Abu Wabu

Literally constantly under attack by neighboring savages, genocidal Islamic regimes, the U.N. and Western anti-semites hiding behind a diseased leftist ideology that affords her enemies moral equivalence, Israel will survive another six decades only by carrying on with the same spirit that has always confounded her enemies and made her a beacon of freedom in the cesspool of tribalism and hatred that surrounds her.

In "Israel Drove Out the Arabs 60 Years Ago?", NRO's Mona Charen provides a primer of the most oft-repeated lies about the creation of the Jewish state. Fresh from a week during which ActMadInJihad called Israel a "stinking corpse", it's time for those who agree with such madness to face the truth.

Israel is about to celebrate its 60th birthday, but alone among the nations of the world, its legitimacy and right to exist continue to be considered matters of debate. Israel, like the U.S., is willing to be self-critical (sometimes to extremes) but this fair-mindedness seems to float on a different plane from the vituperation and defamation that is hurled at Israel from so many directions.

In 2001, most of the world’s nations convened a conference on racism in South Africa. The U.S. withdrew after it became obvious that the conference on racism was itself racist. Condemnations of Israel dominated the proceedings, and the handouts available in the lobby featured caricatures worthy of Der Sturmer: hook-nosed Jews with Palestinian blood on their hands surrounded by bags of money.

So even now, even after triumphing over so much adversity in its all-too-eventful first 60 years, Israel is not considered a normal country. The campaign of deligitimization launched by its enemies has succeeded to a tremendous degree in persuading ordinary people that Israel was conceived in sin. That sin was the dispossession of the Palestinians, the rightful inhabitants of the land now called Israel. Second only to the claim that Iran seeks nuclear power for peaceful purposes, this is the most sinister lie in circulation.

Also setting the record straight are David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who in The Myth Of Occupied Gaza debunk one of the latest and most persistent Palestinian lies, designed, the authors point out, "to limit Israel's freedom of action and give Hamas a legal leg up in its continuing conflict" with Israel:

The Hague Convention is a founding document of the modern law of armed conflict, and its definition of occupied territory was woven into the 1949 Geneva Conventions. There, the relevant provision provides that "[i]n the case of occupied territory, the application of the present Convention shall cease one year after the general close of military operations," although certain protections for the populations continue "to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory." That is the key -- exercising the functions of government. This proposition was recognized in a seminal Nuremberg prosecution, the Trial of William List and Others.

It is because an occupying power exercises effective control over a territory that international law substantially restricts the measures, military or economic, it can bring to bear upon this territory, well beyond the limits that would be applicable before occupation, whether in wartime or peacetime.

The Israeli military does not control Gaza; nor does Israel exercise any government functions there. Claims that Israel continues to occupy Gaza suggest that a power having once occupied a territory must continue to behave toward the local population as an occupying power until all outstanding issues are resolved. This "principle" can be described only as an ingenious invention; it has no basis in traditional international law...

Gaza is exceptional only in that its international legal status is indeterminate. Its last true sovereign was the Ottoman Porte. It was part of the British Palestine Mandate and has since been administered by both Egypt and Israel. Today, no state claims sovereign authority, though it is expected that Gaza will become part of a future Palestinian state. For its part, Hamas acknowledges no higher authority and functions as a de facto government in Gaza. It is a classic example of a terrorist-controlled badland.

Unduly handicapping states that intervene in such badlands -- whether to protect their own interests, those of the local population or both -- is unrealistic and irresponsible. Requiring agreement by the "international community" (whatever that may be) as a precondition for extinguishing such a designation is equally unproductive if the goal is saving lives. Consider the example of Darfur.

And Caroline Glick observes in the excellent NRO Symposium on Israel's 60th birthday:

Many argue that Israel was established by the United Nations. But this is false. Israel was established by the Jewish people who transformed swampland and desert into farmland and forests, and naked fields into modern metropolises. The U.N. merely acknowledged a well-founded reality. So too, Israel’s future survival, strength, and prosperity will be guaranteed not by international good will but by the ingenuity, strength, creativity, and courage of the Jewish people.

Let us hope that we recognize in time that those who aim first to justify Israel’s annihilation, aim second at the remainder of the free world. — Anne Bayefsky