Australia joins Jew-haters at United Nations

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Australia has twice in the past two weeks joined the baying mob at the United Nations General Assembly acting illegally in violation of article 80 of the United Nations Charter – which reserves the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) under articles 6 and 25 of the League of Nations 1922 Mandate for Palestine.

On 3 December 2024 – Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong overruled the advice of Australia’s UN mission to abstain on a General Assembly resolution which:

“Rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip, including any actions that reduce the territory of Gaza, stresses that the Gaza Strip constitutes an integral part of the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, and reaffirms the vision of the two-State solution, with the Gaza Strip as part of the Palestinian State”

That resolution also called for a High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution to be held from 2 to 4 June 2025 in New York preceded by a preparatory meeting to be held in May 2025.

On 11 December 2024 – Australia voted in favour of a General Assembly resolution which:

“Reiterates its unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-State solution, with the Gaza Strip as part of the Palestinian State, and where two democratic States, Palestine and Israel, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders, consistent with international law and the relevant United Nations resolutions, and in this regard rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip, including any actions that reduce the territory of the Gaza Strip, and stresses the importance of unifying the Gaza Strip with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority;

On both occasions the General Assembly was acting in flagrant violation of article 80 of the United Nations Charter – inserted in April 1945 after the Jewish Agency for Palestine submitted a Memorandum to the United Nations Conference on International Organization held in San Francisco stating:

“In view of the unique character of the Palestine Mandate and the special rights of the Jewish people thereunder, no action should be taken at the San Francisco Conference which would be inconsistent with or prejudicial to the special rights of the Jewish people under the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate, and all such rights shall be expressly reserved and safeguarded”

Israel’s first Prime Minister – David Ben-Gurion – then the Representative of the Jewish Agency – emphasised the importance of the insertion of Article 80 into the UN Charter in evidence before the UN Special Committee for Palestine at Lake Success, New York on 7 July 1947:

“… there is also Article 80, and Article 80 was adopted for this very special reason of Palestine…. This is the special Article of the Charter which applies to Palestine. It was introduced only because of Palestine.”

Eugene Rostow Dean of the Yale Law School and Under Secretary for Political Affairs under President Johnson had this letter concerning article 80 published on 19 September 1983:

To the Editor:

In a recent news analysis, ”The West Bank and the Emperor’s Clothes,” Bernard Gwertzman accurately portrays the mindset of the officials who condescendingly dismiss President Reagan’s statement that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are ”not illegal.” But these officials and not the President are wearing the Emperor’s gossamer suit.

Israel has an unassailable legal right to establish settlements in the West Bank. The West Bank is part of the British Mandate in Palestine which included Israel and Jordan as well as certain other territories not yet generally recognized as belonging to either country. While Jewish settlement east of the Jordan River was suspended in 1922, such settlements remained legal in the West Bank.

All rights vesting under mandates were preserved by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter. And they survived the end of British administration in Palestine as a ”sacred trust” – exactly the legal posture for Namibia after South Africa ceased to be the mandatory power. Recognizing the legal force of these facts, those who are seeking to sabotage the President’s position fall back on a provision of the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbidding occupying powers to transfer their own populations to occupied territories. This article of the Convention was a reaction to Nazi policy in Czechoslovakia after the invasion of 1938. But Israel is not in the West Bank only as an occupying power, because the West Bank has never been widely recognized as Jordanian. Israel’s claims to the territory are at least as good as those of Jordan, since Jordan held the territory for 19 years after a war of aggression, whereas Israel took the area in the course of a war of self-defense, so far as Jordan was concerned. As a matter of convenience, Israel applies the Geneva Convention generally in its administration of the West Bank, but does not admit it is legally obliged to do so. Jordan is not the reversioner in the West Bank and therefore the protective provisions of the Geneva Convention do not apply. Whether Israel’s right to settle the West Bank should be exercised at a particular time is thus a matter of prudence, not of law. It is conventional wisdom that such settlements are an obstacle to peace. But the absence of such settlements between 1948 and 1967 did not encourage Jordan to make peace. The thesis, often mechanically repeated by our Government spokesmen, does not do justice to the principles of the Arab position: that the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate, and all that flowed from them were beyond the powers of the victorious Allies of 1914-18, the League, and the United Nations, and that the existence of Israel is itself an aggression against the Arab nation. Perhaps the realization that their continuing refusal to make peace with Israel is bound to have territorial consequences will help to persuade the Arabs that 35 years of intransigence is enough.

EUGENE V. ROSTOW, New Haven, Conn., Sept. 2, 1983

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 19, 1983, Section A, Page 18 of the National edition with the headline: ISRAEL’S SETTLEMENT RIGHT IS ‘UNASSAILABLE’. 

New York Times – 19 September 1983

Eugene Rostow was Dean of Yale Law School and served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres continues to refuse to comment on both the Security Council and the General Assembly acting in violation of article 80 – especially after the Security Council adopted Resolution 2334 on 23 December 2016 as America’s Obama-Biden administration – vacating the White House for then President-elect Donald Trump – failed to veto its passage.

UN General Assembly member States continue to fuel Jew-hatred worldwide adopting legally-unenforceable resolutions breaching article 80 that denigrate and delegitimize Jewish claims. Australia has shamefully succumbed to becoming their latest member.

Please join my Facebook Page: “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine supporters”

Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively by the author — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades

David Singer is a Sydney lawyer and a foundation member of the International Analysts Networkq