Sunday 2 July 2017

One Hundred Years Later.....





This year, on November 2nd, will be the 100th Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
The Declaration, for those who are unfamiliar with it, stated "His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".

The declaration does not provide a map or borders of the proposed state nor any other details of its size or its nature other than a “National Home for the Jewish people,” – a Jewish Homeland.
The following is a map of the area called Eretz Yisrael (AKA “Palestine”) during the times of Lord Balfour

This is also the area part of which was promised to the Jews, in the Balfour Declaration and in San Remo (1920) where a National Jewish Homeland would be founded.
The Balfour Declaration and the San Remo Accord were also the basis for UN Resolution 180 when, thirty years after the issue of the Declaration, in 1947, it voted on a partition plan for Palestine,
Had the Arabs accepted this UN Resolution, there would have been established an Arab State for the Palestinian refugees and the map of the middle east would have looked like this:

But since, in the words of Abba Eban, “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” they rejected this plan and instead attacked the newly founded, Yisrael, the Jewish State.
The Following is a map which is the result of the 1949 Armistice agreement, a map whose borders were never recognized by any International entity and are hence illegal and any call to return to them as expressed by president Obama, for instance, are not in line with International Law:
The ongoing efforts by Arabs state to drive the Jews into the sea (my childhood nightmare which pushed me to force my parents to get me swimming lessons!) eventually plunged them into a reality which made them realize the opportunity they had missed twenty years earlier.
In June 1967, almost 50 years to the day after the Balfour Declaration, Yisrael, subsequent to being pressed into a corner by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, elected to engage in a pre-emptive. That move, the Six Day War, ended with Yisrael getting closer to the attainment of the area allocated for a National Jewish Homeland by both the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo Accord, both of which are anchored in International Law.
It resulted in this redrawn map:

Before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion that Yisrael entered this war with the desire to reach the borders of the aforementioned Jewish Homeland, let me propose that it was the Arabs in their irrational hatred of Jews and their desire to complete that which Hitler was unable to, that brought about the near implementation of the Balfour plan.
I grew up in Yisrael during the years that preceded the 1967 war. I was a teenager. We did not want that war. If not for Jewish ingenuity and superb military ability, that war would have cost us, according to projections, thousands of dead and tens of thousands of injured. We were happy with the tiny strip of land that we ended up with after Yisrael’s War of Independence.
Furthermore, let me share a secret with you. We would have been happy with the implementation of the UN Partition Plan of 1947. My parents, both Shoah survivors and many like them, along with their children, would have been happy with that.
But not the Arabs! One more state which they could have had then without the bloodshed without the millions that their leaders have amassed while their population of refugees are held as pawns, is what they want now!
Will someone please explain to them that History is NOT a dress rehearsal? Would someone please explain to them that one hundred years of history cannot be washed down the drain, forgotten and replaced by narratives?

2 comments:

  1. Battle was recognised in the west, and in the East, as the ultimate test of G_d's Will. The ultimate form of justice is the fight between the two opposing sides for the possession of the object, and confers absolute right over it.

    The winner and the loser in a battle or a fight have both rights and responsibilities... The loser has to gather up as much as he can carry and run to the nearest body of water. The winner has to chase him, and force him to cross.....

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