Tuesday, May 14, 2019

War Crime!: Placing a Note in the Western Wall

by Alan M. Dershowitz • May 14, 2019 at 5:00 am

I urge all visitors to join me in a conspiracy to violate the UN Security Council Resolution...Obama, himself, engineered the Resolution. He pushed it through the Security Council despite some reservations by other members, including Egypt, which believed that the Resolution itself could become a barrier to a negotiated two-state solution. After all, if Israel's control over Judaism's holiest site is deemed illegal, then Israel would have to negotiate its legality with the Palestinians.
These Jewish areas were illegally occupied by Jordan between 1948 and 1967 and lawfully recaptured by Israel in a defensive war, started by Jordan when it fired mortars at civilian targets inside pre-1967 Israel.... Yet there were no United Nations Resolutions, campus protests or other organized shows of opposition by the international community. Only after Israel liberated these historically Jewish areas, did the world, and Obama, decide -- in violation of international law -- that they were illegally occupied.
Declaring the Western Wall to be illegally occupied territory is akin to declaring the Vatican, Mecca or other religious, holy sites to be occupied by those who pray at them. The Western Wall is lawfully part of the nation state of the Jewish people. It will remain so as long as Israel exists. If there is to be any hope of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the world must recognize that historic, moral and legal reality.

Pictured: Notes placed by visitors in the cracks of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Last week, in Israel, I committed a flagrant violation of international law. This "war crime" consisted of placing a note asking for "peace, salaam, shalom" in the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. The reason the note requesting peace constituted "a flagrant violation of international law" and a "war crime" is that the United Nations Security Council, in a Resolution adopted in December 2016, declared that all areas captured by Israel during the 1967 War are illegally occupied territories. That includes the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and the access roads on Mount Scopus to the Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital.