In the Offense of the State of Israel Part 1

In the Defense…
Growing up, I attended numerous Christian schools and received a phenomenal education. One of the classes I took in high school was called “Apologetics”. If you are unfamiliar with what apologetics is, it comes from a verse in the Christian Bible, 1 Peter 3:15: “… Always be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have. But respond with gentleness and respect”.
I have always been someone who has enjoyed debate and logic, so I was actually very excited to hear the logical arguments for why Christian religious scholars believed what they did. However, I was deeply dissatisfied by the answers that we were taught. They relied highly on circular reasoning; this is not due to a lack of understanding of logic but due to the subject matter. After all, we have no way to prove whether creationism, intelligent design, evolution, any other theory, or any combination of them are responsible for the beginning of the world. It comes down to an element of faith. However, what about the things in life that are not based on faith, but rather facts we can see with our own eyes?
I am heavily involved in the pro-Israel advocacy world and have been involved for about 5 years now. I have seen the different methods that we have attempted to use to demonstrate that Israel has the right to exist and is not an evil endeavor. I have been disappointed in all of the arguments and methods that have been presented and taught to me. Because at the end of the day, the goal of the Israel Advocacy and Education movement for the past 77 years has been to practice “hasbara”. For those unfamiliar with the term, “hasbara” comes from the root “lehasber” which means “to explain”. We have been attempting to explain away much of the anti-Israel hate that students have come face to face with on campus.
I recently led a delegation of 37 pro-Israel college students from over 30 American and Canadian college campuses who have been on the front lines of the campus battle. Our team surveyed the students on the accusations they are facing on college campuses of racism, apartheid, proportionality of war, terrorism, and more. Like how my high school had attempted to prepare the students to give a defense for their faith when they went out into the “real world”, I also wanted to prepare these students to have a defense for their Zionism. I heavily valued the attempt at gentleness and respect that had always been present in Christian apologetics because Christians are attempting to proselytize through apologetics to persuade others. So, I also wanted to provide them with communication tactics that would allow them to utilize the information I had shared with them so they could proselytize people to the pro-Israel cause. The following essay is an adaptation of the 2 hour long presentation I gave these students.
The students asked so many amazing questions that I cannot replicate here, however, something that they shared after the session struck me. Many students, like me, have spent years hearing the various formats of hasbara in the past. They were thrilled with the content of the session as they now felt more equipped. But not equipped to defend. No. They felt equipped to go “On the Offensive” on their campuses with the information.
So this is my attempt to be “In the Offense of the State of Israel”.
A Note on Structure
When our team surveyed the students on the information they needed to combat the awful things they were hearing on campus, we provided them with legal definitions for things such as apartheid, genocide, occupation, ethnic cleansing and more. We then asked students to explain a bit more about what they hear about these terms/arguments on their campuses. Finally, we asked students what information they felt they needed to learn more about in order to be confident in addressing the concerns being raised on campus.
Our team then spent over 20 hours compiling resources and information regarding the topics, and divided the concerns along the timeline of modern Israeli history in an attempt to give the session some structure. We were unable to answer every single question/argument, but did our best to combine/address concerns to be able to best empower students.
The major timeline points we decided to address were: The British Mandate, 1948, 1967, The Intifadas, 2005, and finally 2023. These are not entirely exact years, but more framing time reference points to major events in Israeli history that give rise to some of the more controversial claims made against Israel.
A Note on Operationalizing The Information You Will Read
I just want to give a quick primer on the importance of communicating in a way that will bring us closer to peace. The strategy I learned through my experience on Hasbara Fellowships, and that is used by every politician ever is the ABC method.
You begin with A (Acknowledge, Answer, Address), transition to B (Bridge, Build, Broaden), then finish with C (Communicate, Control the Conversation). I can make a separate blog post about this topic in particular, however, this post will be pushing 10k words and I don’t want to test anyone’s ability to pay attention that badly.
International Law
This essay relies heavily on the study of international law. International Law is a topic that is rather touchy in the pro-Israel space due to the long term anti-Israel bias present in international organizations such as the United Nations (UN).
However, as much as many pro-Israel advocates may like dislike the International Law and the system that enforces it, Israel is still bound by much of it. Before diving into the very dense legal definitions, I must provide a caveat regarding the sources of international law and what types of international agreements Israel is party to.
