Reading the news has become a Sisyphean task if one is looking for the unadulterated truth regarding Israel. As an example, there is this Reuters’ clip I found this morning (keep in mind that Reuters is the largest international news agency):
http://youtu.be/nbpc2Y1xCuw
Deborah Lutterbeck’s narrative offers an emphasis on the words “Five hundred” in order to suggest shock and outrage at Israel for building this number of what she calls “settler homes” in Ramat Shlomo, an overcrowded Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. Instead of telling viewers that the construction approved by Israel is for urban dwellings in the form of high rise apartment buildings, Lutterbeck inflames by characterizing these plans as “building on occupied Palestinian land,” using State Department “disapproval” as her green light to editorialize.
Where to begin to dissect such falsehoods? How about starting with the legal definition of the word “occupation,” which refers to land beyond a country’s natural borders seized by belligerents during an offensive? Since Israel’s wars were defensive, rather than offensive, any territorial victories are legal under international law.
As a matter of fact, in 1948, Jordan seized land deemed to be part of Israel, according to the international community. Now THAT was an occupation. Only two UN member states deemed Jordan’s occupation of Israeli land to be legal: Great Britain and Pakistan. Israel, in defending itself against the Arab aggressors, regained more of Jerusalem than it had in its possession prior to 1948, but that does not make Israel an occupier according to international law, since Israel was not the aggressor.
As for the claim that Ramat Shlomo is Palestinian land, “Palestine” is merely the name that evolved from a label the Romans gave to Jewish territory it occupied: “Syria Palaestina.” Hundreds of years later, Arabs strayed from Egypt and other parts of the Middle East flocking to what is today, Israel, looking for employment opportunities. They stayed and had children. But it is not the Arabs’ indigenous land and never was. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for thousands of years. The Jewish presence in Israel and in fact the Jewish people, predate the Arab people and Islam by more than one thousand years.
Jerusalem is not “Palestinian” land, because there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Rather, there are Arabs who came to what was then called Palestine and is now called Israel, seeking a better life. Now they are making a land grab with the approval of the international community, which nonetheless does not make the land grab moral or even legal.
When the State Department decries building in Ramat Shlomo, one has to wonder at the audacity of calling the construction of urban dwellings in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, “settlements,” as though Jews are miscreants setting up rickety shacks on someone else’s land.
Lutterbeck ends on this note: “Palestinian officials have voiced alarm, echoed in the international community, over the settlements, viewing them as the main obstacle to founding an independent state they seek in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Well, you know? Tough boogers. This is Jewish land and we will build on it. And by the way, if this is the reason the State Department is throwing a hissy fit, it needs to refresh its memory regarding the President’s campaign promises to AIPAC.
http://youtu.be/bWrvPvo8yXc
The upshot? You can’t keep your doctor. You can’t keep your plan. And apparently, Barack Obama has decided that the Jews can’t keep Jerusalem, because who cares about international law, history, or indigenous rights?
Reuters and President Barack Obama LIE and they do it publicly and loudly. And in a seemingly unrelated news piece, the Zivotofskys, as in “Zivotofsky vs. Kerry,” in wanting their son’s birthplace listed on his U.S. passport as “Jerusalem, Israel,” are, according to Justice Sotomayer, attempting to promote a falsehood.
“They’re asking the government to lie,” said Sotomayer.
Because apparently, the State Department doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or Israel.
Meanwhile, Justice Kagan—that bastion of Jewish liberalism noted that if someone wants “Palestine” listed on their passport, they can’t do that, even if they believe that Jerusalem is part of a “Palestinian State.”
“This is a very selective vanity plate law, if you want to call it that,” said Kagan. “That suggests that Congress had a view and the view was that Jerusalem was properly part of Israel.”
Um. Justice Kagan? Palestine is a nonexistent entity, while Israel has been in existence since 1948. And again, according to President Obama’s speech to AIPAC in 2008, for example, the official U.S. position on Jerusalem is that it is to be the “undivided capital of Israel.”
Ergo, Jerusalem IS properly part of Israel, even according to the guy who appointed Kagan to her position in the first place.
Seriously? Kagan’s argument: “What if Palestinians want “Palestine” listed on THEIR passports?” is akin to that of a first year law student. In reality her transparent straw argument is just more of the sick inversion of reality in which Jewish liberal academics so delight.
The news: it makes me sick.
