The new version of the Munich betrayal (Munich Betrayal 2.0) is eerily similar to the original one. It is also promoted by the original principal players, France and the UK.
Leonard Grunstein | Aug 17, 2025
United Nations. Photo by John Samuel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia
It’s been almost 87 years since the ill-fated Munich Agreement, when the UK and France, ostensible allies and guarantors of the independence of the sovereign country Czechoslovakia, perfidiously abrogated that sacred responsibility.
Nazi Germany demanded the Sudetenland, an integral part of Czechoslovakia and its defensive system on the border with Germany, be ceded to Germany. It was surrendered to the Nazis by the UK and France, without the consent of the Czechs, in the pursuit of so-called ‘Peace for our Time’, which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared had been achieved. The policy of appeasement proved very short-lived and it was not long before Nazi Germany and its allies conquered all of Czechoslovakia and then proceeded to attack Poland and start World War II.
The new version of the Munich betrayal (Munich Betrayal 2.0) is eerily similar to the original one. It is also promoted by, the original principal players, France and the UK.
It’s began almost two years ago, on October 7, 2023, when Hamas and its cohorts invaded Israel, brutally murdered over 1,200 Israelis, Americans and people from many other countries, kidnapped and took hostage 251 men, women and children and committed rapes and other unspeakable atrocities, as well as firing approximately 12,000 rockets against civilian targets in Israel.
Much like the Nazis, its goals and war aims were explicitly disclosed. No one could rationally believe that the violently antisemitic Nazis, who blatantly violated the Versailles Treaty, rearmed and remilitarized the Rhineland, were truly interested in maintaining the status quo and peace. Similarly Hamas has not hidden its goal of eliminating Israel.
The Hamas Covenant is overtly antisemitic. It requires an armed Jihad against Israel to eliminate the Jewish State. Indeed, Hamas officials have since expressly vowed to replicate October 7th-like attacks until Israel is completely eradicated. Moreover, as the horrendous slogans ‘Rape is Resistance’, ‘From the River to the Sea-Palestine will be Arab’, ‘There is Only One Solution-Intifada Revolution’, ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and ‘By Any Means Necessary’, commonly invoked by Hamasniks reveal, this is not just a one time evil outburst. It is part of an ongoing genocidal plan to eliminate the Jewish people and then destroy America and the West.
Instead of fully backing Israel in its defensive war against Hamas and its cohorts, to utterly defeat Hamas and save the hostages, France, the United Kingdom (UK), Canada and Australia (collectively, the Perfidious Quartet) have declared they intend to recognize a so-called Palestinian state and thereby reward the murderous terrorist Hamsnicks. Nevermind that they are inducing a material breach that goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed in Washington DC on September 28, 1995 (Oslo Accords), sponsored by the US and Russia. Article XXXI, Section 7 thereof expressly enjoins changing the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status talks. The Palestinian Authority (PA) unilaterally declaring statehood would most assuredly violate this provision.
The Perfidious Quartet would also be violating international agreements to which they are bound, if they unilaterally recognize a so-called Palestinian Arab state within the area of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. These are boundaries delineated in the 1920 San Remo Resolution, unanimously confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922. In addition, the UK would be violating the 1924 Anglo-American Convention with the US.
It’s truly ironic that these colonial countries each have their own issues and infirmities, ranging from France’s Basque region to the UK’s Northern Ireland troubles, Canada’s issues with un-ceded land underlying Vancouver and claims against Australia by its Aboriginal people. Yet, the Perfidious Quartet are focused on dismantling Israel, homeland of the Jewish people, the genuinely indigenous people of the land. ‘
The history of France’s own relationship with Monaco is another example of its duplicitous pronouncements with regard to Israel. It is even more galling that the Perfidious Quartet seek to favor the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas, and their cadres of terrorist Islamist colonists seeking to steal land as a base for their heinous plan to eliminate the sovereign State of Israel. In this regard, France and the others in the Perfidious Quartet should take note of the decision of the French Court of Appeals of Versailles, in PLO et ano vs. Societe Alstom Transport SA et al. It decided against the claims asserted by Mahmoud Abbas, as representative of the PLO, relating to Jerusalem.
The Waqf’s own 1924 Brief Guide to the Temple Mount confirms its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute and that, in the year 637 CE, Omar occupied Jerusalem. Consider too, for example, the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery is more than 3,000 years old. There’s no comparable Arab cemetery in Israel; the oldest dates back only to the 11th century C.E.
It is reported that Abbas, emboldened by the pronouncements of the Perfidious Quartet hopes to declare a Palestinian Arab state at the UN. However, the UN did not create Israel. In point of fact, United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 181, generally known as the Partition Plan, was never implemented. By its express terms, it was merely a recommendation. While it requested that the UN Security Council take measures to implement it, this never occurred.
The Partition Plan was unequivocally rejected by the Arab world, which sought by force of arms to eliminate any possibility of a Jewish state in any part of Israel (then referred to as the Mandate of Palestine). There was no real appetite by the permanent members of the Security Council to intervene militarily to effectuate the recommended Partition Plan in the face of Arab militant intransigence or to prevent the existing Arab nations from invading and overrunning the country. The Jews in Israel were left on their own to deal with the onslaught and invasion.
-It is important to note that there is no reference in Resolution 181 to a so-called “Palestinian people”. The label was invented more than a decade and a half later.
-There was also no reference to a so-called “West Bank”. This was also an artificial construct by Jordan, which illegally annexed it, to distinguish it from Jordan proper on the eastern side of the Jordan River.
Resolution 181 just referred to the area as the hill country of Samaria and Judea. The name given to the proposed partitioned area intended to house Arab residents of Israel was the “Arab State”, not the Palestinian State.
At the time and historically, Arab residents in Israel were viewed and, indeed, viewed themselves as a part of the Arab people. As Anwar Nusseibeh explained, Arabs, who happened to reside in the area assigned to the reestablished Jewish State of Israel, saw themselves as a part of the Arab nation, generally, and specifically as a part of Syria.
There was no concept of a separate so-called “Palestinian people”, nor was there any distinct identity beyond being a part of pan-Arabism.
It is critical to appreciate that the UN Charter explicitly provides, in Article 80, as follows:
“… nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.”
Thus, the rights of the Jewish people to Israel, as described below, take precedence over any UN resolution, including Resolution 181.
The Supreme Council of Allied Powers, meeting at San Remo in 1920, recognized and resolved that the Land of Israel (then referred to as Palestine) belonged to the Jewish people. The 1920 San Remo Resolution was unanimously confirmed in 1922 by the League of Nations. It was also reconfirmed in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention. The law and history are a striking rebuttal to the false narrative of the PA and Hamas, mindlessly repeated by the Hamas caucus in the Perfidious Quartet.
The Supreme Council Minutes record the discussions at San Remo regarding the area denominated as Palestine and it being a national home for the Jews.
In this regard, it is important to appreciate that presentations were made by Jewish, as well as Arab delegations, asserting claims as to Palestine.
Reference was made to the new area and borders of the new projected Jewish State, which, at a minimum stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Consideration was also given to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities residing in Palestine. However, political rights were reserved only to the Jewish people.
The Supreme Council considered the claims of the various parties, deliberated, and decided title to Palestine was vested in the Jewish people.
In furtherance of the foregoing, the Supreme Council determined that Palestine would be reestablished as a national home for the Jews and a mandatory would be entrusted with implementing the foregoing under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. The terms of the mandate were to be formulated by the Principal Allied Powers, who constituted the Supreme Council and submitted to the Council of the League of Nations for approval. This occurred, and the terms of the mandate were approved. The effect was to confirm, as a matter of International Law, the re-establishment of Palestine as a national home for the Jewish People.
The Council of the League of Nations unanimously adopted the San Remo Resolution on Palestine. It thereby became an international agreement, binding on all of the member countries, which, in effect, confirmed title to Palestine (Israel) in the people of Israel, under International Law. It recited that recognition had been given to “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”.
There are a number of very important legal concepts embodied in this provision of the Council resolution. It effectively confirmed the Jewish people as the recognized indigenous people of Palestine for over three thousand five hundred years and, as noted above, rejected the claims of others.
This absolutely demolishes the fallacious claim that Jews are just modern-day colonialists.
