The Dead Are Patient

What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching?

In a corrugated-iron tool shed at the edge of a cemetery, a ten-year-old girl asks a gravedigger the one question she cannot answer: What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done when no one was watching? KwaZulu-Natal, September 1992. Three days before Bisho. The grinding interval between apartheid and whatever comes next. The Dead Are Patient is an intimate two-hander about the courage no one claps for. The naming of the dead. The keeping of small things. The getting up, again and again. Tense, unglamorous, and quietly devastating. The light is going amber. The ground is hard. The dead are patient.

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12 responses to “The Dead Are Patient”

KikiFikar

05/09/2026

Oh my. This was a roller coaster in a simple setting for me. The dialogue between the two is so complex and heavy yet only two of them together. Wow!! I could feel the glow of the light as I read! ❤️

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moshe kerr

09/09/2026

A short history of British Crown illegal occupation of Ireland, Malvinas, and attempts to force Jews of Israel into ghetto gulags as did the Poop for three Centuries! The British rape of India.
The Tudor conquest imperialism, especially the Nine Years’ War (1594–1603): probably tens of thousands of Irish soldiers and civilians died. Much larger numbers died from famine and disease caused by the war. The figures are too uncertain to identify a Catholic total. Confederate and Cromwellian wars (1641–1653): perhaps 200,000 or more people in Ireland died overall, including combatants, civilians, famine victims, and those killed in massacres. Most Irish Catholic military resistance occurred in this period, but the Catholic deaths cannot be separated confidently from the total. The 1798 rebellion: estimates commonly place total deaths—rebels, government forces, and civilians—at roughly 10,000–30,000, with most rebel and civilian victims Catholic or Catholic-background, though again the classification is not precise. The War of Independence (1919–1921): roughly 500–700 IRA volunteers were killed, alongside hundreds of civilians and members of the Crown forces. Most IRA volunteers came from the Catholic nationalist population, but this was a struggle for Irish independence rather than a direct attempt to prevent Northern Ireland’s creation.
No single moment when the Irish people unanimously accepted the Protestant illegal occupation of Northern Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty established the Irish Free State and allowed Northern Ireland to opt out. The Dáil narrowly ratified the Treaty, effectively accepting that partition would continue temporarily. This helped trigger the Irish Civil War, because anti-Treaty republicans rejected the settlement. 1937: Ireland’s new constitution still claimed sovereignty over the whole island, so partition remained officially disputed. 1937: Ireland’s new constitution still claimed sovereignty over the whole island, so partition remained officially disputed.
Ireland – a large inhabited country subjected to conquest, colonization, and eventually partition. The Falklands/Malvinas a territorial sovereignty dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom. Yet London condemns post Oct7th 2023 Israeli settlements as criminal simply because London, post the 1939 White Paper, declares East Jerusalem and Samaria as illegal settlements! England and its Allied alliance condemns Israel of illegally occupying Samaria which it styles as “West Bank” – only Britain and Pakistan (a Two State solution creation) approved of Jordan’s illegal annexation of Jordan’s annexed “West Bank” in 1950.
Argentina calls the “Malvinas” a colonial possession. It argues that Britain displaced an Argentine presence in 1833 and replaced it with a settler population, making the dispute closer to a colonial or settlement question which Britain denies. A genuine political and moral inconsistency argument: Argentina’s counterargument British hypocrisy disguises the fact that Britain itself established and preserved a settler population after removing Argentine officials in 1833. Britain “approved” the forced mass population transfer of Jews in Iraq in 1941, its White Paper sought to impose Jewish ghetto settlement of post ’67 Israeli lands. Its ’39 White Paper UN 2334 attempt to establish where Jewish minority populations can live within an Arab majority dominated country.
The Plantations (particularly in Ulster), explicit attempts to alter the demographics and religion of the country to ensure political control. The 17th-century Plantation of Ulster served as a foundational blueprint for British imperial strategies, combining state-directed land confiscation, demographic engineering, and social segregation – Apartheid. It displaced and impoverished the despise lower class populations of the land, its feudalism forced them into tenant labor under strict religious and legal restrictions. English and Scottish Protestants granted land conditionally on building fortified “bawns” and excluding native Irish. Likewise French Algeria (1830–1962) Code de l’Indigénat – wholesale confiscation of communal (habous) lands. Subjugated under a separate legal system without full civil rights unless they renounced Islamic personal status. European settlers granted confiscated fertile lands along the Mediterranean coast to secure French annexations.
