Morsi the Muslim Brotherhood leader of Egypt is charged with murder

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The Egyptian army has announced that former President Mohammed Morsy is no longer being held in 'protective custody.' He's being charged with murder and conspiring with Hamas.
State news agency Mena said the mooted charges against Morsi included conspiring with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, killing prisoners and officers "deliberately with prior intent", kidnapping officers and soldiers, and setting fire to the prison of Wadi el-Natroun.
They relate to his escape from the prison in 2011, when he was arrested during the uprising against Mubarak, and provide legal grounds for his continued detention. .

..and this is very odd. was Stevens a pawn in a hostage swap agreement between Obama and Morsi?

You don't recognize us, We don't recognize you

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(So sorry we can not cooperate with your attempt to create the demise of Jews by building Muslim homes in a predominently Jewish area, but you said you didn't recognize Jews living here... so just keep on pretending the people living in Judea don't exist)
(CarlEurope is whining The Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon had decided to suspend contacts with the EU in the West Bank.Ya'alon has "frozen projects, canceled meetings, curtailed coordination and permits for Europe's operations" for Palestinians living in what is known as Area C, a West Bank area fully administered by Israel, he said.In Brussels, Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said: "The EU is concerned by reports in the Israeli media that the Israeli Minister of Defense has announced a number of restrictions affecting EU activities supporting the Palestinian people.""We have not received any official communication from the Israeli authorities. Our delegations on the spot are seeking urgent clarifications," Kocijancic added. A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that due to the Israeli measures, several European humanitarian aid staff had failed to receive permits to enter the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip.

US COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF PRESIDENT BEING THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DETERMINE JERUSALEM-BORN CITIZENS' RIGHT TO LIST ISRAEL AS NATIONALITY

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(Astute) The court that was overseeing the case of the Zivotofsky family's lawsuit to get Israel listed as their son's birthplace on his passport has invalidated the law from 2002 that was never enforced:
A federal appeals court on Tuesday invalidated a U.S. law that was designed to allow American citizens born in Jerusalem to choose to have Israel listed as their birthplace on passports contrary to long-standing U.S. foreign policy.

Ari and Naomi Zivotofsky, whose son Menachem was born in Jerusalem and is a U.S. citizen, filed a lawsuit in 2003 demanding that the government enforce the law.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the president - and not lawmakers - had sole authority to say who controls the historic holy city claimed by Israelis and Palestinians.

In the U.S. government, the president "exclusively holds the power to determine whether to recognize a foreign sovereign," wrote Judge Karen Henderson for the panel. [...]

Lawyers for Zivotofsky said they would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, as they did following the 2009 ruling.

“We hope that before Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky’s bar mitzvah, he will be able to bear a passport that recognizes his birthplace as ‘Israel,’ ”attorneys Nathan and Alyza Lewin said in a statement.
This is nothing more than a pathetic ruling in Obama's favor, not to mention many anti-Israelists who try to delegitimize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It makes no sense and is offensive, because the judge was basically delegitimizing both Congress and Israel's own sovereignty. I'm glad the family will be appealing this latest ruling, and Congress should too

No Jews allowed in Judea says NY Jews, Muslims and Christians only

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Excerpt from... Arutz 7 Op-Ed: NY Federation has Its Own Boycott of Judea and Samaria Ron Jager, July 23, 2013 ...The New York Federation does not cross the 'green line' (known as the pre-1967 borders) unless of course it's to assist Palestinian Arabs, meaning that Jews who could benefit from the many programs that are funded and provided by the New York Federation for the citizens of Israel are effectively barred if they reside in Judea and Samaria. Jews living beyond the green line have been voluntarily boycotted by the New York Federation despite the fact that there is no legal prohibition to support organizations or communities located in these areas, not only according to Israeli law, but also in accordance with American tax law. Any American dollar donated is fully tax deductible to the extent provided by law. This has not stopped the New York Federation from voluntarily boycotting 700,000 Jews along with the Europeans and the many enemies of Israel who have been behind the boycott movements throughout the world. (MORE)

Fox News parent co. funneling money to Left

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(According to data accumulated from the Federal Election Commission by the Center for Responsive Politics and published on OpenSecrets.org,) the total contributions by News Corp political action committees, employees and their families favored Democrats by a more than 2-to-1 margin in the 2012 election.

NBC to produce four-hour Hillary Clinton miniseries by Clinton donor

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(What difference does it make?From Deadline At the top of NBC‘s TCA presentation, entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt announced that it has put in development four event series/miniseres as part of its push in the arena. They include 4-hour miniseries Hillary, about Hillary Clinton to star Diane Lane.
Oscar nominee Courtney Hunt (Frozen River) will script the project which recounts Clinton’s life as a wife, mother, politician and cabinet member from 1998 to the present as she goes from First Lady to US Senator and then Secretary of State.
Asked whether the mini would approach Clinton as a great tough woman or a controversial figure, Greenblatt said, “it’s going to be all of those things.” 

Civil war in Egypt

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Bibi to ask his cabinet to release 104 of the bloodiest killers

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Why? Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett announced that his party's ministers would vote against the prisoner release. A source close to a Yisrael Beytenu minister said the party's ministers would be permitted by their leader Avigdor Liberman to vote according to their conscience.

Malik Obama was the bestows man at Barack Obama’s wedding in 1992, but he was not the only member of the wedding party who had met with Gadhafi. Jeremiah Wright, spiritual adviser to Barack Obama and officiant at the Obamas’ wedding, visited Tripoli in 1984 with Louis Farrakhan.

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Amendment Curtailing the NSA Fails in the House

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(On Wednesday, July 24, 2013 the U.S. House failed to pass an amendment to the 2014 Defense funding bill that would have ensured none of the funds could be used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to “collect records, including telephone call records that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215” of the Patriot Act.)

Hezbollah is finally identified as a terrorist group by Europe

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EU Finally Blacklists Hizballah's Military Wing (Abha Shankar) 
In a momentous decision Monday, the European Union (EU) designated the military wing of the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah. The decision to embargo the Iran-backed Shi'ite militant group was spearheaded by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
The designation will significantly impact Hizballah's operations in Europe, including the terrorist group's ability to raise funds and engage in logistics and terrorist activity on European territory.

