The Question of Legality for Israeli control of Judea and Shomron

Following the June 1967 War, a number of legal arguments were advanced to support Israeli claims to the remaining territory of the Palestine Mandate, from the “Green Line” 1949 “Armistice Line” to the Jordan River.
This area of Mandated Territory had been “illegally conquered and occupied” by Trans-Jordan (Jordan) from 1948 -1967. The Jordanians never did offer the Arab residents the chance to establish an independent Palestinian entity. Instead they attempted to annex the area.

According to the Fourth Geneva Convention: “...under customary international law as reflected (...) in Article 42 of the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land annexed to the Fourth Hague Convention of 18 October 1907 (hereinafter “the Hague Regulations of 1907”

 "...territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army, and the occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.”

According to the League of Nations resolution for the establishment of the Mandate for Palestine, the area of Judea and Shomron the “West Bank”, were recognized as a cestui sue trust for the Jewish Homeland in April, 1922 in the Treaty of Sèvres (Section VII, Art 94-97) by 52 countries at the San Remo Conference which granted the Palestine Mandate to Britain.

The League of Nations officially granted Britain the "Stewardship" or Mandate for the Territory euphemistically named by Sir Mark Sykes after the geographical term "Palestine",on July 24, 1922. 

This "act" was further ratified later in the Treaty of Lausanne July 24th 1923.

Other facts to be noted are:

• There were Jewish communities that existed in Judea and Shomron the “West Bank” and Gaza Strip prior to 1919 and these had been recognized as legitimate by the Mandate for Palestine,which was adopted by the League of Nations.
• The communities of; Hartuv and Kfar Etzion had only been re-established after 1967 after exhaustive investigations making sure none were built on private land.
• Israel also argues that some of the communities in the area of Gush Etzion are built on land purchased by a Jewish land holding company in 1925.
• There were pre existing Jewish communities in Hebron and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and Silwan before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Many of these "West Bank"Jewish communities were destroyed and residents massacred. or as the Arabs and detractors love to claim the Jewish residents were "ETNICALLY CLEANSED"

"Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired (Art. 26.1) and that the exercise of these rights shall be free from discrimination of any kind (Art. 2)."

— UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007." Michael Calvo

Therefore, it seems reasonable to refer to the lands of these pre-state Jewish communities as liberated as they were "liberated" from the illegal occupation of Jordan and were returned to the possession of the owners, the Jewish People. 

Regarding Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Israeli government has NEVER forcibly transferred its population into the territories. The return of Jews to Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank) is voluntary and does not displace local inhabitants.

There are no clauses in the Fourth Geneva Convention that can be used to prohibit the voluntary return of individuals to towns and villages from which they or their ancestors had been previously ejected by forcible means.

Therefore, in these cases, the application of the Geneva Convention is an entirely different issue. It should also be emphasized that:

Much of the land, that was (and still is) being used to build new residential areas, villages and towns, in Judaea and Shomron - what detractors label "settlements"-, are "public lands" and have never had been under the legitimate ownership of any owner beforehand.

Justice Stephen M. Schwebel, who spent 19 years as a judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague including three years as President. explained;

"...modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful (if not necessarily desirable), whether those modifications are, in Secretary Rogers's words, "insubstantial alterations required for mutual security" or more substantial alterations - such as recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem.."

and in a footnote he added

"It should be added that the armistice agreements of 1949 expressly preserved the territorial claims of all parties and did not purport to establish definitive boundaries between them". Therefore the 1949 Armistice lines are not fixed, as purported by the Palestinians and their supporters. 

The territories, situated between the “Green Line” 1949 “Armistice Line” and the former eastern boundary of Palestine under the Mandate, which were clarified in the British White Paper as being Mandated Palestine Territory- "west of the Jordan" which was intended by the League of Nations and the Balfour Declaration to be converted into a Jewish National Home and was thus excluded from the Arabs was "conquered" and occupied by Trans-Jordan (Jordan) from 1948 -1967.

During this “Occupation” Jordan did not offer to allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian entity, Instead they attempted to annex the area.

Therefore it can be argued Israel in all intents and purposes “liberated” this area in a defensive war in 1967.

Historian and journalist, Gershom Gorenberg, had once stated that outside of the pro-“settlement” community in Israel,this position was considered odd. He had stated that, while the Israeli government has used them for public relations purposes abroad, it takes entirely different positions when arguing real legal cases before the Israeli Supreme Court.

Listen to former Israeli ambassador to Canada, legal adviser and deputy director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Alan Baker who participated in the negotiation and drafting of the Oslo Accords with the Falestinians, as well as agreements and peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. Is the Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center and the head of the Global Law Forum spoke about; Israel Is Not an “Occupier”

Other great Attorneys who have come to the same conclusion are:
Howard Grief who wrote the book "The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law" which is a forceful and erudite pleading for the respecting of the letter and spirit of the he San Remo Resolution and the Mandate adopted at the San Remo Peace Conference on April 24, 1920.

According to Grief the international law that came into existence in the wake of World War I gave de jure sovereignty to the Jewish People over the entire Land of Israel and Palestine as defined in the preamble of the Mandate For Palestine. This law, now largely forgotten or neglected, is still relevant today in regard to the status and borders of the Land of Israel.

"The moment of birth of Jewish legal rights and title of sovereignty thus took place at the same time Palestine was created a mandated state, since it was created for no other reason than to reconstitute the ancient Jewish state of Judea in fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and the general provisions of Article 22 of the League Covenant."

This meant that "Palestine" from the start was legally a Jewish state in theory that was to be guided towards independence by a Mandatory or Trustee, also acting as Tutor, and who would take the necessary political, administrative and economic measures to establish the Jewish National Home. 

The chief means for accomplishing this was by encouraging large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine, which would eventually result in making Palestine an independent Jewish state, not only legally but also in the demographic and cultural senses.

The details for the planned independent Jewish state were set forth in three basic documents, which may be termed the founding documents of mandated Palestine and the modern Jewish state of Israel that arose from it. 

1) These were the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920, 

2) The Mandate for Palestine conferred on Britain by the Principal Allied Powers and confirmed by the League of Nations on July 24, 1922,

3) and the Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920. 

These founding documents were supplemented by the Anglo-American Convention of December 3, 1924" Dr. Jaques Gautier who investigated this subject for over 20 years and concluded that not only is Israel in accordance with International law but that the International community is in direct violation of it's own Agreements and Charters they have themselves formulated.

And Professor Eugene Kontorovich who teaches at Northwestern University School of Law. listen to him discuss the issue in this video; The Legal Case for Israel. 

In 2005 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to dismantle all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank in a regretfully mistaken attempt to stimulate peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Sharon Government's decision to remove the “settlers” from the “settlements” was challenged in the Israeli Supreme Court by the Jewish “settlers”. 

At that time the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sharon Government and won the case by noting;

"the settlements were in territory whose legal status was that of 'belligerent territory' or territory under "Military occupation" that: "Judea and Samaria" [West Bank] and the Gaza area were lands seized during warfare, and are not part of Israel." In the court proceedings, the Israel Government argued that the settlers should have known that the settlements were only temporary.

They “settlers” had argued that use of the term"'belligerent territory" in relation to Israel's control of the areas has no basis in international law or history, and that it prejudges the outcome of negotiations.

