The Legal Foundations of Israel’s Birth Certificate
Of all the countries that have emerged in the last century, none have a birth certificate as legitimate as Israel’s. The founders of Israel, including Theodore Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir, were either lawyers or had legal training. They were obsessed with “making it legal.” Unlike most countries, Israel’s birth was midwifed by lawyers, not generals. This legal journey began with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and continued through the San Remo Agreement in 1920, the League of Nations Resolution in 1922, the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine in 1924, and culminated in the United Nations partition plan in 1947.
The Legal Struggles and War of Independence
Immediately upon its lawful establishment in 1948, Israel was attacked by surrounding Arab states and local Arab populations. In defending its right to exist, Israel lost one percent of its population, including many civilians and Holocaust survivors. Despite these losses, Israel captured some land from the aggressors that was originally assigned to the Arab state. The end result of this war was an armistice line that prevailed until 1967, when Israel was attacked again during its war with Egypt and Syria.
The Ongoing Legal Challenges and Population Transfers
Between 1948 and 1967, Arab terrorists continued to infiltrate Israeli borders, injuring and killing Israeli citizens. This was part of an official policy by surrounding governments and local Palestinian leaders, all in violation of international law. Following Israel’s establishment, a transfer of populations occurred. Several hundred thousand Arabs who fled from Israel during the War of Independence were not allowed to return. Simultaneously, approximately the same number of Jews were forced to leave Arab countries, where they had lived for thousands of years. Unlike the Arab countries, which kept the Arabs in refugee camps, Israel fully integrated Jewish refugees from Arab countries into its society.
The Remarkable Legitimacy of Israel’s Birth Certificate
Israel’s establishment as the nation-state of the Jewish people by entirely lawful means is remarkable for several reasons. First, no country in the world is as surrounded by hostile enemies as Israel. Despite this, Israel has always sought peaceful negotiations, as evidenced by its peace treaty with Egypt in 1978, its peaceful abandonment of Gaza in 2005, and its many attempts to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
The Irony of Israel’s Legal Legitimacy Being Questioned
Despite its lawful origins, Israel is the only country in the world whose legitimacy is questioned by the United Nations, numerous member nations, and many organizations that claim to uphold human rights and the rule of law. Ironically, these attacks on Israel’s legitimacy have taken the form of “lawfare” – the use of international law as a weapon. Any fair tribunal that judged Israel by universal standards would reject such attacks out of hand. However, international courts, like the UN itself, have been packed by those bitterly antagonistic to Israel.
The Unjust Bigotry Against Israel
The phenomenon of questioning Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people cannot be explained on legal grounds or any other rational basis. It can only be explained as pure bigotry, specifically anti-Semitism. If there is a better explanation for why the one country whose right to exist is denied is also the nation-state of the Jewish people, I ask you, what is it?I’m Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law at Harvard University.
