Netanyahu: UN Silent About Jews Being Massacred, E
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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.”
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.”