Although the United States designated Hizballah in 1995, the EU has been dragging its feet. Efforts to ban the group gained momentum following last year's attack on a tourist bus in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists, a Bulgarian bus driver and the bomber. More recently, the terrorist group has joined forces with the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad that has intensified the Shia-Sunni strife in the region.
Both the U.S. and Israel applauded the EU decision. "As Hezbollah has deepened its support for the brutal Assad regime and worked to expand its global reach through increased involvement in international criminal schemes and terrorist plots around the world, a growing number of governments are recognizing Hezbollah as the dangerous and destabilizing terrorist organization that it is," Secretary of State John Kerry said in aprepared statement.
Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni described the decision as "just and correct." She said that "Finally, after years of discussions and deliberations, [they] have failed, and rightly so, in their attempt to claim that they are a legitimate political party."Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the EU to go further, designating Hizballah's political arm. It "is one organization, the arms of which are indistinguishable," he said, calling Hizballah an "Iranian protectorate" with tens of thousands of rockets at its disposal.
Hizballah has waged terror attacks against the United States and Israel. In 1983, the Lebanon-based group killed 240 people in an attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Hizballah, along with its chief patron Iran, had been alleged to have waged attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

On NPR: "Jay-Z and Beyonce were kind of used as pawns to help the developers..."

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I can't tell you how trashy and disgusting hip hop and contemporary R&B culture appears to me. I never liked it and it never spoke to my soul

Thousands gathered in more than 100 cities across the U.S. Saturday to protest Stand Your Ground laws and to show support forTrayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager shot and killed last year by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who wasfound not guilty by a jury in his murder case July 13. And Beyoncé and Jay-Z were among them.

actually most people I talk to say few people showed up...

....from what I've heard of the gathering in NYC this is not true. People are starting to become embarrassed by this story and narrative. Most admit behind closed doors that Trayvon was not the dead icon they had hoped for....
meanwhile....

(Atlantic Yards Report) OK, Jay-Z may be "bulletproof" in the music market, as some experts say, but some remember lingering taint from the role the hip-hip entrepreneur and cultural force played in the building of a certain Brooklyn arena.

From NPR, 7/19/13, Getting Real On Race After Zimmerman Verdict...MARTIN: ...But before we go, we do want to talk about Jay-Z's album "Magna Carta Holy Grail." There's new criticism - now people might remember that the singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte once said that Jay-Z and Beyonce need to take more social responsibility. Well, Jay-Z's talking back on this album. I just want to play a short clip.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Now it's time for our weekly visit to the barbershop, where the guys talk about what's in the news and what's on their minds. Sitting in the chairs for a shape-up this week - our writer and culture critic Jimi Izrael, with us from Cleveland. Fernando Vila is the director of programming for Fusion. That's a joint venture between ABC and Univision. He's with us from Miami. Sportswriter and professor of journalism Kevin Blackistone is here in D.C. And also here in Washington this week - Mario Loyola. He's normally with us from Austin, where he is with the National Review magazine and the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, NICKELS AND DIMES")
[I'm just trying to find common ground
'fore Mr. Belafonte come and chop a nigga down
Mr. Day O, major fail
Respect these youngins boy, it's my time now
Hublot homie, two door homie
You don't know all the shit I do for the homies]

MARTIN: Oh, I had missed that lyric until you all pointed it out to me. Ouch, Kevin what are you saying? Is he overstepping? Is he giving his props to the elders? What's up?

BLACKISTONE: Yeah, he's overstepping. I mean, come on you can't go after Harry Belafonte even though he went after you. Look, you are doing your thing, but we also know you don't have the history and the narrative of Harry Belafonte. You know, you didn't learn at the knee of Paul Robeson. You know, you didn't write the check to get MLK out of the Birmingham jail. I mean, you didn't do all of those sorts of things. You didn't march on South Africa.

You know, you did "Big Pimpin," which a lot of people would say is a misogynistic album, OK. I mean, it may be funky, but at the end - you know, you can look at the lyrics for yourself. And, you know - and most recently, with the whole Barclays Center up in Brooklyn, there's a whole documentary out called "Battle of Brooklyn," which shows how Jay-Z and Beyonce were kind of used as pawns to help the developers just steam roll over people in the Atlantic Yards neighborhood so that they could build that sparkling new arena there. So, you know, lay off of

Harry Belafonte.

It's actually Battle for Brooklyn, but Blackistone gets the picture in a way many don't.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency didn't get the spoof and used it as their narrative

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You know the old saying that liberals just don't have a sense of humor? They really just don't. they take things so literally that it often becomes part of their narrative (Carl) The "Global Jewish News Source" was NOT taken in by what was apparently a spoof of Samantha Power's testimony at her confirmation hearing last week.

Samantha Power, President Obama’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said she would press for Israel to have a rotation on the Security Council.

“The Security Council seat is one that has eluded Israel, despite its many contributions across the years, and I commit to you wholeheartedly to go on offense,” Power told Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) during her confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

Menendez has pressed for such a rotation, which has for decades eluded Israel, in part because it does not belong to any of the regional groupings that advance nominations for temporary membership on the council.

The source for the story was this spoof, which was promoted in an email (which I have) sent out by International Solidarity Movement leader Paul Larudee, followed.

Samantha Power, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has promised to push for a UN Security Council seat for Israel. (Loyalty to Israel is considered a prerequisite for high office, and creative ways of advancing Israel’s agenda are often rewarded with career advancement.)

“The United States has no greater friend in the world than the State of Israel,” Power told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at her confirmation hearing on July 17, 2013.

At the end of the day, I met with her to get further details. Here is a transcript of our discussion:

Barb Weir: Ms. Power, your advocacy for Israel in the hearings today is impressive, but how can you get Israel onto the Security Council? Aren’t most of its neighbors in the Middle East and the Muslim world opposed to being represented by Israel?

Samantha Power: That’s true, Barb, but we consider Israel to be part of Western Europe, which of course it is, if you ignore geographic considerations. It would take one of the European seats and represent Europe.

Barb Weir: How do the Europeans feel about that?

Samantha Power: That’s been an obstacle until now, but with our urging, many of them will be willing to do almost anything for Israel. We are also hoping to add Qatar to Europe, which will improve chances for Israel.

Barb Weir: And if they don’t, what’s plan B?

Samantha Power: In that case, we’ll simply give the U.S. seat to Israel. That is in practice no different from the current situation, but if Israel can get a European seat, that means it will have two. And two are better than one.

Morons.

