From IsraelNN.com: Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: “Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law.” Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years. The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes. Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers – the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions. Gauthier’s main point, as summarized by Israpundit
Read More +Forgotten Legal Rights
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From Forgotten Legal Rights: After most armed conflicts, the international community has sought to re-establish the status quo ante – the previous situation – as part of a political settlement. However, many aspects of the prewar status quo in 1967 were untenable, if not illegal. Jordan and Egypt previously occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of an invasion by the Arab states in 1948 that the UN Secretary-General at the time, Trygve Lie, called an act of “aggression.” In the Six-Day War nearly 20 years later, Israel entered these territories in what was plainly a war
Read More +Amid General Amnesia
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Excellent points made here. From Amid General Amnesia: It’s a curious thing: Although the map that was changed by the Six-Day War had been in existence for less than 20 years, starting with Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, and more than twice as many years have gone by since then, that map of the Middle East continues to be regarded by the world as the “right” map, while the map that replaced it is considered a temporary aberration that needs to be canceled or reversed. Similarly, the world has forgotten what the pre-1967 map was really like. Far from
Read More +The Most Justified War
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From The Most Justified War: As Ha’aretz’s correspondent in Paris before the 1967 Six-Day War, I was at the Israeli Embassy when half a million people rallied in the streets to show their solidarity with Israel. There was a sense that the Arabs were about to wipe out the Jewish state. On television, people saw Egyptian troops marching into Sinai; they heard Nasser’s warmongering speeches. Ahmed Shukeiry, the secretary of the Arab League, declared that the Jews of Israel would be sent back to the countries they came from and native Israelis would be slaughtered. What those now denouncing the
Read More +From Forty Years Later, Doing Nothing Is the Best Policy: In this week’s torrent of 40th anniversary recollections about the Six-Day War, one TV image cut straight to the chase: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia staring into a camera to say, “The essential point remains the total elimination of Israel.” The king’s statement of principles was captured in “Six Days in June,” an impressive two-hour documentary that aired Monday on PBS. For all the noise about peace in the 40 years since, the Saudi monarch’s silver bullet solution is still the basic Arab mindset. As do-gooders and militants reflect on
Read More +Three paratroopers
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One of my most favorite photos revisited 40 years later. Via In Context: JERUSALEM: It’s an image etched in history — an iconic photo that captured Israel in its most triumphant moment. Three young, battle-worn faces gazing up in wonder at the Western Wall, moments after capturing Judaism’s holiest site on June 7, 1967. The three paratroopers — Zion Karasanti, Yitzhak Yifat and Haim Oshri — became famous as symbols of that victory before drifting back into anonymity. Forty years later, they recalled the instant that changed their lives and the life of their country. “It was an uplifting moment,
Read More +The Six-Day War: A Defensive War
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From The Six-Day War: A Defensive War: International law makes a clear distinction between land “occupied” during a war of aggression and land taken as a result of a defensive war. On June 5, 1967, Jordan attacked Israel. Suburbs of Tel Aviv were shelled by artillery. Israel’s largest military airfield, Ramat David, was shelled. Jordanian warplanes attacked the central Israeli towns of Netanya and Kfar Saba. Thousands of mortar shells rained down on western Jerusalem, targeting Israel’s parliament building and the prime minister’s office. Twenty Israelis died in these attacks; 1,000 were wounded; 900 buildings were damaged. Only after coming
Read More +No Pyrrhic Victory
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From No Pyrrhic Victory: It is often said today that the Six-Day War humiliated the Arabs and propelled the region into future rounds of fighting. Yet only a few days before the outbreak of the war, Iraq’s then-President Abdul Rahman Aref saw it as “our opportunity…to wipe Israel off the map,” describing the war as the Arabs’ chance “to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948.” It is said that the Palestinian movement was born from Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Yet the Palestine Liberation Organization was already in its third year of
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