1. A FASCINATING DOCUMENT, BY MORDECHAI SONES, DRAFTED THIS CHANUKAH.
“LEGISLATIVE INSTRUMENT”:
THE ONLY WAY WITHIN NATURE
TO SAVE
JUDEA AND SAMARIA
By Mordechai Sones
INTRODUCTION
In the past, the greatest vulnerability of policies of genocide, expulsion, or abandonment that seemed unstoppable has been a deliberate process of public exposure and subsequent political change accomplished through the grassroots vehicle of a “Legislative Instrument”.
This deliberate process can be studied in its historical context and learned from to deliberately rectify a flawed government policy such as Israel’s current Judea and Samaria policy. Historically, this process has always followed a pattern of concrete steps:
· RESOLUTION;
· POLICY;
· ESTABLISHMENT OF AGENCY;
· IMPLEMENTATION
When we celebrate the reversal of Haman’s planned genocide against the Jewish people on Purim, we generally do not recognize the elements of this process explicitly revealed in Megillas Esther for us to utilize as an example to follow.
However, an essential component of Mordechai and Esther’s success in transforming a policy of genocide against the Jewish people was the “R.P.E.I. Process”:
“Yesterday, it was illegal for the Jews to defend themselves; today, thanks to the new law (Legislative Instrument), it is legal for them to defend themselves.”
That is to say, even after the exposure and execution of Haman, the victory of Purim could not have been achieved without the essential element of the Legislative Instrument.
THE R.P.E.I. PROCESS IN MEGILLAS ESTHER :
RESOLUTION - Esther Confronts Achashverosh with Plot.
“What is your petition, Queen Esther?” asked the king at the second day’s banquet.
“If I have found favor in the king’s eyes,” replied Esther, “and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request. We have been sold to an evil man to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. This vile enemy has a deep personal hatred for me and wishes to dispose of me through the genocide of my people. Your majesty had been deceived into believing that some obscure race was involved, but in truth it is my own people. This wicked murderer has presented his entire plot to the king as a patriotic campaign to convert an unbelieving people while he has actually laid plans for their total annihilation.
“Had he duped the king into selling me and my people into slavery I would have held my peace rather than ask the king to rescind a decree signed in his name, without his knowledge of its victims. But now that he has so thoroughly misled his majesty in every aspect of his plot I feel that I must reveal his true intentions. It is not my people who endanger the kingdom, as he reported to the king, but this evil plotter who is a grave threat to the realm.”
The king was completely taken aback by Esther’s charges and turned to his household for an explanation.
“Who is the man that dares plot such a thing and what reason could have motivated him?”
This adversary and enemy is none other than Haman!” cried Esther. “His deep personal hatred for me and my people has moved him to plot our destruction.”
The uncovering of Haman’s plot ended Achasheverosh’s acquiescence to Haman’s decree.
Although Haman himself was eliminated, his decree to annihilate the Jews was still in effect, as Median law was that an edict signed and sealed by the king could not be revoked.
POLICY: then King gave ring to Mordechai.
At the second feast, Esther asked, “let an edict be written to revoke the letters.” Two different letters were sent out. One was a public declaration, which only said that the people should be “ready on that day.” But they did not know what to be ready for. The second version of the edict was a letter sent to the ministers of every town and province. These contained the explicit order to “destroy, murder, and annihilate all the Jews.” This order was to be kept secret until the appointed day.
Information regarding Achashverosh’s acquiescence in Haman’s plan to kill the Jews had been restricted to the governors and ministers of the provinces.
ESTABLISHMENT OF AGENCY: the sending out of the couriers and activation of militias, and
They succeeded, although time was very short. “The horsemen were sent out dchufim u’movhalim….”
IMPLEMENTATION: Purim
Let us then concisely define a Grassroots Legislative Instrument: An effective grassroots legislative instrument would allow activists and those with political power to effectively mobilize Israel's moral interests to initiate and conduct a debate that transforms political thinking on an issue and remedies flaws in current policy.
An effective grassroots legislative instrument would contain the following essential elements:
1. Clarify changes in government policy toward the land and the people which the government has either suppressed or the media has failed to report.
