Steve Apfel calls himself a diversity freak. Economist. Former director and founder of the School of Management Accounting. Veteran authority on non-military wars against Israel. Anti-Semitism lone soldier. Prodigious author.
A survey reveals that 75% of American Jews fear Israel becoming a pariah in the West. Since 50% feel a need to conceal their Jewish identity, it may already be a pariah. Israel’s fair weather allies would not otherwise have taken depictions of famine in Gaza as their long-awaited window to recognize ‘Palestine’.
The blockbuster will be staged at a September sitting of the UN General Assembly, that forum of duplicitous diplomats, fickle and treacherous, inveterate feudists, liars and extortionists.
The pretext for leaders of Canada, Australia, Britain and France to preen their virtue feathers couldn’t be more persuasive. Public and media consensus condemned Israel as a child-killing juggernaut. Small wonder that the four handed down a penal sentence chockfull of spite. They couldn’t wait to declare a state of Palestine, even while Hamas remains a force to be reckoned with. As a minister in the Australian government put the grimy excuse for diplomacy:
“Both Syria and Iraq had a long period where parts of those countries were being occupied and realistically controlled by ISIS. It didn’t stop us from recognizing and having diplomatic relations with those countries.”
The long and short of it is that a kamikaze neighbor dumped on the doorstep of Israelis will have de facto license to infiltrate their metropolises, towns and settlements.
Only the UN could pull off a gimmick of this magnitude.
Of course ‘Palestine’ won’t exactly be real. It won’t however be a trick of the imagination. Call it a contrivance. Some dignitary will cut a ribbon and salute the colors tottering up a Ramallah flagpole. The ceremonials done with, Israel having decimated Gaza, will be lured into committing a second ‘genocide’ in the 'West Bank'.
“It reflects a commitment to international law and support for the Palestinian people's rights to self-determination,” said a Palestinian Arab diplomat, anticipating the new state. In UN ‘speak’ he meant a commitment to the game of International Law. The object is to displace Star of David counters on the game board with keffiyeh counters while you mimic, “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Can such buffoonery amount to much?
Israel may find itself skating on thin ice. For international law it involves relegation to a fun amateur league. Dreamers of the Two-State Solution will take the recognition of "Palestine" as a consolation prize. To nine-tenths of UN members it means a step closer to axing Israel’s right to exist. Washington and Brussels will get a new arm-twister for making Israel do their bidding. To every participant it amounts to a global “Game of Thrones.”
Giving the Pals a state is all well and good. But where shall it be put? On who’s land? To what extent between the river and sea? The gift of the givers may not be theirs to give - the Pals are not the only people with skin in the game.
If we make-believe that Israel’s hot and cold allies are bona fide ‘critics’ then from the get-go they fixated on two criticisms:
- Israel violates international law.
- Israel occupies ‘Palestinian Territory.’
The Israeli government’s new plan for Gaza converted the criticisms into deed: Arise oh Palestine!
The tomfoolery gift wraps an opportunity for Israel. Not just any but a cosmic opportunity to combat a global fixation with "Palestine" that gets away with condemning Oct 7 and rewarding it in one breath.
Seeing that recognising "Palestine" is all the rage, one recognition deserves another. It’s about time that Israel’s prime Minister should recognise what could be the diplomatic blunder he’ll take to his grave. A decade ago victory in the propaganda war was at his command. Abundant caution (a tactful way of saying ‘cold feet’) decided him not to go ahead.
Had a younger and more timid Netanyahu taken the leap in mid 2012, the fateful claims that Israel violates international law and that it occupies "Palestinian" Territory would today be clumsy calumnies instead of the scourge of its right to exist. I’ve spent a decade prodding Israel-pundits to this effect. The Case The lie The ICJ façade Judgment that plagues Israel
It’s open season for rewarding Hamas and punishing Israel. Europe can’t get enough of it.
- Norway’s Foreign Minister said, “Israel’s takeover of the entire Gaza Strip is an unacceptable violation of international law.”
- Holland’s Foreign Minister said, “We have always been clear: Gaza belongs to the Palestinians.”
- Foreign ministers of the UK, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Australia issued a joint warning that, “Any attempts at annexation or of settlement extension, violate international law."
- Belgium's deputy PM said: “These are legal obligations that compel us to recognize Palestine. This is a matter of applying the law rationally. You can’t negotiate with the law; you can’t turn it into political currency.”
Belgium’s clown in particular effectively invites Bibi to publicly humiliate him.
You don’t have to be a professor of international law or Google fruitlessly in order to hit on the makeshift trick. The diplomats are on the wrong side of the law. Indelible records of binding Jewish rights to Palestine go back to the British Mandate. Cactus thorns to actors who make no bones that Jews have no right to claim rights, the playbook can’t be cruder: don’t acknowledge that records exist. Instead they reference the ICJ - that go-to kangaroo court for terrorist supporters - in order to make “thunderous intonations about international law”
It all begs the question: why did successive Israeli governments, led mostly by Bibi himself, not challenge the perennial libel that Israel occupies Palestinian Arab territory? And while at it, why did he never insist that the UN or the ICJ or the humbugs in Brussels disclose the great event by which Israel came to occupy the Pals precious territory? Homed like a drone, he should be a safe bet for telling the four powers to stop with their publicity stunt “Occupation’. To call the bluff.