South Africa (17-20th C.) introduced the Dutch East India Company land grants, followed by the Natives Land Act (1913). Restricted the natives to designated reserves (later Bantustans), creating a regulated labor supply for settler farms and mines. The Afrikaner (Boer) and British settlers occupied interior agricultural lands, enforcing strict racial hierarchy and labor control. The Crown or colonial government declared indigenous land “vacant” or “forfeited” through legal pretexts—such as rebellion, non-cultivation, or refusal of loyalty oaths—and reallocated it to loyal subjects. Replacing or diluting native populations with loyal settler communities served to establish borderlands, prevent uprisings, and secure territorial claims without relying solely on standing armies.
Settler-colonial regimes consistently created dual legal structures: one set of rights for the settler population to encourage immigration, and restrictive codes for the indigenous population to limit political power and land ownership. British & French strategic ‘Great Power’ interests displaced and impoverished the despise lower class populations of the land, its feudalism forced them into tenant labor under strict religious and legal restrictions. English and Scottish Protestants granted land conditionally on building fortified “bawns” and excluding native Irish. Likewise French Algeria (1830–1962) Code de l’Indigénat and wholesale confiscation of communal (habous) lands. Subjugated under a separate legal system without full civil rights unless they renounced Islamic personal status. European settlers granted confiscated fertile lands along the Mediterranean coast to secure French annexations.
The UN decolonization framework usually prioritizes territorial integrity over the self-determination of settler populations (as seen in Western Sahara) – the UK prioritizes prioritizes the self-determination of the settlers in its “West Bank” Malvinas! And the UN has totally ignored this blatant contradiction. Hence the slander “illegal occupation” so popular in MSM propaganda organs strictly applied to enemies of the British/French narratives of restoring their ‘great power’ destroyed reputations – rather than obey any consistent legal standard.
Viewed form the Confederate perspective Agricultural based rural population economies vs. Industrial city based population economies defines the States’ Rights Israel (Commerce Clause/10th Amendment) better than the emotion packed slavery issue. Based upon the fact that after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War the Czar freed the serfs and committed Russia to play catch-up and industrialize its economy. This sums up the Stalin policies as well as post Mao Chinese modern communism.
Confederate leaders such as John C. Calhoun often emphasized that slavery permitted in the Bible. Prior to the Industrial revolution all societies operated on an Agricultural acquisition of wealth, and therefore required slavery. The American revolution of 1776 preceded the Industrial revolution! Britain the first industrial city based economy consequently the first country to outlaw slavery, despite the established serf\lord relationship in its colonies.
The UN prioritizes the self-determination of the 3,000+ British-descended settlers over Argentina’s claim of territorial integrity. The UN prioritizes the territorial integrity of the “Palestinian” claim over the self-determination of the Israeli settler population of over 700,000 Israelis, even though these “Manifest Destiny” settlers – a demographic reality similar to the Falkland Islanders! UN 2334 – supported by Obama – simply a continuation of the 1939 White Paper Appeasement policy which resulted in the slaughter of some 80 million people across the Planet! The restricted application of Geneva Convention IV – politically motivated – the UK and its 2nd class allies consistently attempt to defame Israel while ignoring similar actions of Russia in Crimea, China in Tebet/Zinjiang, and the UK abominations repeated over and again similar to the devastation of the American Indian genocide.
UN Resolution 1514 and subsequent resolutions, prioritizes the self-determination of colonized peoples over the rights of settler populations. British/Jordan\ “Falklands case” a major exception, where the settler population’s right to self-determination — explicitly protected. The UN has consistently rejected the self-determination of the Moroccan settlers in Western Sahara, prioritizing the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination. This – the standard that should, in theory, apply to Samaria and East Jerusalem. The UN treats the “Jordan” West Bank as “occupied territory” with all Israeli settlements unilaterally declared illegal. Despite the demographic reality of Israeli ‘Manifest Destiny’. The UN likewise supports and defends the British\Jordan “Falklands” precedent – where British settlers’ self-determination – protected. The UK’s history of settler colonialism in Ireland and the Falklands, combined with its current support for the “illegal occupation” narrative in the West Bank, creates a significant power politics propaganda LIE, that undermines the credibility of the international legal framework.

