THE
HANDSTAND...................................................................................SEPTEMBER
2002
ocean
of despair and droplets of hope,
I note: there is no one to talk to....
written by: Ghassan Andoni
Regardless of the
apparent huge level of disagreement, Palestinians and
Israelis are more in agreement, about many issues, than
ever before. Both agree that on the other side there is
no one to talk to...Where does that come from? I think it
does not originate from the intensity and brutality of
the current crisis, but rather comes from the complexity
of the Palestinian Israel conflict. It originates from
the inner conflict between the necessity to
"eliminate" the enemy that stems from the
pre-set objectives of either side and the moral ability
to live with its consequences. The drastic failure of the
Oslo attempts indicated that even re-modeling the other
as an exit of this stale-mate situation is rather
fruitless.
As cruel as it looks, and as cold as it sounds, neither
the current Israeli or Palestinian definition of rights
and nations aspirations can stand a partner on the other
side. If Jews were the miserable, prosecuted, and shelter
seeking emigrants, Palestinians would not have a problem
to accommodate them. But they are not. If Palestinians
were much much much less in numbers, if they were willing
to accommodate for the Zionist project, if they had no
national aspirations, and if they were less attached to
their rights and land, Israelis would have little
problems to accommodate them. But this is not the case.
So, the images that best fit the continuity of the
conflict is the one of a "terrorist" versus
that of a "Zionist gangster". Such images can
easily eliminate any historical or geopolitical context
in which this crisis developed. It help both escape the
notion of historical rights or justice. If the opponent
is a "terrorist", a group or a nation that is
set for indiscriminate killing of Jews for no reason but
a weird ideological, fanatical, or religious one, then
there is no one to talk to. And if the opponent is a
gangster that only tuned to robbing, killing, and
disposing, then there is no one to talk to.
As much as this public attitude can serve as an excuse to
continue with the fight, it can serve to stop the
illusionary hunt for the partner "tailored to my
taste". Chances to continue with the fight are as
wide as the ocean and chances to accept the other as he
is, are only a few droplets.
Ghassan Andoni©2002. Ghassan is a creator, and presently
a co-ordinater, of the International Solidarity Movement
in Jerusalem.
POLITICAL
POWER STRUCTURES - A FATAL STORY THE MANDATES - A LEGAL
SYSTEM?
"The
Peace Negotiations" by Robert Lansing, 1919,
offer a comparison of the United Nations
organisation we know, with its innate inability
to act for the equality of all Nations,
with these memoranda of the institution of The
League of Nations encapsulated in the Treaty of
Versailles at the end of World War One.
Was Robert Lansing the last but one( the other
being George Marshall in 1945)of the benign and
altruistic political representatives of an
American Nation that had developed a philosophy
of government that believed in the Equality of
all Nations? As Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs to President Wilson he was in a unique
position to comment on the final phases of such
beliefs for US governments.
Robert Lansing's
preliminary worry was with regard to the
President of the United States. He judged
President Wilson's interest in adopting the
proposed mandatory system for disposal of the
German and the dismemberment of the Ottoman
Empire after World War One as wholly
unsatisfactory.. He saw it as participation,
possibly, in the political quarrels of Europe, or
The Old World as it was then described. He
foresaw legal difficulties that would entangle
the USA as guardian of any of the peoples
defeated or victims of the war. He reasoned with
President Wilson, that the mandates stemming from
the installation of The League of Nations
presented these difficulties from the standpoint
of international law and the philosophy of
government. These matters that Wilson dismissed a
"mere technicalities" were subsequently
written up by Lansing in a memoranda to the
President, as follows:
"The system
of mandatories under the League of
Nations..raises some interesting and difficult
questions.The one which is the most prominent,
since it enters into nearly all of the
international problems presented, is: Where does
the sovereignty over these territories reside?
SOVEREIGNTY
"Sovereignty
is inherent in the very conception of
government.It cannot be destroyed although it may
be absorbed by another sovereignty, either by
compulsion or cession.