NYC Mayoral Candidate Anthony Weiner Takes Al Jazeera Cash

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Oy! Jewish leaders are kvetching over Anthony Weiner’s accepting campaign cash from a lobbyist for Al Jazeera — Osama bin Laden’s favorite TV network.
City Councilman Lew Fidler (D-Brooklyn), who has endorsed former city Comptroller Bill Thompson’s mayoral bid, called on rival candidate Weiner to return the $4,950 donation to lobbyist John Merrigan.
“Al Jazeera and its lobbyists are no friends to New York City or our Jewish community, and Anthony shouldn’t accept their support,” Fidler said. “They have spread hate and lies against Jews, not only here in New York but across the world. The right thing to do is to give this money back. Anthony should do exactly that.”
Keep reading…

Ding-Dong, The Cunt Is Dead, The Musty Old Cunt, The Moldy Old Cunt, Ding-Dong, The Wicked Old Cunt Is Dead

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Where do they send feminists when they die?(Lid)(ibloga)

Ironically it was a speech at a Arab anti-bias conference Thomas was asked about her statements on that video.

"I paid the price for that," said Thomas, a longtime White House correspondent. "But it was worth it, to speak the truth. The Zionists have to understand that's their country, too. Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists."

Alluding to the anti-Semitic claim that Jews control the media, Thomas said:

"You can not say anything (critical) about Israel in this country.
the whole question of money involved in politics."

"We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where there mouth is…We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.

When asked by the interviewer if she had a personal antipathy toward Jews themselves Thomas labeled the Jews as Arab-haters and denied they had an historical connection to the Jewish State She made some renewed claims about the worldwide "Jewish" conspiracy a little later in the interview.

PLAYBOY: That stereotype of Jewish control has been around for more than a century. Do you actually think there’s a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in this country?
THOMAS: Not a secret. It’s very open. What do you mean secret?
PLAYBOY: Well, for instance, explain the connection between Hollywood and what’s happening with the Palestinians.
THOMAS: Power over the White House, power over Congress.
PLAYBOY: By way of contributions?
THOMAS: Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies, which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing with the financial markets. There’s total control.
(Media Response)

Liberal Jewish bitch

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What this progressive liberal feminist bimbo said:
Israel sees international policy on settlements as simply a guideline or position statement, as opposed to actual law. This escalating sense of hubris over settlement expansion – and getting away with it – is what makes the EU move such a shock for Israel: Gush Shalom, Israel’s peace bloc, likened the EU decision to “a bucket of cold water poured on the head of a drunk”.
In one ‘CiF’ essay she mocked Israel’s efforts to unfairly ‘smear’ Hamas as a terrorist group, and once even managed to spin Israeli concerns over the potential rise of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as evidence of Israeli racism – unmoved, it seems, by the genocidal racism expressed by the group’s spiritual leader, who called for Allah to literally kill every Jew on earth.

If the Europeans really wanted to solve the 'occupation' problem

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Christian Berger decided to solve "the occupation problem." We can suggest to him that on Monday he also take a swing at solving Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus; Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara; the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan that is occupied by Armenia; Russia, which is occupying South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia; the Japanese-occupied Coral Islands; not to mention the significant Russian settlement between Poland and Latvia, known as Kaliningrad. We also have not forgotten Russia's military occupation in portions of the Finnish Karelia province. And China occupies Tibet and Indonesia occupies West Papua, and Pakistan refuses to accept Indian sovereignty in Kashmir. We have yet to mention the issues that the EU does find interesting: The Falkland Islands (British) dispute with Argentina; the problems in New Caledonia (France); British control of Gibraltar on Spanish soil; the residents of Greenland, who seek independence from Denmark; and also Morocco's frustration at Spain, which controls two cities on Moroccan soil, Ceuta and Melia, as if Morocco was still part of Spain.

EVEN LEFTIST GRAPHIC NOVELISTS AREN'T IMMUNE TO ISLAMIC CENSORSHIP

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(Some left-wingers have to consider that, even if they do blindly support Islam, it's not going to persuade Islamofascists not to attack their work.

Cast in point: about a week or so ago in Germany, a university wanted to set up an exhibition on comics. Specifically, political ones. And soon after, vandalism took place (H/T: Atlas Shrugs and ibloga):
BERLIN – A female Muslim student at the University of Duisburg-Essen ripped down parts of a graphic novel exhibit, which included the work of the internationally known Israeli artist Rutu Modan.

In a commentary in the left-liberal website Taz on Thursday, journalist Pascal Beucker attributed the June 24 attack on the exhibit “to an anti- Israel, if not anti-Semitic, motive.”

[...] The Muslim student cut with a scissor photographs from a collage based on Modan’s seminal work Exit Wounds (“Blutspuren” in German).
The collage showed a peace demonstration in Israel with a poster containing the word “Shalom.”

After the vandalism, the university pulled the plug on the exhibit. [...]

German media reported that Muslim students objected to parts of the larger exhibit, particularly the work from the comic book Habibi, penned by US comic and novel artist Craig Thompson. According to Taz, the students said their religious feelings were injured by the depiction of sex scenes in Habibi and because the word “Allah” is written in Arabic calligraphy.
On the surface, it's interesting that they'd take offense at either of these graphic novels, because neither one is negative to Islam per se. Andrew Harrod at Front Page Magazine describes a bit of what they're about, plus the viewpoint of Thompson:
One of the Graphic Novels examined in collage posters was Habibi, a tale of child (sex) slaves in Muslim Arab society by the award-winning American graphic novelist Craig Thompson. As the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) reported, this widely available, 2011 published book has aroused no indication “of being orient-hostile.” Thompson himself in a 2011 German interview described Habibi as “among other things a reaction to the increasing Islamophobia in the United States after 2001.”

A Muslim doctoral student, though, complained to library personnel multiple times that the UDE student poster presenting Habibi hurting her “religious feelings.” The Habibi collage showed a rape scene from the book juxtaposed next to the word “Allah” in Arabic calligraphy along with an English-text explanation. The doctoral student, who hadpreviously obtained notoriety by devoting one of her class presentations to “Allah,” finally took it down on June 17, 2013.

