Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Netanyahu: Arabs ‘ethnically cleansed’ Jews from West Bank

Netanyahu pointed out that in 1929, the Arabs massacred the Jews in Hebron; in 1948, Jews were expelled and murdered in Gush Etzion, Kalya (near the Dead Sea) and Atarot, north of Jerusalem.

Funeral of a Jewish victim of the 1929 Hebron Massacre. (photo credit:Wikimedia Commons)
(JPost) Not Israel, but the Arabs are responsible for “altering the demographic composition” of the West Bank by ethnically cleansing the area of Jews in 1948, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, continuing his aggressive rhetoric against Friday’s anti-settlement resolution at the UN.

“The anti-Israel resolution that just passed in the UN Security Council is based on the argument that Israel is ‘altering the demographic composition’ of Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday.

“The United Nations has consistently ignored the fact that Jews were ethnically cleansed from these territories in 1948, which is why there were no Jews in the area until after 1967.”

The resolution, supported by 14 nations on the 15-nation Security Council, with the US abstaining but allowing it to pass by not using its veto, condemned “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.”

Netanyahu pointed out that in 1929, it was the Arabs who massacred the Jews in Hebron; that in 1948, Jews were expelled and murdered in Gush Etzion, Kalya (near the Dead Sea) and Atarot, north of Jerusalem.

“The Arab Legion also ethnically cleansed the Jews who were living in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and then blew up all of the synagogues there,” he wrote. “Not a single Jew remained in any of the territories conquered by the invading Arabs in 1948. The reaction of the United Nations to this reality? Silence.”

Pointing out that the League of Nations in 1922 ratified the Balfour Declaration that “awarded national rights to the Jewish people – and only the Jewish people – in the Land of Israel,” Netanyahu said that this was later adopted by the UN and “is a binding document under international law that defines the international legal status of the Land of Israel.”

The UN has no legal justification for its resolution on Friday, he wrote, “only ignorance and malice.”

More...