International Efforts to Delegitimize Israel

INSS Insight No. 492, December 4, 2013
Gilead Sher

Israel and the EU recently reached a last minute compromise enabling Israel to join the EU’s research and development program, Horizon 2020. Nonetheless, the EU guidelines adopted earlier this year relating to the settlements in the West Bank will likely continue to jeopardize Israel’s international economic interests. In another development regarding Israel’s international legitimacy, nearly three years after the Israeli takeover of the ship Mavi Marmara, the Comoros Islands, where the ship was registered, filed a complaint against Israel with the International Criminal Court. There is temporary relief in the last minute understanding reached between the EU and Israel regarding Horizon 2020, and in negligible prospects for the Comoros ICC claim against Israel. However, Israel operates in an increasingly complicated and delicate environment, which demands constant sensitivity and accommodation to the numerous facets of the international arena

In late November 2013 Israel and the EU reached a last minute compromise enabling Israel to join the EU’s research and development program, Horizon 2020. Nonetheless, the EU guidelines adopted earlier this year relating to the settlements in the West Bank will likely continue to jeopardize Israel’s international economic interests. According to the guidelines, projects carried out in Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line will not be eligible for EU grants, and organizations that operate beyond that line will not be eligible for EU loans and financial assistance.

Other developments on the international legitimacy front pose related threats to Israel’s international standing. One concerns the Palestinian Authority, which recently revisited the intention of prosecution against Israel before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Indeed, the EU has encouraged the Palestinian Authority to join the ICC should Israel pursue its settlement policy.

On a different matter, nearly three years after the Israeli takeover of the ship Mavi Marmara, the Comoros Islands, a small African archipelago near Madagascar, filed a complaint against Israel with the ICC. Comoros, where the ship was registered, is a tiny 2000 square km United Nations member with a population of less than one million. As a signatory of the ICC it has the formal standing to bring such a claim.

The incident is now under preliminary examination to determine if the alleged crimes are serious enough for court intervention. This, despite the fact that the UN Palmer report acknowledged the legality of the Gaza blockade and recognized that Israeli combatants were responding to an initial attack by the passengers.

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) reported recently that the examination is currently in phase 2 – analysis. In fact, very few preliminary examinations actually lead to a full investigation, much less an actual trial or realistic possibility of conviction. The OTP is currently conducting preliminary examinations in eight situations only out of more than 550 submissions in the last year: four (including the Comoros file)on subject-matter jurisdiction, and four on admissibility. Such proceedings should raise concern in Israel, however, in light of the Palestinian plea for membership in the United Nations and its expressed intention to apply to international tribunals and subsequently file claims against Israel and Israelis.

Although riddled with imperfections and often facing harsh criticism on issues such as its questionable legitimacy and insufficient means of enforceability, the International Criminal Court is a worldwide, easily recognizable establishment. Even if it is not universally acknowledged as the world’s primary criminal court, the ICC has commanded the attention of many major media outlets, often indirectly dictating which stories receive international attention. Although the ICC claims to be an unbiased judicial entity, the practical consequences of the court are visibly political. Thus even cases that are not selected for trial receive a considerable amount of international media attention.

The ICC has 122 signatories, but many countries are hesitant to acknowledge the court’s authority. For various reasons (including the United States standpoint that the ICC violates international law by imposing obligations without consent), it has failed to gain support of countries such as the United States, Russia, and China. Therefore, the ICC lacks influence in its ability to make a meaningful impact and legitimately enforce its convictions.

Israel is not a signatory of the act whereby the ICC was established according to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless, theoretically it can be brought under ICC jurisdiction in one of three ways: if the prosecutor receives a referral by the UN Security Council, if the crime was committed in the territory of a signatory, or (however unlikely) if Israel consents to being subject to the court’s jurisdiction. Turkish lawyers representing Comoros claim that under Article 12 of the Rome Statute, which states that territorial jurisdiction is established if the crime took place on a signatory’s vessel, Comoros has a legitimate claim in bringing Israel under the court’s jurisdiction.

