Letter to the President of the European Council

Yours truly 08.03.2011 03:07

your impudent and outrageous demands which, if implemented, might lead to the destruction of the State of Israel and a new Holocaust.

Howard Grief

Attorney and Notary

Author of The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law

13/2 David Goitein Street,

Pisgat Ze’ev Mizrah, 97782 Jerusalem, Israel

Tel. (Fax): 972-2-656-0085

E-mail: GriefIsrael@yahoo.com

Jerusalem תובב״א

7 Shevat 5771

January 12, 2011

Your Excellencies:

1. Richard von Weizsäcker

2. Chris Patten

3. Hubert Védrine

4. Andreas van Agt

5. Frans Andriessen

6. Guiliano Amato

7. Laurens Jan Brinkhorst

8. Hans van den Broek

9. Hervé De Charrette

10. Roland Dumas

11. Benita Ferrero-Waldner

12. Felipe Gonzales

13. Teresa Patricio Gouveia

14. Lena Hjelm-Wallén

15. Lionel Jospin

16. Jean Francois-Poncet

17. Romano Prodi

18. Mary Robinson

19. Mona Sahlin

20. Helmut Schmidt

21. Clare Short

22. Javier Solana

23. Thorvald Stoltenberg

24. Peter D. Sutherland

25. Erkki Tuomioja

26. Vaira Vike-Freiberga

Dear Sirs and Mesdames,

Re: Letter to the President of the European Council from

the European Former Leaders Group (EFLG)

My client, Ne’emnei Eretz – the Land of Israel Loyalists, under the chairmanship of Rabbi Shalom Dov Ber Halevy Wolpe, has transferred to me for study and response your letter (hereunder: the letter) sent officially in the name of the European Former Leaders Group (EFLG) on 2 December, 2010 to the President of the European Council, Herbert van Rompuy, and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Lady Catherine Ashton. Copies of your letter were also sent on 6 December, 2010 to the European Union Heads of Government as well as to the EU Ministers of Foreign Affairs. The letter proposes that the European Council take steps to implement its agreed policy to establish “a sovereign, contiguous and viable Palestinian state” in the Land of Israel in furtherance of the “Two-State Solution”, within “a clear time frame”. The letter denounces Israeli settlements in the so-called “Occupied Palestinian Territory” including “East Jerusalem” as illegal and demands that punitive measures be taken against Israel for its actions to force it to comply with the positions of the European Union. The letter goes as far as to state that EU foreign ministers should visit “East Jerusalem”, “as a matter of urgency to draw attention to the erosion of the Palestinian presence there, and report back to the EU with an agenda of proposals to arrest and reverse the deterioration of the situation on the ground.”

My client is astonished that your group considers it has the right and duty to intervene so openly and aggressively in the affairs of the State of Israel and the Land of Israel, to pursue a pro-Arab and anti-Jewish agenda and to be the self-appointed arbiter or judge of what Israel must do to please the European Union on pain of sanctions. The State of Israel and the Jews of Israel are not obliged in any way to carry out your impudent and outrageous demands which, if implemented, might lead to the destruction of the State of Israel and a new Holocaust.

Your understanding of the legal status of Palestine – a land the Jews have called Eretz-Israel (hereafter: the Land of Israel) since the time of Joshua Bin-Nun over three thousand years ago and long before the name Palestine was first used in Greek and Roman texts – bears no resemblance to the legal and historical truth. Palestine is not and has never been the home of an Arab nation called “Palestinians”, as you wrongfully assume. Its legal status has always been – since the beginning of recorded history – that of the national home of the Jewish People, which is why Palestine in its entirety was allotted to the Jewish People under international law. The legal status of the Land of Israel as the Jewish National Home has never been legally altered, from the time it was originally designated as such in the San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920 – though many illegal attempts have indeed been made to do so. In this context I refer in particular to the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181(II) of November 29, 1947 which recommended the partition of the land into Jewish and Arab states contrary to the then still valid Article 5 of the Mandate for Palestine, which expressly prohibited any form of territorial partition. This Resolution – rejected out of hand by all the Arab states and the local Arab leadership – also violated Article 80 of the UN Charter, which preserved Jewish rights to the mandated land, including the right to establish an independent Jewish State in an undivided Palestine.

Other documents that purport to divide the land and set up a new Arab state in the Land of Israel are also illegal. This includes the Israel-PLO accords concluded in the 1990s. Under these accords, the “Palestinian Authority” and its administration of parts of Judea and Samaria, now called “Palestine” at the United Nations, were established in contravention of Jewish legal rights to all of Palestine under international law and both Israeli constitutional and criminal law.

To substantiate your position in support of the Two-State solution you rely on various documents, none of which can be characterized as binding documents of international law. These include inter alia the Road Map Peace Plan of 2003, various Security Council Resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative. The states of the European Union, either individually or collectively, cannot decide to retroactively alter the legal status of the Land of Israel as originally determined under international law. This status is a fait accompli that is legally binding, and is not subject to wholesale tampering. To do otherwise would mean that the twin principles of legally acquired rights and the doctrine of estoppel that apply in the case of Jewish rights to the Land of Israel have no permanent value and can be disregarded at any time in contravention of the established international legal order. On the contrary, once rights are given and recognized under international law in accordance with binding treaties and agreements, they are not subject to extinction at the whim of the European Union, especially when this is done without the consent of the party most directly affected, i.e., the Jewish People and its agent and assignee, the State of Israel. Even then, Jewish legal rights to the Land of Israel cannot be legally surrendered under the restraints of Jewish law. In actual fact and as a matter of law, Jewish legal rights to the Land of Israel are imprescriptible, indefeasible and inalienable so long as the Jewish People survives as a distinct nation. If this was not the case, international law would never have recognized the right of the Jewish People to reconstitute their long-defunct Commonwealth despite its non-existence for nineteen centuries.

Your letter demonstrates a complete and abysmal ignorance of Jewish legal rights to the Land of Israel under international law as formulated by the Principal Allied Powers in various documents drawn up in the immediate aftermath of World War I. It was then that Palestine was allotted exclusively to the Jewish People for the reconstitution of its national home, while the Arab peoples received by far the larger portion of the former Ottoman territories in Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia and North Africa. This led eventually to the creation of 21 Arab states and one Jewish State. This global political and legal settlement was approved unanimously by the states that had joined the League of Nations. It must be stressed that under this settlement Palestine was never intended to be the state of an Arab people called “Palestinians”. In fact, the term “Palestinians” previously designated the Jews of the land during the entire Mandate period, and was rejected contemptuously by the local Arab population who preferred to be part of an independent Syria. Since Palestine was the Jewish National Home under international law, it is ludicrous and illogical to refer to any region of Palestine, in particular, to Judea, Samaria and Gaza, as Israeli-“occupied Palestinian territory”. This is a gross misuse of terminology demonstrating ignorance of the legal and diplomatic history of Palestine.

Under international law as embodied in the Mandate for Palestine, Jews were permitted and even encouraged to settle in every part of Palestine. Therefore, your references to “illegal” Jewish settlements in “East Jerusalem”, Judea and Samaria are completely baseless, the accusation you make thus lacking even a grain of truth. Further to this, there exists no legal entity called “East Jerusalem”. Jerusalem is a united city under Israeli sovereignty – just as Berlin is a united city under German sovereignty – and you should thus refrain from using a term that has no official existence.

The principal documents of international law that established Jewish legal title to the entire Land of Israel or former Mandated Palestine – and not merely to the State of Israel – are the following:

1. The Smuts Resolution of January 30, 1919 adopted at the Paris Peace Conference designated “Palestine” as one of six mandated territories to be created; the term "Palestine" as used in 1919 was synonymous with the Jewish National Home, as evidenced by the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 and the Feisal-Weizmann Agreement of January 3, 1919; the Smuts Resolution, named for the South African statesman General Jan Christiaan Smuts, became Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations that created the Mandates System.

2. The San Remo Resolution of April 25, 1920 adopted by the Principal Allied Powers – Britain, France, Italy and Japan – set aside all of Palestine as the land designated for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home, based on the historical connection of the Jewish People with Palestine.

3. The Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 23, 1920 fixing the northern and northeastern boundary of Palestine with Syria-Lebanon made it clear beyond any doubt that Judea, Samaria and Gaza were to be parts of the Jewish National Home.

4. The Mandate for Palestine confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922 details all the Jewish rights to Palestine, in particular, the right of Jewish settlement in all regions of the country.

5. The Anglo-American Convention Respecting the Mandate for Palestine concluded on December 3, 1924 was proclaimed by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge on December 5, 1925, thus becoming – under Article VI of the US Constitution – part of the supreme law of the United States; under this Convention the United States recognized an undivided Palestine as the Jewish National Home. The present policy of the US Executive favoring a two-state solution and denying the right of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is consequently in violation of US public law;

6. Article 70(1)(b) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties continues in force the legal rights of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel derived from the Mandate which comes under its purview. Article 70(1)(b) reads as follows:

Article 70

Consequences of the Termination of a Treaty

1. Unless the treaty otherwise provides or the parties otherwise agree, the termination of a treaty under its provisions or in accordance with the present Convention:

a)…

b) does not affect any right, obligation or legal situation of the parties created through the execution of the treaty prior to its termination.

This provision of international law is in effect a codification of a legal norm that existed long before the Vienna Convention was concluded (1969). Hence all the legal rights and title of de jure sovereignty that inhered in the Jewish People under the Mandate continued unabated in full force in favour of the State of Israel after the termination of the Mandate on midnight of May 14-15, 1948 – specifically the right of Jewish settlement.

7. Article 80 of the UN Charter is another provision of international law that has a direct bearing on Jewish legal rights to the Land of Israel. It provides as follows:

Article 80

Except as may be agreed upon in individual trusteeship agreements… placing each territory under the trusteeship system, and until such agreements have been concluded, nothing [in Chapter XII of the UN Charter dealing with the International Trusteeship System] shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which the Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties…

The long and short of Article 80 of the UN Charter is that it preserves all the legal rights of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel under the Mandate for Palestine which was still in force when the UN Charter was ratified as a treaty in 1945. Any alteration or amendment to the Mandate before its termination in 1948 could only be made in a trusteeship agreement by the states directly concerned. Since no such agreement was ever made at the relevant time before the expiration of the Mandate, all the rights of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel derived from the Mandate were preserved intact, particularly the right of Jewish settlement in all regions of Mandated Palestine, a right that you so ignorantly deny. Article 80 remains of value as a sure-fire defense to block UN infringement of Jewish national rights in the recovered possessions of eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

What the European Former Leaders Group has done is to simply ignore the aforesaid documents of international law and begin its analysis or understanding of the situation in the Middle East from the time of the outbreak of the June 1967 Six-Day War. By adopting the wrong departure-date in order to assess the overall Arab conflict with Israel, you have, conveniently for yourselves, attempted to erase from memory the entire legal and diplomatic history that followed in the wake of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. This then enables you to purport to change the legal status of the Land of Israel to suit your pro-Arab prejudices and thus disregard Jewish legal rights to all of the Jewish National Home embodied in international law during the period between 1919 and 1925, rights which remain in force to this very day. While Jewish title to the Land of Israel has been recognized in international law in the above-cited legal documents, there is no binding document of international law that recognizes any Arab (what you falsely call “Palestinian”) rights to this land. Despite this irrefutable fact, which makes a mockery of all your proposals and recommendations, you have chosen to detour around this barrier of truth by inventing and giving credence to the so-called “Palestinian” Arab rights to the Land of Israel that have absolutely no foundation in international law and, moreover, are prohibited by the doctrine of estoppel which protects the acquired legal rights of the Jewish People to its homeland, including that which you inaccurately call “East Jerusalem” and the “West Bank”, as if the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan still occupied this territory.

If a new Arab state of “Palestine” were to be established, as you propose, the State of Israel would be restricted to what the late former Foreign Minister of Israel, Abba Eban, once called “the Auschwitz borders”. Moreover, the establishment of a so-called “Palestinian state” in the heartland of the Jewish National Home will engender Arab irredentism to claim for themselves the rest of Palestine in what is now the State of Israel. Arab mortars, missiles and rockets will in such a scenario rain down on the Jewish population centers in Israel and will lead inevitably to a new war and even to the possible destruction of the Jewish State. By advocating an irredentist Arab state in the Land of Israel, you are, consciously or unconsciously (you may take your choice!), yearning for the extinction of the Jewish State which the Arabs have consistently sought ever since the Jews started in the 1880s to return under the impetus of the Zionist Movement to their ancestral homeland.

My client has instructed me to remind the former President of Germany, Richard von Weizsäcker, that his father, when he headed the Foreign Office of the Third Reich under Hitler and Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, worked assiduously to advance Hitler’s diabolical plan to annihilate European Jewry, as revealed in the recent study carried out by an international team of distinguished historians. In a report of over 900 pages, mention is made of an order signed by Director-General von Weizsäcker to his subordinates to implement the transfer of the Jews of France to the furnaces of Auschwitz. Your Excellency, by adding your name and signature to the evil letter composed by the European Former Leaders Group (EFLG), you make yourself an accessory to the aiding and abetting of the destruction of the Jews of Israel. Do you truly wish to repeat the crimes of your father and finish the work of the Third Reich? If this is not the case, you must publicly withdraw your name and signature from this evil letter within a period not exceeding thirty day from receipt of this letter.

Indeed, my client demands that not only the former President of Germany, but each and every one of the august members of the European Former Leaders Group whose name and signature is affixed to the letter addressed to the President of the European Council withdraw his or her name and issue a public apology to the Jewish People, in particular to the almost six million Jews of Israel for having supported so evil and illegal a scheme that is tantamount to a criminal conspiracy against the Jewish People to deprive them of their ancient homeland, a scheme that could result in a new Holocaust in the 21^st century. If you do not fulfill my client’s demands within the same thirty-day period, you are all hereby notified that legal proceedings will be taken against you jointly and severally in a European court of law, where appropriate damages will be demanded for advocating a plan for the extinction of the State of Israel and denying Jewish legal rights to all areas of the Jewish National Home in the Land of Israel, rights that were legally recognized under international law by your own countries when they were members of the League of Nations.

Yours truly,

Howard Grief,

Attorney

Copies: Herman van Rompuy,

President of the European Council

Lady Catherine Ashton,

High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

The Mandate for Palestine aka Greater Israel by fact and law 1920

Thursday, February 2, 2017