Stu Eizenstat touts THE BIG PALESTINIAN LIE that in 1948 the U.N. stole Arab land and gave it to the Holocaust survivors

[solutions]

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Subject: Q&A-23 re “12/16/23: EX POST FACTO “CROSSING SWORDS” VIS-À-VIS THE THRICE-FAILED ‘TWO-STATE SOLUTION’”
From: Solutions
Date: Mon January 29, 2024 4:14 pm PST
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Attachment:
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Dear John,

I just finished reading your Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz.

Q&A-23 referred to your “Crossing Swords” on 1/3/2024 with your law-school classmate, Stu Eizenstat, who was, inter alia, President Clinton’s Ambassador to the European Union.

Mr. Eizenstat had been pushing in the “lead up” to the 1/8/2024 weekly Zoom Chat of your Harvard Law School Class of 1967 classmates, the “two state” solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Your 1/3/2024 e-mail to him (Bcc to your classmates) argued about how inappropriate the “two state” solution is since it had failed on three different occasions because the Palestinians do not recognize Israel’s “right to exist.”

You, instead, championed the Dermer/Netanyahu plan for long-term occupation of Gaza similarly to the way the U.S. occupied Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan for many years to transform German/Japanese society so that today, Germany and Japan have for nearly 8 decades, been two of America’s most loyal allies.

Your 1/3/2024 e-mail requested Mr. Eizenstat, in his proposed extolling of the “two state” solution during the 1/8/2024 Zoom Chat -- (A) to explain how it could succeed on the fourth attempt despite the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize Israel’s “right to exist,” and (B) to explain why the Dermer/Netanyahu plan to emulate America’s long-term occupation of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is not preferable.

Did Mr. Eizenstat do so?

Your friend,

Solutions


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: Q&A-23 re “12/16/23: EX POST FACTO “CROSSING SWORDS” VIS-À-VIS THE THRICE-FAILED ‘TWO-STATE SOLUTION’”
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Tue January 30, 2024 10:21 am MST
To: Solutions
Attachment:
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Dear Solutions,

Thank you very much for your e-mail.


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Yes, Q&A-23 did indeed reference Stu Eizenstat’s argument for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution that he prepared for, and circulated to, our weekly Zoom Chat group of Harvard Law School Class of 1967 classmates, and my critique sent to him with copies to the Zoom Chat group.

[Copies of both are available at viewtopic.php?f=780&t=2457&sid=878b33bc ... e523dc557f.]

The short answer to your question is “no.”

The longer answer is that like any attorney or diplomat or politician, virtually all of whom refuse to admit errors, Stu Eizenstat simply ignored the entire imbroglio.

Instead, he confined his remarks on Jan. 8 to the Gaza War and didn’t say a word about its aftermath.

Which is all I expected.

Mission accomplished.


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Stu Eizenstat’s UNFORTUNATE MISREPRESENTATION of the facts re the founding of Israel


Far more distressing than Stu Eizenstat’s views (hopefully, former views) on the Gazan War’s denouement, is an UNFORTUNATE MISREPRESENTATION he asserted in his 1/26/2024 speech at the Holocaust Museum on International Holocaust Day AS THE CHAIR OF THE U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COUNCIL.

[His 1/26/2024 speech is reproduced immediately below.]

In the fourth paragraph from the end of his speech, he said --

“And, especially at this moment, we recall these failures because the Holocaust reminds us that the desperate Jews of Europe had no safe haven. As I said, nations around the world –- including our own -– refused to let them in. IT WAS OUT OF THIS CATASTROPHE THAT THE WORLD RECOGNIZED THE NECESSITY OF A JEWISH STATE IN THE JEWS’ ANCESTRAL HOMELAND.” (All Caps emphasis added.)

OMG, why is such an authoritative person perpetuating A PALESTINIAN LIE???!!!

Which is used to justify the chant “from the River to the Sea” meaning the extermination of Israel???!!!

The historical truth was set forth once more in Q&A-17 through Q&A-24 of the Second Short Quiz --

(A) The basic problem with Arab and world opinion is that it ignores the historical record that since 738 AD, the Muslim world had welcomed Jews into Palestine and permitted them to purchase land.

(B) The Brits, during their governing Palestine following its capture from the Ottoman Empire during World War I, permitted virtually no Jewish immigration.

