Palestine, Israel, and U.N. Resolution 181

When tempers are high people tend, even more than normal, to discard any evidence that anything is wrong with the side they have chosen. They rally around the flag.

Add that to the tendency for history to be treated as propaganda, rather than a true record of the past, and it is not surprising that many people are confused by the history of Palestine as told by its partisans, which appears have very little in common with the history of the modern nation of Israel, as told by its partisans. Voices in the middle tend to get drowned out.

Here I want to take a look at the myth that the United Nations (U. N.) sanctioned the creation of the nation of Israel, and that the non-Judaic Palestinians were opposing a fair and just plan to create that nation. To do that I will be referring to the original 1947 document, available from Yale University at this link:

• United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 "for the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine"

I highly recommend you read the document first, and think about it, before I walk you through how I see it. You may not agree with my analysis.

The key word to look at, in distinguishing historical propaganda from what actually happened, is the word "state." The document uses the word "state" frequently. It is a word that can mean "nation" or a government. But as we know from our own United States, the word "state" can mean a level of government different from (usually subordinate to) a national government.

Everyone agrees that a majority of non-Judaic citizens in the British Mandate of Palestine, possibly a majority of all citizens, rejected the U.N. resolution. They preferred the better-established international standard for transitions from imperial dominance to local freedom: national self-determination. Under that system all the voting-age citizens would elect representatives, mainly by geographic units, and those representatives would then write a Constitution for the nation, then have another election, and start writing the laws of the nation.

The Zionist Palestinians and their foreign supporters (but not all Judaic Palestinians) preferred a Jewish-majority, explicitly theocratic and ethnically defined Nation of Israel. They did not want to have a merely Jewish-majority "state" within a Palestinian nation.

How do we know that the U.N. did not intend to set up a sovereign Nation of Israel through Resolution 181?

In propaganda Resolution 181 is usually called the "United Nation Partition Plan for Palestine" which implies a two-nation solution. You can see that it is actually an attempt at a a one-nation solution from the text in the very first paragraph, which bears repeating: "for the consideration of the question of the future Government of Palestine."

The word Partition comes from the phrase "plan of partition with economic union" which first occurs in paragraph 6. Some relevant U.S. history is the partition of the various areas taken from Native American Indians and partitioned into a variety of states. Partition does not, in itself, imply nation. If historians focussed on the word "union" and minimized the word "partition," people would think about the events of 1948 dfferently.

The words "Jewish State" first appear (Part I, A., para. 3) in the context of withdrawal of British troops. After that the terms Jewish State, Arab State, and City of Jerusalem are used frequently, and they are described as "independent."

But Palestine is not really granted independence. Instead a U.N. commission is to take over the power formerly exercised from the British. The commission is empowered to make the final lines of demarcation of the Jewish, Arab and Jerusalem sectors.

Rather than holding elections, the commission is to appoint Provisional Councils for each of the "states". Among other responsibilities, each Provisional Council is to recruit an "armed militia." Even then "general political and military control, including the choice of the militia's High Command, shall be exercised by the Commission."

Then there are to be elections, and illegal immigrants (who would be mostly European Jews) can vote simply if they "have signed a notice of intention to become citizens of such State."

Neither elected government is supposed to discriminate based on religion or ethnic origin. There is to be freedom of transit, and you can see that a peculiar lapse in language consistency by a referral to "the other State in Palestine, " where elsewhere the term Arab State is used.

The three States are to establish "the Economic Union and Joint Economic Board." Recall that the original call in the United States to go beyond the Articles of Confederation was for an economic union between the 13 states, to be planned at the Annapolis Convention.

Resolution 181 even provides for Arabs living in the Jewish State and Jews living in the Arab state to have the option to vote instead for representatives in the state they are ethnically aligned with, and to be considered citizens of the State which they have opted to vote for. (Section C., Chapter 3)

You can see both the ambiguity of the word "state" and that the Resolution did not intend to create a Nation of Israel most clearly in Section C. Chapter 3, Subsections 2 and 3 where the overall state is again called "Palestine." The phrasing, "These obligations shall be fulfilled through participation in the Joint Economic Board in respect of those obligations applicable to Palestine as a whole, and individually in respect of those applicable to, and fairly apportionable between, the States" is particularly telling.

I'm figuring that is about as much information as anyone can be expected to absorb in one blog post.

I conclude that while Resolution 181 is somewhat ambiguous on the question of whether it authorized a Jewish nation in Palestine, the ambiguity results from the complicated political balance it seeks to impose. The most reasonable reading is that the intention is that a Nation of Palestine is to have three subordinate States, and that each state is to guarantee the usual generally accepted freedoms to all of its inhabitants. It is an attempt to guarantee some protection for minorities, in particular the Jewish minority, rather than to set up two or more racially supremacist or theocratic nations.

My own opinion is that the United Nations had no right to impose a solution on Palestine. The people of Palestine should have been allowed to go through the usual national self-determination process without United Nations (or any other outside) interference.

Although it begins a more complex topic (the history of the conflict), I would also add that the evidence is that a majority of Palestinians would have rejected the dictation from the U.N. had they been allowed to vote on it. However, the actual armies that opposed the creation of the Nation of Israel in 1948 were not Palestinian. The Palestinians had no army. The opposing armies were from other, pre-established Arab nations. In addition, the State of Israel, really a new nation, was declared on May 15, 1948, well before the August 1, 1948 expiration of the British occupation.

Is Zionism a Crime Against Humanity?

Newly appointed United States of America Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday chastised the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for saying Zionism is a crime against humanity.

