Letter to the Guardian Newspaper by Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation

Letter to the Guardian Newspaper by Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation

www.guardian.co.uk

You report (19 December) that the Foreign Office is to warn against the purchase of property in the "occupied territories". The government has no legal basis for its oft-repeated assertion that the settlements are "illegal under international law". The Geneva convention cannot apply to most of the "occupied territories" because they have never been recognised as sovereign territory. As part of Mandatory Palestine, Judea and Samaria never belonged to any sovereign state, but were occupied and administered illegally by Jordan and Egypt between 1948 and 1967, after the Arab war of aggression against Israel in 1948. And East Jerusalem was captured by Jordan in the war of 1948.

Moreover, the Geneva convention was designed to prohibit the forcible transfer of population into occupied territories, such as was practised by the Nazis and USSR before and during the second world war. But the Israeli settlers in the West Bank made a free choice to move there. And as a country that was attacked, Israel is entirely within its legal rights to retain territory that continues to be used as a base for attacks against it.

By raising unrealistic expectations, much of the current rhetoric from the UK government risks encouraging extremists. Israel has proved that it wants peace - by negotiating peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan - and is prepared to give up land, by withdrawing from Gaza. In the midst of the Annapolis peace process, the government must support the voices of moderation and not those of extremism.
Jonathan Hoffman
Vice-chairman, Zionist Federation

(visit the link for the full news article)

The argument put by Jonathan Hoffman goes thusly; Because Palestinians have never formed a modern state in the European model, they are exempt from the protection of the Geneva Convention, therefore, Israel is within its rights to do as it wills against Palestinians.

The Geneva Conventions attempts to protect human rights and minimise human suffering in situations of conflict and occupation. Palestinian have human rights as articulated in all known national constitutions recognising this condition, as defined in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, the Nuremberg articles, the United Nations constitution, World Court, as in most religions and of course as found in basic ethics.

Nevertheless, Jonathan Hoffman seeks to divorce this recognitions from the Palestinians based on technicalities involving defined national jurisdictions. Either this man is operating under some unknown and alien concept of ethics or humanity or he is aiming to facilitate Israel's activities regarding the Palestinians in a moral vacuum. He is proposing that the world accept this moral detour based on sophistic arguments.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 053131p://pm3152 by masonwatcher]