MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images
The anti-Israel International Court of Justice, an arm of the United Nations, ruled on Friday that Israel’s presence in the biblical areas of Judea and Samaria is “unlawful,” and that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, as well as in East Jerusalem, violated international law.
In an opinion delivered by its president, Nawaf Salam of Lebanon, who wrote in 2015 of Israel, “Unhappy birthday to you, 48 years of occupation,” the court claimed, “The West Bank and East Jerusalem are occupied territories in which Israel has status of occupying Power.”
In the face of the October 7 attack by the terrorist group Hamas in which they murdered more than 1,200 people in Israel and in the face of the decades-old series of wars launched by Arab states against Israel and the intifadas which claimed thousands of Jewish lives, the court wrote, “Israel’s systematic failure to prevent or punish attacks by settlers against the life or bodily integrity of Palestinians, as well as Israel’s excessive use of force against Palestinians, is inconsistent with its obligations.”
Among other incidents in which Jews have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria, on March 2011, Tamar Fogel, 12, returned to her home in Itamar to find her brothers, Yoav, 11, and Elad, 4, lying on the floor in pools of blood. She found her 3-month-old sister stabbed in her crib; her parents dead on the floor. Two terrorists, from a neighboring Palestinian village, who were linked with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), committed the murders.
In 2014, Israeli students Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel, ages 16 and 19, were hiking in Gush Etzion when they were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Hamas leader Khaled Mashal congratulated the kidnapping. In April 2023, sisters Rina Dee, 15, and Maia Dee, 20, as well as their mother Lucy, were shot by Palestinian terrorists in the northern Jordan Valley. All three died. Al Qassam Brigade, the militant wing of Hamas, later named the three men responsible and called them “heroes of the Jordan Valley operation that was carried out about a month ago.”
“Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria have killed five Israelis and wounded many others since Oct. 7, according to Hatzalah,” JNS reported. “Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 15, Rescuers Without Borders first responders recorded more than 2,600 attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers, including 760 cases of rock-throwing, 551 fire bombings, 12 attempted or successful stabbings and nine vehicular assaults.”
Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the U.N., fired back, “The ICJ has long been a political circus, and today is a stronghold of Hamas supporters.”
The Jewish claim to Jerusalem, as well as Judea and Samaria, dates back thousands of years to the time of King David, who conquered Jerusalem and made it the capital of Israel. Most of the events recorded in the Bible took place in Judea and Samaria, not the areas near the coast, such as Tel Aviv.
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