The E.U. ignored this powerful letter. Alan Baker was one of the lawyers who signed the Levy Report which was buried by Netanyahu, essentially ignoring the legal conclusions just as the E.U. is doing. Just imagine how much more impact the letter would have had, had Netanyahu accepted the Report. I am part of a team headed by Arlene Kushner and Jeff Daube who are beginning a campaign to get the government of Israel to accept and implement the Report. Ted Belman
Manfred Gerstenfeld interviews Ambassador Alan Baker: “”By its persistence in referring to the pre-1967 lines, the E.U. is undermining future negotiation on this issue…”
“The European Union issued a directive this year which calls upon its member states to cease all dealings with Israeli research institutions, companies and other bodies situated in what the E.U. considers to be the “occupied territories” and specifically in Israeli settlements, which the E.U. considers to be illegal.
“This directive illustrates an inherent bias by the E.U. against Israel and as such prejudices any aspiration by the E.U. that it can continue, with clean hands, to be involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
“Thus, I thought it urgent to issue a widely supported legal opinion explaining why the directive should be revoked, as it is incorrect, wrongly based and in violation of the E.U.’s status in the peace process.
“My aim was to get a large group of attorneys and prominent public figures to sign a serious, well-crafted and reasoned legal letter to the E.U. without diplomatic ‘niceties.’ This might have a more substantive and persuasive effect than the routine political approach by governmental sources.”
Ambassador Alan Baker, a leading international law expert served as Legal Counsel and Deputy Director General of Israel’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He was ambassador to Canada and is presently the Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and heads the international action division of the Legal Forum for Israel.
“I initiated the idea of this letter within the context of the Legal Forum for Israel. This is a group of lawyers from Israel and abroad who defend rights within Israel. It also upholds the rights of Israel and the Jewish people vis-à-vis the international community.
“We circulated the draft letter to approximately 500 attorneys in Israel and abroad who are members of the Legal Forum. However, a wide range of principally legal, Jewish organizations throughout the world requested that their members also be given the option to sign. Within two weeks, we had over 1,000 signatures until we closed the list.
“The letter was sent to Ms. Catherine Ashton, the E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Copies went to all E.U. countries’ foreign ministers and senior officials of the E.U.
“The letter stresses several basic points. The premise of the E.U. directive was that the 1967 Armistice Lines are Israel’s borders, is totally wrong in fact and law. We wrote: ‘The inference regarding Israel’s borders as recognized by the E.U. …is misguided and historically and legally wrong. The pre-1967 Armistice lines (so-called “green” line) were never considered to be borders. UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), endorsed by the European members of the Council, called for ‘secure and recognized boundaries’ to replace the pre-1967 Armistice lines. The European leaders further endorsed this principle in their 1980 Venice Declaration.
“By its persistence in referring to the pre-1967 lines, the E.U. is undermining future negotiation on this issue by predetermining its outcome.’
“Another major point was that the territory of Judea and Samaria has never been determined in any agreement or formal document, to be Palestinian territory. The E.U. itself is signatory as witness to the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (1995). In that text, the parties agreed to negotiate the fate of the territories. Hence the E.U. assumption undermines this negotiating process.
“As the letter stated: ‘The repeated use by the E.U. of the term ‘occupied Arab’ or ‘Palestinian territories’ to refer to the area of Judea and Samaria, has no basis in law or fact. This area has never been determined as such and thus the continued E.U. usage of the term runs counter to the very concept of negotiations to resolve the dispute regarding these areas supported by the E.U., to determine their permanent status.’
“We also stated that the outright rejection of Israeli’s claim to sovereignty in the territories denies the legal and historic rights of Israel and the Jewish people that the European countries have acknowledged over the years, and which remain valid. As such, the E.U. is undermining its own status and commitments by taking sides against Israel.
“Concerning the illegality of Israel’s settlements, the E.U. has misread international law for many years now, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The provenance of this Article was, ‘the need to address deportations, forced migration, evacuation, displacement, and expulsion of over 40 million people by the Nazis during the Second World War. This has no relevance to Israel’s settlements in Judea and Samaria.’
“We also wrote that, ‘The legality of Israel’s presence in the area stems from the historic, indigenous and legal rights of the Jewish people to settle in the area, as granted in valid and binding international legal instruments recognized and accepted by the international community.
“These rights cannot be denied or placed in question. This includes the 1920 San Remo Declaration unanimously adopted by the League of Nations, affirming the establishment of a national home for the Jewish People in the historical area of the Land of Israel (including the areas of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem) as well as close Jewish settlement throughout.’
