimed that its activities were humanitarian and carried out in full accordance with International Humanitarian Law - with the “sole aim” of providing humanitarian support to the most vulnerable population.

Yet this pious claim has exploded in its face with its own admission in the demarche that:

“The EU and EU member States are united in the view that Area C is of critical importance for the viability of a future Palestinian State”

What the EU has really been doing under the guise of humanitarian aid is financing illegal Arab structures designed to create irreversible facts on the ground favouring the claims of the Palestine Liberation Organisation over the national and security interests of Israel. The EU has been outed engaging in such reprehensible actions tainted by illegality outside diplomatic norms.

Israel’s response to this unprecedented ambush and illegal misconduct has been remarkably restrained.

Avivit Bar-Ilan director of the Israel Foreign Ministry’s European Union Department has told EU Deputy Ambassador to Israel Mark Gallagher:

“In Israel, illegal construction is dealt with according to the law.”

Bar-Ilan wryly observed:

“There are 32 humanitarian crises around the world, but the European Union opts to deal disproportionately only with what happens in Area C, which undoubtedly isn’t in a humanitarian crisis,”

The 28 Ambassadors — carrying their demarche between their tails - should be sent packing to Europe for a period of reflection and introspection.