When the Germans were ousted from their colonies,
the sovereignty passed to the Power or Powers
which took possession. The location of the
sovereignty up to the present is clear, but with
the introduction of the League of Nations as an
international primate superior to the conquerors,
some questions will have to be answered.
Do those who have seized the sovereignty transfer
it, or does Germany (and the Ottoman Empire of
the Middle East) transfer it to the League of
Nations? If so, how?
Does the League assume possession of the
sovereignty on its renunciation by Germany? If
so, how?
Does the League merely direct the disposition of
the sovereignty without taking possession of it?
Assuming that the latter question is answered in
the affirmative, then after such disposition of
the right to exercise sovereignty, which will
presumably be a limited right, where does the
actual sovereignty reside?
The appointment of a mandatory to exercise
sovereign rights over territory is to creat an
agent for the real sovereign. But who is the real
sovereign?
Is the League of Nations the sovereign, or is it
a commn agent of the nations composing the
League, to whom is confided solely the duty of
naming the mandatory and issuing the mandate?
If the League is the sovereign, can it avoid
responsibility for the misconduct of the
mandatory, its agent?
If it is not the League, who is responsible for
the mandatory's conduct?
Assuming that the mandatory in faithfully
performing the provisions of the mandate
unavoidably works an injustice upon another
party, can or ought the mandatory to be held
responsible? If not, how can the injured party
obtain redress? Manifestly the answer is: from
the sovereign - but who is the sovereign?
In the Treaty of Peace Germany will be called
upon to renounce sovereignty over her colonial
possessions. To whom will the sovereignty pass?
If the reply is "the League of Nations"
the question is:Does the League possess the
attributes of an independent state so that it can
function as an owner of territory? If so, what is
it? A world state?
If the League does not constitute a world state,
then the sovereignty would have to pass to some
national state. What national state?What would be
the relation between the national state and the
League?
If the League is to receive title to the
sovereignty, what officers of the League are
empowered to receive it and to transfer its
exercise to a mandatory?
What form of acceptance should be adopted?
Would every nation which is a member of the
League have to give its representatives full
powers to accept the title?
Assuming that certain members decline to issue
such powers or to accept title as to one or more
of the territories what relation would those
members have to the mandatory named?"
Lansing
continues..."many of the questions, I
believe the large majority, were as pertinent
after the treaty was completed as they were when
the memorandum was made."
"In
conversation with Colonel House (also on
President Wilson's staff), I stated that, in my
opinion, a simpler and better plan was to
transfer the sovereignty over territory to a
particular nation by a treaty of cession under
such terms as seemed wise and, in the case of
some of the newly created states, to have them
execute treaties accepting protectorates by
Powers mutually acceptable to those states and
the League of Nations." However as far as
Col. House was concerned - "to abandon the
system was to abandon one of the ideas of
international supervision, which the President
especially cherished and strongly
advocated."
"The
mandatory system produced by the creative mind of
General Smuts...appealed strongly to those who
preferred to adopt unusual and untried
methods..The self-satisfaction of inventing
something new, or of evolving a new theory is
inherent with not a few men. The
system....appeared to possess no peculiar
advantage over the old method of transferring and
exercising sovereign control either in providing
added protection to the inhabitants of territory
subject to a mandate, or greater certainty of
international equality in the matter of commerce
and trade - the two principal arguments urged in
favour of the proposed system."
"...In actual
operation the apparent altruism of the mandatory
system worked in favour of the selfish and
material interests of the powers which accepted
the mandates.The League of Nations might reserve
in the mandate a right of supervision and even of
revocation of authority, but that right would be
nominal and of little, if any, real value
provided the mandatory was one of the Great
Powers as it undoubtedly would be".
"From the
beginning to the end of the discussions on
mandates and their distribution among the Powers
it was repeatedly declared that the US ought to
participate in the general plan for the
upbuilding of the new states which under
mandatories would finally become independent
nationalities, but it was never to my knowledge
proposed except by the inhabitants of the region
in question, that the US should accept a mandate
for Syria or the Asiatic Coast of the
AEgeanSea,(Lebanon).Those regions were rich in
natural resources and their economic future
under a stable government was bright."
