Poetry for Palestine

Israel and the “delegitimization”oxymoron

By Alan
Hart

5 April 2010

http://www.redress.cc/palestine/ahart20100405

Alan
Hart argues that in law the foundations upon which Israel
claims legitimacy do not actually exist and that “only the Palestinians
could give it the legitimacy it craved”. He says that “what
delegitimizes Israel is the truth of history”, which is why “Zionism has
worked so hard … to have the truth suppressed”.

For readers who may not be intimately familiar with English
terminology, an oxymoron is a figure of speech by which contradictory
terms are combined to form an expressive phrase or epithet such as cruel
kindness and falsely true. (It’s derived from the Greek word oxymoros,
meaning pointedly foolish).

Here, I’m going to confine myself to one question and answer.

The question is: How can you delegitimize something (in this
case the Zionist state) when it is NOT legitimate?

Leaving aside the fairy story of God’s promise, (which even if true
would have no bearing on the matter because the Jews who “returned” in
answer to Zionism’s call had no biological connection to the ancient
Hebrews), the Zionist state’s assertion of legitimacy rests on the
Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the UN General Assembly’s partition plan
resolution of 1947.

The only real relevance of the Balfour Declaration is in the fact that
it was an expression of both the willingness of a British government to
use Jews for imperial purposes and the willingness of Zionist Jews to be
used. The truth is that Britain had no right whatsoever to promise
Zionism a place in Palestine, territory the British do not possess.
(Palestine at the time was controlled and effectively owned by Ottoman
Turkey). The Balfour Declaration did allow Zionism to say that its claim
to Palestine had been recognized by a major power, and then to assert
that the Zionist enterprise was therefore a legitimate one. But the
legitimacy Britain conveyed by implication was entirely spurious,
meaning not genuine, false, a sham.

Zionism’s assertion that Israel was given its birth certificate and
thus legitimacy by the UN General Assembly partition resolution of 29
November 1947 is pure propaganda nonsense, as demonstrated by an honest
examination of the record of what actually happened.

In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the
people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to
partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority
of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.

Despite that, by the narrowest of margins, and only after a rigged
vote, the UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition
Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem
not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a non-binding

proposal – meaning that it could have no effect, would not
become binding, until and unless it was approved by the Security
Council.

The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal never
went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not?
Because the US knew that, if approved, and because of Arab and other
Muslim opposition, it could only be implemented by force, and President
Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.

So the partition plan was vitiated (became invalid)
and the question of what the hell to do about Palestine – after Britain
had made a mess of it and walked away – was taken back to the General
Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US
was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was
debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be
in existence – actually in defiance of the will of the
organized international community, including the Truman administration.

The truth of the time was that Israel, which came into being mainly as a
consequence of Zionist terrorism and pre-planned ethnic cleansing, had

no right to exist and, more to the point, could have no right to exist
unless it was recognized and legitimized by
those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the
creation of the Zionist state. In international law only the
Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved.
As it was put to me many years ago by Khalid al-Hassan, Fatah’s
intellectual giant on the right, that legitimacy was “the only thing the
Zionists could not take from us by force”.

The truth of history as summarized briefly above is the explanation of
why, really, Zionism has always insisted that its absolute pre-condition
for negotiations with more than a snowball’s chance in hell of a
successful outcome (an acceptable measure of justice for the
Palestinians and peace for all) is recognition of Israel’s right to
exist. A right, it knows, it does not have and will never have unless
the Palestinians grant it.

It can be said without fear of contradiction (except by Zionists) that
what delegitimizes Israel is the truth of history. And that is why
Zionism has worked so hard, today with less success than in the past and
therefore with increasing desperation, to have the truth suppressed.

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