Forty-two British Jews (all of them among the Great and the Good) have signed a letter delivered to Israel’s ambassador to the U.K., Mark Regev, in which they express their fear that “Israel’s international standing will suffer” if it extends its sovereignty to approximately 30% of the West Bank. This is true only if Israel’s supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish, allow it to suffer by not making the best case for Israel’s claim to the West Bank. It is “supporters” who are unwilling, or unable, to make the strongest case for Israel who cause Israel’s “international standing” to suffer. If they truly care for Israel, these “42 British Jews” should first acquire the knowledge necessary in order to stoutly defend it, and that means both to understand and to bring to bear, in any discussion about Israel, and the Palestinian Arabs, both the Mandate for Palestine and U.N. Resolution 242. Having made the overwhelming case for Israel’s claim to the West Bank, they can then, if they wish, still argue against annexation in a different way: “while Israel has a right to that territory, we think it nonetheless unwise for it to exercise that right” – and then let the discussion be about the “wisdom” of enforcing the claim, rather than pretending that Israel’s superior claim does not exist. Israelis themselves are divided on the “wisdom” of annexation, but not on Israel’s right to do so.
The move would be seen as evidence of Israel’s rejection of a negotiated peace settlement involving the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state. This would inflame tensions locally and cause regional destabilisation, the letter says.
Israel has been trying ever since May 14, 1948 to make peace with the Arabs. And after every war, it has tried again to make peace. After the 1948-1949 war, Israel offered to make the armistice lines into permanent borders, upon the signing of peace treaties. The Arabs turned the offer down; they looked forward to a second, more successful assault on Israel and did not want “permanent borders” to get in the way. After the 1967 war, Israel’s offer to negotiate was met by the Arab League’s “Three No’s” at its meeting in Khartoum: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” Although Israel has managed to make peace with Egypt, by handing back the entire Sinai, and with Jordan, too, it has not managed to convince the Palestinian Arabs to make peace. In 2000, Ehud Barak offered Yassir Arafat 92%of the West Bank and control over half of the Old City of Jerusalem. Arafat turned it down, without any discussion. In 2008, Ehud Olmert offered Mahmoud Abbas a deal whereby Israel would retain only 6.3 percent of the West Bank, in order to keep control of major Jewish settlements, but would compensate the Palestinians with Israeli land equivalent to 5.8 percent of the West Bank; in addition, the Old City would be placed under international control. Abbas, like Arafat before him, turned the Israeli offer down. Since then it has been the Palestinian Authority, not Israel, that has rejected negotiations for a peace settlement.
And just now the Israelis have accepted the Deal of the Century, which would lead for the first time to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. That state would also be given a massive aid package of $50 billion. Yet the “42 British Jews” insist that it is Israel that has rejected a “peace settlement involving the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state” when, in fact, that is exactly what Israel has just accepted. Those 42 British Jews may not like the fact that Israel still wishes to keep 30% of the West Bank, while offering in compensation land that is now part of Israel to be incorporated into the new state of Palestine, but they cannot claim that Israel has rejected what it has just accepted – “the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the Israeli state.”
“The damage to Israel’s international reputation … will be enormous,” the letter says, pointing out that the UK government has said it will oppose the annexation plan, and that the proposed move would bolster calls for boycotts and sanctions against Israel.
“The impact on diaspora Jewry and its relationship with the state of Israel would also be profound. The British Jewish community is an overwhelmingly Zionist community with a passionate commitment to Israel. We proudly advocate for Israel but have been helped in doing so by Israel’s status as a liberal democracy, defending itself as necessary but committed to maintaining both its Jewish and democratic status.
