Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
17 December 09
Still mulling over that B'tselem tour to Hebron.
Oren, the B'tselem guide, was very careful to talk about human rights, not politics. At one point he even refused to respond to a question about how the situation in Hebron might be resolved: that's politics, he said. As I wrote already, this wasn't very convincing since he seemed unfazed by the limitations on Israelis in the Palestinian part of Hebron. Yet upon reflection, the problem is deeper.
International law is an expression of the wish to have all nations operate within common limitations. Thus it deals with what countries are allowed to do and what not. Some will tell you they aren't allowed to transfer citizens into occupied territories, since in WWII the Nazis deported people in all sorts of directions so the international community recognized this as an evil to be prevented. You might ask how that is relevant to Israeli citizens moving of their free volition to places they recognize from their daily readings of the Bible or Talmud, or in the case of Hebron, to a town that had a Jewish community until as recently at 39 years earlier, and the response you'd get might not satisfy you. But that's not the bone I want to gnaw on right now.
Oren, the B'tselem guide, was very careful to talk about human rights, not politics. At one point he even refused to respond to a question about how the situation in Hebron might be resolved: that's politics, he said. As I wrote already, this wasn't very convincing since he seemed unfazed by the limitations on Israelis in the Palestinian part of Hebron. Yet upon reflection, the problem is deeper.
International law is an expression of the wish to have all nations operate within common limitations. Thus it deals with what countries are allowed to do and what not. Some will tell you they aren't allowed to transfer citizens into occupied territories, since in WWII the Nazis deported people in all sorts of directions so the international community recognized this as an evil to be prevented. You might ask how that is relevant to Israeli citizens moving of their free volition to places they recognize from their daily readings of the Bible or Talmud, or in the case of Hebron, to a town that had a Jewish community until as recently at 39 years earlier, and the response you'd get might not satisfy you. But that's not the bone I want to gnaw on right now.
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