The UN Wants a New State Bent on the West’s Destruction | The American Spectator

If searching for a locale where diplomats are perpetually at daggers drawn, try Google:

UN General Assembly/forum of imperious people, fickle and treacherous, inveterate feudists, liars and extortionists/

France, Canada, and Britain have diarized a day in September on which their leaders can welcome “Palestine” as a full-blown member state of the United Nations. There could hardly be a stronger pretext than Israel blamed for engineering a famine. These will be punishing votes, unlike the 147 already cast by also-ran states.

No other body could pull a gimmick of this order. Zionist colonial usurpers will be getting their comeuppance for starving kids to death. Let this force for genocide cope with a sovereign state of Palestine for a neighbor.

The exquisite punishment will be the nightmare neighbor. Of course, Palestine won’t be exactly real. Yet neither will it be a trick of the imagination. Call it a contrivance. Some international dignitary — give the honor to the UN Secretary General who anyway splits his time as Hamas’ rep at the UN. He’ll cut a ribbon and, to a blast of fanfare, the national anthem will blare from the sound system and the colors of Palestine will shimmer up the flagpole. After the ceremony, Israelis will have to learn to live with a lawless Jihadist state snaking in and out of their cities, towns, and settlements.

“This reflects a commitment to international law and support for the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination,” said their diplomat speaking in UN mother tongue. Translated, he meant a commitment to play the game of international law on a Tiddlywinks game board that comes with counters of Palestinian figures sporting cotton wool beards.

Can such buffoonery amount to much?

For Israel, it will involve skating on thin ice. For international law, it amounts to relegation to a fun amateur league. For dreamers of the Two-State Solution, it amounts to a consolation prize. To nine-tenths of UN members, it means a step closer to canceling Israel’s right to exist. For Washington and Brussels, it presents a new arm-twisting lever to get Israel to do their bidding. For all players, it amounts to a brand new board game.

Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu was not the only one who missed the boat. “A jihadist state on Israel’s border today will threaten Britain tomorrow,” he swore. “Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will not happen.”

The U.S. State Department’s Tammy Bruce took the byroad favored by Israel supporters:

“A slap in the face for the victims of October 7. Allows it to continue. It gives one group hope, and that’s Hamas.” The international community is breathing life into, “The state of Palestine on the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967,” and the scandalized Israel lobby came up with nothing better than non sequiturs.

Only a group of British lawyers kept a cool head. Writing to the UK government’s legal adviser, it warned that PM Keir Starmer’s pledge to recognize Palestine risked breaking international law. This is the be-all-and-end-all. The dagger thrust to the heart. The ultimate disarmer. I know this how?

I know it after disarming a string of international lawyers. From 2012 when my book, Hadrian’s Echo, was published I uncovered serial ankle-shallow deceptions. The landmark Durban Conference on Racism in 2001 launched lawfare to curse and condemn Israel to death. What could be simpler than turning the tables by exposing the vacuity of regal and righteous verdicts on Israel’s violations in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

My first victim, professor of international law John Dugard — latterly South Africa’s “genocide” case-maker against Israel at The Hague — was caught in flagrante delicto. Law falsifier and antisemite, we soon discover, are two sides of a counterfeit coin.

Acting the part of policeman-prosecutor at the Human Rights Commission, Professor Dugard’s function was to investigate, rebuke, and write up Israel’s criminal conduct in — wait for it — the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Every cause needs a catchphrase, and the bash-Israel cause boasts the Coca-Cola of them all. “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is practically generic to every UN resolution against Israel. Yet no one in that august hall bats an eye, not even Israel’s ambassador. Repeat nonsense time over time and it: (A) begins to make perfect sense; (B) dresses a plot in wig and gown; and (C) makes a lie factual. A lie told for 57 years can slip into the skin of truth with barely a sigh.

What makes “Occupied Palestinian Territory” utter nonsense is seemingly too obvious for people to notice. There never was Palestinian territory for Israel — nor anyone besides — to occupy. It snapped up territories fair and square from Egypt and Jordan. Turn Middle East wars and laws upside down and inside out, and the “West Bank” and Gaza can’t possibly be “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Expelled from their dugout, prosecutors of Israel scamper to another, firing the next volley from landmark Security Council Resolution 242 of 1968. It required Israel to withdraw from some of the territory it snapped up in the 1967 Six-Day War. No, objects the Palestine camp. No no no. Resolution 242 told Israel to withdraw from all territory. Some or all — quite how it connects to the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” narrative is never explained. It could be a bridge too far for people who want Palestine to prevail. It cannot. Resolution 242 nowhere refers to Palestinians. How could it?