If the Trump Peace Plan were accepted, as Israel has said it is willing to do — while Mahmoud Abbas continues his nonstop tantrum — how does the Jewish state cease to be a liberal democracy? The Palestinians would have their own state, with 70% of the West Bank, 100% of Gaza, and two large swathes of territory in the Negev which Israel has agreed to hand over for inclusion in the new state of Palestine. 97% of Palestinians will be able to remain exactly where they are today, and so will 97% of Israelis. What prevents Israel from continuing to be the same polity as before, “both Jewish and democratic”?
“A policy of annexation would call that into question, polarising Jewish communities and increasing the divisive toxicity of debate within them, but also alienating large numbers of diaspora Jews from engaging with Israel at all. Under these circumstances, the commitment to Israel that has been such a vital glue in sustaining and uniting Jewish communities, as well as an asset for Israel, will decline.”
The letter adds: “If asked to make the case for West Bank annexations, however, we will not be able to do so.”
The policy “not only lacks merit, but would pose an existential threat to the traditions of Zionism in Britain, and to Israel as we know it”.
It is surprising that British Jews would be so unaware of the Mandate for Palestine, given that Great Britain was the Mandatory entrusted by the League of Nations with the task of creating, with the Zionists, the Jewish National Home. Or do they think the provisions of the Mandate ceased to be relevant when the League of Nations went out of business? Can all of these distinguished people – and especially the historians among them – be unaware of Article 80 (the “Jewish people’s article”) of the U.N. Charter, which committed the U.N. to fulfill the provisions of any Mandates still existing? And can these 42 British Jews be unaware of what the articulate British ambassador to the U.N., Lord Caradon, said was the meaning of U.N. Resolution 242, which he wrote and which, he insisted, entitled Israel to retain any territory it won in the Six-Day War that it deemed necessary, in order that it might have “secure [i.e. defensible] and recognized boundaries”?
Those 42 British Jews are apparently unwilling to trouble themselves unduly – that is, to study the two independent bases for Israel’s claim to part, or all, of the “West Bank.” They have forgotten, or never knew, or cannot allow themselves to grasp, either the Mandate for Palestine or U.N. Resolution 242. They will be steadfast supporters of Israel, but only on their terms – that is, only so long as the Israelis are willing to yield to what the “international community” demands. They’re sorry, those 42 British Jews, but they simply can no longer support Israel if the Israelis insist on staking or making a claim to the West Bank. How dare those Jews in Israel make things difficult for us, in the Diaspora, who would be happy to support them, just as long as they aren’t too intent on making their case, and on presenting their legal, historic, and moral claim. We can only support the “good Israel,” the one that is willing to drop its claims to the West Bank, and instead agrees to yield to Palestinian demands, even allowing itself to be squeezed back within the pre-1967 lines, that is the 1949 armistice lines, which would again give Israel a nine-mile-wide waist at its narrowest point – from Qalqilya to the sea — the lines that Abba Eban famously called the “lines of Auschwitz.”
The attitude of these 42 British Jews puts one in mind of an old Jewish joke. Gallows humor. Two Jews, Baruch and Moshe, have been lined up against a wall to be shot. Just as they are being blindfolded, Moshe asks one of the armed men “please, could I have a cigarette”? Baruch gives him a furious look. “Moshe, why are you always making trouble?” That’s the attitude of those 42 British Jews – Israel, by daring to exercise its rights, is “always making trouble.”
RT says
JUDEA & SAMARIA – that’s a ridge of mountains and not a f***ing bank!
Charlie in NY says
Laying aside the dubious proposition that the rulers of the Palestinian Arabs are interested in an end-of-conflict settlement, there’s a simple question to be asked – over and over, until there’s a direct response – of those opposition “annexation.”
Why, uniquely, is the West so intent on rewarding Jordan’s illegal invasion and its complete ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria – as that is the minimal and uncompromising Palestinian “peace” demand?
One need only observe what happened with all other Mandates. At their termination, the national group that was the designated beneficiary became, de jure and de facto, sovereign over the entire Mandate land.
