This week Israelis celebrate Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), the anniversary of the reunification of the eternal Jewish capital during the 1967 Six Day War.

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We are paying a heavy price for the protracted apathy of successive Israeli leaders who chose to ignore our rights to the Land and avoided their inclusion in the school curriculum.

It all started with the introduction of the Palestinian people.  Officially recognized in a 1969 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution, this newly minted people was bestowed with inalienable rights to self-determination…and sovereignty over Palestine in the infamous UNGA resolution 3236 of November 1974.

Faced with successive military defeats in self-defense wars imposed on Israel, the Arabs embraced the notion of Land for Peace launched at the Madrid Conference in 1991.  Never before in history was the victor of several self-defense wars compelled to sue for peace, as the Oslo peace process was initiated in 1993.

Ignoring the trail of terror and bloodshed that the “peace process” generated, the Roadmap of 2003 soon stepped up the demands on Israel by calling for the creation of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state.  The so-called illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, buttressed the relentless Palestinian propaganda while the mainstream media slavishly complied by acting as an echo chamber to Palestinian activists who vociferously chant, From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!”

The slogans listed above gradually delegitimized Israel in world opinion, casting it as a colonial, imperialist power.

Regrettably, through the past several decades, no Israeli government ever asserted the Legal Rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.  These incontrovertible rights, which are encapsulated in the next paragraph, are the necessary antidote to the rampaging falsehoods peddled by the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters.

Since Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Zionism has been on the march with outstanding accomplishments in just a few years, after two millennia of Jewish exile:

– The Balfour Declaration of 1917 received considerable international support for the establishment of a Jewish National Home (JNH) in Palestine;

– At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Zionists presented their claims and, a year later, in San Remo, the terms of the Balfour Declaration were incorporated in the Mandates System enacted by the League of Nations, thus enshrining the JNH in Palestine as an act of international law;

– The detailed provisions of the JNH were spelled out in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine which reconstituted the Nation of Israel in Palestine, encouraged Jewish settlement throughout the land, and secured the territorial integrity of the Jewish heritage in all parts of Palestine west of the Jordan River;

– The United States became a party to the Mandate through the Anglo-American Convention – a treaty which is to be regarded constitutionally as “the supreme law of the land” since its ratification in 1925;

– Later, the acquired rights of the Jewish people in Palestine were preserved in Article 80 of the UN Charter (1945) and in Article 70-1(b) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), regardless of the termination of the Mandate.

However, in October 2015, a new deadly mantra was hurled by knife-wielding imams spewing their venom in Gaza mosques. It spread among Palestinians of all ages and was overtly supported by their leaders: Kill the Jews wherever you find them!  How do you respond to these barbaric calls for genocide?

The one-hundred-year Arab war against the Jews (euphemistically called the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”) has reached a new height.  Incitement to genocide is a crime against humanity, as ruled by international tribunals dealing with Rwanda and former Yugoslavia.  Palestinian leaders and appointed officials should be indicted.  All negotiations with the Palestinians should be suspended and a moratorium should be held on the “peace process,” during which time truth should be restored by stressing Israel’s Legal Rights to the Land.  Given the pandemic indoctrination to violence of Palestinian Arab youth, no sensible reconciliation should be expected with the present generation.

We are paying a heavy price for the protracted apathy of successive Israeli leaders who chose to ignore our rights to the Land, and avoided their inclusion in the school curriculum while the “Nakba” was part of it.  Of course, no legal argument could sway the violent mobs and their supporters.  But if a concerted, well-funded public diplomacy campaign on our rights to the Land is finally launched by Israel and Zionists worldwide, it might have a remarkable impact on the civilized community of nations.  This effort is long overdue.