Realistically, the case in question is not likely to invoke further ICC intervention. The court was established with the idea of complementing national jurisdiction, not replacing it with international law. Thus, the ICC generally does not intervene when a country has the capability of conducting an independent, objective investigation. Moreover, the jurisdiction of the Court is questionable prima facie because the incident has already been the subject of multiple credible investigations. A thorough analysis of the incident was sponsored by Israel promptly after the event occurred through the Turkel Commission. Investigators found that any mistakes that were made were not criminal and certainly did not warrant further international probing.

Furthermore, this case would not likely proceed to trial due to the nature of the incident. The ICC was created with the intent of prosecuting truly heinous crimes, such as genocide and torture, generally committed in a systematic manner over an extended period of time. The court was not meant for small scale, isolated events, let alone cases of self defense or a justifiable blockade. In determining what crimes warrant prosecution, the ICC uses a “gravity threshold,” meaning the alleged crimes must have widespread and substantially grave consequences. Generally the court will examine the scale, nature, manner of commission, and impact of the crimes. In comparison to the treacherous acts in former ICC prosecutions, the events surrounding the Marmara are considerably mild.

Therefore, in acknowledging both the jurisdictional issues of the case and the obvious likelihood of inadmissibility due to the nature of the alleged crimes, one questions the motives in bringing a claim that is so clearly incompatible with past patterns of the court. Moreover, if the ICC eventually takes up the matter, it is bound to examine a situation as a whole and must consider all actions by any party in order to make its decision whom to prosecute and for which crimes: Palestinians and especially Hamas may well be also prosecuted. Hence the question: is this complaint brought as a legitimate means of seeking justice, or is the ICC being used – and not for the first time – as a political tool to invoke a media response?

In a world where international image carries immense weight, being in the worldwide spotlight due to alleged war crimes has the potential for bringing considerably grave impacts on the accused and, in Israel’s case, further nurture the de-legitimization campaign against it – even if there is no substance to a claim. Moreover, it is particularly problematic that any signatory, without consequence or accountability, can easily bring accusations against citizens of any state, even one that has not consented to the jurisdiction of the ICC.

The claim regarding the Marmara incident is evidence that the ICC has the potential for dangerous manipulation. When countries can so easily mask political intent as a judicial claim, the court is more likely to be used as a tool for strategic media exposure, as opposed to its stated purpose as a mechanism to seek international justice.

There is temporary relief in the last minute understanding reached between the EU and Israel regarding Horizon 2020, and in negligible prospects for the Comoros ICC claim against Israel. However, Israel operates in an increasingly complicated and delicate environment, which demands constant sensitivity and accommodation to the numerous facets of the international arena.

December 4, 2013 | 7 Comments »

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  1. yamit82 Said:

    BB has declared that even though the Palestinian Authority will always refuse to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, Israel recognizes a “palestinian national state”. Arutz Sheva

    No matter how much Netanyahu declares that he is for the so-called two-state solution, G-d hardens the Arabs’ hearts, like Pharaoh. If we read anything from the story in Exodus, of Moshe’s fruitless remands of the Egyptian tyrant, the latter could never give Israel what it truly sought. And Yamit, you know the moral of the story: the arrogant haughtiness of the Egyptians destroyed them. That is the exact fate of the no-nation G-d has sent to harrass the Jews, the Palestinian Arabs. And there is nothing Netanyahu can do to avert the Divine Decree – don’t you know? My son, it was all decided in Heaven long ago and here we are!

  2. yamit82 Said:

    Why are they after us?

    That is not the question Yamit82. The question is “Why have we survived”? Where is the Pharoh, Ninivah, Babylon, Rome,Czars, and Hitler? Dust in the Wind!!!!!!!!

