For part I, click here.
When Pharaoh decreed slavery for the Jews, he framed the persecution as astute national defense policy. Medieval inquisitors persecuted Jews in the name of divine justice. Nazi jurists wrote laws that made the destruction of Jews seem like the defense of Germany. Each era baptizes its Jew-hatred in the language it most reveres.
Our era’s sacred language is law. The three most manipulative words in the contemporary lexicon are: “International Law says…" Once uttered, the phrase ends debate. Television anchors, ambassadors, and activists invoke it as if citing scripture. Israel, more than any other country on earth, indeed more than all of them together, is uniquely chained in the dock of this selective morality court. The irony is both that Israel’s legal foundation is unusually clear and that those who scream about “international law" either clearly never read it or are simply ignoring what they read.
After our original Biblical deed to the land, there are three key instruments of international law that establish the Jewish people’s inalienable national rights in the Land of Israel.
*The Balfour Declaration (1917) was the first formal recognition by a major power of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."
*The San Remo Resolution (1920) adopted the Balfour Declaration as binding international policy, assigning Britain a mandate to implement a Jewish national home in Palestine.
*The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (1922) codified this, recognizing “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" and calling for “close settlement by Jews on the land..."
*When the League dissolved, Article 80 of the UN Charter preserved the rights granted in existing mandates.
No subsequent UN resolution has lawfully revoked the Jewish people’s recognized national and political rights west of the Jordan River. Under the principle of Uti Possidetis Juris-that new states inherit the borders of the previous administrative entity-Israel’s borders derive from the Mandate territory. There is no legally recognized sovereign that ever held Judea and Samaria and no treaty assigns that land to another state. Under Uti Possidetis Juris, territorial title passes only to a new state from the prior sovereign, preserving existing administrative borders at independence.
Aside from the fact that Jordan’s 1951 illegal annexation of the "West Bank" was never recognized by more than two countries, when the PLO declared independence in 1988, it was not the successor state of Jordan. Insofar as Uti Possidetis Juris does not transfer territory from one claimant to a non-state organization, the PLO could not “inherit" Jordan’s already illegitimate claim to the "West Bank".
The often quoted Fourth Geneva Convention, drafted in 1949 to prevent Nazi‑style deportations and demographic engineering, has been routinely and maliciously misapplied to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. The Convention concerns forcible population transfers between sovereign states or from a state into a disputed territory. It does not prohibit individuals of any ethnicity from voluntarily living in disputed territory. The singling out of Jewish residence as uniquely forbidden is not a neutral legal conclusion; it is a patently antisemitic political choice solemnly dressed up in pseudo-legal garb. It is also quite similar to the Restrictive Covenants used to prevent Black Americans from renting or buying property during the beginning of the 20th century.
Given the real details of actual international law, how did we reach a point where Jewish neighborhoods in Judea and Samaria are reflexively and angrily labeled “illegal settlements," and Jewish presence beyond the 1949 armistice lines is treated as a war crime? The answer is not in an honest reading of actual legal texts and treaties, but a long-game political passion project. After several failed wars of annihilation against Israel, Arab states and their allies increasingly shifted from conventional warfare to diplomatic and legal assault-what is now called lawfare. UN bodies, often dominated by non‑democratic states, began passing a flood of resolutions that falsely treated Israel as uniquely guilty, while ignoring actual far more serious violations elsewhere. Just for one example, between 2015-2024, the UN General Assembly adopted 173 resolutions condemning Israel while only 80 resolutions were adopted against all other countries combined in that same period which saw close to 2.5 million global deaths from war and terror.
The one consistent target of “international law" outrage is the Jewish state whose existence is rooted in both ancient history and modern legal instruments.
Institutions designed to prevent another Holocaust are now deployed to accuse the descendants of Holocaust survivors of Nazi‑like crimes. In previous centuries, clerics invoked divine authority to accuse Jews of ritual murder. Today, diplomats, pundits and NGOs invoke vague legal authority to accuse Jews of collective criminality. The structure is identical: declare the Jew uniquely guilty, declare that guilt metaphysical and non‑negotiable, then demand punishment in the name of a "higher moral order".
At this point, “international law" in public discourse functions less as law and more as liturgy. Israel-focused UN “advisory opinions" or politicized moves by the International Criminal Court, are cited as if they represented careful jurisprudence rather than pre‑determined outcomes. Complex realities and binding prior instruments are ignored. What matters is that the ritual pseudo-legal phrases be intoned: “illegal," “occupation," “settler‑colonialism." This is closely followed by the moral inversion of language itself. Terror gangs are called “militants," pogroms against Jewish civilians are absurdly framed as “resistance," and the horror of murdered Jewish civilians is sanitized by the enlightened class who reduce them to “settlers living on stolen land."
“International law," as commonly wielded against Israel, has become less about protecting human rights and more about criminalizing Jewish self‑determination. It is the latest iteration of the ancient Blood Libel, with international courtrooms, newsrooms, and classrooms replacing cathedrals.
In Part 3, we will see how the most explosive accusations-“apartheid," “genocide," and “settler violence"-complete this process: taking words with precise meaning and stripping them of content and context until they become weapons aimed solely at Jews.
Daniel Winston is a therapist and writer living in Northern Samaria, Israel and can be reached at DanielWinston.com.