On Sep. 5, 2017, Amb. Dore Gold presented 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem to the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London, England’s oldest think tank.
See his full presentation on “The Struggle for Jerusalem in International Diplomacy.” https://youtu.be/b8QeUcVVmVc
His name is Stephen Schwebel, he became legal advisor to the State Department, and later, he advanced to become the President of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Schwebel wrote in 1970 that the rights of a state acting in self-defense to territory are superior to the rights of an aggressor attacking that very same territory.
He compared Israel’s rights to other claimants at the time. In his own words, and I’m quoting him, “Israel has better title in the territory of what was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem…” Jerusalem, according to this analysis, was legally captured in a war of self-defense.
Look around us – across the Middle East. Violent intolerance is destroying holy sites everywhere. That is – almost everywhere. Not in Israel. The fact is that not only does Israel not compromise holy sites, it stands out as the only protector of such sites in the entire Middle East. But it is clear that in a violent intolerant Middle East, only a free and democratic Israel will safeguard the holy sites of all faiths.