The term “occupied territory,” which appears in the Fourth Geneva Convention, originated as a result of the Nazi occupation of Europe. Though it has become common parlance to describe the "West Bank" and Gaza as “occupied territories,” there is no legal basis for using the term “occupied territories,” in connection to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Professor Julius Stone, a leading authority on the Law of Nations, categorically rejected the use of the term “occupied territory” to describe the territories controlled by Israel on the following counts:

(1) Article 49 relates to the invasion of sovereign states and is inapplicable because the West Bank did not and never did belong to any other state other that the Ottoman Empire. (The previous High Contracting Power)

2) ARTICLE 49 The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. Article 8(2)(b)(viii) of the International Criminal Court Rome Statute defines "[t]he transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" as a war crime. (*) This should be read only in the context of the World War II forcible migrations. It is only intended to cover forcible transfers and to protect the local population from displacement and not voluntary movement.

Settlement of Jews in the West Bank is voluntary and does not displace local inhabitants.

Moreover, Stone asserted that" “no serious dilution (much less extinction) of native populations” [exists]; rather “a dramatic improvement in the economic situation of the [local Palestinian] inhabitants since 1967 [has occurred].”

"Irony would...be pushed to the absurdity of claiming that Article 49(6), designed to prevent repetition of Nazi-type genocidal policies of rendering Nazi metropolitan territories judenrein, has now come to mean that...the West Bank...must be made judenrein and must be so maintained, if necessary by the use of force by the government of Israel against its own inhabitants. Common sense as well as correct historical and functional context excludes so tyrannical a reading of Article 49(6.)"

The Israeli legal argument for control over Judea and Shomron was dismissed by the International Court of Justice. 

The Court cited the Geneva Convention's travaux préparatoires, which recommended that the conventions be applicable to any armed conflict "whether [it] is or is not recognized as a state of war by the parties" and "in cases of occupation of territories in the absence of any state of war" as confirmation that the drafters of the article had no intention of restricting the scope of its application

A 1971 interpretation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 by Israeli Attorney-General, Meir Shamgar

states; “…that the Convention did not pertain to the territories captured by Israel since they had not previously been recognized as part of a sovereign state and could not be considered "the territory of a High Contracting Party".

According to this argument, the last legal sovereign over the territories was that of the League of Nations who had decreed a Mandate for Palestine, which stipulated the right of the Jewish people to settle in the whole of the Mandated territory.
According to Article 6 of the Mandate:

"The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes." 

Accordingly, Article Six, makes it clear that Jewish settlements are not only permissible, but actually encouraged. Therefore, Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are perfectly legal.

Here is Article 4:

"An appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and co-operating with the Administration of Palestine in such economic, social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish national home and the interests of the Jewish population in Palestine, and, subject always to the control of the Administration to assist and take part in the development of the country."

"The Zionist organization, so long as its organization and constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be recognized as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic Majesty's Government to secure the co-operation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home."

Article 25 allowed the League Council to temporarily postpone the Jewish right to settle in what is now Jordan, if conditions were not amenable.

"In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided that no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16 and 18."

The Jewish people still have residual historical and legal rights in the West Bank emanating from the British Mandate that were never cancelled, but rather were preserved by the U.N. Charter, under Article 80 — the famous “Palestine Clause” that was drafted, in part, to guarantee continuity with respect to Jewish rights from the League of Nations.

Article 80 of the U.N. Charter preserved this Jewish right to settlement by specifying;

"Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements...nothing in the [United Nations] Charter shall be construed ... to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or peoples or the terms of existing international instruments."

Meir Shamgar further stated:

"There is no rule of international law according to which the Fourth Convention applies in each and every armed conflict whatever the status of the parties.... The whole idea of the restriction of military government powers is based on the assumption that there has been a sovereign who was ousted and that he was a legitimate sovereign
or the last "High Contracting Party."

As we all know the last legally defined High Contracting Party or “Sovereign Power” that controlled the area was the League Of Nations who had a Mandate for a Jewish Homeland in the area that ended in UNR181 from November of 1947.

Therefore the Turkish Empire, was "a sovereign who was ousted and that he was a legitimate sovereign" or the last "High Contracting Party".

With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, in accordance with the Oslo Accords, there is no longer an Israeli military government over the Palestinian population.
Indeed, the famous 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on occupied territories stipulates that an Occupying Power is bound to its terms “to the extent that such a Power exercises the function of government in such territory (Article 6).”

In accordance with the Oslo Accords some functions of government were retained by the IDF, other functions were exercised by the Palestinians, and there were also shared powers. Though the Palestinians do not have an independent state, they technically can not be considered to be under “occupation” when at the same time they were being ruled by the Palestinian Authority;  Mahmoud Abbas.

In their propaganda war pro-Palestinian groups, and their allies on the far left, have embraced the use of the term “occupation” as part of their rhetorical arsenal, along with the terms advocated in Arafat's infamous 1974 speech that diabolically labeled Israel as a “colonialist, apartheid state.” They have succeeded in waging political warfare against Israel by manipulating the truth and facts.

The heinous charge of “occupation” has evolved into one of the most potent weapons in the delegitimization campaign against Israel. Therefore the decision to use the term “occupation” as a means of harsh criticism appears to emanate as much from political considerations as it does from any legal analysis.

According to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007, the Jews are the indigenous people of the lands referred to as Judea, Samaria.

Furthermore, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights declared that "there is an international customary law norm which affirms the rights of indigenous peoples to their traditional lands".

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), British Mandate for Palestine (1922), San Remo Resolution (1920), and Treaty of Sevres (1920) created international law, and recognized and re-established the historical indigenous rights of the Jews to their land. The signatories of these treaties and the Mandate (Britain, France, Turkey, Japan, Italy, etc.), are bound by them.

UN General Assembly Resolutions stating that the settlement of Jews in Judea Samaria is contrary to international law are no more than recommendations and have never led to amendments of existing binding treaties since ONLY resolutions taken under Chapter VII of the UN Charter are binding on all UN member states.

The last word: The 3rd Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Versailles

All of the above is overshadowed by the 2013 decision by the 3rd Chamber of the Court of Appeal of Versailles. The French Court ruling over a previous decision found that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria is unequivocally legal under international law, dismissing a suit brought by the Palestinian Authority (PA) against Jerusalem’s light rail built by French companies Alstom and Veolia

To rule on the suit, the Court of Appeals had to determine the legal rights of Palestinians and Israelis in the region.
Their conclusion was that the Palestinians have no right – in the international legal sense – to the region, unlike Israel, who is legitimately entitled to all land beyond the 1949 ceasefire lines to the Jordan River 1967 Ceasefire line and now 1995 Jordanian- Israeli negotiated peace border.

The Court explained that the PA misinterpreted the texts and they do not apply to Israel presence in Judea and Samaria.

All the international instruments put forward by the PLO were acts signed between states, and the obligations or prohibitions contained therein are relevant to states. Neither the PA nor the PLO are states, and therefore, none of these legal documents apply to them.

Likewise, the Court showed that these texts are binding only on those who signed them, namely the contracting parties. Neither the PLO nor the PA have ever signed these texts.
The Court, quite irritated by the arguments presented by the PA, boldly asserted that the law cannot be based solely on the PLO’s assessment of a political or social situation.

The Court of Appeal therefore sentenced the PLO and Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS), who was co-appellant, to pay 30,000 euros ($32,000) to Alstom, 30,000 euros to Alstom Transport and 30,000 euros to Veolia Transport.

Neither the PLO nor the Palestinian Authority nor the AFPS appealed to the Supreme Court, and therefore the judgment became final.

This was the first time that a NON ISRAELI Court has legally destroyed all Palestinian legal claim that Israel’s occupation is illegal.

From the Preamble of the Mandate For Palestine:

The Council of the League of Nations:

Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have agreed, for the purpose of giving effect to the provisions of Article 22 of theCovenant of the League of Nations, to entrust to a Mandatory selected by the said Powers the administration of the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, "  

"Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, ...Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country..."

The Conclusion is always the same: the Jewish people have been betrayed many times over by the Nations of the world who do not abide by their own agreements that they have themselves formulated.