The following June 24, the doctoral candidate used scissors to cut out part of a poster analyzing the award-winning graphic novel Exit Wounds by Israeli Rutu Modan. The destroyed book scene, viewable above and in a July 10, 2013 story by Berlin’s left-wing Tageszeitung (TAZ), showed Israeli peace rally participants packing their bags with three signs inscribed with “Stop the Occupation” in Arabic, English, and Hebrew. TAZ author Pascal Beucker speculated that the doctoral student’s anger derived from seeing the Arabic language depicted in the much-hated Israel. “It is more than probable,” Beucker suggested in an earlier TAZ article, that the Muslim student had an “anti-Israeli, if not anti-Semitic motive,” given that Exit Wounds deals with the Palestinian terror threat faced by Israelis. The UDE student government publication ak[due]ll, in contrast, countered TAZ, stating that library director Albert Bilo explained to the student senate that the Muslim student took offense at what she considered as a depiction of a sign with “Allah” on it going into the trash.
The picket signs with "stop the occupation" tell that Exit Wounds isn't bound to be very pro-Israel, and Bleeding Cool said about Modan's mishmash:
Then one protestor, attacked another exhibit showing for Rutu Modan's for having what were believed to be pro-Israeli sentiments, such as an Israeli peace march and the words Shalom, cutting them out of the exhibit. It's an odd choice for such a protest, Modan's work is culture all dense and multi layered, it's not a zionist work, rather one that seeks to understand multiple motivation and effects.
Unfortunately, much of the "peace marches" in Israel have been conducted by the left calling for surrendering Israeli land to the Islamists. And a special from clip School Library Journal on Amazon describes the story of Exit Wounds like this:
Modan doesn't shy away from criticizing some of the attitudes the state of Israel holds, hinting that these exacerbate some of the problems with the Palestinians.
But no criticism of any attitudes the "palestinians" holdtowards Israel/Jews? Well then, I guess we know where this political item leans to. Yet it did not succeed in convincing the Muslim student it wasn't worth the vandalism. And Thompson's graphic novel, which doesn't sound or look very appealing either (I saw some of the nudity in it, which looks pretty gross), clearly didn't pass muster with them either. It could be because they think it ironically does paint an accurate picture of Islam, and maybe it's because of one panel that shows the lead character Dodola taking off a burka after looking at some western women walking around without those dehumanizing atrocities on a commercial street.

We can only wonder what Modan and Thompson think now if they know their work was rejected by those Muslim students at the German university. I'd say this serves as a perfect demonstration of how Islamofascists can look for any excuse for committing violence, vandalism and desecration, and no matter how much the work tilts in favor of their Religion of Peace, they can still reject it from the outset. So as Modan and Thompson have learned, no matter how left-wing/pro-Islam they are, there will still be quite a few Muslims out there who'll reject their work from the outset.)

Video - Michael Hastings Cremated Without Family Permission; Wife Hires Private Investigator.

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(MFS - The Other News)(Video - Michael Hastings Cremated Without Family Permission; Wife Hires Private Investigator.HT: InfiniteUnknown.)
Michael Hastings’ Ashes Sent Home for Burial (San Diego 6, July 14/15, 2013):
Details uncovered by this reporter shed new light into the June 18 death of journalist Michael Hastings.
Hastings’ friend and confidant SSgt. Joe Biggs disclosed a macabre twist in the award-winning journalist’s death in a suspicious single-car accident. According to SSgt. Biggs, “Michael Hastings’ body was returned to Vermont in an urn.” He further alleged, “Family members did not want Michael’s body cremated.”
This revelation provides another wrinkle in the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) handling of a case they labeled “no foul play” only hours after the writer’s death.
Nevertheless LA County assistant corner, Ed Winter, said it took two days to identify the burned-beyond recognition body of Hastings. Officials also confirmed that an autopsy has been performed, but the cause of death is still pending. Unfortunately the family will have to wait for cause of death answers as LAPD media spokesperson Lieutenant Andrew Neiman indicated, “It will take several weeks to get the toxicology results.”
SSgt. Biggs also emphatically stated that liquor was not a factor in the accident, as Hastings hadn’t consumed alcoholic beverages in five years.
So why is the LAPD delaying the reports?
It was SSgt. Biggs who released the following chilling email to members of the media; “Subject: FBI Investigation, re: NSA -Hey (redacted names) — the Feds are interviewing my “close friends and associates.” Perhaps if the authorities arrive “BuzzFeed GQ,” er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news gathering practices or related journalism issues. Also: I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the rada[r] for a bit. All the best, and hope to see you all soon. Michael”
The receipt of this email from Hastings tipped the scales for SSgt. Biggs. “This wasn’t an accident and I will continue to investigate his death.”
As an investigative journalist, Hastings saw his fair share of threats. One particular passage in Hastings book, “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan,” revealed that a former McChrystal staff member made a death threat. “We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we don’t like what you write,” the unnamed staffer said. Hastings coolly retorted: “Well, I get death threats like that about once a year, so no worries.”
Despite the LAPD’s categorization of the Hasting fatal accident as a “no (evidence of) foul play,” LAPD continues to ignore FOIA (CPRA in Calif.) requests made by San Diego 6 News for the police report, 9/11 call, autopsy, bomb squad and toxicology reports, or make the Mercedes available for inspection which only fuels conjecture.)

IRS Gave False Testimony

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Sympathetic media outlets ran headlines proclaiming, based upon statements made in a conference call given by Danny Werfel, the new Acting IRS Commissioner, with select members of the media, that the IRS had not only used the words “Tea Party” as a search term to target organizations for additional scrutiny, but that it had also targeted “progressives,” “Israel” and “Occupy.” …But a laborious review of the IRS documents released by Levin, as well as a lengthy response by the Inspector General to Levin’s scathing letter, revealed that those documents did not prove what Levin and others hoped was being proved…. the Service was looking at certain “Israel connected” organizations and making a distinction based upon the organization’s political/ideological viewpoint. While the term “progressives” was found as a category on several of the documents, just a few minutes’ review revealed that nothing was done with the organizations with that term in their title. The 14 IRS documents released by the House Ways and Means Committee contained a category, created by IRS employees, entitled “Occupied Territory Advocacy.” the notice to IRS inspectors to “Be on the Look Out” for groups under this category was sent on August 10, 2010, just days after Z STREET’s file was reviewed

here is a site that has some more information from Z Street:
lorilowenthalmarcus@gmail.com 610.664.1184

in 2010 the Obama administration stopped reporting the total U.S. contributions to the U.N.

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(Susan Rice ended her term by appearing before the cameras at U.N. Headquarters on June 25 and reciting a list of Team Obama’s purported achievements. Among other things, Rice claimed that she had saved American taxpayer dollars going to the U.N. and had created new “transparency.”)

Stand Your Ground was irrelevant to the defense

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(Stand Your Ground was erroneously raised early in the reporting of this incident as a possible contributory factor, however it was never mentioned in the defense case at the trial.  It was irrelevant to the defense as at the time of shooting, Zimmerman was on the ground with Martin on top of him beating his head against the pavement.)

Aboriginal Rights of the Jewish People By Allen Z. Hertz

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President Obama made news by announcing that the United States would support the UN Declaration on the Rights of 'Indigenous Peoples.' But who are the 'indigenous peoples' of Israel? Well, according to the UN it's probably the 'Palestinians.'

