​By Richard Schifter and Adriana Camisar
 
Every year, around this time, numerous newspapers around the world publish articles that mark the commemoration of the Palestinian “Nakba.” The word Nakba means “catastrophe” in Arabic, and is used by the Palestinians to refer to the creation of the state of Israel and the beginning of the problem of the "Palestinian refugees."
 
The trouble with these articles, nearly identical versions of which are published by different international news agencies, and then replicated by newspapers around the globe, is that they repeat, and therefore promote, extreme Palestinian propaganda that is completely counterproductive to the beginning of any peaceful path between Israelis and Palestinians.
 
The vast majority of these articles contain a false account of the historical events that led to the creation of the state of Israel. According to this narrative, Israel’s creation was to the detriment of a “historic Palestine” populated almost exclusively by Arabs. And the ancestral ties of the Jewish people to that land are either ignored or denied.
 
There never really was a "Palestinian state" from which Israel took territory away. When the United Nations (U.N.), in November of 1947, recommended the partition of the area then called Palestine into two states, one Arab and the other one Jewish, all that territory was part of the British Mandate (and had previously been part of the Ottoman Empire). There never was Arab-Palestinian sovereignty over that territory and, in fact, back then, the Arab inhabitants of that area did not call themselves "Palestinians."
 
The U.N. partition plan, which had the approval of most of the nations of the world, was constructed on the basis that both peoples had a right to a portion of that territory, and it recommended that the Jewish state be established in those areas where the Jewish population was a majority. Even though the horrors of the Holocaust precipitated the decision to finally facilitate the creation of a Jewish state, the historical, religious and legal ties of the Jewish people to that land are ancient and well documented.
 
While the Jews accepted the partition plan, the Arab countries rejected it, even though the plan also provided for the formation of an Arab state, and despite the fact that numerous and vast Arab states already existed in the region. That was the first missed opportunity for the creation of an Arab-Palestinian state bordering the state of Israel.
 
Immediately after the establishment of the state of Israel, in May of 1948, five Arab states (Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq, whose armies were also joined by volunteers from Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Libya), started a war with the declared intention of annihilating the nascent state. With enormous effort and the loss of 1% of its population, Israel was able to defeat the Arab armies, and a series of armistices were signed.
 
As a consequence of this war, Israel not only kept the area granted to it in the partition plan of 1947, but its territory expanded by 23%. The area known today as the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt, and the West Bank was occupied by Transjordan (later named Jordan).
 
During the conflict, approximately 700,000 Arabs left Israel. The majority of them did it of their own free will, because their leaders exhorted them to abandon the land in order to facilitate the killing of the Jews.  On the other hand, starting in 1948 and continuing in the following years, around 800,000 Jews were unfairly expelled from the Arab countries where their ancestors had lived for centuries.
 
As we look back at this time period, across the years, there was a similar number of Arab and Jewish refugees. And there is no doubt that the problem of the Palestinian refugees was generated by an armed conflict initiated by the Arab countries against Israel. If the Arab states had not attacked the newly created state of Israel, there would have been no Palestinian refugees.
 
Inexplicably, though, the Arab countries have historically been exonerated from any responsibility in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. They also have not been held responsible for the expulsion of thousands of Jews from their lands.
 
It is important to note that the descendants of the approximately 160,000 Arabs who remained within the borders of the nascent Jewish state in 1948, currently number almost two million people, about 21% of the total population of Israel, and have full civil and political rights.
 
It is also important to note that the Palestinian refugees were treated differently than any other refugee group in the world. The U.N. created in 1949 the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to provide relief for all the refugees of the conflict. But since Israel absorbed most of the Jewish refugees, the agency was left to deal with the Palestinian refugees only.
 
As its name implies, UNRWA was to provide assistance and jobs. But it was meant as a “temporary” organization, which would make sure the number of refugees decreased over time. This is why it was originally intended to resettle the refugees in the communities to which they had fled. About 40% of them were in areas that had been a part of the Mandate of Palestine, namely Gaza and what came to be called the West Bank. Most of the other 60% were in Jordan and Syria, countries whose people were of the same ethnicity and religion and spoke the same language.
 
