New York Review of Books Looks to 1947 Partition Plan to Determine Palestinian Territories - by Tamar Sternthal

According to the reckoning of the erudite New York Review of Books, the southern Israeli city of Beersheba is Palestinian territory. Displaying the same intellectual rigorousness, editors argue that an Israeli Education Ministry app reflects Israeli policy better than Israeli policy reflects Israeli policy.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA..
22 June '20..

According to the profound reckoning of the erudite New York Review of Books, the southern Israeli city of Beersheba is Palestinian territory. By the editors’ logic, the same goes for the central Israeli cities of Ramle, Lod, Modiin (home of this Israeli researcher and over more than 90,000 other Israelis), as well as Ben-Gurion International Airport. The ruling by Review of Books editors from their lofty perch in Manhattan also places Nahariya, Acco, Nazareth in Palestinian territory.

The intellectual giants at the elite literary journal have made clear that, for them, it is the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan – categorically rejected by Palestinian Arabs and surrounding Arab states at the time – which is the basis for now determining what is Palestinian territory.

Thus, while The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Voice of America, Deutsche Presse-Agentur have all commendably corrected erroneous assertions that the disputed West Bank, and in particular areas in which Israeli settlements are located, are Palestinian territory, The Review of Book outliers have preferred to redraw the map entirely. When challenged about the designation of disputed West Bank land as “Palestinian,” NYRB editors cited the United Nations Partition Plan – a proposal roundly rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership over seven decades ago – insisting that the West Bank is Palestinian territory. The natural conclusion about other areas also designated as part of the Arab state under the plan that the Arabs never accepted – Beersheba, Ramla, Lod, Modiin, Bet Shemesh, Acco, Nahariya, the airport, and more – is that they, too, are Palestinian territory. (On the other hand, under the 1947 Partition Plan, Palestinians have no right to Jerusalem, as it was intended to be an international corpus separatum, under United Nations administration.)

(Continue to Full Article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

Surprise? UNRWA nervous over Israel offering free education for Arab "refugees" in Jerusalem - by Elder of Ziyon

...Also, Israeli schools are unlikely to teach students that Israel will be destroyed by their fire and blood. Apparently, this is a problem for UNRWA.

Elder of Ziyon..
17 January '20..

We reported that Israel was pouring millions of dollars into building schools as alternatives to the UNRWA schools in Arab sections of Jerusalem that teach kids to support terror and aspire to be "martyrs."

UNRWA's new acting commissioner is not happy with Israel providing "refugee" children with a choice:

[Interim head of UNRWA] Christian Saunders said Israel was seeking to replace United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) services for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem with those of its own.

He said UNRWA was feeling "the pressure in East Jerusalem in particular", saying that Israel was in the process of building schools and institutions "to compete" with the agency and stop it from operating there.

"The important thing to remember here is that UNRWA has a mandate from the [UN] General Assembly, from the rest of the world, the member states, to provide services to Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem," Saunders said.

The UNRWA mandate does not say that Palestinians cannot choose their own schools! For an agency with budgetary problems, UNRWA should welcome anything that eases its burden - if it was an objective agency tasked with helping Palestinian Arabs. But in fact it is a political organization dedicated to keeping the "refugee" problem festering forever so it can stay in business.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Fresnozionism - Who created the state of Israel?

Fresnozionism.org..
30 April '12..




In a NY Times obituary for Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel’s PM, who died today (Monday) at the age of 102, this sentence appears:

Ultimately, Israel was created as a result of the partition the revisionists opposed.

The “revisionists,” of course, are the followers of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinski, who believed that the state of Israel should comprise all of historical Eretz Yisrael, which includes all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan (plus some parts east of the Jordan that were given to the Arabs by the British in 1922). They saw the proposed partition, which gave the Jews only a sliver of the original Mandate, as unacceptable.

Much can be written about revisionist Benzion Netanyahu (who once served as Jabotinsky’s secretary) and his son, including the true but trivial remark of an unfriendly commentator that “to understand Bibi you must understand the father.” This is true for all of us that have fathers, but the PM has certainly taken a different political path than his father.

But I digress. I want to talk about the sentence from the obituary that I quoted above. Was the state of Israel created as a result of the 1947 partition resolution?

Karsh - Haaretz: The Paper for Thinking People?

Efraim Karsh
Hudson New York
16 December '11

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2669/haaretz-newspaper



Of the countless threats of Arab violence in the run-up to the November 29, 1947 Partition Resolution and in its wake, none has resonated more widely than the warning by Abdul Rahman Azzam, the Arab League's first secretary-general, that the establishment of a Jewish state would lead to "a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades."

Unfortunately, the longstanding failure to trace the original document in which the threat was made has given rise to doubts regarding its veracity, and by implication - the murderous Arab intentions: not least since the historical truth has been erased from public memory by decades of relentless pro-Arab propaganda.

Small wonder, therefore, that when the missing document was recently found, with an annotated full translation published in the Middle East Quarterly, which I edit, Haaretz columnist and self-styled "new historian" Tom Segev, who had spent a good part of the past two decades turning the saga of Israel's birth upside down, went out of his way to whitewash Azzam's threat and downplay its significance. "There is something pathetic about this hunt for historical quotes drawn from newspapers," he wrote, without disputing the threat's contents or authenticity. "Azzam used to talk a lot. On May 21, 1948, the Palestine Post offered this statement by him: 'Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like.'" He then quotes Ben-Gurion's alleged description of the League's Secretary-General as "the most honest and humane among Arab leaders."

(Video) - The UN Vote that Established Israel -- A Quiz

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
JCPA
29 November '11

November 29 is a significant date in Jewish history. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution, which adopted the plan for the partition of Palestine, recommended by the majority of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). 33 states voted in favor of the resolution and 13 against. 10 states abstained.

The UN Committee reached the conclusion that the Mandate for Palestine should be terminated, and most of its members recommended the establishment in the territory of Mandatory Palestine of an Arab state and a Jewish state, while internationalizing Jerusalem.

The partition map proposed by UNSCOP allotted the Jewish state only a small part of Western Palestine. Despite this fact, the Zionist Organization and the institutions of the Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael agreed to accept the plan, since it recognized the right of the Jewish people to a state and not only a "national home" as stated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1922 Mandate for Palestine.

Watch this to learn more about this momentous day.



Take the Jerusalem Center's November 29 quick quiz to test your knowledge.

The adoption of the partition resolution by the General Assembly was received by the Jewish community with great joy and thousands went out to the streets to celebrate, even though it was clear that the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs would embark on a relentless war against the realization of the plan to establish a Jewish state.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Gold - The Palestinians resurrect the partition plan

Dore Gold
Israel Hayom
25 November '11

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=902

Whoever thinks that U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 – the famous Partition Plan – from Nov. 29, 1947, is for historians of the Middle East alone, is not aware of the role that the 64-year-old resolution still plays to this very day. As Israel's ambassador to the U.N. in 1999, I had to deal with an effort by the PLO observer to revive the territorial map of Resolution 181 as a substitute for U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967, which had served as the agreed basis of the peace process until then.

This Palestinian initiative began on March 1, 1999, when the German ambassador to Israel, who represented the European Union when Berlin held the EU's rotating presidency, sent a surprising message in a "non-paper" to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. He confirmed that the EU still was of the view that Jerusalem – both east and west – should be a Corpus Separatum (an internationalized separate entity).

This term comes right out of Resolution 181, and apparently still influenced the diplomatic doctrines of some European countries, who believe that at the end of the day Jerusalem should become an internationalized city.

The German message was leaked to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. Within a few days one the heads of the Palestinian negotiating team at the time, Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), responded in the Palestinian Authority official newspaper, al-Ayyam, saying that the European note "confirms that both parts of Jerusalem – west and east – are occupied territory."