 Aboriginal Rights of the Jewish People

By Allen Z. Hertz

"The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland," said U.S. President Barack Obama in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 21, 2011.  This theme of "people" and "historic homeland" has for centuries resonated with most Jews round the world.  However, the president's words were even more welcome, because our own time witnesses an increasingly bitter controversy over the Jewish people's right to political self-determination in a part of its aboriginal homeland.

That fierce debate inevitably revolves around the political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of peoples.  There is also the companion doctrine of aboriginal rights, because the Jewish people is a small indigenous minority in the Arab Middle East, which in turn is an important part of the greater Muslim world that also includes key countries like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia.  To speak of aboriginal rights suggests that there is significant moral and legal weight to the circumstance that the Jews -- periodically persecuted and perennial victims of discrimination -- nonetheless for more than twenty-five centuries kept some demographic and cultural ties to their aboriginal homeland.  And is there not added moral and legal weight where that particular people's aboriginal rights have already been explicitly recognized in the relevant treaties, which are the highest source of international law?

The concept of aboriginal rights has been well understood by other peoples -- e.g., by the Greeks in the early 19th century, when they fought for independence from the Ottoman Empire.  Now speaking articulately about their aboriginal and treaty rights, the Indian tribes of Canada astutely perceive that law is akin to an ongoing discussion about rights, in which it is essential to offer meaningful arguments.  And that discussion is one where a people gets to tell its own story, which can also become a compelling narrative that engages the conscience of others who are more powerful.

Palestinians "a people" but Jews not?

Denying or minimizing Jewish rights is an integral part of the ongoing war against the Jewish people and Israel.  For example, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deny that the Jews are a people, within the context of the modern political and legal doctrines of aboriginal rights and the self-determination of peoples.  However, there is an enormous body of archaeological and other historical evidence demonstrating that the Jewish people, like the Greek people or the Han Chinese people, is among the oldest of the world's peoples.  The early modern European peoples probably derived their understanding of what it means to be a people in history principally from the example of the Jewish people as set out in the Bible.

What is a people?

Linguists theorize about a proto-Semitic language which perhaps suggests kinship among the ancient Semitic populations, long before the birth of Hebrew and then Arabic.  But "peoplehood" is about much more than genetics.  It is also a complex sociological phenomenon -- an abstraction, yet nonetheless one of the principal motors of world history.  Opting to self-identify consistently as a specific people, a human population takes a name and shares a variable range of relatively distinct civilizational features -- e.g., ancestors, history, homeland, territory, language, literature, religion, culture, economy, and institutions.  And, in addition to its subjective identity, a people also normally attracts objective identity in the eyes of its friends and enemies, who frequently provide valuable historical evidence about its existence and characteristics.

And this reference to historical evidence is critical, because the political and legal doctrines of aboriginal rights and the self-determination of peoples cannot apply retroactively.  This means that a people, without a continuous identity stretching back to the relevant historical time, cannot today make an aboriginal or other claim with respect to that earlier period before its ethnogenesis -- i.e., when it did not yet self-identify as that particular people.  And to be sure, new peoples are always emerging -- while older peoples may disappear, though genes and cultural characteristics may to some extent persist in populations of one or more other peoples.

Names/extent of the aboriginal home

Generally and locally, most Muslims and Arabs stubbornly reject the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State -- i.e., as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish people in a part of its larger aboriginal territory. That ancestral homeland stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to lands east of the Jordan River.  For example, the Bible tells us that the Twelve Tribes straddled the Jordan River, as did the realm of Kings David and Solomon and their successors. Since antiquity, this homeland was known to Jews as "the land of Israel" -- in Hebrew, Eretz Israel (ארץ ישראל).  "The Holy Land" as later understood by Christians (Latin, terra sancta) and by Muslims (Ottoman Turkish, arz-i mukaddes) was for theological reasons geographically identical to the earlier concept of Eretz Israel.

For Christians everywhere, the Holy Land was also "Palestine."  This toponym was an historical reference honoring the memory of a religiously significant province of the Roman-Byzantine Empire, where Christianity was the official faith.  Maps prepared in Europe and the Americas, from the 17th century to the beginning of the First World War (1914-1918), regularly imagined a then nonexistent Palestine, which was generally portrayed as also including lands east of the Jordan River.  From the late 4th century CE until 1946, "historic" Palestine has always included part or all of the territory that is now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Thus, the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says that the Jordan River divides Western from Eastern Palestine, which ends where the Arabian desert begins.

The Jewish people in the Holy Land

Though classical demography is a guessing game, Jews may have numbered several million in the early Roman Empire.  For more than a century before the 70 CE destruction of the Second Temple, most Jews preferred living in various places around the Mediterranean basin, rather than in their aboriginal homeland.  Nonetheless, Jews remained the majority in the Holy Land, perhaps until the late 6th century CE.  Though some Jews always preferred to stay in their homeland, others were moving in and out -- a migratory pattern that endures to this day.  The Jewish Bible, the Christian Gospels, and the Muslim Koran all refer to the Jewish people and its connection to the Holy Land.  Since antiquity, there has never been a time when Jews were absent from the Holy Land.  Even when Jewish numbers dropped to a low point, the Holy Land was still home to rabbis famous throughout the Jewish world.  With at least 2,600 years of continuous history, the Jewish people kept a subjective-objective identity that always included demographic and cultural links to its native land.

In the first four centuries CE, the Jews of the Holy Land played a key role in Jewish civilization, including completion of the Jerusalem Talmud.  Documents from the Cairo Geniza reveal much about Jewish life in the Holy Land from the Muslim conquest in the early 7th century CE to the  Crusader victory in 1099.  During the Crusader period, Acre was an important center for Jews, about whom we learn from a variety of sources, including the 12th-century Jewish travelers Benjamin of Tudela and Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon.  During the Mamluk period (1250-1516), Jerusalem was seat for a deputy to the Egypt-based nagid who headed all the Jewish communities of the sultanate.  Fifteenth-century Holy Land Jews also feature in the letters of Rabbi Obadiah ben Abraham Bertinoro and the travelogues of Christian pilgrims like Arnold van Harff, Felix Fabri, and Martin Kabatnik.  Richer are sources from the four Ottoman centuries ending in 1917.  For example, 16th-century Ottoman registers (defter-i mufassal) record the names of Jewish taxpayers.  Evidence also comes from documents like some late 18th-century account books of the Jerusalem Jewish community.  With the 19th century, travel books and consular reports join a flood of other sources about local Jews who also told their own stories.  Though the number of Jews grew absolutely, they remained a fraction of the total population which, including the Muslims and the Christians, remained astonishingly low -- in fact, much lower than in the early Roman Empire.

