The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned the France, Spain and Italy for issuing ‘warnings’ to their businesses not to conduct commerce with Jews living in Judea/Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. In recent days, Spain and Italy published advisories, warning their citizens against doing business with ‘settlements,’ just days after a similar advisory was published in the French-language section of the French Foreign Ministry website.
The French Foreign Ministry falsely claims that “due to the fact that the settlements are illegal in international law, the performance of financial transactions in the settlements –– e.g. money transfers, investments, acquisition of property, provision of supplies or the performance of any [other] economic activities that benefit the settlements involves risks” (Tova Dvorin & Ari Yashar, ‘France, Spain, Italy Launch BDS ‘Settlement’ Warnings,’ Israel National News, June 27, 2014).
This disgraceful position taken by France, Spain and Italy mean they actually favor Israel giving the Golan Heights to the monstrous Syrian dictator and butcher, Bashar al-Assad, and the remainder of Judea/Samaria still under Israeli control to the Hamas/Fatah Palestinian Authority (PA) regime. Both the Fatah Constitution (Article 12) and the Hamas Charter (Article 15) call for the destruction of Israel and the Hamas Charter also calls (Article 7) for he worldwide murder of Jews. It is even more shocking that the French, Italian and Spanish advisories came after Hamas/Fatah unity government agreement and the Hamas kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers, since murdered by their kidnappers. It is to a regime with such elements that these governments want Israel to make dangerous concessions.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We condemn this latest attempt to penalize Israel and siding with Israel’s enemies by falsely attempting to have Israel treated as acting illegally by permitting Israeli Jews to live in these territories.
“As we have indicated many times, the claim that it is illegal for Jews to move to, live in or build homes in Judea/Samaria and eastern Jerusalem is a falsehood and absurdity for which these governments should be ashamed.
“Last year a report issued under the chairmanship of former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy affirmed the legality under applicable international law of Jewish residence in the territories.
“Indeed, the law was clear long before Justice Levy produced his report: the territory of the Judea/Samaria (West Bank) was earmarked for Jewish settlement in 1920 at the San Remo Conference that drafted the League of Nations Charter. This decision, enshrined in the British Mandate for Palestine that shortly followed, has never been superseded by an internationally binding agreement.
“The 1993 Oslo Accords, which the Palestinians Arabs signed, contain no prohibition on the existence and growth of these Jewish communities. Jewish rights remain unimpaired. Whether one supports or opposes Jewish residence in Judea/Samaria, all should be able to agree on this.
“The usual basis for this false claim is that Jewish residence in the territories supposedly contravenes Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention, but this is nonsense.
“Article 49 prohibits ‘Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not. It also ordains that ‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.’
“Palestinians are not being deported or forcibly transferred from the West Bank to another territory. Jews are not being deported or transferred from Israel to the West Bank; they are moving there freely of their own will.
“Moreover, the 4th Geneva Convention deals only with territories belonging to a sovereign power. In contrast, Judea/Samaria, illegally seized by Jordan in 1948 and captured by Israel following Jordanian attack in 1967, remains unallocated territory under international law. Article 49 is irrelevant in this case.
“It is amazing that, at a time that the Fatah/PA enters a unity government with Hamas, a U.S.- and European Union-recognized terrorist group that calls in its Charter for the murder of Jews, these governments side with the Fatah/Hamas efforts to have these territories made judenrein.
“If these governments had their way, Israel would have relinquished the Golan Heights to the Assad regime. Imagine what that might mean today for the lives and security of Israel’s citizens in northern Israel. Yet, they side right now with Assad, who has murdered tend of thousands of Syrians.
“We know that the PA is relentlessly urging the Europeans to adopt these absurd, biased positions. We know that, in February, Palestinian officials urged the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, to push for tougher sanctions against Israeli ‘settlements.’
“We also know that the Palestinians were incensed when the Australian government recently and rightly ceased to refer to eastern Jerusalem as occupied. To have this fiction exposed undermines the fraudulent case the PA has manufactured for international campaigns to harm Israel.”