American Jewish International Relations Institute
Dedicated to combating the use of the UN to delegitimize Israel.
December 2018
On December 6, 2018 the UN General Assembly took a very unusual step: it voted on a pro-Israel resolution. What is more, a majority of the votes cast, 60.4%, were cast for the resolution. Those unfriendly to Israel have minimized this reality because the resolution did not get the support of 66.7%, a two-thirds majority, but that does not change the reality that the votes on the resolution were 87 for and 57 against. It is a significant step forward.
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October 2018
December 2017
Illustration on Jerusalem by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The current debate over Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in the aftermath of President Trump’s decision to recognize it as such, is sorely lacking in historical context.
In 1947, after Great Britain announced its intent to relinquish its mandate over Palestine (which dated from 1917), the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) was formed to investigate and recommend a fair disposition for the territory, claimed by Jews and Arabs. The result was the U.N.Partition Resolution of Nov. 29, 1947, which recommended the division of Mandatory Palestine into three entities. To start, an Arab and a Jewish state were to be established. But the partition resolution went on to provide a special dispensation for the city of Jerusalem:
“The City of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum (separate body) under a special international regime and shall be administered by the United Nations. The Trusteeship Council shall be designated to discharge the responsibilities of the Administering Authority on behalf of the United Nations.”
When the Arab states refused to accept the concept of the creation of a Jewish state and the British were about to end their engagement in the Mandate area, the Jewish Agency for Palestine established the State of Israel in May 1948. Overruling Secretary of State Marshall, President Truman decided to recognize the State of Israel within days following the establishment of the state.
Israel was immediately attacked by the neighboring Arab states, but won the war. The war came to an end in 1949 with the conclusion of armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states which had attacked it. The armistice agreement concluded between Israel and Transjordan (now Jordan) resulted in the drawing of demarcation lines that allocated more land to Israel than had been recommended in UNGA Res. 181, including West Jerusalem.
In the years immediately following Israel’s war of independence, efforts were indeed undertaken by U.N.entities to establish Jerusalem as a corpus separatum. But the Arab states as well as Israel were opposed. By 1954 it was clear that the proposed third entity would not be established.
The idea had been overtaken by events. The city remained divided: West Jerusalem as part of Israel, East Jerusalem as part of Jordan. Efforts to create the corpus separatum were given up and West Jerusalemwas indeed considered part of Israel. U.S. Embassy personnel stationed in Tel Aviv would travel consistently to West Jerusalem for contact with the appropriate Israeli government agencies.
At that point it would have been logically and legally appropriate to recognize West Jerusalem as part of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy there. But the Eisenhower administration, with John Foster Dulles as secretary of State, was greatly concerned about Soviet penetration of the Arab world and wanted to avoid a step that would antagonize the Arab states.It is thus the Cold War situation in 1954 that caused the United States to create an exception in the case of Israel to its worldwide policy regarding the location of U.S. Embassies, by maintaining an embassy in a city other than the country’s declared capital.
Thus the policy that has been followed for the past 63 years was based on the Cold War concerns of 1954 — now obviously no longer relevant. As the years passed, the original reason for this glaring anomaly appears to have been forgotten.
It is also worth noting in this context that in 1974 the United States established diplomatic relations with the German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany). The German Democratic Republic (GDR), had been established in 1949 under the auspices of the Soviet Union. It consisted of what had been the Soviet Zone of Occupation of Germany and the Soviet Sector of Berlin.
Under an agreement reached between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, France, the U.K. and the U.S. in 1945, decisions regarding Berlin were to be made by consensus of the four occupying powers. The Western powers had not agreed to the incorporation of East Berlin into the GDR, but it was nevertheless incorporated into the GDR and was established as the capital of East Germany. When, in 1974, the U.S. established diplomatic relations with the GDR, the U.S. Embassy to the GDR was located in East Berlin, the capital of the GDR, even though we did not recognize East Berlin as a part of the GDR.
Mr. Trump’s official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a recognition of fact, and the carrying out of a congressional mandate dating back to 1995 (not to mention the fulfillment of a campaign promise). The act of recognition does not determine what the ultimate boundaries of Jerusalem will be. It means simply that the United States recognizes that West Jerusalem is part of Israel. That reality has simply not been understood by those who have raised hackles and protests in Europe, in the Middle East, and elsewhere (though apparently not as much as had been feared).
What needs to be understood is that Mr. Trump’s action is not a special favor granted to the State of Israel. It is a matter of ending a policy of discriminating against the State of Israel, which has been the only country worldwide in which the U.S. Embassy is located in a city other than the country’s capital.
• Richard Schifter, former deputy U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, is founder and chairman of the board of the American Jewish International Relations Institute.
Forget about college basketball. It was March Madness this week at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). This is a bracket where human rights abusers like China, Cuba, Pakistan, and Venezuela always advance to the next round unscathed while Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is sure to lose.
The UN created the Council in 2006 after abolishing its predecessor, partly for its anti-Israel bias.
The UNHRC has fared no better. Following two separate Hamas-Israel wars, the Council initiated commissions of inquiry that effectively presumed Israeli guilt. Similarly, the UNHRC’s special rapporteurs for “human rights in the Palestinian territories” have a mandate to investigate only “Israel’s violations,” to the exclusion of those perpetrated by Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority allegedly accused one of these rapporteurs, Richard Falk, of being a “partisan of Hamas.”
But, without a doubt, the most egregious manifestation of the UNHRC’s double standard for the Jewish state is its dedication of a standing agenda item to criticism of Israel.