Aboriginal rights of the Greek people

The modern Jewish people is aboriginal to its ancestral homeland in the same way that the Greek people is aboriginal to Greece.  In the early 19th century, some prominent personalities like the English poet Lord Byron enthusiastically championed the aboriginal rights of the Greek people.  Partly for this reason, some of the European powers intervened to help the Greeks win their independence from the Ottoman Empire.  In 1821, when the Greeks began their revolt against the sultan, they were a minority of the population in the territory that is now modern Greece.  In the 19th and 20th centuries, modern Greek history has been partly about the hundreds of thousands of Diaspora Greeks who gradually returned to their ancestral homeland.  And, after the First World War, U.K. Prime Minister David Lloyd George unsuccessfully backed the aboriginal rights of the Greek people to the Anatolian littoral.  There, large Greek communities had persisted from antiquity until 1922, when they were finally destroyed by the Turks, who are not aboriginal to Anatolia.

Aboriginal rights of the "First Nations"

The modern Jewish people claims both aboriginal and treaty rights to parts of its ancestral homeland.  Aboriginal and treaty rights are also claimed by the aboriginal peoples of Canada, including the "First Nations" or Indian tribes.  The First Nations strongly believe that their sovereign rights to their tribal lands extend back to the beginning of time -- i.e., long before the origins of Canadian, European, and international law.  In the same way, the Jewish people's claim to its ancestral homeland reaches back to antiquity and thus antedates the post-classical birth of both Europe and the Islamic civilization.

Conceptually, the Jewish people is aboriginal to its ancestral homeland in the same way that the First Nations are aboriginal to their ancestral lands in the Americas.  Common Law courts began recognizing aboriginal rights in the 19th century.  From 1982, the rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada have explicitly featured in Canada's Constitution Act.  The Supreme Court of Canada has decided that, where a First Nation maintains demographic and cultural connections with the land, aboriginal title (including self-government rights) can survive both sovereignty changes and the influx of a new majority population resulting from foreign conquest.  Dealing with claims of right on all sides, the Court seeks to reconcile the subsequent rights of newcomers with the aboriginal rights of a First Nation.  The concept of aboriginal rights is also an important legal topic in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S., and is now receiving more attention internationally.

Spot-on is the comparison between the aboriginal rights of the Jewish people and those of the First Nations of the Americas.  Between the sea and the Jordan River, "the Jewish people" is the aboriginal tribe and "the Arab people" is the interloping settler population, including newer waves of Arab immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Whether a thousand years ago or today, Jews  returning to join other Jews in the Holy Land are not to be compared with the 17th-century Pilgrim Fathers who had neither antecedents nor kin in the New World.

Aboriginal rights of the Jewish people

Like the Greek people or the First Nations, the Jewish people has for more than two millennia continuously affirmed its connection to its ancestral homeland.  Of all extant peoples, the Jewish people has the strongest claim to be aboriginal to the Holy Land, where Judaism, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish people were born (ethnogenesis) around 2,600 years ago.  Before then, the Holy Land was home, inter alia, to the immediate ancestors of the Jewish people, including personalities like Kings David and Solomon, famous from the Jewish Bible.  And at that time and still earlier, the Holy Land was also home to other peoples -- like the Phoenicians, Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, and Philistines -- which have long since vanished from the world, with nobody today entitled to make new claims on their behalf -- e.g., by reason of recently alleged genetic descent.

What, then, of that dramatis persona of world history known as "the Arab people"?  As such, the great Arab people is aboriginal to Arabia, not the Holy Land.  Judaism, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish people were already established in the Holy Land for about a thousand years before the 6th-7th-century-CE ethnogenesis in Arabia of the great Arab people, the birth of which was approximately coeval with the emergence of Islam and classical Arabic.

Though local Jews suffered persistent discrimination and periodic persecution, neither the Arab people -- from the first Muslim conquest in the 7th century CE -- nor subsequent invaders succeeded in eradicating the Jewish population or ending the links between the Jewish people and the Holy Land.  Jews are today no longer a minority between the sea and the Jordan River.  This means that the Jewish people can now draw greater benefit from the doctrine of the self-determination of peoples, which normally allocates territory by the national character of the current local population.  At the same time, the Jewish people also continues to affirm aboriginal rights to parts of its ancestral homeland.  And it will be seen that these Jewish aboriginal rights still have some political and legal significance in the ongoing dispute over the refusal of most Muslims and Arabs to recognize the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as the Jewish State.

The Jewish State

Most Jews round the world see Israel as "the" Jewish State -- i.e., as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish people in a part of its larger ancestral homeland.  Like other peoples, the Jewish people has a right to self-determination.  Though the self-determination of the great Arab people is expressed via twenty-one Arab countries, Israel is the sole expression of the self-determination of the great Jewish people.  Some Western thinkers are now uncomfortable with the idea of a nation-state as the homeland of a particular people.  If so, there is no special reason to target Israel, because other countries are also nation-states.  For example, also nation-states are Japan, Italy, Greece, and the countries of the Arab League.  In theory and practice, the nation-state model does not have to conflict with fundamental civil and human rights for aliens or for citizens who do not ethnically self-identify as members of the majority people.  Moreover, the nation-state can also accommodate collective rights for one or more minority peoples.  And, with regard to such individual and collective rights, Israel's domestic law is comparable to what is provided by other legal systems, and superior to what is offered in other Middle Eastern states.

Israel born of the Ottoman Empire

Until the end of the First World War, the Holy Land was part of the Ottoman Empire.  Thus, Israel and two dozen other modern countries are successor-states of the Ottoman caliphate, which for four hundred years (1516-1920) was the principal power in the Near and Middle East.  Apart from the ruling Turks, the Ottoman Empire was home to other peoples including Albanians, Greeks, Slavs, Copts, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs, and Jews.  For centuries, these Jews lived in a variety of Ottoman venues, including Constantinople, Salonika, Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Basra, Tiberias, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and Jerusalem.

In October 1914, the Ottoman Empire opted to enter the First World War to fight against the U.K. and its Allies.  As the fortunes of war began to favor the British Army, the U.K. government addressed the question of what to do with the multi-national Ottoman lands both in the light of current British interests and the 19th-century liberal doctrine of the self-determination of peoples.  In this regard, the father of modern political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in his 1896 manifesto The Jewish State, had already proclaimed that Jews, though living in many different places around the globe, constitute one people for the purpose of self-determination.

Why the Balfour Declaration?