“The 1922 League of Nations Mandate Instrument conferring the mandate on Britain confirmed this. It was further affirmed by Article 80 of the U.N. Charter.
“Our letter garnered much publicity and wide support from many Jewish organizations. From the E.U. however, apart from one acknowledgement of receipt from a low-level official, we have heard nothing.”
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
The writer has been a long-term adviser on strategy issues to the boards of several major multinational corporations in Europe and North America.He is board member and former chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and recipient of the LIfetime Achievement Award (2012) of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.
A rule of law would have immediately adopted the Levy Report, but instead, the Israeli government preferred to base its policy towards the settlements upon the report of Talya Sasson executed at the request of Ariel Sharon in 2005.
Just to give a good idea of her lack of impartiality and objectivity, Talya Sasson later joined the illegal Meretz party.
This is another typical example where instead of relying on international law that grants Israel the right to settle eveywhere in the whole territory from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, the Israeli leaders preferred to adopted an illegal policy to deprive the Jews of their fundamental rights.
The considerable damage perpetrated by such biased and tendentious report has to be repaired by the adoption of the Levy Report which concluded the following: “Therefore, according to International law, Israelis have the legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria and the establishment of settlements cannot, in and of itself, be considered to be illegal.”
In addition, claim for compensations and damages for men, women, children, and babies for beatings, emotional distress, and all the pain and suffering they encountered due to these illegal orders and decisions which were all in violation of the Human Rights Declaration.
How international law is defined, applied, followed or ignored altogether, operates on the principle of “might makes right”. The mighty so act based not on reason, law and rights, but on what is in their own best interests. Ex post facto their position or actions, the mighty either strain to reconcile their misguided take on or their ignoring international law or they don’t bother to even try to do so at all.
That principle of “might makes right” is what moves the EU and the U.S. to take the positions they have as regards speaking of Palestinian lawful and human rights in respect of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the settlements they call illegal and treating the Green and 1967 Armistice lines as borders, ignoring Israel’s rights and focusing on Israel’s alleged wrongs- ie. the illegal occupation.
The framework of the 2 state solution that the West seeks to force into existence between Israel and Palestinians, is thus about Israel making concessions to right all the alleged wrongs Israel has committed against the Palestinians by their illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Calls for and forcing Israel to negotiate with Palestinians to achieve a 2 state solution peace agreement is thus premised on perceiving Israel as the villain that must make amends for her villainy against the Palestinians by giving back to Palestinians at least most of their allegedly rightful due and property.
Such subversion, perversion or acting in defiance of international law began with the British soon after the borders of the original Palestine Mandate were established when the British under Churchill cut out 77% of the mandated territories and gave same to Britain’s WWI Arab ally Sharif Hussein of Saudi Arabia and gave over the Golan Heights, another 3% of the Mandate to the French that controlled the Syrian-Lebanon Mandate.
Without getting into it, Britain’s perfidious treatment of Jews within the remaining 20% of the Mandated territories they controlled, including Britain’s ongoing breach of her trust obligations to the Jews, did not end there.
The thinking of the mighty that were sympathetic to the Mid East Arab enemies of Israel, that saw their best interests served by accommodating anti-Semitic anti-Israel Arab sentiment or both, led in 1949 to the UN establishing the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) solely for the benefit of so called Palestinian refugees. The UN already had an agency to aid refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) . Unlike the definition of refugee guiding the UNHCR that included only existing refugees, the UNRWA definition of Palestinian refugee included existing refugees and all their relatives and descendants, whether they ever lived in the West Bank territories or not.
As noted, UN members for reasons of self interest aforesaid, wanted to give special preferential treatment and accommodation to the Palestinians to win favor with the Arab nations with whom the non-Mid East UN powers saw their best interests lay.
Again, without going into any detail, the effects of UNRWA’s mandate, which agency is largely funded by the U.S. Canada and the EU and staffed by Palestinians and Hamas members, have contributed greatly to the existential challenges Israel now faces regarding the Palestinians.
Countless words have been uttered and written by history and international law experts that contend that by historical precedent and international law, Israel is not in illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that the settlements beyond the armistice lines are legal and that Israel has the right by both law and historical precedent to make all the West Bank a home for Israelis and Jews.
Israel has for a number of reasons, chosen since her birth to frame her position in the context of her security needs and not by asserting her lawful, historical rights and her own narrative in that regard, save for declaring her right to exist as a Jewish and Democratic state and by openly discrediting Palestinian claimed rights and revisionist narrative.
By not framing her position in the context of her lawful and historical rights, Israel undermines the persuasive force of those who advocate those Israeli rights and narrative and collaterally empowers the alleged rights revisionist narrative based case the Palestinians make with the avid aggressive and material support of the West, the vast majority of the Muslim world of 1.6 billion and various UN agencies.