Agenda Item Seven, the only standing item directed at a specific country, requires the examination of Israel’s human rights record at each of the Council’s three annual sessions. Most other issues of humanitarian concern are brought up under Agenda Item 4. Because of this skewed system, the Council has targeted Israel with more condemnatory country-specific resolutions than the rest of the world combined. When the Council voted on March 22-23, Israel was the target of censure in five separate resolutions, while flagrant human rights abusers North Korea (political prisons and crimes against humanity), Iran (funding terrorism and political prisoners) and Syria (mass atrocities and chemical weapons) only received four. Many other Council members with abysmal records of their own almost entirely avoided scrutiny.
There are signs, however, of a gathering backlash against such hypocrisy. Just last year, the UK announced that it was putting the UNHRC “on notice” for its abusive treatment of Israel, a call it reinforced this year. The last straw was the UNHRC’s criticism of Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights, coupled with its deafening silence on the Assad regime’s atrocities in Syria.
“Nowhere is the disproportionate focus on Israel starker and more absurd than in the case of today’s resolution on the occupation of Syria’s Golan,” read the UK statement.
Over the past few years, following America’s lead, most Western countries have refused to participate in the Agenda Item Seven debate, recognizing that it discriminates against Israel.
But the fouls against Israel continue nonetheless. In March 2016, the Council passed a resolution requesting that the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein of Jordan, “produce a database” of companies operating in Israeli-controlled areas. Potentially, the list may serve as an instruction manual for anti-Israel boycotts of Israel, and it will bear the United Nations’ imprimatur.
In January 2018, Prince Zeid released a report in which he said that 206 unnamed companies – 22 of which are American – have assisted Israel’s presence in the West Bank. The High Commissioner vowed to release the names at a later date and he has further set the stage for a boycott by releasing a report that falsely accuses Israeli settlements in the West Bank of constituting “war crimes.”
While treating Israel as a pariah, the Council recently offered a platform to Alireza Avaei, Iran’s Justice Minister, who has been sanctioned by the European Union for his role overseeing torture against pro-democracy dissidents. He and other serial human rights abusers scapegoat Israel, and ensure that the Council is so hyper-focused on the Jewish state that it cannot properly address humanitarian issues elsewhere.
As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said, the UNHRC has become a “haven for dictators.” Their outsized role at the UNHRC has undermined the Council’s legitimacy.
The need to reform the Human Rights Council is painfully obvious. The UN should have a permanent body dedicated to the investigation and condemnation of the atrocities that remain disturbingly common. Israel should certainly not be exempt from criticism. Yet for as long as some of the world’s worst human rights abusers hold positions on the Council, many of the most egregious human rights violations will languish in darkness.
The first step toward improving the Council is open voting for membership by the UN General Assembly, instead of secret ballots. This would force every country that votes for serial rights abusers to face a measure of public accountability.
Next, there should be safeguards to prevent noncompetitive elections within certain regional groupings, which usually redound the benefit of dictators.
There should also be some basic standard of respect for human rights as a prerequisite to UNHRC membership. Currently, 14 of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council received Freedom House’s worst ranking of “Not Free.”
Once it has a more respectable membership, the UNHRC should remove all of its anti-Israel laws and mandates, starting with Agenda Item Seven.
Unless these changes are made, the dictators club will continue to protect its own while bashing the only democratic state in the Middle East. That is madness.
David May is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Prior to joining FDD, David was a senior research analyst at AIPAC where he focused on Israeli-Palestinian issues and the United Nations Follow David on Twitter @DavidSamuelMayand FDD @FDD.
BY RICHARD SCHIFTER AND ERIC ROZENMAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 02/23/17 11:50 AM EST 20
US Embassy in Tel Aviv. Photo: David Jones, via Flickr
Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, published December 24, 2016.
Regarding the Dec. 14 World article “Moving embassy to Jerusalem is a ‘very big priority’ for Trump“:
Consistently overlooked is the reason the United States did not move our embassy to West Jerusalem after the government of Israel had established itself there. The United States recognized the 1949 Israeli-Jordanian armistice lines as the new borders of Israel outside Jerusalem, but as for Jerusalem the U.S. position was to support the provision of the 1947 U.N. Partition Resolution, which called for Jerusalem to be a “corpus separatum under a special international regime … administered by the United Nations.” Thus, the U.S. position was not to recognize West Jerusalem as part of Israel nor East Jerusalem as part of Jordan because of the plans for a U.N. administration of all of Jerusalem. That is why the U.S. Embassy was not moved to West Jerusalem, the location of the government of Israel, including its foreign ministry.
By 1953, the United Nations had shelved plans for a “corpus separatum,” and West Jerusalem was de facto understood to be part of Israel. Keeping the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv had no relationship to the status of East Jerusalem. Not moving the U.S. Embassy to West Jerusalem in 1953 or thereafter was essentially a bureaucratic decision, devoid of any legal justification.
Richard Schifter, Bethesda
The writer is chairman of the board of directors of the American Jewish International Relations Institute.
Source: Why the U.S. Embassy is in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem – The Washington Post
Former President Jimmy Carter Lectures at the House of Lords. Copyright House of Lords 2016. Photo: Roger Harris.
An Op-Ed by former President Jimmy Carter that appeared in the November 29, 2016 issue of the New York Times, “America Must Recognize Palestine” misrepresented the facts related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Carter calls on the Obama administration to recognize the state of Palestine and for the Security Council to pass a resolution imposing terms for resolving the conflict. The article written, below, by The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), lays out the complete case as to how Carter misrepresents the Israel-Palestinian conflict and why “Carter advocates a dangerous policy.”
The CAMERA article follows:
November 30, 2016
by Tamar Sternthal,
Director, Israel Office
CAMERA
Wrong on Military Rule, Population
Carter errs on military rule in the West Bank, stating: “Over 4.5 million Palestinians live in these occupied territories, but are not citizens of Israel. Most live under Israeli military rule, and do not vote in Israel’s national elections.” (Emphasis added.)Continue Reading …