  3. Why are they after us?
    Almost since the birth of the Jewish People, the nations have had an unnatural obsession with this small, seemingly insignificant people. The question that begs to be answered is ‘Why?’ Of all of the tiny, dispersed and alien populations, the world has only set its sights on us. Even back in our own Land, with a rebuilt and prosperous Jewish State, the world still hounds us and no one else. Attributing this constant and consistent focus on the Jewish People to antisemitism is a gross misnomer, for even those who claim to love us, such as the Baha’is and the Christian Right would like us to melt away from being a distinct culture and religion.
    Every culture we have interacted with, from the Egyptians and Canaanites, to the Christians and Muslims have tried to get rid of us, sometimes by the sword and sometimes by converting us. Our presence and our Torah were, and still are, such a threat to the greatest Empires, such as Babylon, Persia, Rome and Greece have outlawed our religious observance and tried to root it out through the sword and forced assimilation. And when both failed to remove us and our Torah, they resorted to the next best thing: demonization. For those of you who think that antisemitic libels started with Christian Europe, you are mistaken. The Egyptians(under Roman occupation), Greeks and Romans all had antisemitic libels against the Jews. But the great Empires never enacted similar actions against any other conquered peoples or their religions, they never banned their worship and put their holy books on trial as they did with the Talmud. Even Christianity originally declared the pagan religions as ‘innocence’, while from the outset Judaism was outdated, and the Jews were forsaken and hated by their ‘god’. The Muslims pressured both Christian and Jew, but they added more restrictions and humiliations upon the Jews, they massacred Jews and took their children in Algeria and Yemen respectively. Recently, when the Pope, as they saw it, insulted Muhammad they rioted and went a little crazy for about a week. No one was killed. When we reclaimed our Land, offering protection and respect to Islam in our country, we have had nothing but constant terror, war and bloodshed against us, they have destroyed and desecrated many of our holy sites and had as banned from the Temple Mount. The Greeks and the Romans not only allowed their conquered subjects to continue worshipping their gods, but they adopted them as their own! Yet when it came to HASHEM and His Torah, they were made illegal, Sabbath observance was banned and the Greeks took our Temple and slaughtered pigs inside it to intentionally desecrate it, and the Roman Vespasian had sex with a prostitute inside the Holy of Holies on top of a Torah scroll before having the Temple destroyed. Hitler, arguably the most powerful man to have ever walked the earth since the Roman emperors, was so threatened by us that even our absolute assimilation and renunciation of Judaism was not enough, and the only solution was the Final Solution.
    Now, the simpleton or the Jew-hater can accept the libels against Jews as truth, and our evil, destructive, greedy, sneaky, backstabbing, sabotaging natures, or that of our ‘religion’, as the reason why we have been chased out from every country, including our own, and why every religion has a Special Clause on converting Jews, to save us from our evil selves or our evil outdated Torah. But we Jews have always been thinkers, we have always been people who do not accept things at face value. The fact of the matter is our very existence is a threat, and our adherence to the Torah is a destructive force, and the nations know this, especially the so-called Abrahamic ‘daughter’ religions of Judaism: Christianity, Islam and the Baha’i Cult.
    Christianity preaches “to the Jew first”, Islam demonizes us and our religion and recently has started to adopt the Christian stance to Jews: convert and don’t kill, and the Baha’is parade around, uniquely, the ‘first Jewish believer’, with no mention of the first Christian or Muslim believer in their absurd cult. Again, why the focus on us? In fact, a pamphlet on converting Jews from the website http://www.JewsforAllah.com (Incidentally there is no ExChristiansforAllah or ExHindusforAllah) spells out exactly why conversion of the Jews is necessary: We are a spigot in the neck of Islam in it’s attempt to spread throughout the ME and the world. Who would have thought that 14 Million people would be any challenge to one of the world’s largest and most powerful religions! The fact of the matter is, if one looks at history, the Jewish convert is always worth a million Gentile converts. These Abrahamic faiths especially ,who view themselves as having replaced us, treasure the Jewish convert beyond reason and consider each and every one a personal victory over Judaism. This demands an explanation. Why did the Catholic Church devote its