The Europeans had managed to harden the Palestinian position. Within a short time, the new Palestinian position was taken up in New York by the PLO Observer, Nasser al-Qidwa, who wrote an official letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which demanded that "Israel must still explain to the international community the measures it took illegally to extend its laws and regulations to the territory it occupied in the war of 1948, beyond the territory allocated to the Jewish State in resolution 181 (II). Such a situation has not been accepted by the international community." The areas to which the Palestinian representative was referring included what are today Israeli cities like Beersheba, Ashkelon, Nazareth, and others. They also included Jerusalem.

Freezing Palestinian myths

Dr. Gerald Steinberg
The Canadian Jewish News
0riginally published
06 January 2011

http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20556&Itemid=86

Palestinian myths of victimization have been the major obstacle to peace for more 60 years, but they’re largely ignored by journalists, diplomats and would-be peace activists. Instead, the spotlight has been misplaced exclusively on Jewish settlements and the “occupation” that resulted from the 1967 war. The first two years of the Obama administration’s peace efforts were entirely wasted because of the illusion that settlements are the cause of the conflict.

In order to break the long stalemate and end decades of failure, the myths of Arab victimization must be exposed – in place of a “settlement freeze,” we need a “victimization freeze.” False histories that blame Zionism (or European antisemitism) only serve to make peace based on mutual acceptance even more unlikely.

To move forward, Palestinians and their supporters need to be brought back to reality. In place of the myths, they will have to acknowledge that their “suffering” and the refugee problem were the result of the unanimous Arab rejection of the UN Resolution 181 – the November 1947 version of the two-state solution. This was followed by military invasions that killed one per cent of the Jewish population. The Arab defeat on the battlefield was followed by the entirely fictitious claim to a “right of return” as refugees from illegal wars for which the Arabs themselves were responsible.

This is difficult to capture in an emotional photo, dramatic headline, television documentary or YouTube video. Israeli settlements, scenes of the occupation and the inevitable images of Palestinian suffering are easy to portray and manipulate in order to evoke immediate and unquestioned sympathy with the perpetual victim. And while the number of Jews expelled from Arab countries in this period is roughly equal to the displaced Palestinians, the Jewish refugees were absorbed into the Israeli population.

Indeed, the Palestinian refugee industry is thriving, reinforcing the wall it has created to block any peace agreement based on a two-state framework that ends the conflict. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) provides hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and many officials are totally devoted to this anti-peace mythology, and to perpetuating the false refugee claims. When one UNRWA employee, Andrew Whitley, dared to question the myth, he was immediately attacked and forced by UNRWA’s victimization police to recant his honest assessment. Expect him to be looking for alternative employment soon.

In addition, a vast network of non-governmental organizations using the language of human rights and humanitarian aid promote Palestinian refugee myths. Powerful groups such as BADIL (“The Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights”) get hundreds of thousands of dollars every year from a number of European governments to fuel the conflict in this way. For many years, allies in the International Development Research Centre funnelled Canadian taxpayer funds to BADIL.

In parallel, young Jews, many of whom have joined groups such as J-street and the misnamed “Jewish Voices for Peace,” as well as some Israelis, have been exposed incessantly to these images and myths, and adopted the false narrative. Exploiting this situation, Palestinian officials such as Saeb Erekat – described by diplomats and journalists as a “moderate” because he looks and sounds reasonable – continue to weave false tales to sell to naive audiences.

Another myth, promoted during the failed Oslo peace negotiations, was that the Palestinian leadership was “holding the refugee card” in order to play it at the last minute. According to this script, former Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat would suddenly reverse decades of Palestinian theology, and tell his people that the “right of return” was exchanged as part of a comprehensive peace. Like other parts of the Oslo process, this was based entirely on wishful thinking.

An alternative scenario that has survived Oslo and Arafat depicts the Palestinian leadership as knowing they’re not going to return en masse and turn the Jewish state into another Muslim stronghold. All that they want, we are told, is a symbolic recognition of the “injustice” and their “suffering” resulting from the creation of the State of Israel. But this is simply another version of the victimization myth, which, if accepted, would be used to justify more terrorism and delegitimization of Israel.