Only in the case of the Jewish people has a Mandate been treated differently: In 1947, the UN attempted a second partition (the first having created today’s Jordan in 1922) which would have had a legal effect had the Arabs accepted this resolution, as the Jews had. Article 80 prohibits the UN from acting unilaterally to diminish rights granted under any existing Mandate, as the one for Palestine terminated only 1948. So the UN partition resolution immediately became a dead letter upon the Arabs’ rejection of it.
The current situation, where there is a supposed concern over potential second-class or even apartheid circumstances for the Palestinians in the territories, is the direct result of the UK’s failure to live up to its “sacred trust” as the designated Mandatory Power through its intentional undermining of the Jewish right to immigrate and closely settle throughout the lands of the Mandate.
Had even a fraction of those murdered in the Holocaust found refuge there, I doubt anyone would be discussing any issue of demographics, “time bomb” or otherwise, today. There would have been a massive Jewish majority in place in 1948 and, perhaps, facing that reality, no Arab-Israeli war in 1948-49 would have happened. Protests, even violent ones, probably but the fundamental issues of Jewish rights would have been resolved at the outset and similarly with all the other terminated Mandates.
Is it conceivable that these 42 signatories fail to see the irony?
carpediadem says
Most excellent points and post.
As far as the EU goes, they want Israel for the “Palestinians” ie Arabs as per the EuroArab dialogue.
As for the rest of the world, they want to appease Muslims especially those they’ve let into their countries and the lefties have always hated the Jews and Israel and want them to disappear.
terry sullivan says
where is part one?
names of the 42?
gravenimage says
Right here, Terry:
“Forty-Two British Jews Against Israel’s Annexation Plans (Part 1)”
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/06/forty-two-british-jews-against-israels-annexation-plans-part-1
Fred Middleton says
It’s not really annexation when the territory is Israel’s under an international treaty.
Rarely says
It is almost immaterial that a good legal case could be made for Israel to have the right to the West Bank. It is highly unlikely that the ICJ or any court seated to hear such a case would side with Israel. Even if they did it would not be accepted by the Arabs any more than Israel’s very existence has been. Of course it would be different if part of an overall peace plan (I won’t hold my breath). It would have been very surprising if the Palestinians had accepted Trump’s offer regardless of whether it made sense or not.
A unilateral annexation is quite another thing. I suspect that it would be troublesome to Israel diplomatically (Israel has precious few friends as it is) and it’s hard to see how any “tangible benefit” would be gained since Israel already has military control over the area it would annex anyway.
I feel certain that the Israelis know the situation clearly and hope they will act appropriately.
In the meantime, if one can judge by the 10 listed in Part 1, the 42 are hardly a collection of ignoramuses and are certainly as aware of History as anyone on this site. They are certainly not out of line by expressing their concerns to the Israeli government which is likely to discount it anyway. Advice from the Diaspora is not usually welcomed.
BTW. The cute little Jewish joke at the end of Part 2 was in poor taste.
gravenimage says
Rarely, I actually thought that joke was very apt here–these thugs are always going to try to destroy Israel, and many hand-wringing fools will blame her for being the victim of Jihad terror. If only she had done something differently, there would–somehow–be no Jihad!
As for this issue, I think she should just go ahead. We were told that the US moving her Embassy to Jerusalem would be a disaster, and bring about even more Jihad terror–and yet now, almost no one talks about it at all. Just move confidently ahead.
James Lincoln says
gravenimage says,
“Just move confidently ahead.I think she should just go ahead. We were told that the US moving her Embassy to Jerusalem would be a disaster, and bring about even more Jihad terror–and yet now, almost no one talks about it at all.”
Exactly!
The hate for Israel by the “palestinians”, Iran, etc., is already at 100%, so what would be the difference?
And its rightfully theirs…
Rarely says
Ethnic humour is almost always stereotypical and, as such, likely to be both inaccurate and offensive. In this case no one is suggesting Israel is causing Jihad terror or that she should shy away from fighting it.
Israel has made some major diplomatic gains in resent years and will have to balance risking losing some of those gains against taking unilateral action that brings “no tangible benefit”.
gravenimage says
Rarely, this is humor used *by* Jews, not by antisemites against them. There is a *big* difference.
And lots of people claim that Israel causes the Jihad against her, even if that does not include these signatories.
As for the idea that Israel has somehow made gains in recent years by kowtowing to Muslims demands, I have not seen such examples. Netanyahu has done less of this than any Israeli Prime Minister in recent history–and Israel is generally much the stronger for it.
As for the idea that strengthening her borders brings “no tangible benefit”, this is *very* questionable.
carpediadem says
You simply cannot assume that they know any history at all.
Moreover it is very plain that they are frightened for themselves in the UK should Israel assert sovereignty.
That is obvious.
Rarely says
Not obvious at all. Their knowledge of history is almost surely very extensive and far beyond that of most of us. Contrary to some of the commenters here this is not a group of ignorant suicidal fools.
gravenimage says
Which commenters here are ignorant suicidal fools?
And while Simon Schama does appear to understand that Jews were treated as brutalized second-class citizens under Shari’ah–he may not grasp that Muslims want to do just the same to Jews today, if they are able to savagely destroy Israel.
gravenimage says
Forty-Two British Jews Against Israel’s Annexation Plans (Part 2)
……………
Suicidal idiocy.
James Lincoln says
Yes, gravenimage.
And on steroids…
gravenimage says
I think a lot of these people are well-meaning–but their idea that if only Israel does nothing to protect herself that all will be well is madness.
James Lincoln says
Yes, gravenimage.
And the IDF uses incredible restraint against its pesky islamic neighbors…
Rarely says
Did anyone suggest Israel do nothing to protect herself or do something that’s suicidal?
Did anyone suggest Israel giving up any military control of the area?
Once again: Changing the status of various territories as a result of a peace deal is not the same as unilaterally changing that status. The latter carries some major diplomatic risk. Israel certainly knows that and will have to take it into account before upsetting the status quo however tenuous the status quo may be. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” is usually not a good foreign policy.
gravenimage says
Rarely, have you noticed that “peace deals” with Muslims have never resulted in actual peace for Israel? Or perhaps you *do* realize that…
Rarely says
GI
So far the peace deals with Egypt and Jordan have held up pretty well. I would be very surprised if Israel agrees in the foreseeable future to any peace deal which would leave her weaker or more vulnerable than before.
MBOTR (meanwhile back on the ranch). I have seen nothing which would suggest that the populace of Egypt and Jordan have much less animosity towards Israel than before so any regime change could destroy those treaties overnight. We have seen how that happened with both Iran and Turkey. Mind you that also has been the case in Europe too throughout history. I recall a line from a Tom Lehrer song of the 1960s about Germany: “We taught them a lesson in 1918 and they’ve hardly bothered us since then”. Times are always changing.
DP111 says
in which they express their fear that “Israel’s international standing will suffer” if it extends its sovereignty to approximately 30% of the West Bank.
Israels standing is so low that it can only go up. More nations and people will have far greater respect for Israel when it asserts its sovereignty over land that has historically been Israel..
Rarely says
There is only one certainty: Israel will be severely criticized whatever she does or doesn’t do here.
Consequently Israel has to (and almost always does) ignore criticism and act in its best interests. In this case it looks like Israel may have little to gain by acting unilaterally and much to lose diplomatically. That these 42 very significant supporters of Israel are pointing out their concerns is likely not out of place.
gravenimage says
The first part of your post is certainly correct, Rarely.
R Russell says
Some people are Jews by name only
gravenimage says
I think they are mostly just scared that if Israel defends herself that things will–somehow–be even worse. Not that this way of thinking is not terribly destructive, of course.
Rarely says
R Russell
What do you mean by “Jews by name only”?