energy and manpower to rooting out and destroying Judaism and why does Evangelical Christianity, our supposed ally, spend BILLIONS of dollars on campaigns to convert Jews and to create evil movements under the umbrella of Messianic ‘Judaism'(nothing more than Christianity translated into Hebrew) to make their religion seem more acceptable to us? Why did the Muslims aid Hitler in trying to wipe us out, and why have they virtually bankrupted their countries and sacrificed thousands of their people in the last 66 years to destroy the Jewish State? It can’t be because we have ‘conquered holy Muslim land’, for India was once under Muslim control, Iraq, once the seat and beacon of Islamic learning and knowledge, was until recently under American control and Afghanistan was under Soviet and now American control. Other than random terrorist attacks in India over Kashmir, not to liberate it from the heretical Hindus or to eradicate them, a terrorist campaign against Soviet and American soldiers in Afghanistan, and an upsurge against the Americans in Iraq to ‘liberate’ these countries and not to wipe out Americans or Russians, not ONE Muslim soldier or tank from any of the countries that rushed full force against Israel has been mobilized to free the ‘holy Muslim land’ and to ‘eradicate the occupiers’. Islam’s hadith contains no end-time scenario of Christians being wiped out completely from the face of the earth by Muslims as it does for the Jews. The Baha’i Cult has its World Center in Israel, even though they consider us and our religion as equal to the Muslims, yet they don’t have a single Temple of the size of the one in Haifa in their countries. Again we see the focus on the Jews, and this GARBAGE about them adhering to the seldom enforced law forbidding preaching to/converting Jews in Israel is just that :Garbage. The Baha’is one day aim to establish a one world government with them at the head of it, and their World Centre just happens to be in Israel?
    Besides being absolutely obsessed with us these three international cults have other things in common: Absolute rejection of the Talmud with acceptance, to some degree, of the Torah with full acceptance that it is the word of G-D, the usurpation of the Davidic Throne, the replacement of Israel as the Chosen People, and the rejection of Jerusalem as the Seat of G-D’s Holy Presence, and adopting a foreign deity claiming that he is the G-D of Israel(Lihavdil!). This means they have delegitimized the four pillars of Judaism: G-D (by replacing Him with the idols Jesus and Allah), Torah, both Oral and Written, (either by saying that a new covenant has superseded it, that it has been changed and the new revelation corrects the errors, or that the ‘ritual law’ has been rejected while the ‘moral law’ remains in force, and by absolute rejection across the board of the Oral Law), Chosenness (by saying they are G-D’s new people and taking the claim of David’s Throne), and Israel (by replacing Jerusalem).
    Personally, I view the acceptance of the Written and rejection of the Oral Law the most important point. A Written Law is unmovable, it is set and open to a plethora of interpretations, that is why HASHEM gave us the Oral Torah, which is an ongoing discussion where all of the arguments are presented and the incorrect ones rejected, but they are known. The Talmud has been called by many the central pillar of Judaism. Notice, all of the heretical sects, from the Sadducees, Boethusians, and the Karaites to the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Liberal and Secular humanist, all reject the Talmud, and aside from the first two who are already extinct, the others are slowly but surely fading away. Why is it that rejection of the Talmud is necessary? Because within the bounds of the Talmud, all other religions besides Torah-True Judaism would not be able to survive. Acceptance of the Talmud would have destroyed Islam, Christianity and the Baha’i Cult, and it is this Holy Writing alone that is most dangerous to them. Notice how in Christian Europe it was put on trial, out of all of the Jewish holy books, neither the Midrash nor the newly concocted Kaballah was put on trial, censored and made illegal. Islam views the Talmud as unnecessary and burdensome rules that the Jews placed upon themselves, and which Jesus came to alleviate. Ironic, since a lot in the Qur’an, Hadith and Islamic dogma is stolen from the Talmud. I’m not sure on the Baha’i stance on the Talmud itself, but they view that the ‘Ritual Law’ has been replaced, and since the Talmud details ritual and proper observance, well, you figure that out. One thing I’d like to digress on here is the ridiculousness of the belief in a Moral vs. a Ritual Law. The Sabbath for instance is considered a Ritual Law, yet G-D called it ETERNAL, ‘and this is an eternal sign between me and the Children of Israel for all of their generations’. What about, ‘you shall not add or subtract from this