The Khazarian Lie Of the Nachbah Losers

A very intelligent and bright young Jewish woman, Leora, posted on Facebook: "One of the biggest arguments that I hear from the BDS is that "you're not a real Jew, since you're Ashkenazi." (And, thus not Semitic.)"

The Palestinians and their Trolls have consistently attempted to distort and pervert historical truth ever since Arafat's 1975 UN speech. They do this in order to discredit the claim of the Jewish people to Eretz-Yisrael and to "Negate" the Jewish Homeland basis in the Balfour declaration and the League of Nations Mandate. The "If " Jews are "white" and Middle Easterners are "not white", then obviously Jews are not from the Middle East and therefore Jews are not “really” the true descendants of the original Jews but are "Khazaian" Usurpers and therefore are not indigenous to the Middle East. Thereby defining the modern state of Israel as an illegitimate settler colony forced upon the poor natives by Imperialist forces.This specific horrendous fallacy has become known as the "Khazarian lie".

Regretfully this blatant and outrageous lie to label today's Jews / Zionists as settlers "colonizers"  if you will, as "Usurpers to the land" and to mark Israel as a "Pariah among nations", has become very prevalent among those whom I label HOIZs or the Haters of Israel and Zionism. This bizarre lie goes hand in hand with the Palestinian propaganda initiative I labeled the "Negation of Israel plan" begun under Yasser Arafat. 

This initiative was explained and laid out to Yasser Arafat by leading anarchists and Marxist communists in the 1970's; Võ Nguyên Giáp, a General in the Vietnam People's Army and Muhammad Yazid, who had been minister of information in two Algerian wartime ‎governments.

This "PR" ploy became the basis for the Palestinians agenda to negate the UNR181 Partition of the Mandate in 1947.

“Stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your terror war into a struggle for ‎human rights. Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand.”
Võ Nguyên Giáp

“Wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab ‎states, or the reduction of the Palestinian problem to a question of refugees; instead, present ‎the Palestinian struggle as a struggle for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression ‎‎…that in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. ‎Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only ‎facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.”‎ Muhammad Yazid

‎This strategy of the "Palestinians" to "delegitimize Israel as an unwanted Apartheid racist, colonist entity" has had a remarkable success in inverting much of the world's perception of the Middle East; transforming tiny Israel, from its natural role of "David" against the massive Arab population and lands, to one of "Goliath" against the (poor) "stateless," "oppressed," and "occupied"  Palestinians. These three terms have become the keywords in the anti-Israel delegitimization plan. The purpose of the keywords is to elicit a demand from the nations of the world for the dissolution of the State of Israel by a cancellation of the Partition.

The Palestinians failed abysmally by rejecting the peaceful division of the Mandate offered to them in 1947. Instead the Palestinian people, whose leadership was divided and self motivated, opted to allow the Arab League to invade and conquer the area. They were told to leave and that once the Jews were exterminated "driven into the sea" they could not only return to their homes they could reap the plunder of the Jewish possessions. However the Arab armies failed. This Arab failure and ever lasting embarrassment has been immortalized in the "Nachbah," which has haunted the Arabs of the Mandated Area ever since.

Nearly every anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi website today denounces Zionists and Israelis as “Khazars.” This Khazar myth has been spread by Neo-Nazis and Islamofascists to invent a racialist argument against Jews being entitled to self-determination, independence, or a homeland in the Land of Israel. It is their belief that Jews are nothing more than converted Khazars, or so goes the argument of the anti-Semitic racialists. They use this lie to spread the falsehood and distortion of history that today's Jews are foreign interlopers (usurpers) in the Levant and have no right to statehood there. 

We can see that this is a consistent thread taken from the "Palestine Ministry of Propaganda and Fantasies" manual for Palestinian Trolls in all of the "Talkback" comments on the Internet and YouTube videos to brainwash and "bamboozle" the naive and uneducated.

Web chat “Talkbacks”; in which Jews, not just Israeli Jews, defending Israel are dismissed outright as “Khazarian usurpers”, are just too numerous to count.
These "Talkback Trolls" pervert historical fact and truth as they have attempted to claim that they are the true descendants of peoples who predated the Hebrews – a few years ago it was the Canaanites -or as in their latest Lie they claim to be descendants of the Philistines!(sic) They attempt to do this by quoting passages from the Bible where by the term Philistines is mentioned to show that "Palestine" existed as a country and they are the "true inhabitants"-"natives" if you may.
Their total ignorance of historical fact and the meaning of the term "P'lishtim- (Hebrew for invaders)" meant to indicate that the Philistines were part of the Minoan-later the ‎Mycenaean civilization from the island of Crete in Greece and not- Moslem Arabs!! Therefore in ‎Hebrew the word "Palestinians" lit means = INVADERS)‎

The fact that Jews came from Judea means nothing as does all the archaeological finds showing that Jews were inhabitants of the land. To them and their supporters the Jews / Israelis of today are “usurpers” and not “true Jews”. One of the most glaring absurdities of their claim is the fact that nearly 60% of ALL of today’s Israelis are descendants of Jews of Arab lands and NOT from Europe!

To explain this mind-numbing development, let’s take a few steps back.  Yes, there was indeed a Kingdom of Turkic peoples living north of the Black Sea in the Dark Ages called the Khazars, and – yes – its ruling family and part of its population did convert to Judaism. 

A myth was created, about the Khazars being an important component of European Jewry, in the 1976 book, The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler.  Koestler wrote his book largely in order to create interest and sympathy for Jews and Israel, believing the Khazar story would serve as a basis for respect and fascination with Jewish history.  In reality, there is very little evidence of any type, from genetic markers to family and place names, that there is any significant Khazar “blood” among Western or Ashkenazi Jews.

One of the favorite sources for this fable is Tel Aviv University  Professor Shlomo Sand, an Austrian-born member of the extreme "left wing" whose expertise is French history and  NOT a  geneticist, joined with Arabs and many non-Jews to argue for an end to Israel as a Jewish nation.‎
At the heart of Sand’s book we find the claim that the Jews of Eastern Europe, the ‎‎“Yiddish people” by his definition, do not originate with the Jews who came from the ‎Middle East via Ashkenaz to Poland, but with the Khazars, nomadic tribes that built an ‎empire between the Black and the Caspian seas, converted to Judaism in the eighth ‎century, and scattered to the four winds when their state was destroyed between the ‎tenth and thirteenth centuries.
Sand contests the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of ‎Israel.‎ He argues that the Jewish people, to use his words, is an “invented” entity or ‎‎“implanted memory” with no connection, in fact, to the land of Israel. In his work Sand was bent on undermining the traditional Jewish narrative, which depicts the Jewish ‎people of today as the descendants of the biblical and Second Temple Jews who lost their ‎land, dispersed over the world, yet retained their bond to the land-of-Israel homeland, to ‎which – as the Scroll of Independence states – they have now returned. Sand and (his Falestian propagandist backers) have blatantly ignored the fact that even if Jews were not exiled from their ‎land, and many of them had not scattered all over the Roman Empire of their own free will. The very loss of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel; as signified by the Romans’ change of its ‎name to Palestine out of a desire to erase all trace of Jews from it after the Bar-‎Kokhba Revolt was crushed, went down in Jewish collective memory as profound traumatic experience.  Sand and (his Falestian propagandist backers) deny and ignore the fact that a small Jewish community continued to exist in the land of Israel, particularly in the Galilee until Christianity became predominant in the Roman ‎Empire in the fourth century.‎The denial of ‎such a connection and the narrow definition of Jews as just a “religious community” – ‎a millet, a Turkish term used by the “Canaanites” to define "exilic Jewry" – aims to ‎influence Israeli Jews to change their self-image and open up to a civil concept of ‎identity; this would enable the State of Israel to become a “state of all its citizens,” ‎unrelated to diaspora Jews who are also just local religious communities (e.g. “Judeo-‎Americans,” as he calls them). When that happens, the discrimination practiced in the ‎State of Israel against its Arab citizens (“Palestino-Israelis”) on the basis of the Law of ‎Return will disappear, and they will be given the opportunity to fully integrate into an ‎Israeli state that will shed its undesirable Jewish identity yet enable Arabs to keep their ‎separate identity and unique culture. ‎