2. Articulate Jewish moral, legal, strategic, and economic interests at stake in Yesha, particularly those overlooked or marginalized by Knesset debate.
3. Rebuke those official policies that violate the aforementioned values and interests. Doing this in a sufficiently compelling way can re-connect Jews to the Jewish heartland, and can become politically impossible to oppose it in public.
4. Establish clear policy initiatives for building a Jewish Yesha, including outreach to and alliance with all groups involved in related work.
5. After reading the text, people with a genuine interest in the issue would be able to perceive that the legislation would justify time taken off from work or family responsibilities to lobby their elected and appointed officials.
6. In the case of Israeli Yesha policy, transformation in outlook will be necessary to achieve the required change in Israeli policy. Only a few models of such successful instruments exist: the Declaration of Independence in 1776; the Lahore Resolution of 1940, demanding a separate nation for the Muslims of India, resulting in the independence of Pakistan; the 1944 Department of Treasury Memorandum which persuaded President Roosevelt to end his acquiescence in the murder of Europe's Jews.
The 1944 U.S. Department of Treasury memorandum that persuaded President Roosevelt to end his administration’s acquiescence in the murder of Europe’s Jews resulted in the establishment of the War Refugee Board.
THE R.P.E.I. PROCESS IN WORLD WAR II :
· RESOLUTION;
· POLICY;
· ESTABLISHMENT OF AGENCY;
· IMPLEMENTATION
RESOLUTION TO SAVE LIVES
A passionate young U.S. Treasury official named Josiah DuBois provides us with a shining example of what a single man’s thoughtful commitment against a bankrupt policy can accomplish:
Refugee and visa questions had been delegated to Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, whose orders were to curb any special efforts on behalf of Jews, as these would create a diversion from the war effort. This restrictive approach was not only Long’s wish but also that of Long’s good friend, the President of the United States.
DuBois and two other low-ranking Treasury Department officials had put their careers on the line to research and document State Department suppression of information, which prevented the rescue of several hundred thousand Jews. The Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews was presented by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. to President Roosevelt, forcing him to realize that history would judge his government’s policies responsible for being willing bystanders to genocide.
The delegation led by Secretary Morgenthau confronted President Roosevelt face-to-face with this memorandum. The President found it no longer politically possible to remain part of such a murderous policy of abandonment.
The eighteen-page DuBois Memorandum, based on research into U.S. official suppression of information about the Holocaust, exposed how policy officials were not merely incompetent or confused about how to best rescue the Jews of Europe, but were actively suppressing information which circumvented rescue from taking place. This behavior, once documented, became impossible for Roosevelt to sweep under the table.
RECTIFYING POLICY
As the Treasury representatives dissected the obstructive tactics of the State Department, Roosevelt must have realized that his own failure to liberalize refugee policies bore much of the responsibility. Furthermore, Morgenthau’s Personal Report contained political dynamite and Roosevelt knew it. If it were made public the damage to the prestige and good faith of his Administration would be incalculable.
Roosevelt knew that he would have to take action – and quickly.
The Treasury men had been far-sighted enough to bring along the suggested draft of an executive order establishing a War Refugee Board.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee had already been considering a resolution
“urging the creation by the President of a commission of diplomatic, economic, and military experts to formulate and effectuate a plan of immediate action designed to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany.”
Breckinridge Long testified in those hearings, denying the need for such a commission on the grounds that State was already aiding rescue work in the most effective manner.
Executive Order 9417 creating the Board began by stating that
“it is the policy of this government to take all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death and otherwise to afford such victims all possible relief and assistance consistent with the successful prosecution of the war.”
The order went on to define the administrative structure of the Board within the executive office of the President, responsible directly to the President:
The Board’s function would include
“without limitation, the development of plans and programs…for (a) the rescue, transportation, maintenance, and relief of the victims of enemy oppression, and (b) the establishment of havens of temporary refuge for such victims.”
The objective of the Board’s Washington staff was to develop positive, new American programs to aid the victims of Nazism while pressing the Allies and neutrals to take forceful diplomatic action in their behalf.