The Council resolution also did not purport to grant the Jewish people a newly minted right to Palestine; rather, it recorded that recognition had been given to the “grounds for” reconstituting their national home in that country. Thus, it was a pre-existing legal right that was recognized and acknowledged. Consistent with this principle, it called for “reconstituting” the Jewish people’s national home in their homeland of Palestine, not building a new national home there, which had no prior existence.
The use of the term ‘country’ in the Council resolution is also cogent. It was no longer referred to as a geographical territory in the former Ottoman Empire; rather, Palestine was now referred to as a country. The sovereignty and legal title to the country of Palestine was vested in the Jewish people.
Article 7 of the resolution expressly provided that the administration of Palestine be responsible for enacting a nationality law, which shall include provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine. In essence, International Law expressly provided for a law of return for Jews to their native homeland of Palestine [Israel]. No similar provision was made for anyone else.
As Eugene Rostow makes clear: By protecting Arab civil and religious rights,
“the mandate implicitly denies Arab claims to national political rights in the area in favor of the Jews; the mandated territory was, in effect, reserved to the Jewish people for their self-determination and political development, in acknowledgment of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land.”
Lord Curzon, who was then the British Foreign Minister, made this reading of the mandate explicit.
Most importantly for this discussion, Article 5 of the Council’s resolution provided that:
“no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power”.
In essence, the title to the country of Palestine granted to the Jewish people at San Remo could not be revoked or granted to another by the mandatory authority or the League. This legally includes the UN as the successor to the League. Palestine belonged to the Jewish people.
The San Remo Resolution was also a part of the Treaty of Sevres with the Ottoman Empire and, in effect, ratified by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 with Turkey.
The Resolution of the Supreme Council of Allied Powers at San Remo was also endorsed in the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine noted above. It actually incorporated the text of the resolution of the Council of the League of Nations, referred to above. The Treaty was concluded and signed by the respective representatives of the US and UK in London on December 3, 1924. The US Senate ratified it, under its power to advise and consent, on February 20, 1925, and President Calvin Coolidge approved it on March 2, 1925. It was formally ratified by Great Britain on March 18, 1925. The respective ratifications were exchanged, and the Treaty was formally proclaimed on December 5, 1925.
The Treaties, thus, formally and legally recognized the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty over all of Palestine, between the Jordan River on the East and the Mediterranean Sea on the West, including, of course, Jerusalem.
Notwithstanding that the British Mandate over Palestine was terminated, nevertheless, the rights granted under the Treaties to the Jewish people survive, as confirmed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
It is respectfully submitted that the UK and other members of the Perfidious Quartet, by virtue of the treaty obligations summarized above and International Law, may not promote a so-called Palestinian Arab state in any part of Israel, between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, including Judea and Samaria, which perforce includes Jerusalem.
Interestingly, when the British illegally adopted the White Paper in 1939, restricting immigration by Jews to then Mandatory Palestine, a bipartisan group of fifteen (out of the twenty-five) members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee urged the State Department to protest the British White Paper and advise the British Government that it would be regarded as a violation of the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty. The group declared that the British plan to limit Jewish immigration to the Holy Land and attempt to fix the Jews as a permanent minority was a clear repudiation of the Treaty. They also said it was the duty of the American Government to see to it that the treaty was carried out in good faith.
Yet, despite having title to and sovereignty over all of Israel, it is not the Jewish people seeking to disposes the invading Arabs, who in 1964 suddenly self-identified as “Palestinians”, a label contrived as part of an illegal effort to steal the Land of Israel, it’s the so-called “Palestinian” Arabs who are seeking to eliminate the Jews.
As an aside, after Jordan illegally conquered Judea and Samaria, including the eastern portion of Jerusalem in 1948, it sought to legitimize its conquest of these areas, which it proceeded to rename the “West Bank” of Jordan.
On December 1, 1948, it organized a conference in Jericho that was attended by representatives of numerous constituencies within these areas. In attendance were the Mayors of Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah and they together with the other attendees adopted what became known as the Jericho Resolutions. Among other things, the Jericho Resolutions confirmed the desire of the Arab residents of the so-called “West Bank” to be immediately annexed to Jordan. Subsequent conferences occurred in Ramallah and then Nablus, which declared their support for the Jericho Resolutions.