Torah that I have given you’, or the commandment to observe ALL of the Torah?! Nowhere in the Torah does it make a difference between so-called Ritual and Moral. In fact, it is the violation of many ‘ritual laws’ that incurs a death penalty or karet, while most ‘moral laws’ do not! Also, it seems that G-D tells us that observance of the ‘ritual laws’ is what brings morality, for instance after the laws of Kashrut. Anyways, the point is they must reject and take away the sanctity of the Talmud for them to even exist (an irony here is that Christianity preaches strict reliance on Scripture yet has developed an Oral Tradition of its own, in specific instances concerning ’Mary’s’ genealogy in Luke and Mary Magdalene being a prostitute, which do not appear in the NT).
    The replacement of G-D or attempting to change His Nature is not so serious, but reflects the pagan origins of all three religions. Whether the concept of a dead man-god Triune or the pagan moon deity of the Kaaba, Hubal, renamed “Al-Lah”, the G-D, which is also adopted as the name of the Baha’i ‘god’, they reflect the inability of the founders of these religions to separate themselves from paganism and idol worship(If you will say that Jesus wasn’t a pagan, so he couldn’t have had these ideas, well, the NT wasn’t written by Jesus or even by Jews and not even in his lifetime, and he preached idolatry which idolaters accepted).
    The Messiah has always been considered a redeemer(not a SAVIOR!) of the world, in that he will return the world to worship of G-D and G-D alone. Obviously a very important figure. And if an important figure in my religion lead the world back to G-D, surely my religion must be the One True Religion, no? This is the line of logic that all three Abrahamic bastard child religions of Judaism follow. The problem is that no one has ever fulfilled THAT messianic prophecy. Hell, we Jews would know since the concept of the Messiah is a JEWISH one, so naturally we would hold what is truth and what isn’t as to the Messiah. Can you teach Einstein about the atom, or understand a Ford car manual for the Model-T better than Henry Ford, who wrote the damned thing? Can you tell an author what he meant when he wrote something? Obviously not. So what’s the next best thing you can do? Lie. And that is exactly what the nations have done. They claim the Jews have been blinded, a veil has been put over their eyes, they have falsified interpretations, or that revelations are progressive and the newer generations are considered smarter and thus G-D gives them more understanding. WHAT HORSESHIT! Especially the latter, which is an exact opposite of the Jewish belief that the farther from Sinai, the less understanding we have. Baha’u’llah had more understanding than Moses? Really?! He ascended to a mountain where G-D has descended to meet him, and he spoke with Him as one speaks with his fellow? The fact of the matter is, all of these latter arguments are easily refuted by a proper reading of the Tanach with no idolatry adultering one’s thoughts, and shown to be put for by weak apologetics for weak-minded ignoramuses. Anyways, to have the Messiah be ‘theirs’, Israel has to be rejected. If Israel weren’t rejected, then G-D would have at least two absolute true religions, and thus our arguments are still 100% valid and thus would trump theirs. They have to replace us in every way. And even the Christians who claim that they believe we are still G-D’s Chosen People in fact view us as rejected and eternally damned. For all of you blind Jews, Christians want us to return to Israel so that the anti-Christ can come, slaughter a large amount of us, then Jesus comes and kills him, then kills off the remainder of the Jews who didn’t believe in him (i.e. Jesus), and those Jews, along with every Jew who did not accept Jesus, burns in hell for eternity. If we weren’t rejected, cursed, and damned how are we going to go to Hell? THINK!
    Jerusalem is replaced as a symbol of G-D’s rejection of the Jews. Christians only view Israel as ‘holy’ because Jesus walked there and it is the ‘land of the bible’(Ironically, the Torah was given in Sinai and records events in Iraq and Egypt, half of Ezekiel was given on the way to Babylon, the books of Daniel and Esther occurred in Modern day Iraq and Iran, yet there are no Xian pilgrimages there. Only where Jesus walked and where Jews can be found to be converted. In fact, as is attested by many modern day evangelicals, America is the promised land. I didn’t say it, Pat Robertson did). Muslims put two cities ahead of Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina, the first because Allah is an inconsistent fool and can’t figure out which city he wants to be called his and the latter because Mohammad walked there. The true reason why Mecca was chosen was because 1) the Jews told Mohammad to piss off so he rejected their ‘Qiblah‘ and conveniently a stone statue name allah revealed to him that