Alas. Enragement sidetracked Israel’s longest serving leader. When venomous diplomats vaunted their weak underbelly Bibi fired a shotgun. He pepper-sprayed scattered targets and eliminated none. “Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails,” he said. “Palestine will not happen.” Then he poked at France’s Macron for “encouraging the Jew-hatred now stalking your streets.” Sadly the firepower of Israel pundits as a whole was defective.
It took a group of British lawyers to attack the incoming missile. Looking to explode the menace in midair, it warned Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s law advisor that recognition of
"Palestine" risked breaking international law. What possible difference could that make?
It depends on a catchphrase and its power. Every cause must have one. And since demonizing Israel is the mother of all causes, nothing but the Coca-Cola of catchphrases will suffice. It is demonstrably true that if not for the manic misnomer, “Occupied Palestinian Territory” Israel could have won the propaganda war instead of lamenting being the loser.
Skittish Israeli coalitions, fearing to step onto a diplomatic minefield, stumbled onto the mother of all minefields. The catchphrase is anti-Zionism’s ‘Hail Mary’. On platforms from Harvard Yard to Piers Morgan Uncensored, ‘Occupation’ abetted by #GazaHolocaust, excused Oct 7.Going by the narrative there is a beginning to everything, and October 7 was not it. Occupation was the beginning.
The dereliction of duty by a succession of Israeli governments had a beginning too. As Prime Minister in 2012 Netanyahu looked to be taking the offensive. He tasked a commission under retired Chief Justice Edmund Levy to “Examine the Status of Building in Judea and Samaria.” The objective was to “Regularize” unauthorized Jewish communities in the "West Bank". It confirmed that Jewish settlement is perfectly in keeping with international law. Nor does the "West Bank" as “occupied territory” have a legal leg to support keep it upright.
In sum, the Levy commission stated that no legal impediment stood in the way of settlement-building. Where can this armory in a document be found? Look in state archives where it lies accumulating coats of dust.
Again there’s a real beginning, and the Levy Report was not it. By winning the 1967 war in 6 days and by taking territories from aggressors who had a mind to commit a second Holocaust - one they would not have denied but proclaimed - the Jewish army committed a grievous sin. Anticipating diplomatic toil and trouble, Israel’s High Court bound it to the Geneva Conventions.
As if to leave no room for doubt, the red flag word, ‘belligerent’ wrapped Israel’s guilt ‘to go’. Judges Aharon Barak, Eliahu Matza and Mishel Heshin announced to a rapacious world that Israel was an invader by a belligerent act of war. “The military commander of territory held in belligerent occupation must balance between the needs of the army on one hand, and the needs of local inhabitants on the other.”
It was perhaps the biggest ‘own goal’ in Israel’s political record of own goals. It weaponised kangaroo courts, UN forums, law schools and NGO’s of every description. Never mind that the ruling wilfully treated the seminal argument of Judge Stephen M Schwebel as if it never existed. The Schwebel: alias US Supreme Court justice, alias Professor of International Law at John Hopkins University, alias member of the UN Law Commission, alias twice elected President of the once proud International Court of Justice. In 1994 he set the unarguable ‘Self-Defense’ principle in which he began,
"A state [Israel] acting in lawful exercise of its right of self-defense may seize and occupy foreign territory as long as such seizure and occupation are necessary to its self-defense.”
To be fair Israel’s High Court tried to ring-fence its craven ruling. It stated that the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibiting mass transfer of population into occupied territory, as practiced by the 3rd Reich in WW2, was not meant to apply to Israelis who chose to live in Judea and Samaria.
“Not meant to apply”... A jeweler who decorates his window with all that glitters never meant to be burgled. The High Court chose to mobilize global condemnation of Israeli occupation. It only goes to prove that honorable intentions, when Jews have them, are marked down as a demerit. And so it happened that ‘Occupation of Palestinian Territories’ (OPT) became the bane of Israel’s disputed existence.
It would be a storm in a teacup if the catchphrase was a mere misnomer. To the contrary, it grew into a monster which created facts on the ground. For one thing, the international community adopted OPT. For another, a vocal section of the Diaspora, and even Israelis, nailed their colors to that mast. Third, an economic bubble developed around OPT. Monthly pay slips of untold hundreds of thousands of UN employees depend on the unreal real estate. Thousands of human rights entities owe their business to it.
But for the big hoax the world would be a different, if quieter, place. And the Zionist enterprise would not be under pressure to capitulate to Hamas, declare a unilateral ceasefire and consign the few live hostages to the living dead.
A short version of this article appearaed on the American Spectator