(C) The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (“UNSCOP”) which was established 5/15/1947 to oversee the termination of British rule, carefully catalogued who owned what.

(D) UNSCOP reported that there were only 1,077,000 Muslims out of a total population of 1,846,000 – or 58.3%.

(E) Accordingly, UNSCOP recommended, and UN Resolution 181 proclaimed, British rule would end on 5/14/1948 to be succeeded by a “Jewish State” and a “Palestinian State” based on who owned what even though the Jewish State and the Palestinian State resembled a “checker board” of land ownership.

(F) Israel accepted U.N. Resolution 181 and declared its independence on 5/14/1948 – and was immediately invaded by Egypt, Syrian, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.

(G) This “two state solution” was followed by two additional “two state solutions” that Arabs have rejected because they continue TO REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO EXIST.

(H) Muslims aren’t even willing, before throwing all Israelis "into the sea," to buy back the land that their ancestors sold to the Jews.


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Valediction

A good “extra-credit” question for our Short Quizzes would be --

Can Israel survive the support such an eminent authority as Stu Eizenstat provides for the PALESTINIAN LIE that “the world” (presumably a reference to the United Nations) stole Arab land and gave it to the Holocaust survivors?

Evoking the adage – “With a ‘friend’ like this, who needs enemies?”

I’m not even Jewish, but I certainly hope Israel can survive such "support" for the sake of fundamental fairness (as set forth in Items A through H).

Thank you again for your e-mail.

Your friend,

John K.


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INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
Ambassador (ret) and US Holocaust Memorial Council chair Stuart E. Eizenstat
January 26, 2024
Washington, D.C.


Welcome to all of you, and thank you for joining us on this very important and solemn day. We have many special guests with us. First, I would like to acknowledge the Austrian Federal Minister for Europe and Constitution, Karoline Edtstadler, who also addresses antisemitism. We are grateful to her and her government for their commitment to Holocaust education.

I would also like to acknowledge the several ambassadors with us today – from Austria, Liechtenstein, Moldova, and Sweden as well as our program participants, the ambassadors of Israel, Germany, France, and Poland and members of the Museum’s governing Council.

A very special welcome to the high school students from the German International School of Washington, who asked to be with us on this significant day. The fact that a younger generation wanted to join us is especially meaningful, and your presence means a great deal to us, symbolizing that the Holocaust will not be forgotten in the mists of history.

And finally, and most especially, we welcome our heroes, our cherished Holocaust survivors. Please stand.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day was first established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, so that the global community could come together to commemorate the Holocaust. The date marks the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau on January 27, 1945. Auschwitz has become a symbol worldwide of the systematic, industrialized effort to kill every Jew in Europe by Nazi Germany and its allies. We have never recovered our numbers: in 1939, there were 17 million Jews in a world of one billion; today there are only 14.7 million in a world of eight billion. More broadly, two thirds of European Jewry, the flower of Jewish culture and religion, were murdered, including one and a half million children, never able to make their contribution to the world. The greatest genocide in history was accompanied by the greatest theft of property and personal possession in history, as the Nazis and their collaborators sough to eliminate all vestiges of Jewish life, root and branch. Along with Jews, millions of others, Poles, Slavs, Roma, and individuals with disabilities were also killed based upon a racial ideology that treated them as subhumans.

Auschwitz was the ending. But today, and at critical moments like this with a dangerous eruption of antisemitism worldwide, we must focus on beginnings. We must ask ourselves; What was the path that led to Auschwitz? What did the world know about Auschwitz and when? And, most importantly, what were the warning signs that could have prevented the Holocaust and how did people respond? These are the enduring questions– questions deeply relevant to our own times. We keep asking them and study the history of the Holocaust not only to cherish the memory of those who perished and honor those who survived, but to learn lessons for the future: to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and heed warning signs in our time.

When we look at the failures of the past, we must ask hard questions about our own nation. During the Holocaust, FDR’s action and inaction reflected widespread isolationism, antisemitism and xenophobia in the US. Yes, our government’s response was woefully too late. But in truth Nazism needed to be stopped well before Germany plunged the world into war and genocide. Which is why it is also worth recalling that 90 years ago this year, Hitler was still early in his regime, still solidifying his power, and German society still becoming Nazified. Radical antisemitism as state policy targeting Germany’s tiny Jewish community was clear for all to see. And yet, most ominously in 1934, Hitler, working within the German system, exploited events to become the absolute dictator of Germany, removing all previous legal and constitutional limits to his authority. That year — 1934 – was seven long years before the mass murder of Europe’s Jews began. The warning signs were there. Long before an Auschwitz was even being contemplated.

