From Aaron Klein of Breitbart Jerusalem
TEL AVIV — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to
Facebook on Tuesday to provide context regarding the historical, religious
and legal Jewish connections to the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, lands
baselessly declared occupied Palestinian territory in the text of last
week’s anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution.
Netanyahu slammed the UN for its “silence” in the face of
Arab massacres and expulsions of Jews from the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem,
events that, he wrote, explain why no Jews were living in those
territories when Israel was founded in 1948.
Some of the holiest sites in Judaism are located in those
areas, including the Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City; the
Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron, which was home to the oldest
continuous Jewish community in the world until the Jews of Hebron were
massacred and expelled; the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem; and Joseph’s Tomb in
Nablus or biblical Shechem.
Netanyahu accused the UN of having “no legal justification
for its decisions” on the status of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
Instead, he argued, the UN possessed “only ignorance and malice” in its
designation of those territories.
He explained the British Mandate for Palestine, later
adopted by the UN and still legally binding, called for the “establishment in
Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
Netanyahu’s Facebook post can be seen below:
Here is the text of Netanyahu’s post:
The anti-Israel resolution that just passed in the UN
Security Council is based on the argument that Israel is “altering the
demographic composition” of Judea and Samaria. The United Nations has
consistently ignored the fact that Jews were ethnically cleansed from these
territories in 1948, which is why there were no Jews in the area until after
1967.
Some context: In 1929, Arabs carried out a massacre in
Hebron against the Jews who were living there, including women and children,
while the British police stood by.
In 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, the Jewish
residents of Gush Etzion were expelled and murdered. The Arab Legion from
Jordan destroyed the Jewish villages of Kalya (near the Dead Sea) and Atarot
(north of Jerusalem). The Arab Legion also ethnically cleansed the Jews who
were living in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and then blew
up all of the synagogues there/
Not a single Jew remained in any of the territories
conquered by the invading Arabs in 1948. The reaction of the United Nations to
this reality? Silence.
Another important reminder: The terms of the British Mandate
awarded national rights to the Jewish people — and only the Jewish people — in
the Land of Israel. The Mandate, which expanded upon the Biblical and
historical connection of the Jewish people to its land, was ratified in 1922 by
the League of Nations. It was later adopted by the United Nations and until
today it is a binding document under international law that defines the
international legal status of the Land of Israel.
The United Nations has no legal justification for its
decisions, only ignorance and malice.
The UN resolution passed on Friday after the Obama
administration abstained during the Security Council vote. Israeli
Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer has said the Jewish state possesses evidence
that President Obama and the White House were involved behind-the-scenes in the
evolution of the resolution.
The text of the resolution repeatedly and wrongly refers to
the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem as “Palestinian territory
occupied since 1967.” The Western Wall and Temple Mount plaza are located
in eastern Jerusalem. In actuality, the Palestinians never had a state in
either the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem and they are not legally recognized
as the undisputed authority in those areas.
Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem
from 1948 until Israel captured the lands in a defensive war in 1967 after Arab
countries used the territories to launch attacks against the Jewish state.
In 1988 Jordan officially renounced its claims to the West Bank and
eastern Jerusalem.
The text of the resolution declares that the Israeli
settlement enterprise has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant
violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of
the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”
It calls for Israel to “immediately and completely cease all
settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East
Jerusalem.”