Unless and until Israel reverses course and starts framing her position for peace based equally on her security needs and her own narrative and legal and historical rights, while discrediting Palestinian claimed rights and revisionist narratives, she will continue to undermine not only her own position, but also the efforts of those who advocate based on Israel’s rights and narrative.
yamit82 Said:
very impressive, there are a lot of rich jews that could really be of help with this issue. The GOI probably convinces them not to do anything.
I suggest you pressure BB to answer as to why he has ignored and obstructed Jewish rights in YS. Ask him why he has not implemented Levy. Ask him whether the Levy report and the E1 announcement were really con artostry used to win an election and then immediately ignored afterwards. Ask him if he intends to answer such questions at some point or does he always wish to claim some secret benefit under the table. Perhaps he is the one getting the secret benefit. Ask him if he has been blackmailed, paid off or extorted to obstruct Jewish rights. Ask the difficult questions, don’t let him off the hook with BS replies. see if you can find out if this 9 mos negotiation is just a sham to keep the Israel pal conflict out of the public eye or is it real and there has already been an agreement that will be disclosed in time for US midterm elections
From where I sit the major obstruction to internationally guaranteed Jewish rights in YS is Benjamin Netanyahu.
bernard ross Said:
Learn from Jacob Schiff what a single individual Jew with determination, money and power is capable of.
bernard ross Said:
Learn from Jacob Schiff what a single individual Jew with determination, money and power is capable of.
During the Russo-Japanese War, in 1904 and 1905, in perhaps his most famous financial action, Schiff, again through Kuhn, Loeb & Co., extended a critical series of loans to the Empire of Japan, in the amount of $200 million. He was willing to extend this loan due, in part, to his belief that gold is not as important as national effort and desire, in helping win a war, and due to the apparent underdog status of Japan at the time; no European nation had yet been defeated by a non-European nation in a modern, full-scale war. It is quite likely Schiff also saw this loan as a means of avenging, on behalf of the Jewish people, the anti-Semitic actions of the Tsarist regime, specifically the then-recent pogroms in Kishinev.
Schiff made sure none of the funds from his loans ever went to Russia, which continued to severely oppress the Jewish people. When the Tsar’s government fell in 1917, Schiff believed that the oppression of Jews would end. He formally repealed the impediments within his firm against lending to Russia.
Despite his success in the financial world, he always felt he had a special obligation to the Jewish People. He fulfilled this commitment through his philanthropies.
Schiff was a Reform Jew, but he still retained many of the Orthodox habits of his youth. He was especially active in the establishment and development of the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Hebrew Union College. He was a large contributor to the relief programs for the Jewish victims of the Russian Czar’s anti-Semitic programs.
with 100 million dollar contributions to US politicians from jews like adelson why doesn’t a private jewish donor fund a private jewish NGO to sue the EU for reneging on agreements with the Jews, for libeling the Jews by declaring their immigration and settlement of YS illegal, for the incitement of genocide against jews by the intentional spreading of libels while knowing that EU history of jewish genocide was based on the issuance of known libels. What is wrong with the Jews that they can’t fund this campaign and also fund a campaign in every country who signed on the san remo, lon mandate and UN charter 80 to be Estopped from obstructing internationally guaranteed legal jewish immigration and settlement in YS and to be compelled through mandamus to “encourage” said settlement as stated in the relevant treaties. What’s wrong with Jews, are they crazy???? this is disgusting:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/06/14/sheldon-adelson-willing-to-spend-100-million-to-beat-obama
Adelson and like Jews , give the money to shurat al din or create a ngo whose purpose is to sue against these libels. Get a jewish lawyer dammit!
shame, shame on these rich jews! 🙁
Its time for Israel to ditch the destructive Oslo paradigm of retreat, surrender and waiting for the inevitable with an approach that emphasizes Jewish national rights, preserving the Land Of Israel and aggressively countering Israel’s demonizaton and delegitimization on the international level.
For the past few decades the Arabs have mounted a simply and chillingly effective campaign to shrink the Jewish State in size and its been successful beyond their wildest dreams. In response, Israel talks about the need for “painful compromise” and “security needs.” The Arabs’ talking points are always about their rights and justice. Israel is losing, without a shot being fired, the political battle for its existence.
This is liable to lead to catastrophic consequences! Unless Israel finds a way to put Jewish national rights and the necessity of Arab recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people back on the table, Israel is living on borrowed time. As long as the Arabs reject these irreducible core requirements for ending the conflict, peace will never be in the cards.