In denouncing as "illegitimate" Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria at the rostrum of the UN General Assembly on September 24th, Barack Obama became  the first President of the United States to openly challenge the legitimacy of God's Covenantal bequest of the land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants..

That's one heck of a price to pay for a pat on the head from the likes of Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah and their Arab, Muslim and far-Left European cheerleaders. For if the only "land-grant" ever issued by the Creator of the Universe can be deemed "illegitimate," what claim to legitimacy can any nation  (the U.S. included) have o the land on which it sits? President Obama has ventured onto very dangerous ground. "Strike at God's law," a sage once observed, "and the whole world is made of glass."

Dismissing the Covenantal bond between the Lord and Israel, the President has seen fit to invoke "international law" in support of his case for implanting a jihadist "Palestine" in Israel's Biblical heartland. That's extremely unfortunate because Mr. Obama would have to stand international law on its head and spin it like a top before he'd get it to validate any claim to any portion of the land of Israel by Fatah Mob Boss Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas Terrorist-in-Chief Ismail Haniyeh and their assorted  supporters and "constituents." Neither in the 1917 landmark Balfour Declaration, which called for the return of the Jewish people to their "national home" in Palestine, the 1920 San Remo Resolution, which transformed that document into "binding" international law, nor the British Mandate for Palestine, issued by the League of Nations, is there any provision whatever for an Arab state anywhere within the borders of Palestine. Indeed, the Mandate specifically prohibited any partition or division of that land  (see the review of The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law by Howard Grief elsewhere in this issue of ZionNet).

The President's determined push for the creation of a 23rd Arab "state" in Judea and Samaria not only transgresses the "international law" he invokes in his favor, it flies in the face of American law. If Mr. Obama can spare the time to do a little reading of its history he would discover that under the 1924 "Anglo-American Convention on Palestine," the United State became a "contracting party" to the same British Mandate that forbade the partition of Palestine or its allocation for any purpose other than as a "Jewish National Home." President Calvin Coolidge's endorsement of the Anglo-American Convention incorporated the language of the Mandate for Palestine into American law, adding even further legal weight to a Joint Resolution of the 67th Congress to that effect two years earlier  (unanimously passed by both the Senate and the House), signed by Coolidge's predecessor President Warren G. Harding. Thus, President Obama's demand that Israel carve an Arab state out of its heartland repudiates the signatures of two U.S. Presidents and is flagrantly contemptuous  of the American law he took a constitutional oath to uphold.

We believe it is  the opprobrium of spurning God's Covenant with Israel that, above all, should give the President deep pause for reflection. If that doesn't move him, perhaps the prospect of standing in violation of American law or the law of nations will. In either case, he would be wise to do some hard thinking.

*Bill Mehlman is co-editor of ZionNet and representative in Israel for Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI),

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