He had taken his thesis for his controversial book “The Invention of the Jewish People”‎ from novelist Arthur Koestler’s 1976 book, “The Thirteenth Tribe”.
Sand, claimed that European Jewry are not the children of Abraham but descendants of pagan Eastern ‎Europeans and Eurasians, concentrated mostly in the ancient Kingdom of Khazaria in ‎what is now Ukraine and Western Russia. The Khazarian nobility converted during the ‎early Middle Ages, when European Jewry was forming.‎
Although scholars challenged Sand’s selective manipulation of the ‎facts, specifically regarding the conversion of the Khazars which was actually limited to the tiny ruling class and not to the ‎vast pagan population. ‎
Harry Ostrer’s book "Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People" is an impressive counterpoint to the dubious historical methodology of ‎Sand and his admirers. And, as a co-founder of the Jewish HapMap — the study of ‎haplotypes, or blocks of genetic markers, that are common to Jews around the world and his book is the definitive response to this fabrication.‎

So was the story about the Khazars true?

The sources are very sparse; to the extent that there is any archaeological evidence, it is ‎very little. The whole subject straddles the seam between legend and historical reality. ‎The most esteemed scholar of the Khazar monarchy, by Sand’s own acknowledgment, is ‎Douglas Morton Dunlop (1909–1987) was a renowned British orientalist and scholar of Islamic and Eurasian history whose command of the languages needed to study the ‎Khazars, on whom information is found; in Arabic, Hebrew, Byzantine and Chinese ‎literature. Though the information available is fragmentary and at times contradictory. Dunlop, at the end ‎of his book; "The History of the Jewish Khazars", New York: Schocken Books, 1967, relates to the theory that the Jews of Eastern Europe are the descendants of ‎the Khazars; he states that “This can be dealt with very shortly, because there is little ‎evidence which bears directly upon it, and it unavoidably retains the character of a mere ‎assumption.”  With typical English understatement, he also adds that to speak of East ‎European Jewry, i.e. the Ashkenazim, as the descendants of the Khazars “would be to go ‎much beyond what our imperfect records allow.”

However despite all this proof to the contrary that the Khazar lie was a myth it has hijacked by anti-Zionists, anti-Zionistic Jews,Neo-Nazis and Islamofascists to invent a racialist argument against Jews being entitled to self-determination, independence, or a homeland in the Land of Israel.  If Jews are nothing more than converted Khazars, or so goes the argument of the anti-Semitic racialists, then they are foreign interlopers in the Levant and have no right to statehood there.

As usual the HOIZs ignore written historical facts.

It is a documented and recorded historical fact, described in the books of Josephus and other Roman historians of the first century period some 2,000 years ago, that substantial Jewish communities were already spread across the Greco-Roman and Persian Empires before the  mid-second century BCE.

These Jews of the "Diaspora" maintained links to Jerusalem and they numbered in the tens of thousands by the first half of the first century CE. We see this in the burial business in places in Israel like ancient Tzipori (Sepphoris) where Jews from abroad paid to have their bones interred in the Sepphoris ossuary.

By the end of the first millennium CE, Jewish communities in the Roman Empire were visible along the Rhine valley in Germany and through out Gaul. Jewish communities flourished throughout the old Babylonian and Greek empires as Jews had migrated after the Babylonian exile and before the Roman Empire to the area of the Khazarians .

Jewish merchants known as Radhanites or  Radhanim traveled East from Akko towards the area of today's Southern Russia along the Silk Road to China where they settled there. Jewish merchants settled in many provinces of the Greek and later Roman Empire after the Diaspora. So it’s only reasonable to suppose they interbred with the Asiatics who were already in Khazaria and who according to some converted between 620AD and 740AD according to The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906. 

"In 679 the Chazars subjugated the Bulgars and extended their sway farther west between the Don and the Dnieper, as faras the head-waters of the Donetz in the province of Lebedia…It was probably about that time that the chaghan (kagan=king) of the Chazars and his grandees, together with a large number of his heathen people, embraced the Jewish religion. According to A. Harkavy (“Meassef Niddaḥim,” i.), the conversion took place in 620; according to others, in 740. King Joeph, in his letter to Ḥasdai ibn Shaprut (about 960), gives the following account of the conversion:
(see Harkavy, “Soobshchenija o Chazarakh,” in “Yevreiskaya Biblioteka,” vii. 153)"

“Some centuries ago King Bulan reigned over the Chazars. To him God appeared in a dream and promised him might and glory. Encouraged by this dream, Bulan went by the road of Darlan to the country of Ardebil, where he gained great victories [over the Arabs]. The Byzantine emperor and the calif of the Ishmaelites sent to him envoys with presents, and sages to convert him to their respective religions.
Bulan invited also wise men of Israel, and proceeded to examine them all. As each of the champions believed his religion to be the best, Bulan separately questioned the Mohammedans and the Christians as to which of the other two religions they considered the better. When both gave preference to that of the Jews, that king perceived that it must be the true religion. He therefore adopted it”
According to Mas’udi (“Les Prairies d’Or,” ii. 8), the king and the Chazars proper were Jews; According to historian Shaul Stampfer, "even though it's a wonderful story", the mass conversion of Khazars to Judaism never took place.

What actually became of the Jewish Khazars is unknown. The Khazar kingdom was largely destroyed by the expanding Russian kingdom in the tenth century, and anything remaining was destroyed in the Mongol invasions. With the successive invasions and the destruction of Khazaria, the members of the Jewish community fled as refugees further northward into Germany and Russia. Some may have integrated themselves into other Jewish communities in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe.

As the centuries went by they interbred with those fair-skinned people too. In reality, there is very little evidence of any type, from genetic markers to family and place names, that there is any significant Khazar “blood” among Western or “Ashkenazi” Jews.

As to the question; "What is the source of the term Ashkenaz?"

By Talmudic times, however, both the Scythians and the Cimmerians had disappeared from the world, swallowed up by other nations. Casting about for the location of Gomer, who was the eldest son of Japheth (and of the Japhetic line), and father of Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah, according to the "Table of Nations" in the Hebrew Bible, (Genesis 10).
The rabbis of the talmudic period took it on the basis of phonetic resemblance to be Germania, as the Romans referred to the Teutonic areas west of the Rhine whose tribes they were constantly battling. “Gomer is Germamya [sic],” says the tractate of Yoma, while the tractate of Megillah tells us: “There are three hundred crown wearers [that is, petty kings] in Germamya and three-hundred-sixty-five lords in Rome, and every day they go forth and kill one another because they are too busy fighting to have time to unite under a single king.”

This is no doubt the reason that Ashkenaz, the biblical son of Gomer, came to be associated with Germany, too. This association may have been strengthened further by the name Scandza, as Scandinavia, the Germanic-speaking north of Europe, was often referred to in medieval times.

By the middle ages, we find Ashkenaz being widely used for Germany in Jewish sources (when the 11th-century Rashi, RAbbi SHlomo Itzhaki  for example, translates a Hebrew word into German in his commentaries, he gives it to us in “the language of Ashkenaz”), and before long it became the standard term.

