The UN has voted to remove Jews from Israel. Still the Israeli government won’t play the trump card
Imagine, if you can, that rocket barrages from Lebanon are not intercepted as a matter of policy. The war cabinet is wary that deploying Iron Dome will give Israel a belligerent name, even among allies. Preposterous?
In point of fact it happens to be close to the way Israel has conducted international relations. For fear of upsetting allies no cabinet has summoned the chutzpah to play the trump card it held. Rather, like the coalition Netanyahu cobbled together, they chose to absorb barrage after barrage of a lie masqueraded as a written clause in international law rather than call the bluff.
The way Netanyahu’s cabinet met a resolution, perfidious even by UN standards, followed the time honoured pattern. On 18 September 2024 the General Assembly flooded a resolution with the bald though evergreen lie. Time over time it asserted Israel’s illegal presence in the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” a sanctified space that goes with the globe’s favourite conflict as butter goes with bread. The General Assembly had voted to evict Israel from it, giving Israel 12 months to get out.
Importantly the eviction order does not stop at land. The ‘illegal occupier’ must withdraw from the land, from the air, and from the sea. Brilliant! The UN thereby invents a whole new ballgame. In two foul swoops it debars the IDF from tracking and eliminating terrorists on the ground and from the sky. In a third foul swoop it stops the IDF intercepting military and tunnelling materials and equipment shipped to Hamas through the port of Gaza.
It goes without saying that Israel will ignore such tomfoolery. But will her suppliers? The UN’s court minions at The Hague lie in wait to rule weapon embargos on Israel that would be risky for American and European suppliers to flout.
What a gross ploy! How did Israeli officials bear up to the shock? They scrambled to attack the UN with rambling and wishy-washy declamations. They rubbished the eviction order as, “cynical international politics that would encourage terrorism and harm the chances for peace.” They called the order, “a distorted decision disconnected from reality”. They pointed out that the resolution, “strengthened Hamas and the Iranian terrorist state behind it.” And firing a damp squid parting shot, they complained that the UN had sent, “a message that terrorism pays and also makes a hostage deal less likely”.
Think of the benign complaints as equivalent to not bringing Iron Dome into action for fear of upsetting allies. Liken them to a barrage of rockets and UAVs not being intercepted and hitting targets.
Small wonder, in the light of such candyfloss verbal counter attacks, that lawfare has got Israel scurrying between Washington, the UN and The Hague to explain itself. Alan Baker, legal advisor to Israel for the 1993 Oslo Accords, himself couldn’t explain the mystery of obsessively shy Israeli governments withholding the winning card.
Two questions: What will it take for the government to shed its diffidence and play the card? And how would that dismantle the decisive lie of Occupied Palestinian Territory?
It would take three changes of attitude for Israel to put down its card on the gaming table:
(1) Appreciating that the power of anti-Israel propaganda is consumptive. (2) The courage to stare down western allies that have drunk the Cool Aid of illegal occupation rendering, to their mind, Jewish settlements a political hot potato. (3) Understanding that ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ is a crutch without which lawfare against Israel must buckle and collapse.
In a 1928 groundbreaking book simply titled, Propaganda, Edward Bernays wrote that, “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power.” Unwittingly close to Israel fighting against lawfare, Bernays wrote also that, “The language of democracy can be used to mask an undemocratic reality”. By the same token the language of international law can be used to mask the reality of political bias. Masking for the nefarious purpose relies on the term, ‘Occupation.’
When the UN Secretary General said that Oct 7 did not happen in a vacuum he was alluding to the "Occupation". When campus crazies called themselves the ‘resistance’ they meant resisting the "Occupation". Hamas used "Occupation" to justify Oct 7. The world court’s ongoing trial over Israel’s possible genocide in Gaza relies on the "Occupation".