In October 1917, the U.K. Cabinet decided to favor plans to create "a national home for the Jewish people."  The venue was said to be "Palestine," a then-nonexistent country of uncertain extent, that was ultimately described by the League of Nations in 1922 as "the Palestine Mandate," that also included the Trans-Jordan Emirate first formed in 1921.  The U.K. government's promise of "best endeavours"  to create "a national home for the Jewish people" was motivated by a desire to help realize the Jewish people's long-standing claim to self-determination in its ancestral homeland, to shore up support for the Allied war effort among Jews in revolutionary Russia and the U.S., and to help cover the eastern flank of the Suez Canal, which was then the crucial gateway to British India.  The intention to create this "national home for the Jewish people" was announced in the November 1917 Balfour Declaration.

No "Palestinian people" in 1919


As the U.K. worked to defeat the Ottoman Turks, the world also began to learn about the national claims of the great Arab people.  Here recall the wartime exploits of Lawrence of Arabia and the Hashemite Prince Feisal ibn Hussein, both of whom were present at the 1919-1920 Paris Peace Conference.  There, a powerful searchlight was trained on the doctrine of the self-determination of peoples, including the claims of the great Arab people.  But nobody in Paris knew about a distinct "Palestinian" people.  Had there then been such a Palestinian people, its existence would have been known to Prince Feisal, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, France's Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, U.K. Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and to the other leaders who came to work on the peace treaties.  This assessment is confirmed by extensive local testimony and petitions collected in 1919, by the U.S. King-Crane Commission.  Its report to President Wilson indicated that, whether Muslim or Christian, the Arabs of the Holy Land specifically rejected any plan to create a new country called "Palestine," which they perceived to be part of the detested Zionist project.

Never a Muslim state called "Palestine"


In 1919-1920, most local Arabs backed then-current plans to create a new Arab state of Greater Syria, which they expected would cover what is today Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel.  For Muslims in the Holy Land, this broader geographic focus of political self-identification was natural, because a large province of Damascus (Ottoman Turkish, Şam) had at various times featured prominently in Muslim and Ottoman history.  By contrast, the Ottoman Empire never had a province or sub-provincial unit called, or co-extensive with, "Palestine," no matter how conceived.  Nor had Muslim history ever known a state or province called "Palestine."  After the 7th-century-CE Arab conquest, the caliphate for a time kept the old Roman and Byzantine toponym Palaestina, arabicized as Filastin (فلسطين), for one small district or jund (جند) of the province of Damascus.  Straddling the Jordan River, this jund Filastin was just a fraction the size of the larger Palestine that was -- a province of the Roman-Byzantine Empire, then for centuries remembered by Christians everywhere, and finally realized again, in 1922, as "the Palestine Mandate" that included both the Trans-Jordan Emirate and the "national home for the Jewish people," from the sea to the Jordan River.

Global self-determination exercise

The Paris Peace Conference was concerned with the task of accommodating the political interests of the victorious Allied and Associated Powers with the claims to self-determination of well-known peoples with long histories of self-affirmation and bitter suffering under foreign oppression.  Thus, considered were difficult and entangled issues touching the self-determination of such famous peoples as the Chinese, the French, the Germans, the Poles, the Finns, the Letts, the Latvians, the Estonians, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Slovenes, the Croats, the Serbs, the Italians, the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Turks, the Kurds, the Armenians, the Arabs, and the Jews.  In this larger context, just one decision among many was creation of "a national home for the Jewish people." And it is noteworthy that "national home for the Jewish people" was reiterated from 1917 to 1922, in a series of consistent declarations, resolutions, and treaties that were ex post facto blessed by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty with the Turkish Republic, as successor to the Ottoman Empire.

Why a national home for the Jewish people?


The decision to realize the self-determination of the Jewish people in a part of its aboriginal territory was the rationale for the 1922 creation of  "a national home for the Jewish people," from the sea to the Jordan River.  With a legal status akin to a multilateral agreement or treaty, the Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations (July 24, 1922) entrusted the U.K. government with a new jurisdiction that included both Trans-Jordan and the national home for the Jewish people.  In 1946, Trans-Jordan was by treaty severed from the Palestine Mandate to become the independent Arab state called "the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan."  In 1948, the national home for the Jewish people became the independent Jewish state called "Israel."

Decision-makers at the Paris Peace Conference knew the Holy Land to be significantly under-developed and under-populated.  They also understood that the new national home for the Jewish people would initially lack a Jewish majority population.  However, there was a conscious choice to refer not just to circa 85,000 Jews then living locally, but also to the past, present, and future of the great Jewish people.  In this context, the national home for the Jewish people was understood to also pertain to the 14 million Jews worldwide, including the one million then living in the Near and Middle East.

The international decision to create a national home for the Jewish people was made not so much on the basis of local demographics, but explicitly due to "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine."  This was clear recognition of the Jewish people's long-affirmed and continuing links to its aboriginal homeland.  The Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations also contained detailed stipulations requiring the development of the national home for the Jewish people.  For example, specific provisions called for "close settlement by Jews on the land," from the sea to the Jordan River.

Did Arabs deserve all the Middle East?

Failure to create a national home for the Jewish people would have meant denying the great Jewish people a share in the partition of the multi-national Ottoman Empire, where Jews had lived for centuries, including in the Holy Land.  Failure to create a national home for the Jewish people would also have meant that the great Arab people would have received almost the whole of the Ottoman inheritance.  That result would have been unacceptable to David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, and their peers, because they significantly understood that the claim to self-determination of the great Jewish people was as compelling as that of the great Arab people.

The Paris decision-makers strongly insisted that they had also done justice to the claims of the great Arab people, which they believed they had freed from 400 years of Turkish rule and helped on the road to independence via creation or recognition of several new Arab states on lands that had formerly been subject to the Ottoman sultan.  For example, 77% of the territory of the Palestine Mandate was Trans-Jordan, which finally became an independent Arab state in 1946. 


The international decision to create a national home for the Jewish people, from the sea to the Jordan River, did not result in the displacement of local Arabs.  To the contrary, from 1922 until 1948, the Arab population of the national home for the Jewish people almost tripled, while the Jewish population there multiplied eight times.  The later problem of Arab refugees (about 726,000) from the national home for the Jewish people, and Jewish refugees (about 850,000) from Arab countries only emerged from May 1948, when local Arabs allied with several neighboring Arab states to launch a war to destroy the newly independent Israel.  Their declared intention was to exterminate the Jews living between the sea and the Jordan River, just as the Turks in 1922 had spectacularly succeeded in liquidating the aboriginal Greek communities of the Anatolian littoral.