Actually, Mr. Erdogan was saying that the international community should consider Islamophobia, or prejudice against people who have Islam as a religion, as a crime against humanity "like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism."

There are so many problems with both Mr. Erdogan's and Mr. Kerry's statements that it is worth teasing out the many facts and ideas encompassed by them. Is Zionism a crime against humanity? Let's begin by understanding that Erdogan used the term "crime against humanity" in a rather loose manner.

Crimes against humanity have been defined by international agreement to be serious attacks on humans, possibly including humiliation or degradation, that are a result of government policy. They include, but are not limited to, government-sponsored or enabled murder (particularly mass murder), torture, and physical brutality including rape, as well as denial of human rights for political, racial, gender, or religious reasons. In the context of war they become war crimes. In the worst case they include genocide, the mass murdering of an ethnic or national group, and ethnic cleansing, the murder or expulsion of people from a state for ethnic reasons.

On its face, the general term Zionism is simply the wish of ethnically Jewish people to live in the region near Jerusalem. There is nothing inherently criminal about that, any more than wishing to live in Paris or Nebraska.

Then again, being anti-Semitic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Being anti-Islamic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Even being fascist is not a crime against humanity; there were fascist states that did not commit such crimes, such as Austria before it was united with Germany in 1938.

However, in practice crimes against humanity have been committed. Fascist crimes against humanity and war crimes are well-documented. Where does Zionism stand in the historic record?

In the 1800s when the modern Zionist movement picked up steam, modern Palestine (including what would become the State of Israel) was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Many Jews had long lived peacefully in Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem. Zionists were able to move to Palestine and buy land there, expanding the Jewish population. Perhaps there was some illegal immigration, but for the most part Zionism was characterized by legal immigration into Palestine.

When the British Empire took over Palestine (and most of the Middle East) after World War I, they were obligated to Jews for helping them to win the war. They allowed much more Jewish immigration into Palestine, which created some Arab discontent, but still the immigration was legal and peaceful.

Then came the Holocaust. Many Jewish survivors were angry, militant, and did not feel bound to the old system of ethics or law. Zionism changed. Terrorist Jewish groups appeared in Palestine (they mainly targeted the British at first) and Zionist organizations brought in large numbers of Jewish settlers illegally (by then the British were limiting Jewish immigration to try to placate the increasingly powerful Arab states).

Then the United Nations, which was still largely a military coalition, interfered. The Jewish minority (particularly the newly-arrived European Jews) wanted to create a Jewish State. The native Palestinians wanted to kick out the British Empire and have a democratic state, in which they would be a 65% majority, more if illegal immigrants were expelled. The British and United States pushed the U.N. to favor the Jewish nationalist plan.

U.N. Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947) was also not, in itself, a war crime or crime against humanity, but it acted as an enabler. Rather than calling for elections within a united Palestine, which would have led to peaceful electoral struggle, it called for partition, or racial segregation. It was actually just a recommendation to the British Empire, not a law. While the word independence was used for Arab-Palestinian and Jewish-Palestinian "states," they were to be in an economic union together, with recognized rights for minorities in each.

Another interpretation would be there would be two autonomous regions within the State of Palestine. It should also be noted that the vote was rigged. 13 nations voted against the resolution, including most neutral nations. The 33 votes in favor came mainly from the U.S. and its puppets in Latin America, the Soviet block, and the British imperial block.

There was no declaration of war. Violence escalated. Both Arab and Jewish militias were encouraged by Resolution 181 iteself. Both sides weaponed up and outsiders (more Zionists, including American Jewish organized criminals, and Arab hotheads from several nations) helped promote the situation into a civil war. Both sides had factions that engaged in ethnic cleansing (and both sides had citizens and groups that were appalled by the violence). The better armed, trained, and motivated Jews won. The new State of Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948 when the British quit the scene.

I cannot recount all the wars since that time, or all the crimes against humanity and war crimes on both sides.

Is Zionism a crime against humanity? In the post 1948 setting we find the most troubling evidence that Zionists, now controlling the Israeli government, committed crimes against humanity. There was clearly a great deal of ethnic cleansing. Palestinians driven off by violence were not allowed to return, and so their lands were seized and occupied by Jewish settlers. This was the policy of the State of Israel, and its courts, not just individual Zionists. The process has continued decade by decade since that time, punctuated by attempts by Arab states to obtain a military victory over Israel.

On the other hand, a large number of non-Jewish persons remained within the State of Israel, and they have at least nominal human rights, including the right to vote.

While it is worth examining all the actions that might be construed as crimes against humanity committed in the region, that would take a voluminous study.

I would refrain, and would recommend politicians refrain, from calling Zionism a crime against humanity. The thing to do is to address current injustices by restoring private property that has been stolen from anyone in occupied Palestine since 1948, and by carefully investigating all deaths of unarmed civilians on both sides.

Few nations and ideologies are truly free of the taint of crimes against humanity. The goal of the "law" is to eliminate these practices. In particular, the treatment of African Americans in the officially segregated States of the United States before roughly 1968 appears to amount to a crime against humanity.

Mr. Kerry should help clean up his own house before busying himself with lecturing other national leaders, Israeli, Turkish, or Palestinian. Perhaps, thrust into a prominent role, he is thinking of running for President in his old age. Perhaps he is just prepping to do the traditional campaign shake down of Zionists in the United States.

Resolution 181 is worth a read (see link above). The nation as a whole is called the Economic Union of Palestine.

It is my fond hope that any Palestinian state will be secular and tolerant of all religions, rather than Islamic. Given the definition of crimes against humanity, any state that plays favorites, or promotes segregation of religious or ethnic groups is engaging in crimes against humanity. That should include the United States and the United Nations.