The Holocaust was not inevitable. Hitler’s original goal was to make Germany Judenrein, free of Jews. He proceeded methodically, step-by-step, gradually disenfranchising German Jews, carefully gauging German and world reaction. He saw:

>No boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, even with the 1935 Nuremberg laws and other discriminatory measures.

>1938 was the fateful year when Hitler got clear signals of the world’s indifference to the fate of the Jews, and he and his propaganda machine led by Joseph Goebbels , said so publicly:

--The Anschluss with Austria;

--The Evian Conference, called by President Roosevelt to deal with the plight of German Jewish refugees, where the U.S. and other western nations refused to lift rigid immigration quotas;

--Kristallnacht, the furious pogrom with mass violence and arrests nationwide and torching of 7500 German Jewish businesses and 1000 synagogues.

None of this led to U.S. economic sanctions against Nazi Germany.

And the next year in 1939, over 900 German Jewish refugees on the SS St. Louis were denied entry to Miami Harbor.,

Later in the war, the U.S. Treasury Department presented Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. with an explosive report initially entitled “The Acquiescence of this Administration in the Genocide of the Jews.” This led exactly 80 years ago this week, on January 22, 1944, to President Franklin D Roosevelt at last acting, issuing Executive Order 9417, creating the War Refugee Board, and announcing that it was now official US policy to offer rescue and relief to the desperate Jews of Europe. However, by the time the War Refugee Board was established, over four million Jews had already been killed.

While welcome, the War Refugee Board was created long after the US government was aware of many earlier warning signs. FDR’s Executive Order came 17 long months after Gerhard Riegner, of the World Jewish Congress, had informed the US State Department in 1942 of Germany's plan to annihilate Europe’s Jews. By the time the State Dept received this information, all five killing centers has begun operations and the Nazi genocide of the Jews was at its height. And the Board was not created for more than a year after courageous Polish diplomat Jan Karski personally visited the president in the Oval Office on July 28, 1943, to provide his eyewitness account of the Nazi effort to wipe out Polish Jews.

We recall these failures in order to remind us why the international commitment of Never Again is so vital. Never again for Jews or for any group targeted for annihilation solely because of who they are.

We recall these failures because we need to do more to live up to that commitment and to confront Holocaust denial and antisemitism which are rampant online, on campuses and in cities worldwide.

And, especially at this moment, we recall these failures because the Holocaust reminds us that the desperate Jews of Europe had no safe haven. As I said, nations around the world – including our own– refused to let them in. It was out of this catastrophe that the world recognized the necessity of a Jewish State in the Jews’ ancestral homeland. For Holocaust survivors, still reeling from the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel– the largest killing of Jews since World War II, along with over 200 hostages, including a Holocaust survivor—-a Jewish homeland is something they never had when the world abandoned them: the guarantor of a Jewish future that the Nazis and their collaborators sought to prevent. That is why it is only fitting that we begin today’s commemorative event with remarks from Israel’s ambassador to the US Michael Herzog.

Before I invite Ambassador Herzog to the podium, I want to close on a personal and deeply important note. When I served as US Ambassador to the European Union, I remember that my late wife Fran and I could always identify Jewish synagogues and institutions in the EU member states because they had armed guards outside, and we comforted ourselves that we would never have to worry about attacks in the United States. I could never have imagined then that such measures would become commonplace here in the US and that Jews everywhere would feel threatened by violent hate. I also could never have imagined that Israel would shockingly be accused of genocide in an international courtroom as it seeks to defend its citizens from a deadly Hamas threat. And I am grateful that our government has repeatedly stated that Israel has not committed genocide and that the South African case is “meritless,” and that the German and French governments have also firmly rejected this accusation. This is an unimaginable affront to those we are here today to honor – Holocaust victims and survivors.

Having served in six presidential administrations, including my diplomatic post to the EU, I always worked for and fervently hoped for peace in the Middle East. We know from Holocaust survivors that it is always children who suffer the most in wartime. We mourn the loss of all innocent lives, Israeli and Palestinian

It is now my distinct honor to welcome Ambassador Herzog.