tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649499642859537516.post2487009336678470055..comments2023-11-02T08:07:14.853-07:00Comments on The Land and the Book: Did the U.N. Create the State of Israel?Adam Grandyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10160077670199351921noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649499642859537516.post-33936105758432848982010-10-27T21:23:46.455-07:002010-10-27T21:23:46.455-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jeremy R. Hammondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00435387165017933335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5649499642859537516.post-71733153486022649612010-10-27T21:23:07.805-07:002010-10-27T21:23:07.805-07:00Dear Charlie,
In your reply here, you mischaracte...Dear Charlie,<br /><br />In your reply here, you mischaracterize my article. You state I tried "to show that the U.N. decision to partition Palestine ... was an illegal decision". This is false. I never argued this, and it's a false premise. The U.N. did not make a "decision" to partition Palestine. As I discuss in my article, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 adopted UNSCOP's recommendation that Palestine be partitioned. It was just that -- a recommendation. I never argued this resolution was "illegal". I merely pointed out that, absent mutual consent from both parties to accept that proposal, neither the General Assembly nor the Security Council had any authority to implement it by force, and doing so would be a violation of the U.N. Charter.<br /><br />You suggest that noting Jews owned less than 7 percent of the land and yet the partition plan, had it been implemented, would have awarded them 55.5 percent of the total area for their state is "misleading" because much of that land was in the Negev. Nevertheless, Arabs owned 85% of the land, which means that even if we accept your argument, the fact remains that the plan, had it been implemented, would have meant taking enormous swaths of land from its rightful Arab owners to give to the Jews. So citing these facts is in no way "misleading".<br /><br />You state that Dr. Nisan made "a strong rebuttal" to my article. In fact, Dr. Nisan acknowledges that my thesis is correct -- the U.N. did not create Israel. You yourself also admit this truth. However, the claim that Israel came into existence because the Jews "fought for their right of self-determination against an Arab population unwilling to accept a Jewish state in their midst" is a gross mischaracterization of the situation. The Arab majority wished to exercise their own, equal right to self-determination, and they were willing to recognize and respect that equal right of the Jewish minority by proposing a single, democratic state with constitutional guarantees protecting the rights of the minority and guaranteeing Jewish representation. It was not the Arabs who rejected Jewish self-determination, but the Zionists who rejected Arab self-determination. Israel was founded upon that rejection, manifested in the racist act of ethnic cleansing that was necessary to demographically create the "Jewish state".<br /><br />As for your assertion that God gave the land to Israel, and those who deny this "won't accept the message of the Bible", I suggest you read the Bible more carefully, because it doesn't support that argument, even if we were to accept the assumption that a state's legitimacy could possibly derive from a religious text (see my article "Woe to you, Christain Zionist, Hypocrites!" for more).Jeremy R. Hammondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00435387165017933335noreply@blogger.com