allah chooses and rejects whatever he wants and this way it would be more convenient for Mohammad, 2) it was his home town, 3) it was a major trading hub and a pre-existant pagan Arab holy site to many even outside of the Quraysh tribe. Jerusalem didn’t even register on the map to the Muslims until 693, and only because of a feud between the Sharif of Mecca and Abd-Al Malik, whereupon it was interpreted that the Isra’ and Mi’raj, i.e. the Night Journey, actually brought Mohammad to Jerusalem on the back of a flying horse/woman named Al-Burak. In subsequent centuries, though, Jerusalem’s insignificant status to the Muslims became more apparent as it turned into a backwards trash-heap(that Golden Dome is very recent). Jerusalem only became such a focal point to Islam when the Jews liberated it. It only has any holiness because Mohammad walked there. The Baha’is have apparently replaced it with Haifa, the Carmel and Acco because Baha’u’llah said so and he was imprisoned in Acco. CULT!!!!
    As we can clearly see, these three religions have been built around rejection and refutation of Judaism. But our existence is a very real threat to these people. Always the one who holds the truth in a sea of lies is considered a threat. So they try to silence us in any way possible, and now we even aid them. A Jew with a knowledge of Torah is the biggest danger to these cults. We Jews make up less than one percent of the world, while the Christians, 1.5 BILLION, and the Muslims, 1.3 BILLION together make 2.8 Billion, almost half of the entire world, almost 25% each. Yet they are obsessed and unnaturally focused on this tiny speck, this insignificant 14 Million Jews, this less than 1% of the world which has risen to the heights of the world, outlived the greatest empires, succeeded wherever they set foot and finally returned to their homeland, all in accordance with and in affirmation of the Holy Torah. If we were a threat to their foundations when we were dispersed and degraded, as their holy books said we always would be, how much more so when we defied the words of their gods and returned to our homeland? Is it a wonder why almost a billion Hindus, almost half a billion Buddhists and every other religion receive virtually no attention or vilification from either Christian or Muslim? They don’t spend 1/4th the amount of energy or money on these other groups who make up over a billion people as they do on the Jews, whether to convert or destroy them. The fact of the matter is, the Jews, as the original people of the Torah and the prophets, can either make or break a religion. Wholesale Jewish conversion to any religion is the ultimate stamp of approval of authenticity of that religion. But since Jews have been(overall) so stubbornly adherent to the Torah for the past 2000 years, this has been virtually impossible. So the next best thing is to get rid of us completely, but that also has proved impossible. The Nations attribute it to G-D knows what. We Torah-True Jews attribute it to the promise G-D made us, that even if we are in the lands of our enemies, He will not forsake us to allow us to be destroyed. So they take a lesson from the Greeks and the Romans: the way to get rid of Jews isn’t to overtly try to convert them, or to attempt to eradicate them, but to assimilate them, to destroy them culturally and cut all of their ties to the Torah, and then they will come on their own, begging to join the dominant culture. And a superficial look at the general Jewish population reveals a very dominant desire to join the majority Jewish culture and fully assimilate, because we have forsaken Torah study and Torah knowledge. I was once told by my classmate, a Jehovah’s Witness, during one of our discussions, that he didn’t preach to me or ‘Orthodox Jews’ because it’s impossible to convert a Torah-observant Jew. The Ramban is another perfect example of a dangerous Jew, in his debate with Grand Inquisitor Torquemada before the king of Spain. Nowadays, conversion of Jews has become much easier due to assimilation and ignorance of the Torah, even among many kippah-wearing Jews. All of the nations’ pressure on us is to weaken our link to Torah, bit by bit, to eventually sever it. They have learned their lesson and now know this is our Achilles’ heel, for as Rav Saadia Gaon said, Israel is only a nation by virtue of the Torah. Without that, we are nothing but prey for one false ideology after another.
    So as we can see, the new tactic to convert us is separating us from the Torah. The absolute need and focus of the Nations to do so is to feel secure, it is because our very existence and propagation of the Eternal Truth of the Torah, Written and Oral, exposes them for the falsehoods that they are, but their faith and belief clouds their reason. They won’t admit, even to themselves, that we have the truth, even though HASHEM and His Torah has shown Themselves to be the Absolute and Eternal Truth time and again.

