The Arabs In Israel: Laws and the Leftists Who Distort Them

Leftists and Israel-haters (or PC anti-Semites as they are more accurately known), both inside Israel and out, both Mosaic in origin and not, have long decried Israel’s construction of Jewish housing in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as being “clearly illegal”, citing the 4th Geneva Convention as their source. They claim, as leftists will, that the text bans what they hold to be an immoral act of an occupying entity in occupied territory; that it is illegal for the occupier to build communities in the occupied territory. But is this really banned by the Geneva Convention?

First, it’s important, since this is the JEWISH Conservative and not the Atheist-Postmodernist-Moral relativist Conservative Blog, to point out what Judaism says about the situation. The Book of Numbers (33:52-53) clearly commands: “then ye shall drive out ALL the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places. And ye shall drive out the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein; for unto you have I given the land to possess it.”

Unlike other references throughout the 5 Books of Moses to the conquest of the Land of Israel, the command given here does not mention the 7 Canaanite nations which dwelled there at the time. That is because, as the classical biblical commentator Ohr HaChaim pointed out that these verses refer to any foreign elements inhabiting the land, not merely Canaanites. The Land of Israel, as stated repeatedly throughout the Bible, belongs to the Jewish people and to no one else. Occupying the whole of the country is not only not problematic in Judaism it is a commandment, just as it is a commandment to “drive out ALL the inhabitants of the land”.

That is because those foreigners who occupy the Land prior to the establishment of Jewish sovereignty will never accept Jewish control over what they consider to be their land. Thus, the verses after the commandment to conquer Israel warn: “But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that ye let remain of them be as thorns in your eyes, and as pricks in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land wherein ye dwell”.

But for those who worry about a Geneva Convention that Israel signed in good faith, it’s relevant to point out what it actually states. The section in question, Article 49 of the 4th Convention, states as follows: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. The implication is clear. An occupying power cannot force its own citizens out of the country into occupied territory, as Germany did to its Jewish citizens in World War II. But this says nothing about building homes and allowing citizens to buy them, and it is typical liberal dishonesty to say that it does.
Another point of equal importance; there is almost no basis for claiming that the West Bank is even occupied territory, since the only inheritor of the previous legitimate possessor (the British Mandate) is the State of Israel. Palestine never existed as a country and is not a claimant, and Jordan, from whom Israel captured the land, was an illegal occupier.

That is the sheer depth of the lie: not only is Israel not occupying the West Bank, even if it were, the construction of settlements would not be illegal. Not only that but the same Article (49) quoted by the anti-Israel crowd against the settlements states that occupying powers may legally evacuate or remove all occupied peoples for security or military needs. This even applies to “Protected Persons”, that is people who are protected by the Geneva Convention by virtue of their nation’s signing the agreement. But the residents of the West Bank are, by and large, not nationals of any such state and therefore do not even fall into this category, giving them no protection whatsoever.

This is just one more example of the outrageous lies and distortions of the leftist anti-Israel clique, who turn truth completely on its head.