Until these dimensions are addressed, peace efforts will be stillborn. In this framework, a freeze on refugee myths and false narratives is long overdue.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Great Letter

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
23 December '10

In the NYTimes:-

To the Editor:

In “A U.N. Plan for Israel” (column, Dec. 14), Robert Wright says, “The United Nations created a Jewish state six decades ago, and it can create a Palestinian state now.” But it cannot and would be well advised not to try.

First, the United Nations didn’t “create” Israel — sovereignty was asserted by its provisional government at the termination of British authority in the territory — nor indeed was the 1947 General Assembly partition resolution even legally binding. It would have been, had both Jews and Arabs accepted it, but Arabs did not. Had Arab arms prevailed over the Jewish forces, there would have been no Israel, regardless of United Nations resolutions.

(Read full letter)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

November 29, 1947: The Story of a Vote

ToldotYisrael
23 November '10

Toldot Yisrael (http://www.toldotyisrael.org ) presents the story of the November 29th, 1947 UN vote for the Partition of Palestine, when, within a few brief moments, 20 centuries of Jewish homelessness came to an end.



"Eyewitness 1948" is a short film series produced by Toldot Yisrael and the History Channel. The films are the centerpiece of an educational pilot program developed with The iCenter, made possible by the generous support of the Jim Joseph Foundation.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

The Middle East that could have been

Efraim Karsh argues that the Palestinian-Jewish struggle might have ended peacefully in 1947-- if only Arab leaders hadn't opted for war


Ephraim Karsh
National Post
14 May '10

"There is no place in Palestine for two races. The Jews left Palestine 2,000 years ago. Let them go to other parts of the world, where there are wide vacant places."

--Hajj Amin Husseini, 1936

"We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption--proven throughout all our activity in the Land of Israel --that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs." --David Ben-Gurion, 1937

On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine into two independent states -- one Jewish, the other Arab -- linked in an economic union. The city of Jerusalem was to be placed under an international regime, with its residents given the right to citizenship in either the Jewish or the Arab state.

For Jews all over the world, this was the fulfillment of a millenarian yearning for national rebirth in their ancestral homeland. For Arab political and intellectual elites, it was a shameful surrender of (a however minute) part of the perceived pan-Arab patrimony to a foreign invader. In Jewish localities throughout Palestine, crowds danced in the streets. In the Arab capitals there were violent demonstrations.

"We are happy and ready for what lies ahead," the prominent Zionist official and future Israeli prime minister Golda Meyerson(Meir) told thousands of revellers in Jerusalem. "Our hands are extended in peace to our neighbours. Both States can live in peace with one another and co-operate for the welfare of their inhabitants."

To this, however, the response of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), the effective "government" of the Palestinian Arabs, headed by the militant ex-mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Husseini, was an all-out war. In the five-and-a-half months between the passing of the UN resolution and the end of the British mandate, the former mufti's forces, assisted by a sizeable pan-Arab irregular army, carried out thousands of attacks on their Jewish neighbours in an attempt to prevent them from establishing their state.

This failed, and by the time the last British high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, left the country and the state of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, Palestinian Arab society had all but disintegrated, with 300,000-340,000 of its members fleeing their homes to other parts of Palestine and to the neighbouring Arab states.

(Read full article)

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
.

Sullivan Actually Sullies Himself This Time

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
15 March '10

Go on, have a real hearty laugh at the stupidity of Andrew Sullivan when he writes in The Atlantic:

...Jerusalem was 84 percent Arab in 1946 and well within Palestinian authority under the partition plan the Palestinian Arabs rejected. It is undoubtedly true that Palestinian and wider Arab refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist has been a huge part of this problem - arguably the central reason for this conflict. But it remains true to my mind that the current Israeli government needs an attitude adjustment, and soon.

In case you are wondering why I am laughing and why you should laugh, well,

(Read full post)
.