THROWING ISRAEL TO THE JACKALS

Here are the 14 nations of the UN Security Council that agreed to censure Israel for building settlements in the West Bank.  I have provided a thumbnail sketch of the first four to provide context for the “moral outrage” they proclaim.

Egypt, sponsor of the motion  – Was Egypt bowing to pressure from the Saudi financiers of Egypt’s shaky economy?  With far fewer civil liberties and political rights than Israel, was el-Sisi thinking that terror attacks on Egypt would stop if only he paid lip service to the Palestinians?  Much as I’d like to, I won’t be returning to Egypt these days.  I’m guessing they just lost billions in revenue from other travelers, as well.

Malaysia –Has among the strictest limitations on freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association.  Is well known for arresting persons without warrants and detaining them indefinitely without trial.  And this paragon of virtue lectures Israel?

Angola – The constitution limits the president to two 5-year terms.  President de Santos has now been there for 36 years.  His daughter, somehow, is the richest woman in Africa.  Persecution of journalists, political activists, and many religious groups is rampant.  Who better to censure Israel than such an upstanding leader?

Ukraine – Still a kleptocracy, fighting for its life, Ukraine has a low rating for protecting  civil liberties.  What were they thinking?  Perhaps that this would form a precedent to get Russia to return Crimea?  Ukraine needs every friend it can find.  Better a dependable pariah like Israel than fair-weather acquaintances that will dance to Moscow’s or Riyadh’s tune.

Other current temporary members: New Zealand, Spain, Uruguay, Japan, and Senegal – normally more responsible members of the world community, and

Permanent members: Russia, China, France, and the U.K. – and of course the US, which fomented the vote by promising to abstain.

There are two groups represented here: the Club of Tyrants and Dictators exemplified by one-man rule on the one hand, and on the other, those who believe Israel, alone among nations, should be forced to give up territory because there are other people in that territory who object to its presence.

Using this standard, Spain should relinquish control of Catalonia, the UK should grant independence to Scotland, France should cede a homeland to the Basques, China should relinquish its stranglehold on Tibet, and Russia – most recently – must return Crimea to Ukraine.  Can anyone spell “hypocrisy?”

A bit of history: the land in question was historically called the Land of Israel, which encompassed the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  After about the 3^rd century, many Christians also occupied this terrain, followed a few hundred years later by Muslims. 

It wasn’t until after WWI, when Britain was charged with administering this part of the defeated Ottoman Empire’s territory, that the term Palestine was used with quasi-defined borders.  At this time, the international press typically referred to the Jews – not the Arabs -- living in this area as “Palestinians,” recognizing they were the first to live there.

The British found these Palestinians and Zionists (those who believed in leaving parts of the world where Jews were most often persecuted or marginalized and resettling in the “Land of Israel”) most annoying.  Exhausted by other issues in India, in 1947 they abdicated in favor of letting the United Nations deal with the Palestine / Israel issue. 

The U.N. proposed that Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a U.N.-controlled enclave around Jerusalem.  This plan was adopted on November 29, 1947.  The nation that would become Israel agreed to this 2-state solution.

Of the Arab neighbors, only King Abdullah I of Jordan (then called Transjordan) was in favor of the proposal.  He preferred an amiable Jewish state on his western border to a Palestinian Arab state run by former Nazi collaborator Amin al-Husseini.

 

No other Arab state was willing to agree to the 2-state solution.  They wanted it all.  On May 14, 1948, when Israel declared its nationhood, it was immediately attacked by Egypt, Syria, Iraq and, to avoid its Arab neighbors’ enmity, Transjordan.  These were soon joined by the Syrian-sponsored Arab Liberation Army and volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Lebanon.  

After a brutal war in which the Israelis were badly outnumbered, Egypt, defeated in battle, agreed to an armistice and the other aggressor forces evaporated.  Thus were the Israeli borders fixed until 1967 – including Jordanian annexation of the West Bank.

After the 1967 war, Israel closed some of the gaps in its defenses, taking the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Sinai.  Jerusalem is directly on the border of the West Bank and Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial center, is just 11 miles away.  When the Arab nations speak of driving Israel into the sea, this is where they would have liked to begin – and likely would if Israel were to cede the entire West Bank.  Such a geographic surrender would be tantamount to, say, allowing Russian missiles in Cuba.

Offering an olive branch, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, which cost them dearly in the 1973 war.  Israel later also unilaterally withdrew all settlements from Gaza, which is a picture of what would likely occur if it were to withdraw completely from the West Bank: Hamas immediately began sending rockets and terrorists into Israel, vowing to completely obliterate Israel.  

Is there anyone so naive to believe that nations and terrorists who have sworn to kill every Israeli will change just because Israel gives even greater competitive military advantage to them?

In 2000, there was yet another Camp David accord, granting the Arab Palestinians another olive branch: almost all of Gaza and the West Bank.  Which the Palestinian leadership rejected.

The issue of Jewish settlements is not the real obstacle to peace.  If it were, then why is Gaza, with no Jewish settlements, a hotbed of hatred and terrorism?  Even the Egyptians carefully monitor their border with Gaza.  The simple truth is that, for 69 years, Israel’s Arab neighbors, with the exception of Jordan, have refused to accept Israel’s right to exist and done everything they could to destroy it.  

If the U.N. really cared about the peace process, the starting point of any discussion would be that there is no discussion until these neighboring states recant their oath to destroy Israel.

Parenthetically -- if Israel is to be censured by the U.N. for the crime of keeping some of the lands it acquired via warfare, we need to fortify a hell of a lot of glass houses.  In addition to the already mentioned hypocrisies of the 14 U.N. members voting to censure, we in the US might be wary of setting such a precedent as forcing Israel to give up territory gained via warfare, offensive or defensive.

Such a precedent might create quite a stir in the nearly 500 tribal nations that were displaced in our westward march.  Should the US give those lands back?  Of course not.  The dissolution of the USA would do far more harm than good.

Well then, should there be a U.N. resolution that the U.S. cede nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico back to Mexico (which took the land from Spain, which took it from the Aztecs and other indigenous people?)  It would be ridiculous and serve no purpose to do so.  Every nation has acquired or lost territory in some distant past time.

Yet Israel alone, which has the oldest claim on these lands, is singled out as a cause célèbre by dictators in the the Middle East and elsewhere.  Why?  Most likely to deflect popular anger from being directed where it should be – at their own regimes. 

These autocrats and oligarchs have had ample opportunity, beginning 69 years ago, to create a homeland for displaced persons who share their ethnicity and their religion.   Only Jordan has invited them as citizens.

Israel is smaller than Djibouti, smaller than Macedonia, smaller than the Solomon Islands.  The Sinai Peninsula, which Israel returned to Egypt as part of the Camp David accords, is bigger all by itself than Israel!  Yemen is 25 times as big; Egypt is 50 times as big; Saudi Arabia more than 100 times the size of Israel.  Israel is 1/700^th of the land mass of the Arab League nations.  Surely if they were truly concerned about the plight of the Gaza and West Bank Arabs, they could find it in their hearts and their terrain to follow Jordan’s lead and recognize Israel’s right to exist, yes?

Apparently not.  It’s much easier to continue buying gold-plated Mercedes limos, living a life remote from that of their citizens, and pointing the finger at Israel or the USA for causing all their woes.  The difference this time?  The current administration has chosen to aid and abet such behavior, distancing our nation from the only true democracy in the Middle East as we spout rhetoric about democracy versus autocracies.  

My own, my country’s shame.   

(c) 2016 JL Shaefer