Originally, therefore, an "Ashkenazi" in Hebrew was a Jewish inhabitant of Germany. (It doesn’t appear in any Jewish source in the sense of Scythian.) Yet as Jews migrated eastward and northward to Slavic lands from German ones, taking with them “the language of Ashkenaz” (which gradually turned into Eastern European Yiddish), “Ashkenazi” came to denote any Yiddish-speaking Jew, and eventually — as it does today — any descendant of Yiddish-speaking Jews.
Ashkenaz, on the other hand, continued to refer in Hebrew to Germany alone, until it was replaced in the 20th century by Germanya so as to avoid the ambiguity of Ashkenazim meaning both non-Jewish Germans and Jewish speakers of Yiddish. As for Germamya, it is gone from the world, along with the Cimmerians and Scythians.

After the wave of expulsions from Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition during the fifteenth century, Jews began to disperse once more, into Eastern Europe. It is also important to note that from the founding of the Kingdom of Poland, in 1025 through 1569, Poland was considered to be the most tolerant country in Europe known as “Paradisus Iudaeorum” (Latin for "Paradise for the Jews"). During the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion it became a shelter for the persecuted and expelled European Jewish community and it became the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. There are some references that show that up to three-quarters of all Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century.

Now, as a matter of fact, even if the Khazar myth were true, and Ashkenazi Jews were descendant from converted Khazars (and – we repeat – the myth is NOT true!), it still would not make the slightest difference.  Jews never defined themselves in genetic or racial terms.  They always saw themselves as an ethnic group marked off by religion, tradition, and language.  Converts are just as Jewish as are those born to a Jewish mother and just as entitled to participate in Jewish self-determination.  And, as I stated previously to top it all off, most Israeli Jews are not even Ashkenazi Jews.

Meanwhile, the popularity of the Khazar myth among anti-Semites represents a return of modern anti-Jewish anti-Semitic hatred and bigotry to the racialism of the 1930′s rise of the Nazi's and earlier.
It is the "in" thing now on every anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi website to denounce Zionists and Israelis as “Khazars.” Web chat lists in which Jews defending Israel are dismissed as “Khazar usurpers” are too numerous to count.

The racialism in vogue once again holds that Jews would only have legitimate claims to the right of self-determination in their homeland if they were appropriately "Real Jews" and true Semites from a racial point of view.
To them Palestine is part of the Semitic racial "Lebensraum" and those who do not possess the correct pure racial markings have no business being there.  Racial purity is suddenly the new basis for national rights. And the absurdity that this agenda of theirs is straight out of the stated Nazi policy in Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf" does not detract from their willingness to harangue Israelis as "ZioNazis"

If we take the racialist argument to its illogical conclusions, Palestinian Arabs have the right to exercise all claims to sovereignty in Israel due to their being true racial Jews, while Zionists are non-Jewish Khazars – racial impostors and usurpers.
But to make things even more hypocritical, Arabs themselves are, of course, a mixture of racial strains, They too are derived  from Arab intermixing with Spanish and Italian Europeans, Caucasian Berbers, Vandals, Goths, and even some Vikings.

So is it any wonder that so many Jews ended up looking like those with whom they live? Just like the blue eyed blonde Moslems who live in Serbia and other areas of the Balklands.

In conclusion this Khazarian story can be added to the long list of ludicrous attempts to negate the Jewish presence and connection to Eretz Yisrael and exemplifies the sickness that resides within those abject losers and their backers of the "Nachba" heritage.

Samir Kuntar - "Murderer of Nahariyah" Dead at last

Earlier in the month of July (2015) there had been a previous report of the neutralizing of the "Murderer of Nahariyah" Samir Kuntar  by an Israeli drone attack on a vehicle  at the entrance of the Druze village of Hader, in Quneitra Province.

At that time in a previous Blog entry of mine I had my suspicions that the report which was being spred through out the Social Media were not correct. I had written; "It is NOT YET confirmed that  Samir  Kuntar from Abey Mount, Lebanon was among those killed."

According to Hezbollah's mouthpiece Al-Manar, thirty-six years after murdering the Haran family and the Israeli policeman  Eliyahu Shachar  in a vicious terror attack in Nahariya, senior Hezbollah leader Samir Kuntar was killed in an airstrike on Saturday night, which the Lebanese terror organization attributed to the Israel Air Force. Two IAF jets infiltrated Syrian airspace and launched four long-range missiles at a six-floor high building in Jaramana, on the southern outskirts of Damascus, destroying the building and causing damage to surrounding structures.

According to reports in the Arab media, eight others were killed in the attack, including Farhan al-Shaalan, another senior leader who planned terror attacks against Israelis in the Syrian Golan Heights.
"At 10:15pm on Saturday December 19, Zionist warplanes struck a residential building in Jaramana city in Damascus countryside. The Dean of liberated detainees from Israeli prisons, brother Mujahid Samir Kuntar was martyred along with several Syrian citizens in the strike," Hezbollah said in a statement.
The Syrian government released a condemnation of "the terror attack that led to the death of innocent civilians in Jaramana, including the warrior Samir Kuntar."

The Murderer of Nahariyah

In 1979, when Kuntar was 16 years old, he infiltrated Israel on a rubber boat from Lebanon along with three other terrorists from the "Palestine Liberation Front." The four came ashore in Nahariya, shot dead police officer Eliyahu Shahar and broke into the apartment of the Haran family. There, they took Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat hostage, while mother Smadar hid in a crawl space with two-year-old daughter Yael.

Father Danny and daughter Einat were taken ashore, where a firefight ensued between the terrorists and police officers who arrived at the scene. Kuntar shot Danny Haran to death, and then cruelly smashed Einat's skull with the butt of his rifle, murdering her as well.
Two-year-old Yael was accidentally smothered to death while her mother was trying to stop her from crying and revealing their hiding place.
Another police officer was killed, along with two of Kuntar's cell members, in the gunfire that ensued.

Kuntar was jailed for almost 30 years, for which he was known in Lebanon as "The Dean of Lebanese Prisoners" for being the longest-held prisoner in Israel, and was freed in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah in 2008, for the IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose condition was unknown and cynically withheld from Israel during the negotiations. Hezbollah kept a vision of their being alive until the very last moment when the coffins were brought to the exchange point. Both had been reported to have been captured wounded but alive.

Upon his return to Lebanon Kuntar, 53, received a hero's welcome. Syrian President Assad awarded him the country's highest medal during a trip he made to Damascus that year.

In 2014, Kuntar, who is a Druze himself, was reportedly involved in attempts to recruit the Druze in Syria - both in the Golan Heights and in other areas - for a Druze militia to fight for the Assad regime, but these efforts were unsuccessful. As a Druse, Kuntar played a central role in Hezbollah and Iran's efforts to build up terrorist infrastructure in the Golan Heights in order to launch attacks against Israel, with recent reports in the Gulf States claiming Kuntar was in charge of the "Syrian Hezbollah."

Kuntar, recently gave an interview to the Lebanese Al Mayadeen TV channel, which is affiliated with Hezbollah. There he claimed that "Israel gives a lot of aid to the anti Assad fighters but they must not be too happy about that, because some of them will pay a very high price for it."

He was asked if he is worried of an attempt on his life, and answered that he was. "Even if they assassinate me or other resistance fighters, the Syrian resistance operation continues forward,"

In deference to the previous announcement in July 2015 this time Kuntar's his step-brother from his father's second wife Shiham acknowledged his death in a "Tweet"

If indeed Samir Kuntar was "neutralized" by Israel, it would bring some slight comfort to the Schachar and Haran families.

Judea and Shomron: What Occupied Territory?

Do pray tell what are the "Palestinian Territories"?

I do not remember anywhere in recorded history that there is or was such an area as the "Palestinian Territories".

