How terrorism became "Legitimate Resistance" and resistance to terrorism became "illegal" under "international law"

A shorter summary of Jeane Kirkpatrick's How the P.L.O. Was Legitimized.

Original: http://www.aei.org/docLib/20030829_KirkpatrickPLO.pdf

Bullet-points version

• The original U.N. Charter forbid violence except for self-defence in case of attack.
• In 1955, Israel does not participate in the Asian-African conference of Bandung, Indonesia which leads to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement. Kirkpatrick insinuates that Israel was intentionally excluded. Given the political situation of the time, this would have been necessary to gain the participation of the Arab states.
• In 1960, the General Assembly unanimously approved Resolution 1514, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries, finding that "all peoples have the right to self-determination." Kirkpatrick alleges that "self-determination" soon became redefined as "replacing a 'colonialist' or 'imperialist' government with a 'progressive' regime allied to the U.S.S.R."
• During the 1960s, U.S.S.R. Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech equating "self-determination" with "national-liberation moverments". In Kirkpatrick's words, he said "that any an 'imperialist' power fighting against a Third World country was engaged in an unjust 'local war' which violated the U.N. Charter's prohibition on the use of force; but wars of national liberation and popular uprisings against 'colonialism' and 'imperialism' were, Khrushchev argued, 'good force', a fulfillment of the U.N. Charter, not a violation of it." Kirkpatrick does not give any more details of the speech, but she may be referring to the Moscow Conference Report of January 6, 1961 in which Khrushchev defined the Suez War of 1956 as a "local war unleashed by the imperialists" which "was stopped by the U.S.S.R. and the whole socialist camp". See also an analysis of this speech by the U.S.-linked Radio Free Europe.
• In 1964, the Palestinians were formed under the claim to be a "people" "struggling" against "colonialist" "occupation". The new movement explicitly renounced any Palestinian claim to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
• In 1969, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 2535 "Reaffirms the inalienable rights of the people of Palestine". This resolution, for the first time, mentions a ficticious "people of Palestine" exclusive of the Jews, the actual native people of Israel. Kirkpatrick erroneously states that the resolution included the word "Palestinian".
• In 1969, the P.L.O. is invited to the Non-Aligned Movement as a guest. Israel is still excluded from the movement.
• Kirkpatrick writes that as of 1969 Israel was being described as "colonial", but "Manifestly, Israel did not posess colonies. How then could it be a colonial power? By virtue of the fact that 'colonialism' has been redefined so that it was no longer a historical condition but a political designation deriving from the relation of movements and countries to Marxist goals."
• In 1970, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 2672 declares "that the problem of the Palestinian Arab refugees has arisen from the denial of their inalienable rights under the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," That same year, the General Assembly passed Resolution 2708 which encourages "the colonial peoples and the peoples under alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal", which Kirkpatrick says "created a new category of 'legitimate' force".
  • Resolution 2708 also defines colonialism to include "activities of foreign economic and other interests which exploit colonial peoples" (foreign investment) and declares this "and the attempts of some colonial powers to suppress national liberation movements" (defending against insurrection) to be "incompatibile with the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence and pose a threat to international peace and security".
  • Resolution 2708 further calls for an embargo against Portugal which was then fighting Soviet-backed Communist rebellions in its African colonies Angola, Guinea, and Mozambique; "notes with satisfaction the progress made in the colonial territories by the national liberation movements"; declares the White-led government of Southern Rhodesia to be an "illegal" regime, and declares the use of mercenaries against "national liberation movements" to be "a criminal act".
• In 1970, the Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations (mis-cited by Kirkpatrick as "Friendly Nations"), Resolution 2625, which declares that "all peoples have the right freely to determine without external influences their political status [...] and every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter." The Declaration further states that "Every State has the duty to refrain from any forcible action which deprives peoples referred to in the elaboration of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of their right to self-determination and freedom and independence."
• The Palestinians are granted "observer status" by the Non-Aligned Movement in 1973 and "full support" in the 1974 meeting in Havana, Cuba.
• By 1975, the International Court of Justice adopts the position that General Assembly resolutions define international law. Kirkpatrick cites Michael Reisman in the Yale Journal of International Law.
• In 1975, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the UN General Assembly declared that Zionism is racist and Israel's existence is a crime under international law.
• General Assembly statements of the late 1970s authorized acts of terrorism against "colonial" and "racist" states in the name of "legitimate rights", "self-determination", and fighting "occupation". The General Assembly would specifically endorse the bombing of a market in Tiberias and condemn the United States for extradicting the attacker, Ziad Abu Ein, to Israel. Ein was represented by Ramsey Clark.

Appendix

My criticisms:

• Kirkpatrick does not appear to recognize the natural right of peoples to revolt against a truly oppressive government.
• Kirkpatrick misses citations in many areas.

The UN was born in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when there was a clear sense of who was an aggressor and who was a victim of aggression, which were the countries that were defending peace and freedom and which were seeking to spread dictatorship around the world. It was an era when things were black and white. The original mission of the UN was to nip aggression in the bud, so you wouldn’t get a replay of World War II.

I think the fundamental flaw was that the UN lost its ability to discern between the aggressor and the victims of aggression. And if you can’t make that distinction, you can’t possibly contribute to world order. On the contrary, if you fail to make that distinction, then you contribute to disorder and chaos, which the UN does.

- Dore Gold, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. From an interview in Thrive Magazine

For comparison...

No one at the United Nations dares to insist upon China's withdrawal from East Turkestan and Tibet, to condemn China's colonization there, or to speak in support of the indigenous peoples of these regions. In fact, the United Nations now officially calls these states by their Chinese provincial names Xinjiang and Xizang. Yet these are cases where an imperialist power really is oppressing a native people and engaging in colonialism.

Nor is there a movement for the "self-determination" and "liberation" of the Afrikaaners to end the "colonialist" "occupation" of Africa by blacks, which may be the closest analogy to the position of the Palestinians and their supporters.