The War Refugee Board had a small staff, consisting of:
· General Counsel
· Executive Director
· Liaison with the State Department
· Field Representative
The Board was given added sinews in its power to work with private organizations and foreign governments in achieving its objectives.
The practice of suppressing unpleasant information had ended.
THE WAR REFUGEE BOARD – ESTABLISHING THE AGENCY
Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the formation of the War refugee Board on January 22, 1944. Three days later a cable drafted by John Pehle was sent over the signature of Cordell Hull to all United States Embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic missions. It ordered that “action be taken to forestall the plot of the Nazis to exterminate the Jews and other persecuted minorities in Europe.”
The message specified “communication facilities should be made freely available to private agencies for all appropriate messages for carrying out this policy of the government.”
In Washington, the War Refugee Board was bringing continuous pressure against the Axis satellites, reminding them that their mistreatment of the Jews would be remembered after the war, stressing the American determination to punish war criminals.
In place of the weak, apologetic appeals sent sporadically by Breckinridge Long and his associates, the new directives were urgent and uncompromising.
In the belief that the Nazi’s avowed drive to exterminate the Jews should be condemned and war criminals threatened with drastic punishment, the Board drafted a forceful declaration which it hoped would be issued by President Roosevelt. The British government opposed the statement on the ground that similar declarations had been ineffective and had proved “embarrassing” to the Allies.
John Pehle reacted immediately to the British argument. On February 11 he wrote to Undersecretary Stettinius, stressing that the leaders of the enemy nation must be convinced that the Allies were dedicated to the rescue of the Jews. Pehle argued that a change in enemy attitudes, brought about by a new realization of Anglo-American determination to rescue the Jews, could result in the saving of many more lives than complicated rescue programs.
On March 24, 1944, President Roosevelt issued the strong statement drafted by the War Refugee Board.
The March 24 presidential statement on Nazi criminality was not a polite pronouncement couched in diplomatic terms and released into to empty air to be forgotten. It was a direct warning to Germany and its satellites, and it was relayed by every conceivable means, including foreign-language broadcasts by the Office of War Information, publication in underground newspapers, and in leaflets air-dropped by the millions over occupied Europe.
IMPLEMENTATION
At a conference analyzing lessons learned from the Holocaust, historian Richard Breitman described the impact of the DuBois Memorandum:
“For years, people like Breckingridge Long and the entrenched bureaucracies in the State Department and the Immigration service appeared to be an insurmountable obstacle to effective action to rescue Jews in Europe. But suddenly within days after President Roosevelt approved the DuBois Memorandum, Breckingridge Long was no longer listened to nor heard from, and the political opposition to the rescue of European Jews virtually collapsed overnight.
“Although some bureaucratic foot dragging remained, especially the War Department’s foot dragging over the bombing of the rail lines to Auschwitz, programs for the rescue of European Jews advanced rapidly under the aegis of the War Refugee Board, saving tens of thousands of lives during the final stages of the Holocaust.”
“The final reports of the War Refugee Board’s field representatives reflected their sorrow that the vast rescue actions had not been set into motion much earlier. From Turkey, Ira Hirschmann wrote:
‘It bears repetition that it is regrettable that the Board, which has demonstrated its vitality and the success of its operations, was not created a year or two ago. There is no doubt from the evidence at hand that additional thousands of refugees could have been saved…’”
NEEDED TODAY: ESTABLISHMENT OF LEGITIMATE YESHA REPRESENTATION FOR LEGAL ESTABLISHMENT OF YESHA DEFENSE AGENCY
The process that took one day between Morgenthau and Roosevelt must now take place between Yesha and the Israel Government if Israel is to survive. Tens of thousands of Yeshan grassroots are aware of the first strike/eviction abandonment. Only a handful has translated this awareness into action.
The day may come when the ravshatzim will have to give the orders to open the gun rooms and help – or at least allow - the Yeshans to engage in effective nonlethal resistance against an IDF-led eviction, or effective lethal resistance against an Arab first strike.
Women in Green has pledged to oppose transfer with their “dead bodies.” However, the Gaza Expulsion shows that only a small percentage of the residents of Yesha might be prepared to stay no matter what, while the rest have not yet committed to draw the line and stay.