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Bob Lynn

11/09/2026

Thank you for your comment. I am going to respond not with counter-assertions but with questions, because I think your argument would benefit enormously from being asked to explain itself. I will take your points in roughly the order you raised them, though I confess the ordering was not always easy to follow.

On your central analogy: the Falklands and the West Bank

You present the Falklands and the West Bank as morally and legally identical cases, and you do this repeatedly, as though repetition substitutes for demonstration. So let me ask you to walk me through the equivalence step by step.

The Falklanders have lived on those islands continuously since 1833. That is nearly two centuries. They are not recent arrivals placed there by an active military occupation of a neighbouring sovereign state. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank were established after 1967, in territory captured during a war, and their expansion is ongoing, state-sponsored, and accompanied by military administration of a separate civilian population. Could you explain, specifically, which mechanism of international law you believe makes these two situations identical, rather than merely sharing the word “settler”?

You also invoke UN Resolution 1514 and the principle that the UN prioritises territorial integrity over settler self-determination in Western Sahara, yet protects settler self-determination in the Falklands. You call this a contradiction. But have you considered that the relevant distinction the UN draws is not “settler versus non-settler” but rather “a population with generations of continuous habitation and no competing sovereign claim in active dispute” versus “a population transferred into territory under active military occupation in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention”? If you have considered that distinction, could you tell me precisely where you find it incoherent, rather than simply asserting that it is?

On the “hypocrisy” argument

You spend many paragraphs cataloguing British colonial atrocities in Ireland, India, South Africa, and elsewhere. I will not dispute that these histories are grim, and you are right that they deserve scrutiny. But I must ask you a straightforward question: does Britain’s historical guilt make Israeli settlements legal? Is your argument “Britain did terrible things, therefore Israel’s settlements are lawful”? Or is it “Britain did terrible things, therefore Britain lacks the moral authority to criticise anyone”? Those are two very different claims. The first is a legal argument and requires engagement with the Geneva Conventions, Security Council resolutions, and the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice. The second is a rhetorical point about who gets to speak, and it does nothing to establish that the settlements themselves are lawful. Which argument are you actually making?

On your treatment of settler colonialism

This is perhaps the question I would most like you to sit with. You devote hundreds of words to condemning the Ulster Plantation, French Algeria, South African land acts, and the Falklands settlement as monstrous examples of demographic engineering, land theft, and apartheid. You call them “Apartheid.” You call them feudalism. You call them contempt for “despised lower class populations.”

And then you argue that 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank constitute a “demographic reality” akin to “Manifest Destiny” that must be respected and protected.

Could you explain to me why the exact same process you have spent your entire comment condemning becomes legitimate and even admirable when the settlers in question are Israeli? If the Plantation of Ulster was a “foundational blueprint” for apartheid, and if French Algeria’s Code de l’Indigénat was a system of subjugation, what precisely makes the settlement enterprise in the West Bank categorically different? Is it simply that you approve of the settlers in one case and disapprove in the others? If so, you have not made a legal or moral argument. You have stated a preference.