But the Arab countries refused to resettle the Palestinian refugees (because they wanted them to be available to return to Israel and continue to be of help in efforts to destroy it).  Through clever manipulation of the U.N. system, UNRWA was turned into an organization that assumed the task of preventing the integration of the Palestinian refugees into the communities in which they lived.  That was done by setting up, under UNRWA auspices, a segregated system of medical, educational and social services for Palestinian refugees.  Children were taught in UNRWA schools that their home was Palestine, the place to which they were to return so as to end Israel’s existence.  When the operatives who had changed the very objective of UNRWA’s existence recognized that their goal might not be reached soon, they succeeded in creating for UNRWA an exception to the general U.N. rule, by providing that Palestinian "refugee status" would pass from generation to generation (along the paternal line).
 
The Palestinians are the only people in the world whose refugee status passes from generation to generation. By virtue of this, the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees, who today number more than 5 million people, are still considered "refugees”, and the U.N. continues to promote the so-called "right of return" of these refugees to Israel.
 
This massive migration program is something that no Israeli government would ever accept, because it would imply the liquidation of Israel as a Jewish state, the only Jewish state in the world, to become yet another Arab state.
 
While the Palestinian leaders say that they are in favor of a two-state solution, by not giving up the "right of return," what they are really seeking is the destruction of Israel through demographic means. This is the main reason why so many attempts to reach a peace agreement have failed.
 
By constantly repeating a historically incorrect and radical narrative, instead of making a fact-based, objective analysis of the conflict, international news agencies are contributing to the empowerment of the most rejectionist factions, and the unnecessary prolongation of this painful conflict.

​In late December 2019, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, Fatou Bensouda, announced that a “basis” exists to investigate the “situation in Palestine” and whether Israel committed war crimes during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, as well as the Gaza border conflict of 2018-2019. Earlier this month, the court gave the green light for Bensouda to open an investigation of alleged war crimes committed by American servicemen during the United States’ war with Afghanistan. 
 
If it sounds worrisome for Israel and the U.S., that’s because it is. Both Israel and the U.S. are not members of the ICC and did not ratify the court’s founding Rome Treaty, precisely because both countries feared it was a structurally biased institution and would become the politicized body it has. The ICC does not try states, but individuals. That means although the U.S. and Israel are not parties to the Rome Treaty, their citizens, leaders and soldiers are not immune from indictment, prosecution and arrest warrants in countries that are parties to the treaty (and there are 123 member countries of the ICC).  
 
The International Criminal Court was created in 2002 to prosecute individuals for international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The institution was meant to function as a “court of last resort," which means it should step in when rogue nations do not hold ostensible perpetrators of war crimes accountable. In this sense, the ICC is a powerful resource to maintain law and order around the globe and to serve as a deterrent to tyrants from committing grave crimes. However, as we have witnessed another international body, the United Nations Human Rights Council, stray from their noble cause into a political farce, so too has the International Criminal Court.  
 
The United States and Israel both have vibrant democracies, each with some of the world’s most respected judicial systems that investigate alleged wrongdoings by their militaries.  The notion that the ICC would open inquiries into both countries is obscene. The U.S. and Israel currently view the court as a politicized and illegitimate institution. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently called the most recent ruling on Afghanistan a “truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable, political institution masquerading as a legal body,” and Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon referred to the investigation of Operation Protective Edge as “diplomatic terrorism.” 
 
For years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) along with several Palestinian NGOs, backed by thousands of euros from European governments, has threatened to open a probe of war crimes against Israel.  In 2015, the PA joined the Rome Treaty and several countries recognized Palestine as an independent state. However, contrary to some wishes, Palestine is still not a sovereign state according to the Vienna Convention, upon which the Rome Statue is based.  Therefore, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has argued that “only sovereign states can delegate criminal jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court. The PA does not meet the criteria.” It’s quite straightforward. The ICC has no jurisdiction to investigate the PA’s request, and it certainly has no jurisdiction over Israel, which is not a party to the institution.   
 
In over two decades, the ICC has only ever convicted three people in trials of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Given the last decade and the atrocities out of Syria or human rights abuses out of Iran, let alone the nearly daily war crimes committed by Hamas, e.g. sending incendiary balloons across the Gaza border to land in school yards, that there has been little interest in prosecuting such crimes speaks volumes about the political agenda and anti-Israel bias of the court.  
 