This has been achieved by the Israel government’s emphasis of one policy: dividing yishuvim against each other. By declaring some yishuvim to be “safe,” but abandoning others, the “safe” yishuvim can be lulled into turning their backs on the abandoned ones. This approach is designed to prevent what the government fears most: the yishuvim uniting behind a resolution to draw the line for Yesha’s future.
There has been a demonization of Yesha residents in the past years which has caused a disconnection between Yeshan and Diaspora Jewry that needs to be repaired rapidly by clearly and concisely clarifying the values at stake in Yesha to determine if they are worth giving one’s life for. This must be done in a way that can reach all the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora. By putting our lives behind this resolution, we can cause this communication to occur.
A suggested draft of such a resolution follows. It will enable us to politically and morally pressure our elected representatives and government to strengthen the besieged communities of Yesha. By endorsing it, Diaspora Jewry can demonstrate their support for the Yeshans who can then begin the process of rectifying Israeli policy. With every name we win over to it, with every yishuv that unites behind it, we can increase the likelihood that Yesha will survive and fulfill the role for which it is destined.
JUDEA AND SAMARIA
MATERIAL ASSISTANCE RESOLUTION
Calling upon the Government of the State of Israel for the abolition of the Palestinian Authority and its replacement with an administration that represents the residents of Yesha loyal to Israel:
Whereas Judea and Samaria are vital to the defense of Israel’s eastern border;
Whereas in the modern missile age, Judea and Samaria’s unique topography and size provide Israel valuable survivability as hill country is far more resistant to NBC contamination;
Whereas water is a strategic resource for Israel, even in an era of peace;
Whereas whoever controls Judea and Samaria controls the mountain aquifer, Israel’s principal source of high-grade drinking water;
Whereas Palestinian military bases in close proximity to Israeli cities would present an unacceptable threat to Israel’s civilian, economic, and military infrastructures;
Whereas Palestinian nationalism is the first national movement in world history conceived for the express purpose to serve as an instrument for the genocide of an existing nation and represents a dangerous and unacceptable development in Islamic expansionism and Arab ultranationalism;
Whereas the struggle against said expansion can succeed if those of us who are dedicated to peace come to its support;
Whereas according to responsible IDF officials, the cost of abolishing the Palestinian Authority is projected to be hundreds of IDF soldiers and thousands of civilian lives, mostly Arab;
Whereas the flow of arms and money to the Palestinian Authority, increased training, and growing international sympathy may increase the cost of abolishing it with every day Israel allows it to fester on her sovereign soil;
Whereas the idea of any concessions to the Palestinian Authority is likely to increase the aforementioned cost in human lives, and would therefore be immoral and unacceptable;
Whereas the Palestinian Authority has brutalized Arabs living within the areas where the government of Israel has allowed them to control and also in places outside these areas;
Whereas for fifteen years the Jews of Yesha have withstood violent campaigns by Arabs and an international campaign to discredit them yet have nevertheless gained the admiration of Jews and friends of Israel the world over with their courageous sacrifice, bravery, and determination;
Whereas many individuals and private organizations all over the world have already sent substantial aid to the Jews of Yesha;
Whereas Yesha, all of Yesha, is an indispensable prerequisite to Israel’s survival and future, in virtually every way such as can be measured, including military, cultural, spiritual, economic, and political;
Whereas to entrap any Jewish community within any form of Palestinian sovereign entity, by disarming and abandoning them would amount to an indefensible policy of deception and betrayal: Now, therefore be it
Resolved by the Knesset, that it should be the policy of the State of Israel:
1. to recognize and salute the courage of Jews and Arabs of Yesha who have lost their lives out of loyalty to Israel opposing Palestinian Authority corruption and oppression;
2. to encourage and support the Jewish people of Yesha in their struggle to resist Islamic or Arab domination;
3. to provide the Jewish people of Yesha, if they so request, with material assistance, as the State of Israel considers appropriate, to help them protect themselves effectively against attack; and
4. to pursue a settlement of the war in Yesha, based on the abolition of the Palestinian Authority and the recognition of the inalienable right of the Jewish people in Yesha to choose their own destiny free from fear of attack or eviction, so that the quarter million Yeshan Jews can continue their lives in safety and honor.
