| 1. Palestine belongs to the Jews as their ancestral land, a land inhabited by Jews continuously |
| for thousands of years. The Jewish connection to Palestine was recognized by the “Internationl |
| Community” in the form of the League of Nations’ mandate over Palestine. |
| This statement appears repeatedly in advocacy articles written from a pro-Israeli viewpoint, an |
| example being quoted below. The statement is also corroborated by authoritative historians, but these |
| works are not available on the web. |
| On the other hand, it is easy to establish and document definitively that the “international community” |
| has accepted the Jewish historical claim to Palestine, and consequently the claim of the Jewish people |
| to a national home in Palestine. To substantiate this statement, I quote from the preamble to the text |
| of the League of Nations Mandate: |
| “Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory |
| should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally |
| made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, |
| and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in |
| Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly |
| understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and |
| religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the |
| rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country ; and |
| Whereas |
| recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of |
| the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting |
| their national home in that country…” |
| (The text quoted above may be found on many web sites; we selected to quote from the site of |
| Yale |
| Law School |
| ). |
| Among the parties present at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, were Felix Frankfurter and Chaim |
| Weizmann on behalf of the Zionist movement, and the Emir Feisal on behalf of the Hedjaz (now |
| Saudi Arabia). In the course of their meetings, Feisal wrote a letter addressed to Frankfurter and |
| dated 3 March, 1919. The letter, which may be found at |
| http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~samuel/feisal2.html |
| stated: |
| We Arabs, especially the educated among us look with the deepest sympathy |
| on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted |
| with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organisation to |
| Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate proper. We will do our |
| best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: |
| we will wish |
| the Jews a most hearty welcome home. |
| Unless Feisal himself recognized the Jewish historical claim to Palestine, there would be no meaning |
| to the sentence, “we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home”. Hence it is clear that the |
| Jewish claim to Palestine was already well established even among the Arabs, when the League of |
| Nations granted the British a mandate over Palestine on July 24, 1922. |
| As an example of the many web sites which deal with the Jewish connection to Palestine I quote from |
| http://www.rosenblit.com/Palestine.htm |
| : |
| In 135 CE, after having long-become a province of the Roman Empire, |
| Judea’s third and last revolt against Rome was crushed by Emperor Hadrian; |
| but Rome’s army also suffered devastating losses, including the complete |
| annihilation of its illustrious XXII Legion. In furtherance of Rome’s |
| costly victory, Hadrian — in a blatant propaganda effort to delegitimize |
| further national Jewish claims to the Land — renamed the province |
| Palestina (Palestine) after the Philistines, a long-extinct Aegean people |
| who had disappeared from History approximately a millennium earlier. |
| However, although the province had been converted from Judea (– Land of |
| the Jews –) into Palestina (– Land of the Philistines –), it continued |
| to be populated by Jews, together with substantial minority populations of |
| Christians and Samaritans, but hardly any Arabs, at least until the great |
| Arab invasion of 638 CE, as a result of which, 73 years later, Byzantium’s |
| Christian basilica known as the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, which |
| then sat atop Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, was remade into Islam’s Al-Aksa |
| mosque. But even under the rule of the Arab and all subsequently |
| superseding empires, the Jewish people nevertheless maintained a |
| continuous national presence in “Palestine” — right up until the |
| resurrection therein of the Jewish nation-state of Israel in 1948 CE.” |