On the 1939 White Paper

You describe the 1939 White Paper as an attempt to impose “Jewish ghetto settlement” and as the ideological ancestor of UN Resolution 2334. You then claim, without any supporting evidence, that this policy “resulted in the slaughter of some 80 million people across the Planet.”

I will ask you simply: could you trace the causal chain for me? Step by step. How does a British immigration restriction in Mandatory Palestine in 1939 lead to 80 million deaths globally? Which 80 million? Are you counting the entirety of the Second World War? Are you attributing the Holocaust, the Eastern Front, the Pacific theatre, the Bengal famine, and every other catastrophe of that era to a single British policy document? If so, I would be genuinely curious to read your mechanism, because you have not provided one.

You also refer to UN 2334 as a continuation of the White Paper. Resolution 2334 addresses the illegality of settlements under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The 1939 White Paper restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine. These are not the same instrument, do not address the same legal question, and were produced in entirely different contexts. Could you explain the connective tissue you believe links them, beyond the fact that both involve Britain and the territory?

On “Samaria” and naming

You insist on calling the West Bank “Samaria” and place “West Bank” in scare quotes throughout, as though the name itself is a British or Jordanian fabrication. I will ask: does renaming a territory alter its legal status under international law? If the international community, the ICJ, the Security Council, and the vast majority of states refer to the territory as occupied, does your preferred nomenclature change the obligations of the occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention? You write that only Britain and Pakistan recognised Jordan’s 1950 annexation. That is incorrect; Iraq and several other states also extended recognition, and the Arab League’s position was more nuanced than you suggest. But even granting your framing for the sake of argument: the rejection of Jordan’s annexation does not automatically transfer sovereignty to Israel. Could you explain which legal instrument you believe confers Israeli sovereignty over that territory, given that you reject Jordan’s claim, reject the British Mandate framework, and reject the UN partition plan?

On the Confederate tangent

You introduce John C. Calhoun, the Commerce Clause, the Tenth Amendment, the Crimean War, the emancipation of the Russian serfs, Stalin, and Mao. I have read this section three times and I cannot identify the argument you are making, let alone its connection to the rest of the comment. Could you explain, in plain terms, what point you are drawing from the fact that the American revolution preceded the industrial revolution? Are you suggesting that slavery was economically inevitable and therefore morally defensible until industrialisation made it unnecessary? Are you suggesting that Israel’s situation is analogous to the antebellum South’s? If so, I would ask you to consider very carefully the implications of aligning Israel with the Confederacy, but more immediately, I would ask you simply to state your premise and your conclusion in one sentence each, so that the reader can evaluate whether the logic holds.

On the language

You refer to the Pope as “the Poop.” You describe British policy towards Jews as forcing them into “ghetto gulags.” You call the history of British rule in India “the British rape of India.” You describe indigenous populations as “despise[d] lower class populations.” I understand that you are angry, and some of the histories you reference are genuinely terrible. But I will ask you: do you believe that this register of language strengthens your case, or does it signal to the reader that the argument cannot be sustained on evidence alone? You ask us to engage seriously with international law, the Geneva Conventions, and UN resolutions. Could you extend the same seriousness to your own prose?

On the broader structure

Your comment is approximately 1,500 words. It addresses Ireland, the Falklands, India, Israel/Palestine, French Algeria, South Africa, the American Civil War, the Crimean War, Stalin, Mao, the UN, the Geneva Conventions, the 1939 White Paper, the Ulster Plantation, the 1798 rebellion, the Irish Civil War, and the 1937 Irish Constitution (which you cite twice, in identical sentences, suggesting a copy-paste error). You draw confident causal links between all of these.