"I confined
the objections which I presented to him, as I
have stated, to those based on legal
difficulties.....The system of mandates was
written into the Treaty"
In Sept. 1919 In a
private conversation which was reported by the
recipient "Mr. Lansing said..England and
France have gotten out of the Treaty everthing
that they wanted, and the League of Nations can
do nothing to alter any of the unjust clauses of
the Treaty, except by unanimous consent of the
members of the League, and the Great Powers will
never give their consent to changes in the
interests of weaker peoples."..." he
continued "I believe that if the Senate
could only understand what this Treaty means, and
if the American people could really understand,
it would unquestionably be defeated, but I wonder
will they ever understand what it lets them in
for.""(The revelation of this
conversation led to the resignation of both the
recipient and Lansing.)
This book ends
prior to the ratification of the Treaty but here
are quotes from a memoranda that Lansing wrote:-
"The terms of peace appear immeasurably
harsh and humiliating, while many of them seem to
me impossible of performance....The League of
Nations created by the Treaty is relied upon to
preserve the artificial structure which has been
erected by compromise of the conflicting
interests of the Great Powers, and to prevent the
germination of so many seeds of war which are
sown in so many Articles and which under normal
conditions would soon bear fruit. The League
might as well attempt to prevent the growth of
plant life in a tropical jungle.Wars will come
sooner or later......the League is an instrument
of the mighty to check the normal growth of
national power and national aspirations among
those who have been rendered impotent by
defeat.....peoples delivered into the hands of
those they hate, while their economic resources
are torn from them and given to others. It may be
years before these oppressed peoples are able to
throw off the yoke, but as sure as day follows
night the time will come when they make the
effort.......whatever it may be called or however
it may be disguised it is an Alliance of the Five
Great Military Powers..........the law of
restraint will be broken or render the
organization powerless. It is founded on the
shifting sands of self-interest."
by jocelyn
braddell
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Henry Ford on Zionism in 1920
From
"Will Jewish Zionism Bring Armageddon?" Observing and
weighing the events and tendencies of Jewish rule thus
far in Palestine, it is not difficult to see the purpose
in it all. The Jews still distrust their ability to make
a State. They do not distrust the world's willingness to
let them have a State; indeed, it is amazing how
naturally the Jews place confidence in that portion of
the world they have always affected to despise. But
deep-seated in the Jew is a distrust of himself. He
doesn't know how his people will contrive to live
together. He doesn't know how they will contrive to drop
the principles and practices which are so destructive of
social comity elsewhere. And he feels that, patient as
the mandatory power may be now, it is doubtful how long
that patience will hold out under the blunders and
brutalities that will be inseparable from Zionist rule,
if any deductions can be drawn from the facts at hand.
Therefore, feeling that the time may be short, he is
endeavoring by such actions as interference with the
cultural question, with the racial rights if the natives,
and by such schemes as the land- grabbing device
described above, to get so strong a hold on the situation
as will seriously complicate it whenever
Great Britain shall feel it to be her duty to the world
to step in and attempt to bring some kind of order out of
the chaos.
It begins to be very clear that Jewish
nationalism will develop along the line of enmity to
the rest of the world. Already the dangerous proposal has
been made to organize a Jewish army for the protection of
the Suez Canal. Instead of thinking of roads and
farmsteads, of vineyards and oil presses, of schools and
sanitary villages, the Jews are thinking of elevating
themselves into the military power that shall stand
between East and West on that most strategic strip of
ground in the world. The whole situation is fraught with
danger, and men who wish well to the Jews are alarmed and
saddened by the prospect.