International Law as set forth in a UN explainer document is the result of a decentralized basis constructed by the 192 States that make up the International Community. The UN Charter and Statute for the ICJ (International Court of Justice) Article 38 “identifies five sources:- (a) Treaties between States; (b) Customary international law derived from the practice of States; (c) General principles of law recognized by civilised nations; and, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of international law: (d) Judicial decisions and the writings of “the most highly qualified publicists”.
Treaties between states make up much of what a layperson understands International Law to be. As a part of treaty based law there are traditionally two stages once an agreement is negotiated: Signature and Ratification. Signature is the stage at which the representative of a State signs the agreement. At this stage, the agreement is not legally binding, but states are not permitted to take actions that would violate the agreement as they are in the process of agreeing to the treaty. Ratification is when the state government passes/amends the domestic laws/structures to be in accordance with the signed agreement.
Israel is party (the term used to describe a member state of an agreement) to many of the major International Law Treaties. A full list of the Israeli agreements can be found here: http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/ratification-israel.html. I will not bore you here with the specifics of what Israel has agreed to, but will rather bring it up as it is relevant.
British Mandate
The Mandate System was created by the League of Nations to administer territories of the former German and Ottoman Empires after their defeat in WW1. The mandate system arises as a compromise between the Allied forces desire to retain the territories and honor the pre-armistice declaration that the annexation of territory was not their aim in the war. Three subdivisions or classes of mandates are created based on their political and economic development, with the idea that mandates would be able to climb up the ranks of the system and eventually “graduate out”.
Class | Definition | Example |
A | Recognition of provisional independence but had allied administrative control until the countries would be able to fully stand alone | Britain maintained mandates over Iraq and Palestine, and the French over Syria and Lebanon |
B | Former German colonies in Africa where mandatory powers had direct responsibility for the administration of the mandates | Togoland and the Cameroons |
C | Various former German held territories that the mandatory powers administered as integral parts of their territory | Nambia, New Guinea |
Following the breakdown of the League of Nations and the Second World War, the Mandate System was succeeded by the UN trusteeship system in 1946.
With the advent of the United Nations, Britain saw a unique opportunity to rid itself of the costly and problematic British Mandate of Palestine. There had been ongoing civil disobedience and fighting between the local Jewish and Arab populations since the early 1900’s. The British referred the problem to the United Nations which established the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in 1947.
When the representatives from UNSCOP arrived in the territory, they were welcomed by the Jewish leadership and scorned by the Arab leadership who refused to meet with them. (Some Arab officials and intellectuals met with the representatives privately after facing death threats.)
Upon the end of the fact finding mission, the Committee produced a partition plan as follows:
The Jews had the lowlands of the partition, with 56.47% of the land that was not separated out for the state of Transjordan. The Jews comprised 32.94% of the population, and had approximately 7% of the farmable land of the area.
The Arabs had the high ground and 65.17% of the local population. Under the partition plan, they would have received 42.88% of the land that was not separated out for Transjordan. Additionally the Arabs received approximately 93% of the farmable land in the plan.
The remainder of the land under the partition plan (0.65%) would have consisted of Jerusalem and its outlying towns. It would have been administered by the UN in some sort of international zone.
This plan was outlined in UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 181 which passed 33-13-10. There are two important things to understand about this resolution. 1) UN General Assembly Resolutions are not legally binding. 2) Neither the Jews nor the Arabs who were the ones being partitioned were a state that could vote on this issue in the UN. Those two important notes are now being made- The Jews accepted the partition and the Arabs rejected it.
Now, we could get sidetracked here forever, but it is not useful to our cause. There have been entire treatises written about the issue, and if you’re interested in learning more about this particular issue, I would highly recommend War of Return by Einat Wilf. In the next part, we will look at the next major time point: The 1948 War/The War of Independence/The Nakba.
Thank You
Thank you for being willing to read this multi-part blog post of a longer essay I have written and am interested in having people consume and critique. I hope to create more content on topics such as this and provide Israel advocacy advice and recommendations. If this is something that interests you, please engage with my content and feel free to reach out to discuss anything I have written here!
I will hopefully be going on the road soon to speak on this exact topic with American College and University students, and if that interests you, please send me a message.