I believe it is about time that when people write abut the Middle East one should learn to describe and relate the truth. It is to the everlasting disgrace through the negligence of the Israeli government and the Hasbara department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry that this LIE of “occupation” is repeated and it has been absorbed by governments abroad to give legitimization to a fairy tale known as the “West Bank” and "Palestine".

Let us review historical fact shall we?

When the Palestinian Mandate ended in UN Resolution 181 on November 29th 1947, there was supposed to be a Partition of the Mandated Areas between the Jews and Arabs of the "Mandated Areas". 

The Arabs, at the instigation of the leaders of seven members of the Arab League did not and still do not fully recognize the Jewish people the right to establish a "Homeland" in the "Mandated Territories" known as Israel.

Instead of the local Arab population agreeing to the "Partition" or "Division" of the League of Nations "Mandated" area there was a bloody war that ended in an "Armistice". 

Please note: an "Armistice" is defined as a:

Noun; an agreement made by opposing sides in a war to stop fighting for a certain time; a truce.
synonyms: truce, ceasefire, peace, suspension of hostilities (!!!!)

The "Armistice"in Rhodes in 1949 are a set of agreements which divided the "Mandated Territory" 9 between Israel and neighboring Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan,and Syria.The agreements ended the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and established Armistice Demarcation Lines between Israeli forces and Jordanian-Iraqi forces, also known as the "infamous" Green Line. 

It is extremely important to note that there was no Palestinian representation involved in the negotiations. (And no one has ever questioned; "Why was that?")

Few realize that in the 1948 invasion and seizure of the Mandated Area and the capture of Jerusalem by the Trans-Jordanian Legion. Jordan was in open violation of Article 2 clause 4 of the UN Charter at the time of the invasion and capture of Jerusalem.

To the detriment of the Jewish state the world governments did ABSOLUTELY nothing!! There was no UN Condemnation, no raised voices, no mass marches in the streets.

ABSOLUTELY nothing was ever done at that time by the members of the UN to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Jerusalem's centuries-old Jewish Quarter and desecration of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. As well as many areas of Judea and Shomron which were Jewish owned lands purchased prior to 1948 such as the Etzion Block.

According to Article 2 clause 4 of the UN Charter the Mandated Area was “illegally occupied” by Jordan was therefore termed in International Law as terra nullius, or "land belonging to no one".

Israel, which according to the League of Nation Mandate was entitled to the part of the area, subsequently took that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense in 1967 has better title to it from the prior occupying power- Jordan - of the “West Bank” and the Eastern part of Jerusalem.

With the negotiated peace treaty, between Jordan and Israel in 1995, the "Mandated Area" for the Jewish Homeland (Article 8 Mandate for Palestine) was returned and therefore the "West Bank" officially became Israeli territory as per International Law termed;

Utipossidetis juris or uti possidetis iuris (Latin for "as you possess under law") is a principle of international law that states that:
"is a principle of customary international law originally applied to decolonized territories to preserve the boundaries of colonies emerging as States."

So legally there is no need to annex since neither the Jordanians nor the "Falestinians" never claimed sovereignty. 

Since no country or government had claimed sovereignty over it than according to International Law “terra nullius” which is a Latin expression deriving from Roman law meaning "land belonging to no one".

"Terra Nullius" is used in international law to describe territory which has never been subject to the sovereignty of any state, or over which any prior sovereign has expressly or implicitly relinquished sovereignty. Sovereignty over territory which is terra nullius may be acquired through occupation.

Furthermore, Israel's occupation of the West Bank is fully legal under the terms of UN Resolution 242 (1967), which was carefully drafted to guarantee Israel's rights to remain there until such time as there is a;

"Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force."

In 1994 the so called “Green Line” is a “Cease fire line” between Israel and Jordan and was replaced by an official border along the Jordan River through a peace agreement with Jordan.

Therefore, until the “Palestinians” and the “Palestinian Authority” accepts a peace with Israel based on mutual recognition it is beyond proof that the land belongs to Israel and there is no such thing as "Palestinian Territories".

Tempting Fate

Upon reading the ever so sad news of the murder of two young parents of four small children, Eitam and Na'ama Henkin, my heart breaks at the thought.
As both a father and as a grandfather I am totally outraged at this vulgar barbarity of the cold blooded murder of the young parents in front of their small children but even more so by the murderers carrying out verification of death shots.

As usual I am not surprised but still truly revolted by the world's continual apathy at the death of Jews by those who hate us. It appears that this barbarity is part of our collective Jewish existence on this planet.

When it was believed to be Israelis who perpetrated the attack in arson attack in the village of Duma where a child was killed outright and his parents succumbed to their wounds, every official in Israel strongly condemned the act and Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu even visited the family in the hospital.

The Falestinian "leader" Mahmoud Abbas has not issued a single condemnation of the couple's murder, and his utter silence in the face of the despicable attack is a typical response of Arabs to that of Jewish lives. What we have heard loud and clear was a senior official from his Fatah movement praising this cold blooded murder.

And as I stated, I am of course outraged at the murder nevertheless I am consistently angered at the gross negligence of those residing in the area of Judea and Shomron to ignore the possibility of these murderous actions.

Ah but of course I see the comments on the social media blaming everyone -

• Bibi and the Israeli Government
• the IDF
• the Border Guards and the Police
• the Shin Bet
• the leftists etc, etc. 

As my father once stated when you point your finger at someone remember you have three finger pointing back at you- the thumb points off to the side. So like aiming a rifle before shooting, when you accuse someone else think first since you may miss them.

As we Jewish "settlers" ALL know.  For more than 100 hundred years we Zionists, who have  had the audacity to return to live in OUR homeland of Eretz Yisrael. We have been forced to acknowledge that  the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas" -those who euphemistically refer to themselves as "Falestinians,"are most definitely not your "peaceful" neighbors!
Our long and very blood soaked history has shown that even prior to the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 the Arabs have wanted to murder us. Their lack of ability to accept that we Jews were here and that this was our land has been their source of deep hatred. As they say; "We love death!"

The overwhelming majority of the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas" nurture a myopic and blind hatred of the Jews and of Israel. They have created a cultural environment of vengeance, violence and death to prepare their children just like the god Moloch of the ancient Philistines to be sacrifices in a death cult. 

Back to Judea and Shomron.

From past experience anyone who resides among the "Arabs of the Mandated Areas" should know that it is NOT safe to travel on lonely roads at night. Especially in the aftermath of Mahmoud Abbas's speech where he openly declared that "his people" were no longer bound by mutual agreements with Israel. (The so called defunct Oslo Peace Accords of a once hoped for Middle East peace process.)
.
So why tempt fate?

It was sheer and utter stupidity -not to speak of gross negligence for Eitam and Na'ama Henkin to risk NOT ONLY their lives but the lives of their small children to leave Itzhar at night!
Oh yes as my Religious friends would nod and mumble it is "HaShem's" way.

We ALL know the situation sucks and the "Falestinian Leadership" wants ALL Jews OUT and Judea and Shomron "Judenrein". So murderous attacks on Israeli -read Jewish residents -NOT Settlers! Are going to continue!

So WHY give the murderers easy targets on "Silver Platters"!

It is time to wake up and realize Rav Kahane is not the Prime Minister and Bibi listens only to those money bags in Big Business of the Liberal Fraction of the Likud. He is NOT going to take drastic steps because we Jews live in a world of hypocrits.
Oh yes just how we would love to do what our Arab neighbors do to one another and I hear you!

But we are above all Jews.
"HaShem" chose us and gave us a moral conscience.
As such we are not Nazis, as our detractors scream and yell at us. Neither are we Daesh (ISIS)

It is our superior morality that makes us models for humanity and why we have been despised and hated. All others are jealous of HaShem's love for US dare i say it Jews.

So there you have it we are all stuck with the "Falestinians" and YOU who reside in Judea and Shomron remember you are NOT in the Wild West.