There are three elements of danger in
the situation as it exists today: ...the intense,
egotistic and challenging nationalism that Zionists
exhibit even before they get a potato patch -- the taste
for world politics and world power; and the racial
confusion which now exists in Palestine. These combined are
dynamite. It is unimaginable that the nations responsible
to humanity for the conduct of that important strip of
territory will remain supine while Bolshevism spreads
under the false pretense of a religious movement favored
by Christendom. Although exercising no sovereignty over
the land ...The white race has thus far been the Chosen
People to whom the dominion of the earth has been given
Palestine is the key to world military strategy and
trade. In question 12 of the Questions and Answers
published by the department of education, Zionist
Organization of America, this occurs: What are the
commercial possibilities of Palestine? The location of
Palestine between the three continents favors foreign
trade. All this lends itself to
dreams of future glory, and many Christian friends of the
Jew have pleased themselves by conceiving an universal
Hague at Jerusalem and a new social order going out to
bless the nations from Zion. It is the idea conveyed by
men like A. A. Berle in books like "The World
Significance of a Jewish State." All this might be
expected if the Jews of today were Old Testament people,
anxious to re-establish the social laws of Moses, which
are conceded to be the best safeguards ever devised
against pauperism on the one hand and plutocracy on the
other. But Palestine has not fallen into the hands of
that sort of Jews.... The racial situation in Palestine
just now is very delicate. Americans do not understand
it. The Zionist propaganda has always been accepted on
the assumption that Palestine is the Jews' land and that
they only need help to go back. It is an historical and
political fact that Palestine has not been the Jews' land
for more than 2,000 years. There are in Palestine 500,000
Moslems, 105,000 Christians and 65,000 Jews. The industry
of the land is agriculture. Engaged in this are 69 per
cent of the Moslems, 46 per cent of the Christians and 19
per cent of the Jews. Neither numerically nor
industrially have they held the land. Yet, as the result
of a war bargain, it is handed over to them as regardless
of the native inhabitants as if Belgium had been handed
over to Mexico. Many of the natives are Semites, like the
Jews, but they do not want the Jews among them. That is a strange
fact for those who use the term
"anti-Semitism"; why do real Semites also
dislike the Jews? Surely Semites are not victims of
"anti-Semitism."
The Balfour Declaration, as well
as the terms of the Mandate adopted at San Remo,
recognized the rights of the native races. Indeed,
everyone who knows about the people who have been native
to Palestine for 2,000 years recognizes their rights,
everybody except the Jews. Bethlehem
was a Christian town, as befits the birthplace of Christ.
Yet the Jews have contrived that 2,000 Bethlehemites
leave Palestine rather than submit to what they see
coming. The other races are not so placid about it, hence
the trouble. .... General
Allenby promised those native races of Palestine that
their rights would be respected. So did the Balfour
Declaration. So did the San Remo Conference. So also did
President Wilson in the twelfth of his Fourteen Points. But
Judah says, "Let them get out!" Americans have
been in their land less than 150 years as a nation and
there is China and Arabia or Siberia for us to go to if
we should want to, but we prefer our own country, and so
do the native races of Palestine, who have dwelt there
for 2,000 years. The watchmen on the
towers of the world are alarmed at what seems brewing in
Judah's geographical caldron. [THE DEARBORN
INDEPENDENT, issue of 28 May 1921]
A Thought for 2002:: Do the English still have a Legal
responsibility as expressed in the
Mandates of the Treaty of Versaille, in relation to
Israel and the Palestinians?
By Noam Arnon:
The writer is a spokesman of the Hebron Jewish
Community
http://www.haaretzdaily.com
Five hundred or a thousand years ago, a few
thousand Jews lived in the country. In 1919, the
League of Nations recognized the Jewish people's
right to the land, without any connection to their
number in it (tens of thousands). In 1948, 600,000
Jews lived in the country. The numerical issue was
never brought up as an element determining the
Jewish people's connection to or belonging in the
country.
Hence, for us it doesn't matter whether there are more
Jews or Arabs here. Of course, we would prefer it if
there are a majority of Jews here. But no matter, the
Jewish people will retain their right to the country.
By definition the state of Israel was founded as a
Jewish state. The regime constituted in it is
democratic in character, but its essence is Jewish.
And if there is a contradiction between this essence
and the character of the government, it is clear that
the essence takes precedence, and that steps are to
be taken to prevent damage or changes to this Jewish
essence. Democracy cannot to be exploited to
destroy the Jewish state.
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