  4. “For we are well able to overcome it”

    “And Calev stilled the people toward Moshe, and said: ‘We should go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.’
    But the men (the spies sent in) that went up with him said: ‘We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.’
    And they spread an evil report of the land which they had spied out unto the children of Israel, saying: ‘The land, through which we have passed to spy it out, is a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.
    And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people wept that night.
    And all the children of Israel murmured against Moshe and against Aaron; and the whole congregation said unto them: ‘Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! or would we had died in this wilderness!
    And wherefore does the LORD bring us unto this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will be a prey; were it not better for us to return into Egypt?’
    And they said one to another: ‘Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.’
    Then Moshe and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.
    And Yehoshua the son of Nun and Calev the son of Yephunneh, who were of them that spied out the land, rent their clothes.
    And they spoke unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying: ‘The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceeding good land.
    If the LORD delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it unto us–a land which flows with milk and honey. Only rebel not against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us; their defence is removed from over them, and the LORD is with us; fear them not.’ ”
    (Bamidbar 13-14)

    BB has declared that even though the Palestinian Authority will always refuse to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, Israel recognizes a “palestinian national state”. Arutz Sheva

  5. Israeli leaders are willing to take the garbage without fighting back.
    So Israel will continue to get the garbage.In 1948 David Ben Gurion & his government were in a much much more precarious situation than Israel is today.Yet they had the heart to tell the Europeans,who wanted to finish the Holocaust,to go to hell.The drones in the government ministries are gutless,spineless bootlickers.When the EU bluffs Israel it does not see the Israeli government,they see middle eastern court Jews

  6. Gilead – sensitivity to whom? Anti-Semites and Israel haters?

    These people will be never be satisfied with Jewish goodwill! You saw how the moronic Netanyahu’s unjustified apology to the Turks did not get Israel the desired reciprocal treatment from Ankara.

    Bending over for Israel’s enemies is not the solution; its the problem! Actually, the real problem is cowardly Hellenists like you who care what the world thinks and end up worsening Israel’s standing in the world.

    Jewish self-respect begins at home. It can’t be earned from one’s enemies.

  7. The worldwide delegitimization of Israel shall perpetually continue, and all unfounded and fictitious motives might be invoked by Israel’s enemies.

    If the European Union and Arabs want to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court to attack Israel on the two issues (i) the legality of the settlements, and (ii) the legality of the takeover of the terrorist ship Mavi Marmar, then Israel should use the same weapon and beat them at their own game.

    1. LEGALITY OF THE SETTLEMENTS

    This issue has been raised ad nauseam. The treaties of international law (San Remo Resolution and the Palestine Mandate) conferred the rights to Jewish People to settle everywhere within the boundaries of Palestine (from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River, and from the Litani River to the Nile River).

    The said rights were further extended and ratified in accordance with Article 70(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, thereby becoming permanent without any possibility of termination.

    2. LEGALITY OF THE TAKEOVER OF THE SHIP

    The law with respect to armed conflicts at sea is clear on this matter: an enemy vessel may be captured outside neutral waters if it is “breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search or capture“.

    A break of a military blockade constitutes a military action, and all those who participated in such a battle have undoubtedly lost their civilian status, thereby becoming combatants within the meaning of the law.

    In addition, the flotilla passengers endorsed the status of combatants by carrying weapons and refusing to comply with the Israeli orders for identification and inspection.