There is no cavalry led by John Wayne or Ronnie Reagan to come to your rescue. Only the stupid sidekick Obama.

You who reside in "Indian Territory" need to remember you are surrounded by vicious barbaric blood thirsty savages who want more than anything your scalps. So wake up and act accordingly

Mysterious Explosion On Chinese Docks

In April 2004 there was a "Massive explosion" on a train in northern North Korea....why? What was involved? The other day there was "another massive explosion" on the docks Tianjin in northern China.
If anyone is interested may I suggest before any vote on any Iran deal be made that Senator Kerry and President Obama request that an FBI forensics team be sent to Tianjin in northern China to investigate the docks in China....

So what possibly could have been on the docks? What deals have been made in secret between Iran and China "behind" Israels back? Iran wants to attack Israel with nuclear weapons and here are new Chinese made cruise missiles,,,,,coincidence?

Silkworm (missile)

The Shang You or SY-series (Chinese: 上游; pinyin: shàngyóu; literally: "Upstream"), and the Hai Ying or HY-series (Chinese: 海鹰; pinyin: hǎiyīng; literally: "Sea Eagle") were early Chinese anti-ship missiles. They were derived from the Soviet P-15 Termit missile.
The HY-1 and HY-2 received the NATO reporting name Silkworm. However, to confuse matters, Western media also referred to the SY-series, and its export derivatives, the Fei Long or FL-series (Chinese: 飞龙; pinyin: fēilónɡ; literally: "Flying Dragon"), as 

Silkworms.Operational history:

Iran-Iraq War The Silkworm gained fame in the 1980s when it was used by both sides in the Iran–Iraq War; both countries were supplied by China. During 1987, Iran launched a number of Silkworm missiles from the Faw Peninsula vicinity striking the Liberian-flagged tanker Sungari and US-flagged tanker Sea Isle City in October 1987. Five other missiles struck areas in Kuwait earlier in the year. In October 1987, Kuwait's Sea Island offshore oil terminal was hit by an Iranian Silkworm which was observed to have originated from the Faw peninsula. The attack prompted Kuwait to deploy a Hawk missile battery on Failaka Island to protect the terminal. 

In December 1987, another Iranian Silkworm was fired at the terminal, but it struck a decoy barge instead. Prior to these attacks the missile's range was thought to be less than 80 kilometers (49.7 mi), but these attacks proved that the range exceeded 100 kilometers (62.1 mi) with Kuwaiti military observers seeing that the missiles originated from the area and tracking them on radar along with US satellite imagery of the launch sites.

In March 1988, China agreed to stop supplying Iran with HY-2 missiles, though it reportedly supplied Iran until 1989. Iran has since developed the capability to manufacture these missiles itself.

On February 25, 1991 a shore-based Iraqi launcher fired two Silkworm missiles at the USS Missouri which was in company with the USS Jarrett and HMS Gloucester. A Sea Dart missile from HMS Gloucester shot down one Silkworm and the other missed, crashing into the ocean. Royal Air Force officers subsequently recovered an HY-2 missile at Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. It is currently displayed at the RAF Museum Cosford.

Iraq War

During the Iraq War, Iraq used the Silkworm as a surface to surface missile by firing at least two of them at the coalition positions in Kuwait.

Second War in Lebanon 2006

On July 14, 2006, in the 2006 Lebanon War when Hezbollah fired two at Israeli warships. One missile hit the corvette INS Hanit, causing significant damage and four fatalities.Iran, the reported supplier of the missile to Hezbollah, refused to formally confirm or deny the claim. The Hanit suffered severe damage, but stayed afloat, got itself out of the line of fire, and made the rest of the journey back to Ashdod for repairs on its own.
The Israeli ship possessed sophisticated multi-layered missile defense capability: a Phalanx CIWS gun, Barak 1 anti-missile missiles, Chaff and ECM. These should have been able to prevent an anti-ship missile attack such as the YJ-82, but according to the Israeli military, these were intentionally disabled at the time of the alleged missile hit due to:a lack of intelligence indicating Hezbollah possessed such a missile; and the presence of many Israeli Air Force aircraft conducting operations in the vicinity of the ship which might have accidentally set off the ship's anti-missile/aerial threats system, with the danger of shooting down a friendly aircraft. However, the ship has an (optionally installed, especially during wartime) Identification friend or foe interrogator system to prevent attacking friendly aircraft.

Cry for the children bred by hatred

Regarding the recent death of the 18 month old Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsheh in the Arab village of Duma. I would like to begin by stating that it must be understood by both sides of this horrendous blood feud that there needs to be ZERO tolerance for injury to any innocents!

Indeference to the Palestinian's there are those who will point fingers and make accusations of my Zionist Jewish Israeli viewpoint as being biased and racist.

However, I will nonetheless point out that in past occasions when Jews were slaughtered;

• there were wild mass jubilant celebrations with candies handed out in the streets of Palestinian villages, cities and towns.
• There was mass glorification of morbid scenes of the aftermath of horrendous scenes of gory and bloody deaths.

• There were postings of colorful mass media posters lauding the perpetrators as "Heros" by "Official" governmental agencies.
• And of course there are the ceremonies with Palestinian Authority officials with payments of funds to the perpetrators from money given from donations given to "improve life".

Once the story of the child's death was known to the general populace in Israel there was overwhelming embarrassment, shame and disgust.

Fingers were immediately pointed and tongues unleashed among the "Left" of the secular Israeli establishment in a full scale assault on the "Settlers" and those who reside in Judea and Shomron from whence it is "assumed" the perpetrators of this "Price Tag" attack originated from.

As a matter of course there were mass protests in our major cities as many Israeli's began a process of soul searching for the source of this extremist bitter hatred.

And as of course in our Israeli society there was immediate major news coverage in the Israeli mass media televised, written press and social media as well.

Almost every Israeli openly denounced the horrific act.

There were hours of televised panel debates and criticism of those who could possibly be responsible for the instigating this horrific crime.

There was widespread wall to wall political condemnation of the crime and promises have been made to use all the legal means possible to find the perpetrators and those that inspired and assisted them.

It is also true that there are those who are backers of the "Rightists" who have responded on the social media with denials. They wish to deny and refuse to believe that this act could have been done by "Our Youth." They state;

• That the act is not proven.
• That there are "outstanding circumstances" and it was a "false flag" act.
• That the Arabs themselves did it.
• That it was a part of the ongoing feud within the Village.
• That there is no physical evidence to link any suspect to the scene.

Yet, it is undeniable that, as was pointed out by ex-members of the Shin Bet - Israeli Security Intelligence personnel, that there have been 13 such "Price Tag" attacks carried out in the preceding months. -- However these previous arson attacks did not cause loss of life but did cause physical damage.

Because of this they were not mentioned on the news or in the press simply because they were labeled as non news items. However the arson attacks with "Price Tag" Graffiti were left at the scene.

It was also mentioned and discussed by ex-members of the Shin Bet -Israeli Security  the fact that these acts in the past are extremely difficult to prove and investigate in the Palestinian administrative areas. That arrests and convictions are a rarity due to the non-existence of "physical" evidence.

Added to this list of recent "Price Tag" hate crimes was the recent firebombing of the Church of Loaves and Fish at Tabgha, on the Sea of Galilee.

In this specific case of  arson at the Church, Israeli Police investigators were able to collect and use surveillance videos from several locations to tediously connect the perpetrators to pieces of physical evidence.

In the case of the Dawabsheh arson attack besides the dubious "Price Tag" graffiti little or no physical evidence has been found.

The case is also hampered by the government and democratic legal investigative measures that can used by Police and Shin Bet investigators against the assumed suspects. The bottom line to consider is that Israel will investigate and will do its' utmost to find those responsible was reflected in the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu who stated, 'Hate and intolerance have no place in our society,' as he  ordered an accelerated investigation of the incident.

