Ubiquitous ignorance

In the new German citizenship questionnaire, designed to weed out potential citizens who are antisemitic, question five asks on what legal basis the state of Israel was founded (Want to be German? Then learn about Jewish life and history, 5 April).

It gives the correct answer as being “A resolution of the United Nations”. Such ignorance, unfortunately, is ubiquitous, including amongst Jews and many governments.

The UN does not have the power to create states, and no other state, other than supposedly Israel, has been “created” by it.

Jewish legal rights to the Land of Israel under international law were formulated by the victorious Principal Allied Powers after the First World War.

The still extant treaties that established Jewish legal title to the entire land of Israel on the former mandated territory of Palestine, (arguably including what is now Jordan), are as follows:

1) The San Remo Resolution of April 1920, set aside all of Palestine for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home, based on “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine.”

2) The Franco-British Boundary Convention of December 1920, fixing the northern and northern eastern boundary with Syria/Lebanon, making it clear beyond any doubt that Judea, Samaria and Gaza were to be part of the Jewish National Home.

3) The Mandate for Palestine document confirmed by the League of Nations on July 1922 detailing all the Jewish rights to Palestine, in particular the right of Jewish settlement in all regions of the country.

4) The Anglo-American Convention, Respecting the Mandate for Palestine in December 1924, which became, under Article VI of the US Constitution, part of the supreme law of the United States.

Article 70 1B of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which guarantees the legal rights of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, and Article 80 of the UN Charter which guarantees all the previous treaties under the former League of Nations.

Finally, the universal concept of uti possidetis juris guarantees that the borders of the previous ruling entity, ie the British Mandate, shall be inherited by the sovereign that replaces it, meaning that all the land west of the Jordan River is under Israeli sovereignty. James R Windsor

Ilford, Essex