2. A STATEMENT BY SHMUEL RE: THE NEED FOR A TOTALLY NEW ELECTED GOVERNMENT, THROWING OUT THE TREASONOUS TRASH NOW IN POWER, WRITTEN ON CHANUKAH.
2. Language
3. Law of the Land (this is the definition of "culture" in Treaty)
4. AND AS AN ADD-ON, THIS PIECE, FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Israeli settlements are more than legitimate
By Eric Rozenman,President Obama asserts, seconded by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements” in the West Bank. Both have praised the 10-month freeze on new residential building — excluding eastern Jerusalem — that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late last month.
Netanyahu now calls for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations or take the blame for lack of progress when the “one-time-only” freeze expires. Abbas’ precondition — adopted after Washington’s pronouncements — is that all Israeli construction, including in eastern Jerusalem, must cease permanently.
Too bad international diplomacy doesn’t have a replay button. If it did, the parties could look back at history, which would show that Israeli settlements not only are legitimate under international law but positively encouraged.
The basic relevant provision, the League of Nations’ 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, Article 6, encourages “close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public use.” Most Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been built on land that was state land under the Ottomans, British, Jordanians and, after the 1967 Six-Day War, under the Israelis, or on property that has been privately purchased.
The United States endorsed Article 6 by signing the 1924 Anglo-American Convention, a treaty stipulating acceptance of the mandate. The League of Nations is long gone, but Article 6 remains in force. The United Nations’ 1945 Charter, Article 80 — sometimes known as “the Palestine article” — notes among other things that “nothing in the charter shall be construed to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or peoples or the terms of existing international instruments.”
Eugene Rostow, U.S. undersecretary of State for President Lyndon Johnson — who is an authority on international law and the coauthor of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which outlines requirements for Arab-Israeli peace — reaffirmed this principle. In 1990, he said: “The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem before the state of Israel was created.”
As for Resolution 242’s call for “secure and recognized boundaries,” according to Rostow in 1991 in another piece, a careful look at the wrangling over the resolution in 1967 makes it clear that it did not mandate Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai peninsula to the post-1948 armistice lines.
Many who allege that Jewish communities in the West Bank violate international law cite the 4th Geneva Convention, Article 49. It states that an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” But Julius Stone, like Rostow a leading legal theorist, wrote in his 1981 book, “Israel and Palestine: An Assault on the Law of Nations,” that the effort to designate Israeli settlements as illegal was a “subversion . . . of basic international law principles.”
Stone, Stephen Schwebel, a former judge on the International Court of Justice, and others have distinguished between territory acquired in an “aggressive conquest” (such as Nazi Germany’s seizures during World War II) and territory taken in self-defense (such as Israeli conquests in 1967).
The distinction is especially sharp when the territory acquired had been held illegally, as Jordan had held the West Bank, which it seized during the Arab states’ 1948-49 war against Israel.
Further, Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention was intended to outlaw the Nazi practice of forcibly transporting populations into or out of occupied territories to labor or death camps. Israelis were not forcibly transferred to the West Bank, nor were Palestinian Arabs forced out of it. Two years after President Carter’s State Department determined that Israeli settlements violated international law, President Reagan said flatly that they were “not illegal.”
One can argue, as Reagan did and Obama does, that Israel’s establishing towns in the disputed territories after 1967 obstructs diplomacy, or, as some Israeli critics do, that building Jewish communities near Palestinian Arab population centers disperses the country’s Jewish majority too widely. But one cannot accurately declare the settlements illegal.
Eric Rozenman is Washington director of CAMERA, the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
Comments:
nik says:
this is bogus... chanukah and purim are two separate issues... both are holidays that will never be batul unlike most of the min hatorah yomim tovim which will fall away because the yeshuah from moshiach's arrival will make pale incomparisom the geulah rom mitzrayim...
Of course, we want NISSIM AND NIFLAOT AND TESHUOT. And the MILCHAMOT WILL COME WHETHER WE WANT THEM or not!
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