I will ask you one final question. If you had to reduce your entire comment to a single, testable proposition, what would it be? Not a list of grievances. Not a catalogue of historical episodes. One claim, stated clearly, that could in principle be supported or refuted. Because as it stands, what you have written is not an argument. It is an accumulation. And an accumulation of loosely connected grievances, however passionately assembled, does not become a case simply by being long.

I appreciate you taking the time to write, even if the comment has little to do with the subject of this blog. I hope you will consider whether the questions above might sharpen your thinking before you post it elsewhere.

Best wishes,

Bob

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1. moshe kerr
  
  11/09/2026
  
  Argentina has claims which predate the British. But the point raised through this precedent comparison, London claims “illegal settlers in Samaria” and Argentina claims “illegal settlers in the Malvinas”. Further one claim employs Malvinas while the opposing claim employs Falklands. This dispute compares to Samaria vs West Bank.
  
  London/UN attempts as seizing the high grounds of morality falls flat not just with the Argentina but also with N. Ireland. UN 242 likewise ignores that both Poland and Russia no occupy Prussia – the heart of the Kaiser 2nd Germanic empire.
  
  Nasser not the first to promise Arabs he intended to throw the Jews into the Sea. The ’48 Arab invasion likewise envisioned this objective. The UN favors Arab arguments as if actions have no consequences. Arab states made mass Jewish population transfers, starting in Iraq in 1941 which pale the Night of Broken Glass pogrom in horrors and scope. If all the lands Arab states confiscated from Jews which had lived their in a dhimmi status for who knows how long?! The lands seized some 5 times or more larger than ’67 Israel following the Nakba Allah dead God defeat – justice demands some fair compensation of damages.
  
  The core issue: UN Resolution 1514 does not “prioritize” Western Sahara in the way described, and the Falklands situation is not legally analogous. This 1960 resolution establishes two principles that exist in tension with each other, not in a hierarchy where one “prioritizes” the other: 1. Self-determination of all peoples (Article 1, 2). 2. Territorial integrity of existing states (Article 6): “Any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” The UN has never adopted a rule that “territorial integrity trumps self-determination” as a general principle. The divergence is not about “settler self-determination.” It’s about how the UN classifies each territory: The UN never applied 1514 to the Falklands the way it did to Western Sahara. In 1965 the General Assembly specifically removed the Falklands from the decolonization list and reframed it as a sovereignty dispute between two member states, calling on the UK and Argentina to negotiate.
  
  There is genuine, widely-criticized inconsistency in how the UN applies these principles — this is a legitimate and serious point of debate. But it stems from: Political power and Security Council vetoes, not from a coherent legal doctrine in 1514. The UN’s selective classification of territories (what counts as “colonial” vs. “sovereignty dispute”). The unresolved tension between self-determination and territorial integrity that 1514 deliberately left unranked. The “settler self-determination” framing (used for the Falklands) vs. “territorial integrity” (used for Western Sahara) is a rhetorical characterization, not the actual legal basis the UN cites.
  
  Bob, law stands upon precedents. The examples brought attempt to explore similar cases through classic compare and contrast.
  
  The Appeasement Policy exercised by the Chamberlain government permitted Hitler to conquer without a fight the Czech Republic. “Peace in our Time” resulted in WWII. The death toll of that war or wars mind blogging a fact that all historians agree upon.
  
  West Bank implies “East Bank”/Jordan. The Peel Commission referred to Samaria not Jordan’s illegal annexation post the ’48 Independence War.
  
  The history of Alsace-Lorraine is the definitive example of the cycle of conquest and reconquest in modern European history, perfectly illustrating the tension between national self-determination and state power (and territorial integrity). Prussia stripped away from Germany post WWII. Wars classically determine international borders.
  
  The American Civil War depicted as a war to free slaves. Both the British and Northern States had made major shifts to their populations centers consequent to the Industrial revolutions a City rather than rural based economy – as in the Confederacy. I point out the song “16 tons” sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford in the mid-1950s.
  
