I know you saw my video from last week of me dancing with my friend Ze'ev. We took a few pictures together (again, thank you Talia) in class that day. Here are a few:
I really learned a lot that day in Ze'ev's class. Not to mention that we got to watch Matisyahu's new music video for his Chanukah song and it was awesome. But really, Ze'ev is helping us understand the land conflict in Israel and how to speak about it as educated Jews. We were talking about rights to the land. I don't want to get too political here but we talked about six different types of rights the Jews have for the land of Israel. Those are - divine rights, aboriginal rights, legal rights, pioneering rights, internationally granted rights, and rights of war. One thing we focused on in this recent class is internationally granted rights. A lot of people don't realize that there have been several times in modern history where the Jews were granted this land. There was the Balfour Declaration in 1917 which was like a suggestion of rights. It happened because some of the Brits were sympathetic to the Jews but mainly because they wanted us on their side when the war ended. Then they changed their mind. They were setting up puppet governments all over the Middle East and figured it would be easier to control the area if it was all Arab. The League of Nations, Mandate for Palestine in 1920 was a lot more clear and legally sound. The preamble to the Mandate stated - "Recognition Has Been Given to the Historical Connection of the Jewish People with Palestine and to the Grounds for Reconstituting their National Home in that Country."Notice the use of the word reconstituting. They weren't giving the Jewish people something because they felt sorry for them, they were just making sure that they had their land back. In fact, all 51 member countries voted for this. This mandate was actually huge, including what was subsequently called TransJordan. Under this mandate, the Jews had religious, civil, and political rights and the other inhabitants of the land had religious and civil rights. The thought was that since there was a huge amount of land available to the other inhabitants where they have political rights, that would be reserved only for the Jews in this area. "At no point in the entire document is there any granting of political rights to non-Jewish entities (i.e., Arabs) because political rights to self-determination as a polity for Arabs were guaranteed in three other mandates for: Lebanon, Syria and Iraq" - Eli Hertz. This is not to say that today we don't want equal rights for all Israeli citizens, rather that within this mandate, the idea was to create a safe haven for the Jewish people while also providing huge tracts of land to other groups. Thus by ensuring political rights to the main inhabitants of the land and not others who may decide to come in and usurp the land, the integrity of the mandate would hold. Today, this is not a feasible option, nor would many people want it this way. I've included it here to point out context and thought process.The League of Nations was officially dissolved in 1946 while the UN officially began in 1945. While Article 80 of the UN Charter has been created to implicitly recognize the Mandate for Palestine of the League of Nations, they UN General Assembly made a recommendation in 1947 that Israel be established. This was UN Resolution 181 and it was a recommendation and not a legally binding resolution, which would have had to be passed down from the Security Council. UN resolution 181 has little significance in comparison to the League of Nations mandate which was legally binding.What a history! And a special thanks to Ze'ev for putting up with all the girls twice a month to teach them this history. It is so helpful and informative!Totoro out.