Israel's short history has been consumed by Palestinian warfare since before the state’s creation, from terrorism to the battlefield, to the media and the BDS and delegitimization campaign and now through lawfare. We cannot underestimate the use of lawfare as a weapon against the Jewish State and dismiss it as mere politics. It may be a political show, but this time Israel cannot dismiss the ICC’s legal positions in the same way it dismisses rulings by the U.N. General Assembly. International law carries with it very real consequences and not just from a P.R. perspective of assigning the label of war criminal to an Israeli leader. If said person refuses to submit to interrogation by the ICC prosecutor and travels to an ICC member state like Germany or England (as well as much of the rest of Europe, South America and Africa), that person could theoretically be arrested as soon as their plane lands on foreign soil.  That scenario would lead to an international scandal of epic proportions, causing severe diplomatic rifts—rifts Israel cannot afford.
 
The ICC Pretrial Chamber is expected to decide sometime after this month whether or not it will recognize a “State of Palestine,” (meaning whether or not it actually has jurisdiction), and determine if they will proceed with a full criminal investigation. For now, we will watch as things unfold, continue to advocate on Israel’s behalf and hope Israel continues to mount a multi-layered defense against this delegitimization.
 
For years, we have made the case that Israel continues to be subjected to unequal footing and outright systemic bias within the international community. The latest moves by the ICC add it to the growing list of anti-Israel, arguably anti-Semitic, international bodies.  The real tragedy here is that victims of actual crimes against humanity may never see justice because a pervasive international obsession with the one Jewish State trumps all else. 

​Last week, the American veto stopped yet another dangerously misguided U.N. Security Council resolution from passing. The resolution was tabled by Kuwait, the current non-permanent member of the council from the Arab states. The U.S. was the only state to vote against it, but the resolution was unbalanced enough that four other states (Ethiopia, the Netherlands, Poland and the U.K.) on the 15-member council also chose not to support it, and abstain. A resolution needs nine votes to pass, as long as none of the permanent member of the Security Council (China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.) votes against it, so this resolution was close to failure on its own, but it did require a U.S. veto in the end.
 
The resolution was typical of what comes out of the U.N. whenever aggressive provocations by Palestinian terrorist groups lead to a crisis situation. Israel was roundly condemned for defending Israeli citizens and soldiers against Palestinian rioters — often Hamas fighters — trying to storm the border and murder Jews. Hamas was never mentioned by name in the resolution; neither was Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which only days earlier had launched a barrage of rockets toward Israeli communities near Gaza, a situation which could have easily spiraled into yet another war. The resolution does deplore rocket launches from Gaza, but the way it is worded it sounds as if the rockets are magically launching themselves. There is no actor responsible for the terrorism. Some states criticized this lack of naming-and-shaming terrorist groups, but shamefully voted for the resolution nonetheless.
 
The U.S. proposed a resolution that would have condemned Hamas by name at the same council session. Unfortunately, the U.S. stood alone in voting for it. Russia, Kuwait and Bolivia voted against and the rest of the council abstained, many complaining that enough time was not given to negotiate on the text to “balance” it. In U.N. terms, balance is only achieved when Israel is viciously criticized for defending itself and Palestinian terrorist groups are either ignored or are lumped in on calls for restraint by “both sides.”
 
Beyond this phenomenon, which — sadly — appears all too often at U.N. bodies, this resolution was notable for its efforts to create an international protection mechanism for Palestinians. The resolution would not have created the mechanism, but rather started the process: it called on the U.N. Secretary-General to report back on recommendations for such a mechanism. Such a mechanism would be unhelpful in the extreme, and Israel would never allow it, especially given the history of ineffectual international missions being stationed between Israel and its neighbors.
 
In Sinai, U.N. forces withdrew at Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser’s demand as Egypt and other Arab countries moved in on Israel in what turned out to be another failed attempt to annihilate Israel. In Syria, the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) on the Golan Heights fled early in the Syrian civil war. European Union observers on the Gaza border also fled after the Hamas coup in 2007. Finally, in Lebanon, the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has not lifted a finger to stop the growing Hezbollah arsenal of thousands of rockets pointing at Israel. Israel knows that in these sensitive areas, only Israel can provide for its own security. An “international mechanism” would only put Israeli (and, ultimately, Palestinian) lives in greater peril.
 
The Palestinians have been issuing calls for international protection for a while at the U.N. So, in essence what we have is the Palestinians asking for a certain policy, which is rightly ignored by the international community as unworkable. Palestinian terrorists then instigate violence and create a situation where the Security Council feels the need to respond, and the Arab states are there to offer a resolution with the solution that the Palestinians wanted all along. Some of the states on the council that voted in favor of the resolution fooled themselves into thinking that it was a balanced text (though, of course, it was not), and that they were voting to urge a stop to a terrible situation. In reality, they were only making the situation worse in the long run by encouraging Palestinian intransigence and, indirectly, violence.
 