In his recent article, "Palestinians: The Difference between Us and Them" Bassam Tawil states:

"Netanyahu's strong and clear condemnation left me and other Palestinians wondering when was the last time we heard similar statements from our leaders. I cannot remember Abbas or any other Palestinian leader ever expressing shock and outrage over the killing of a Jew in a Palestinian terror attack, nor the last time a Palestinian official visited the Israeli victims of a Palestinian terror attack."  

To me the response by the Israeli general public shows the deep moralistic sense that pervades within the majority of the Jewish people and fully illuminates the deep chasm of the abyss of the lack of morality on the Arab side. It also fully delineates the reason why this Arab-Israeli conflict is not being resolved.

In recordings of sermons from Mosques and in lessons given by certain Rabbis, on YouTube and in tape recordings religious teachings are being misused by fanatics on both sides.

In the past few years we can see how in the Arab mass media that Arab behavior is being warped by Islamic teachings specifically those of Dar al Islam al Sham referred to by the acronym Da'ish /Daesh or as you call them ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Levant/Syria] the international resurgence of ultra-Wahhabi terrorism. which is socially abhorrent and reprehensible. This extremism is worrisome to the Arabs, both Sunnis and Shi'ite alike because it is uncontrollable and it is engulfing the entire Moslem world.
As in all major conflicts, as in the conflict with Islamic extremists raging in Syria and Iraq, it is always the innocents of both sides that pay the ultimate price for blind religious extremism and the obstinance of the adults to reach a solution to their conflict.

It is a fact, based on historical records, that the murder in Duma of an Arab child by Jews, is indeed a rarity.
Regretfully most of those Palestinian children that have perished in the age old conflict over the years have been killed in incidents involving the Israeli military forces and NOT in Jewish "terror" attacks.

With the death of the toddler in Duma, voices of the anti-Israel groups have erupted in unison once more in their morbid attempt to accuse and lay the blame on Israel for the murder of the 551 Palestinian children in last summers Operation Protective Shield in Gaza.
The fact that British military expert Colonel Richard Kemp has testified to the fact that most of the Palestinian children who were killed, were killed in attacks against Palestinian terrorists themselves. The Hamas members cynically used the families as "Human Shields" during house to house fighting in densely populated and crowded areas of the Shuja'iyya neighborhood in Gaza. The overwhelming majority of cases the deaths of the Palestinian children were unintentional and could have been avoided if the parents of the children had taken steps to protect their children by distancing themselves from the area of conflict.

Colonel Kemp specifically referred in his testimonies to the cynical use of guerrilla warfare which was used by the Hamas in the  Shuja'iyya neighborhood in Gaza purposely that lead in the great majority of the cases to unintentional and unavoidable civilian deaths.

"I consider myself as having an objective view of what's happening over here. The IDF does not need me to defend them; they have proven it over the years. It's the dispassionate military perspective that I bring."

The proof that Hamas used it's citizens as "Human Shields" is clearly stated by Hamas political leader Fathi Hammad who says in a TV interview:

"[The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the Mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the Mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: "We desire death like you desire life."

We hear of this also from a resident of the Shuja'iyya neighborhood who was asked in an interview from Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas/Gaza) television when the person being interviewed was asked who he thought responsible for the injuries that he received during the recent conflict:

"But of course Hamas was responsible. My father received a text-message from the Israeli army warning him that our area was going to be bombed, and Hamas prevented us from leaving. They said there was a curfew. A curfew, can you believe that? I swear to God, we will take revenge on Hamas. I swear to God I will stand on my other foot and fight against Hamas. Even if Israel leaves them alone, we will not. What had my two-year-old nephew done to be killed under the rubble of our home so Khaled Mashaal [Hamas leader based in Qatar] could be happy? We want change at any cost. I am not claiming the Israelis are innocent, but I know Hamas has fired rockets from every residential spot in Gaza. If that was not hiding behind civilians, then it was stupidity and recklessness. Nobody who is normal, in his right mind, in Gaza supports Hamas. People have lost parents, children and friends, and have nothing more to lose. I believe if given the chance and the weapons, they will stand against Hamas."

In all cases that involved the loss of innocent civilian lives our soldiers and officers in the IDF have shown remorse and have attempted to correct the errors or steps that caused these deaths. The cost that Israel paid in the lives of it's soldiers in their efforts to prevent civilian casualties was unheard of.

As Jews we are moralistic and we do not rejoice in the death of our enemies nor their children. As Golda Meir once stated;

"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." 

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan comment; "a people whose children were burned in the Holocaust needs to do soul-searching at a time like this." Reflected the response of outrage and soul searching in Israeli society. we witnessed this in the massive response by most Israeli's in large outdoor rallys and demonstrations against those in our society who may have done this beastly thing.

It is true that our children have suffered from terror by those immersed in hatred. Over the years hundreds of Jewish children have been gruesomely murdered in intentional terrorist attacks to kill Jews simply because they are Jews.

The central fact for the continuation of this conflict remains that the Palestinian children have suffered from the greedy and blind leadership who trough their total unwillingness to compromise refuse to accept their fate. It is truly regretful that this ancient conflict was never resolved because of the Palestinian leaderships consistent refusal and unwillingness to share land and accept the Jewish people as their neighbors.

I have always stated, as Khaled Abu Toameh does in his Gatestone Institute article:"Palestinians: A Rare Voice of Sanity".

"...that the real tragedy of the Palestinian people has been -- and remains -- bad and irresponsible leadership." 

This is the same view that I have always expressed that the first real step for finding a "Peaceful Solution" to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict is for the Palestinian people themselves to realize at long last that they lost the war in 1948.

In our Israeli educational systems we do not teach militarism and anti Arabic hatred. Our children are taught to value life and to grow to enjoy it. We do not dress our children in military garb and teach them "martyrdom". We teach our children the love for the "Land of Israel". We attempt to teach tolerance and acceptance.

The Palestinians, through the UNWRA funded Palestinian Authority, on the other-hand teach their children that Jewish "settlers" - not the settlers of Judea and Shomron but the Jewish presence in ALL of Palestine have usurped their ancestral homes and that only through military struggle will their return to their "Homeland" be achieved. The call to "wipe the Jewish nation" and "Jewish People" off the map is taught to the children on a daily basis.

Let me clarify by stating that we should not tolerate their use of terror and we should aspire to do our uttermost to eradicate it by legal means.

As Zev Jabotinsky once stated:

‎"All of us, all Jews and Zionists of all schools of thought, want the best for the Arabs of Eretz ‎Israel. We do not want to eject even one Arab from either the left or the right bank of the Jordan ‎River. We want them to prosper both economically and culturally. We envision the regime of ‎Jewish Palestine as follows: most of the population will be Jewish, but equal rights for all Arab ‎citizens will not only be guaranteed, they will also be fulfilled."  

Yes, there have been protests by those who are labeled as "Leftists" who are ignorant of the very reason for their presence in this land. Their parents had been so fearful of those that drove them here they negated and hid their faith in Judaism thinking it would "save them"from the utter hatred in the lands that drove them out. They negated their religion as they attempted to assimilate and hide thinking that by denying who they were that it would save them from the storm of anti-Semitism. In doing so they never taught their children the actual basis for their presence here.

What needs to be understood by those of us who do know our reason for existing here in the Land of Israel, is that the youth that committed the attack of burning the homes of Palestinians did so from an ideology based on pure hatred which cannot be tolerated.

As Jews we come from a higher moral plain than those who hate us, for this is why HaShem choose us. We need to aspire to a higher code of conduct while on the other-hand retaining the willingness to defend our people and our land.