Who self-identified as Palestinian before 1948?


The Jewish people has kept the same name and subjective-objective identity in each century since ancient times.  By contrast, among local Muslim Arabs, the formation of a distinct, subjective-objective "Palestinian" identity did not generally occur before the second half of the 20th century.  And this is understandable, because the fifty years from the Ottoman collapse to the 1967 Six-Day War was a short time for the birth of a new people.  Moreover, relatively few Muslim Arabs would have wanted to self-identify as "Palestinian" until three preconditions had been satisfied.

First precondition was political resurrection of the ancient toponym "Palestine" via the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the 1922 creation of the Palestine Mandate, which consisted of Trans-Jordan and the national home for the Jewish people, from the sea to the Jordan River.

Second precondition was the 1946 separation from the Palestine Mandate of an independent Arab state called Jordan.  This is significant because the new Palestinian identity was directly focused on the territory of the national home for the Jewish people.  This was then notably that smaller  Palestine, from the sea to the Jordan River, that existed for less than two years -- i.e., from May 25, 1946 (the birth of Jordan) until May 14, 1948 (the birth of Israel).  Before 1946, that precise  territorial focus was largely absent, because as a border the Jordan River then had relatively little meaning for the self-identification of most of the Muslim Arabs living on either bank.  This factor was implicitly recognized by the U.K. Peel Commission, which in 1937 recommended the creation of a new Arab state to consist of both Trans-Jordan and the Arab-inhabited parts of the national home for the Jewish people.  And more than a decade later, this factor was again implicitly recognized by King Abdullah I, who in 1950 annexed to the Kingdom of Jordan the West Bank and East Jerusalem that his Arab Legion had conquered in the 1948-1949 war.

Third precondition was the abrupt jettisoning in May 1948 of the appellation "Palestine" in favor of "Israel" as the name for the newly independent Jewish state.  Before 1948, the adjective "Palestinian" had too often been used as synonym for "Jewish." And to be sure, the name "Palestine" and many other specific features of the 1922 Palestine Mandate were too closely associated with Jews and Zionism to have offered much of a focus for Muslim Arabs.  Therefore, they generally did not identify as "Palestinian" until the "Palestine" trademark had been definitely abandoned by the Jews.


The Palestinian people in the 1960s

Arab leaders had themselves been slow to recognize the existence of a distinct Palestinian people with a right to self-determination.  For example, as principal Arab leader at the Paris Peace Conference, Prince Feisal had specifically accepted the plan to create "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.  And his father, the Hashemite King of the Hedjaz (later part of Saudi Arabia) was party to the 1920 Sevres Treaty that explicitly stipulated that there would be "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.  Around three decades later, the governments of Egypt and Jordan showed how little regard they had for the self-determination of a Palestinian people.  First, they rejected the 1947 U.N. General Assembly resolution recommending the partition of the territory of the national home for the Jewish people into two new independent states, the one Jewish and the other Arab.  Second, no Palestinian state was created between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt held the Gaza Strip and Jordan had East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  The loss of those lands by Egypt and Jordan in the Six-Day War strongly encouraged the tendency of local Arabs to see themselves as distinct from the Arabs of Egypt and Jordan.  Now more clearly spearheading their own irredentist struggle, local Arabs had added incentive to self-identify as "Palestinian." And all the more so, since the new identification effectively  expressed their stubborn determination to eventually master all the territory that in 1922 had been internationally recognized as the "national home for the Jewish people." And certainly, history knows of other instances in which new national identities have been forged in the fire of territorial dispute and ethno-religious hatred.

Peaceful rights reconciliation

This analysis neither denies the current existence of a distinct Palestinian people nor suggests that this newborn Palestinian people is today without rights, including claims to self-determination, independence, and territory.  Rather, there are now "claims of right" on all sides.  Urgently required is a peaceful process that respects the dignity of both peoples and effects a reconciliation of the subsequent rights of the newly emerged Palestinian people with the prior rights of the ancient Jewish people.  A peaceful process is mandatory, inter alia, because the Jewish people's aboriginal rights include "the right to life."  Namely, Jews have a right to live safely in their native land -- and even more so, in that part of their aboriginal homeland, that was explicitly recognized as "national home for the Jewish people" in a series of declarations, resolutions, and treaties from 1917 to 1923.  This significantly means that the Palestinian people lacks the right to wage a "war of national liberation" against the Jewish people, which is legitimately sited between the sea and the Jordan River.  There, the Jewish people lives "as of right and not on sufferance," as said by Winston Churchill in 1922.


Sketching a principled peace

One people lacks a right to rule over another people.  Thus, a peaceful process for the reconciliation of rights would probably have to respect the doctrine of the self-determination of peoples.  For example, a full and final peace treaty concluded today would likely have to waive most Jewish aboriginal and treaty rights with respect to land now mostly inhabited by Palestinians wishing to live in a new Palestinian state.  By the same doctrine, the treaty would probably have to include within Israel land now mostly inhabited by Jews.  If so, there would probably be no legal requirement to compensate a new Palestinian state for Israel's retention of some territory beyond the 1949 Green Line -- i.e. the armistice demarcation lines (ADL).  First, the 1949 armistice agreements with Egypt and Jordan say that the ADL are without prejudice to a final  settlement.  Second, no Arab government has ever recognized the ADL as the legitimate and permanent borders of the Jewish State.  Third, the peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) explicitly indicate as Israel's international borders not the ADL, but rather to the west the old Sinai boundary with Egypt, and to the east the Jordan River.  Fourth, the Jewish people's aboriginal, treaty, and self-determination rights rest on principles so fundamental that they probably outweigh any arguments favoring the ADL.


A full and final peace treaty could probably also rely on aboriginal rights to ensure that Jews keep access to certain religious sites, sacred to Judaism for more than two millennia.


Finally, Jewish aboriginal and self-determination rights together argue for safeguards to ensure that creating a new Palestinian state cannot be a stepping stone toward eventual destruction of Israel.  Because Jews remain a vulnerable minority in the Muslim and Arab Middle East, a full and final peace treaty would probably need to have a number of effective stipulations for Jewish security.  And such safety measures should probably embrace both military provisions and an article unequivocally recognizing the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as the Jewish State -- i.e., as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish people in a part of its aboriginal homeland.


Allen Z. Hertz was senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's prime minister and the federal cabinet.  He formerly worked in Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and earlier taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto, and Hong Kong.  He studied European history and languages at McGill University (B.A.) and then East European and Ottoman history at Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.).  He also has international law degrees from Cambridge University (LL.B.) and the University of Toronto (LL.M.).

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