By Barry Shaw
NETANYA, Israel — April 25 should have been a Jewish holiday.
That date needs to be celebrated as San Remo Day. For on that date, in 1920, the leaders of the free world gathered in this Italian resort town to declare the establishment of a national home in Palestine.
It needs to be noted that there was never an Arab Palestinian entity.
Palestine had been a barren dusty district of a defeated Ottoman Empire that covered a huge sprawling land mass from Turkey through today’s Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan down to the Red Sea, and Israel.
The Arabs received, or grabbed, huge swaths of land mass. Eventually, on April 25, the Jews, the indigenous people of the ancient land of Israel for three millennia, were granted, by the world powers, the right to establish their homeland.
The decision taken in San Remo was sanctioned further by the League of Nations who “recognised the historic connection of the Jewish connection with Palestine” and the “grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”
But what of the poor Arabs? Did not they also have claims to Palestine?
Indeed they did, and they received Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq as their share of the territory.
But, as history shows, it is never enough for those who cannot swallow their hatred of a race that deserves, and warrants, the right to live in peace in a land that was theirs.
When independent Arab states, such as Iraq and Egypt, joined the League of Nations they were legally bound to recognize Jewish people’s sovereign right to the land of Israel.
They didn’t, and went to war with the Jewish State in 1948, thereby violating their international obligations as members of the League of Nations and later, of the United Nations, because all resolutions and treaties of the League of Nations are enshrined in Article 80 of the founding document of the United Nations, and cannot be overturned.
The people of Israel live, and San Remo Day (April 25) should become an international Jewish holiday.
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Barry Shaw is the International Public Diplomacy Director for the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.