(A) They were not one of the belligerents in the 1967 war. (B) The drafters of Resolution 242 looked to Israel the victor to give back territory — to the defeated Arab belligerents, not to Palestinians. (C) Not until a year after Resolution 242 do the Palestinian people emerge to claim rights to a state to call their own. (D) No binding UN resolution, before or since, no treaty or agreement, gives Palestinian people a leg to stand on.

In short, to speak of “Occupied Palestinian Territory” is to speak UN mother tongue, to be caught in wishful thinking.

The acronym in Dugard’s job title was enough to indict him. The rebuking reports he submitted to the Human Rights Council were filled with “Occupied Palestinian Territory”. “The Wall being built by Israel in the name of security penetrates deep into Palestinian territory,” the report read.

I eventually had to ask him to clarify international law to the effect that Israel occupies Palestinian territory. He obliged by email: “I think it would be helpful if you were to read the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of 9 July 2004 and the judgment of the High Court of Israel in the Beit Sourik case of 30 June 2004. They will provide you with answers to most of your questions and give you a better understanding of the legal norms that govern the situation.”

That was the sum total of it. With all respect to a lawyer of international repute, an “advisory opinion” and an obscure advisory opinion seem nothing compared to the enormity of deciding the boundaries of a state. Not to highlight a problem of timing. Dugard started at the UN Human Rights Commission in 2001, therefore prior to his 2004 cases. His very job title was a fake. Like a doting father, he transferred territories from Israel to an ersatz people. The verdict: For three years, Dugard acted as a law unto himself.

Before allowing the witness to step down, one more thing: Professor, you wrote of “legal norms.” I consult the Oxford Dictionary, I find that “norm” or “normative” has one of two meanings: “Value judgments as contrasted with stating facts;” Or, “A standard of behavior that is required, desired or designated as normal.” Value judgments, opinions and standards of behavior…. The lawman was lawless. “Palestinian Territory” was not a real bit of real estate. His reports gave no inkling that he was making up law and history on the go. That he was not wearing his gown and wig. That he was not applying the sober judgment of a professor of international law. Dugard would love Gaza and the West Bank to have “Palestine” stamped over them. Sadly, law and history are not the same as ideology.

What to say of a legal authority who clambers onto a political bandwagon. Dugard was more than premature, he was presumptuous. He anticipated a land-swap agreement between two parties. He went over the head of the party in possession — Israel with 9/10 of the law in its favor. What made him, bogus title and all, parade like an avenging angel? “Israel will be held accountable for its violations of humanitarian law and human rights law.”

That great historian Paul Johnson wrote of antisemitism that it merits a category of hate all on its own: “I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.” What he’s saying is that Jew-hatred makes the finest intellects leave their senses. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, another great who hit on the phenomenon, said that, “More than hate destroys the hated, it destroys the hater.” Simply put, antisemites are not in their right minds.

Hence to the impending recognition of Palestine by the leaders of Canada, France and Britain. Doing so will defy their own strictures. “Israel is breaking international law in Gaza,” Britain said for the first time, as David Lammy accused Netanyahu’s government of “starving children.” Israel’s assault on the foundations of international law must have consequences say UN experts.” “The occupation has turned genocidal,” said Professor Francesca Albanese, holder of Dugard’s old position.

“Occupation” has grown into far more than a risible lie. It’s acquired the power to create facts on the ground. For one thing, the international community adopted it. For another, a vocal section of the diaspora, and even Israelis, have nailed their colors to the mast. Third, an economic bubble developed around “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Monthly pay slips of untold tens of thousands of UN employees depend on this unreal estate. Thousands of nonprofit human rights bodies would be the poorer without the Occupation lie. The world over it’s the article of faith on which anti-Zionists peg their zeal. Their god demands two things: hate Zionists and revere Palestinians.

But for the big hoax the world would be a different, if quieter, place. And the Zionist enterprise would not be under global pressure to capitulate to Hamas, declare a unilateral ceasefire, and consign the few live hostages to the living dead.

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