No term has dominated discourse on the conflict more than it. Hardly a day passes without a claim that Israel is illegally in "Occupied" Palestinian Territory. The term is invoked to explain the origins and persistence of the conflict; to complain of Israel's ‘repressive’ acts; to justify the hatred of Jewish settlers; or to call for boycotts – economic, military, diplomatic and cultural.
In short, "Occupation" is a catchphrase meaning whatever Israel-haters want it to mean. The latest UN resolution relied on ‘Occupation’ to expel 800,000 Israelis from Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria.
What makes it one big sham?
The most absurd aspect of the last year is the willingness of the White House to claim that peace will come when Palestinians have a state of their own.
There is no historic or factual basis for that claim. Gaza was a Palestinian state that became a terror state the moment Hamas seized power
At war, Israel snapped up two territories, Gaza and the 'West Bank', fair and square from Egypt and Jordan. Turn Middle East wars and laws upside down and inside out, ‘Occupied Palestine’ never enters.
The above certitude can be tested three ways: (1) By the logic of chronology. (2) By the ICJ’s nod of agreement. (3) By the identical international law that propagandists habitually condemn Israel for violating.
1) The logic of chronology
Not even "Occupation"-pounder Wiki can help dating the "occupation" to the year 1967 when Israel captured territories during the 6-day War. Nor is Wiki in denial that Israel captured Gaza from Egypt and the 'West Bank' from Jordan. Absolutely no Palestinian Arab territory enters the picture in 1967. How could it indeed when ‘The Palestinians’ did not enter the lexicon until a year later?
So the problem is stark. In what year and by what process did Gaza and the 'West Bank' get transferred to Palestinian ownership? What was the recorded event at which this happened? Go to Wiki. Zero answer. Go to a source of your own choosing. Zero answer.
2) The ICJ’s tacit nod and the careless disclosure by an ICJ ad hoc judge
The International Court of Justice gave birth to ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ in July 2004. The midwife was the court’s non-binding advisory on Israel’s separation ‘wall’. No less than ad hoc judge to the ICJ, Professor John Dugard, pointed me to this first time ever paralegal recognition of ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory.’ We are talking 11 years after the signing of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn in 1993, President Bill Clinton beaming over the handshake of the two signatories. What! – ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ is a punkish 20 year-old freak.
3) The identical international law which anti-Israel propagandists spitefully parade
Certain contemporary facts are not in dispute. In the 1948 War Egypt captured the Gaza Strip, and Jordan took Judea and Samaria. Egypt did not claim sovereignty in Gaza, but in 1950 Jordan annexed Judea and Samaria, subsequently known as ‘The West Bank.’ The annexation was not recognized by international law, and even the Arab nations objected to it. In 1967, after the Six Day War, these territories, meant for the Jewish people's national home, under international law, returned to Israeli control.
Expelled from one dugout, anti-Israelites scamper to another, firing the next volley from the landmark Security Council Resolution 242 of 1968. It required Israel to withdraw from some of the territory it snapped up in the 6-Day War. No! – says the Palestinian camp, No, no no! Resolution 242 told Israel to withdraw from all territory. Some or all—quite how it connects to the narrative of 'Occupied Palestinian Territory' is never explained. It could be a bridge too far for those wanting Palestine to prevail. It cannot.
Resolution 242 nowhere refers to Palestinians. How could it? (a) They were not one of the belligerents in the Six Day War. (b) The drafters of the resolution looked to the victor Israel to give back territory – to the defeated Arab belligerents. (c) Not until a year after Resolution 242 do the Palestinian people appear in records. (d) No binding UN resolution, before or since, nor treaty nor agreement gives the Palestinians a legal leg to stand on.
In short, to speak of "Occupied Palestinian Territory" is to speak UN lingo and be caught in wishful thinking.
If not for the big hoax the Middle East and indeed the globe would be different if quieter locales. And but for their lack of chutzpah, Israel’s leaders would not today be scurrying between Washington, international courts and UN forums instead of giving real wars on the borders their undivided attention.
Steve Apfel is a long recognised authority on anti-Zionism and prolific author.