Finally, there is a real question of whether or not the riots from Gaza warranted this much Security Council attention in the first place. When there are instances of actual peaceful protests being suppressed by authoritarian states, the council tends to ignore it (see, Iran, Venezuela, and most recently, Nicaragua). Palestinian protesters are only cared about if they appear as a violent riot rushing at Israel’s border; the right to protest against Hamas brutality in Gaza or the Palestinian Authority repression in the West Bank is not important to the international community. At the U.N., hypocrisy is the norm and the U.S. veto is the only check against double standards and delegitimization and demonization of Israel.

​Over the past few years, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has fallen deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole by actively participating in the Palestinian campaign to delegitimize Israel at international institutions (see prior blog post on the subject here). In the UNESCO context, the Palestinians have been trying to erase immutable facts of history—specifically, the ties between the Jewish people to Israel, our homeland—through various libelous resolutions that either try to obfuscate the Jewish connection to holy sites (for instance, only using the Arabic name for the Temple Mount or putting “Western Wall” in quotes and giving preference to an obscure Arabic name for the site), and/or falsely claiming that holy sites are in danger. A shameful, albeit steadily decreasing, number of UNESCO member states have been far too willing to go along with these outright lies.
 
The events of this summer, however, are a warning signal to UNESCO on the perilous route that the membership is taking. Last month, the World Heritage Committee (WHC) voted to approve an anti-Israel resolution that, among other attacks, claimed that Israel had no sovereignty over Jerusalem—the eternal heart of the Jewish people and the capital of the State of Israel—and a second decision to add Hebron’s Old City (and the Tomb of the Patriarchs within it) as a Palestinian site to the list of World Heritage Sites in danger, even though the site is in no apparent danger.
 
Shortly following the conclusion of the WHC session, Palestinian violence flared up in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The cause of the violence? Metal detectors.
 
Following a terrorist attack in which the terrorists hid their guns in al-Aqsa Mosque and then murdered two Israeli policemen, Israel closed the Temple Mount temporarily, and installed metal detectors. Similar security measures are used at holy sites throughout the world—the Vatican, Mecca, and at the Western Wall, to name a few. These installations were added to ensure that all visitors to the Temple Mount are safe, regardless of faith.  
 
The reaction was immediate and without any proportion to reality. Muslims refused to pray at the site if they had to deign to walk through measures designed for everyone’s safety. Violent protests followed, egged on by Palestinian and Muslim leaders. Both Hamas and Fatah called for a “Day of Rage” on the next Friday. That night, at a Shabbat dinner table, a terrorist went on a rampage, murdering Yosef Salomon and his children Chaya and Elad. The violence went on for nearly two weeks, and has only recently gone down, although one would be hard-pressed to call the situation “calm” yet.
 
This reaction was a direct consequence of the lies told by the Palestinian leadership to its own people (and the rest of the world) for decades—that holy sites, and specific to this case, al-Aqsa Mosque—were in danger. This, plainly, is fiction. Israel does not engage in activities that endanger holy sites. To the contrary, Israel has made extraordinary efforts to discover and preserve cultural, religious and historic sites throughout the country, while making them safe and open for visitors of any faith.
 
The world has seen, once again, who is truly creating the instability at the holy sites—it is the side that stored weapons in a mosque of significant importance to the Muslim world (a mosque which sits upon the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism), carried out a terror attack from that site, and then erupted in violent protests and further terror when common sense security measures were introduced following the murder.
 
The Palestinians know that this lie is a touch point that can lead to open conflagration when manipulated, as it has on previous occasions. The question is—how far is UNESCO willing to go to push the Palestinian narrative when real world consequences are at stake? When will responsible member states at UNESCO, which, incidentally, is tasked with creating peace in the minds of humanity, take a stand against extreme historical revisionism?
 
We’ve seen UNESCO bodies push forward a truly absurd narrative in many previous resolutions (once even complaining that Israel was planting fake Jewish graves at a cemetery in Jerusalem). But, claiming that Israel is putting holy sites in danger is a real threat to the peace and stability in region. When UNESCO bodies accept this destructive narrative, they make the world body complicit in the explosive violence that is then borne of this lie.