Thus, instead of seeking to have an independent state in these areas Jordan conquered and occupied, they ceded any rights they may have had to Jordan. The Arab (not Jewish) residents of these areas were granted Jordanian citizenship (including voting rights). Indeed, Jews were forcibly expelled from the areas conquered by Jordan and their homes were seized and synagogues demolished.
The Arab residents of the so-called “West Bank” participated in the Jordanian Parliamentary elections of April 1950 and were equally represented in the Jordanian Parliament. On April 24, 1950, the newly elected Parliament, noting it represented both the eastern bank of the Jordan, as well as, the western one (i.e. the so-called “West Bank”), formally approved annexation of the areas of Judea and Samaria conquered by Jordan, including the eastern part of Jerusalem. It unified them into the single state of Jordan, as confirmed by the King of Jordan.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Jordan’s sovereignty over the so-called “West Bank”. It expressly provided in Article 24 of its original Charter of 1964 that it exercised no sovereignty over the “West Bank” that belonged to Jordan. Interestingly, it also expressly declared it exercised no sovereignty over Gaza.
Its professed twin goals were Arab unity and the destruction of Israel.
Therefore, whatever rights the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, including the eastern part of Jerusalem, may have had to assert any claim to sovereignty over these areas, were fully vested in Jordan. Even the PLO acknowledged they were ceded to Jordan.
Like any other sovereign state, Jordan could negotiate and barter away sovereignty over any of its land. Thus, when it entered into a Treaty of Peace, dated October 26, 1994, with the State of Israel and, in Article 3, demarcated the international boundary between Israel and Jordan as the Jordan River, it effectively ceded sovereignty over its former “West Bank” to Israel. In this regard, the provisions of Article 2, Section 1, requiring that, in particular, each party recognize and respect each other’s sovereign territorial integrity and political independence are cogent. Jordan recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the land within its borders as demarcated by the Treaty. Section 2 of Article 3 of the Treaty declares the boundary noted above is the permanent secure and recognized international border between Israel and Jordan.
There is no explicit carveout for any claim of sovereignty by so-called Palestinian Arabs to the “West Bank”. The Treaty, in Section 3 of Article 3, goes on to say the parties recognize the international boundary, as well as, each other’s territory, territorial waters and airspace, as inviolable, and will respect and comply with them. Furthermore, Section 6 of Article 3 provides each party is to deploy on its side of the international boundary, upon exchange of the instruments of ratification of the Treaty, which occurred during King Hussein’s first official visit to Israel on November 1, 1994 (after approval by Israel Knesset and ratification by Jordan’s Chamber of Deputies). These sovereign rights are not made subject to or otherwise expressly qualified by any claims of so-called Palestinian Arabs.
The Perfidious Quartet should not be allowed to undermine the sovereign State of Israel. The US should take the initiative and recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.
Consideration should also be given to sanctioning the Hamas supporters within the ranks of the Perfidious Quartet. Hamas is a designated terrorist organization in the US, EU, Canada, Australia and the UK. Curiously, France has not itself designated Hamas a terrorist organization, although it is technically bound by the EU designation.
France was the first unilaterally to declare its commitment to recognizing a Palestinian Arab state in September. It is believed by many that this resulted in Hamas scuttling the ceasefire talks. It is yet another example of the failure of appeasement.
The world does not need another Munich betrayal, like Munich Betrayal 2.0.
The US policy of peace through strength is a proven one. Instead of flirting with failed policies of appeasement, the free world must wake up and fully support Israel in its defensive war to defeat the evil that is Hamas and to free the hostages.
May G-d bless and protect Israel, the US and all those countries that join in support of Israel in this sacred mission.
Leonard Grunstein, retired attorney and banker, founded and served as Chairman of Metropolitan National Bank and then Israel Discount Bank of NY. He founded Project Ezrah and serves on the Board of Bernard Revel at Yeshiva Univ. and the AIPAC National Council. He has published articles in the Banking Law Journal, Real Estate Finance Journal and more and is the co-author of “Because It’s Just and Right: The Untold Back-Story of the U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.”
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