When a European leader makes a public statement that is seemingly inane or nonsensical, look for the hidden reason or strategic motive behind it.
Take, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron.
Here are some cogent facts. Hamas, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, actively operates in Judea and Samaria, contrary to Macron’s deceitful statement at the U.N. General Assembly that the terror organization has never been active in the so-called “West Bank.” According to Israeli government figures, as many as 150 terrorist attacks by Hamas operatives originating from or acting within Judea and Samaria have killed more than 1,000 Israelis and injured some 3,300 since 1989.
This is the same Hamas that has ruled the Gaza Strip and 2 million Palestinian Arabs there for the past 30 years.
Israel left Gaza in 2005. The Palestinian Authority initially assumed formal civil jurisdiction of the coastal enclave, though Hamas took full control of the territory in June 2007, following a brief and bloody civil conflict with the Fatah Party, the dominant political faction that founded and controls the administration of the P.A.
It should come as no surprise that there have been no elections for leadership of the P.A. since 2005. As for its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who will turn 91 in November, he has not been re-elected since his initial four-year term.
That is no coincidence; the threat of a Hamas operative or proxy winning any new election for head of the P.A. is quite real.
There is also the seamy underside of European appeasement that has sought immoral and dubious arrangements with Palestinian terrorists, instead of working utterly to defeat them. Who can forget the era of Yasser Arafat and the PLO, as well as their cohorts, in the 1970s and ’80s, when Palestinian terrorist attacks were committed throughout Europe, including France?
The response was a secret deal reportedly made by French intelligence with terrorists. Under the arrangement, Paris was to turn a blind eye to Palestinian Arab actions elsewhere, as long as they were not committed on its national soil. Similar arrangements were also reportedly made by Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
It would appear that this kind of international extortion is a very lucrative business. Arafat is reported to have amassed a fortune worth in excess of a billion dollars. Abbas and his sons have reportedly collectively accumulated many hundreds of millions of dollars. Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal and Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk are reportedly multibillionaires.
This is not the first time that Macron has engaged in revisionist history and promoted false narratives. In another deceitful speech, he erroneously claimed that the United Nations created Israel.
The law, historical facts and the presence of the Jewish people in Israel are indisputable. The Supreme Council of Allied Powers, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, adopted the 1920 San Remo Resolution, unanimously confirmed in 1922 by the League of Nations (including France and the United Kingdom). It recognized that sovereign title to the Land of Israel (between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea) was vested in the Jewish people, provided for the right of Jews to live there and the establishment of a nationality law for their benefit, as well as prohibiting the land from being ceded or leased, or in any way placed under the control of the government of any foreign power.
The San Remo Resolution was also a part of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres with the Ottoman Empire and, in effect, ratified by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 with Turkey. It was also reconfirmed in the 1924 Anglo-American Convention.
The United Nations did not create Israel. In point of fact, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181, generally known as the Partition Plan, was never implemented. By its express terms, it was merely a recommendation. And it was unequivocally rejected by the Arab world, which sought by force of arms to eliminate any possibility of a Jewish state in any part of Israel (then referred to as the British Mandate of Palestine). The Jews in Israel were left on their own to deal with the onslaught and invasion.
It’s important to note that there is no reference in Resolution 181 to a so-called “Palestinian people.” The label was invented more than a decade-and-a-half later. There is also no reference to a so-called “West Bank,” an artificial term used by Jordan, which illegally invaded and annexed it, to distinguish it from Jordan proper on the eastern side of the Jordan River. Resolution 181 just referred to the area as the hill country of Samaria and Judea.
Moreover, it’s critical to appreciate that the U.N. Charter provides, in Article 80, that it cannot alter or abrogate existing Treaties and international instruments. The rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel under the Resolutions and Treaties summarized above take precedence over any U.N. resolution.
The efforts by European countries to prohibit and even impose boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Jews residing in Judea (including Jerusalem) and Samaria violate their treaty obligations (which survive under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties) and international law.
Moreover, under U.S. law, American citizens and American companies are prohibited from complying with such foreign boycotts.
How can anyone reward the P.A. for being Judenrein (cleansed of Jews)? It even imprisons Palestinian Arabs convicted of violating noxious laws prohibiting the sale of land to Jews and promotes the rampant oppression of Christians.
As Europe puts Israel in its economic crosshairs, the United States should enforce existing treaty obligations—and instead sanction these perfidious state BDS actors.