  Only about 2% of the White population in the South could afford owning slaves. But the huge plantations absolutely depended upon slave labor to produce farming wealth. Dickens horrors of life in the cities with its child labor far surpasses the cruelty of slave labor. Because a slave compares to a exotic sports car that costs over a million $. Folks with such a car do not normally run that car off the side of a cliff.
  
  Israel a free Independent nation which expelled the British just as did American revolutionaries. In 1948 Palestine ceased to exist yet the UN pretend it still remains. Rome extinct but great power insanity … Czar means Caesar. Israeli self determination means that Israel not foreign states name their own country. Never in all human history an Arab Palestinian state. No currency and No Capital.
  
  Hope this helps. Thank you.
  
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2. Bob Lynn
  
  11/09/2026
  
  Moshe, thank you for returning and for engaging further. I appreciate the effort, and I will extend you the courtesy of taking your points seriously, even where I think they collapse under scrutiny. I will again work by questions rather than declarations, because I think your argument contains several internal tensions that become visible once you are asked to hold two of your own claims side by side.
  
  I will also begin by conceding a point, because intellectual honesty demands it.
  
  Where you are right: UN Resolution 1514
  
  You correct the framing of Resolution 1514, and you are broadly correct to do so. The resolution does establish self-determination and territorial integrity as coexisting principles in deliberate tension, not as a ranked hierarchy. You are also right that in 1965 the General Assembly reclassified the Falklands, removing them from the decolonisation list and reframing the matter as a bilateral sovereignty dispute. These are fair points, and I thank you for sharpening the legal picture. I accept the correction.
  
  However, I must then ask you to follow the logic of your own correction, because I think it cuts against the very comparison you wish to draw.
  
  The Falklands/West Bank analogy, revisited
  
  You argue that the Falklands and the West Bank are analogous cases, and that the naming dispute (Falklands versus Malvinas, Samaria versus West Bank) proves the parallel. But consider what you have just told me about the Falklands. The UN reclassified them. It removed them from the decolonisation framework and said: this is a sovereignty dispute between two member states; negotiate. The West Bank has never received that classification. It is treated under the law of belligerent occupation, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and Security Council resolutions including 242 and 2334. These are different legal frameworks with different obligations.
  
  So here is my question. If you accept, as you have just argued, that the UN classifies territories differently and that the Falklands were deliberately moved out of the decolonisation category and into a sovereignty-dispute category, then on what basis do you insist they are legally identical to the West Bank? You cannot simultaneously say “the UN’s classification is what matters, and it classified the Falklands differently” and “the Falklands and the West Bank are the same case.” Which is it? If the classification is what determines the applicable legal framework, then the two territories are governed by different bodies of law, and your analogy is not a comparison but a conflation.
  
  You also say the naming dispute proves the parallel: Argentina says “Malvinas,” Britain says “Falklands”; one side says “Samaria,” the other says “West Bank.” But a naming disagreement is not a legal status determination. Argentina and Britain disagree over sovereignty of the Falklands. The disagreement over “Samaria” versus “West Bank” is not merely a naming preference; it reflects a dispute over whether the territory is sovereign Israeli land or occupied territory whose final status is unresolved. Could you show me where in international law a change of name alters the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention? If Israel declared tomorrow that the West Bank would henceforth be called exclusively “Samaria” in every UN document, would Article 49 of the Convention cease to apply?
  
  On UN 242 and Prussia
  
  You raise UN Resolution 242 and then immediately pivot to Poland and Russia occupying the territory of former Prussia, as though this is a parallel case the UN has ignored. I would genuinely like you to explain the connection you are drawing. Resolution 242 addresses the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war. The disposition of former Prussian territory was settled by the Potsdam Agreement of 1945 among the Allied powers, subsequently ratified by the Two Plus Four Treaty of 1990, and Germany formally renounced all claims to those territories. The legal mechanisms are entirely different. There is no active military occupation in dispute; there is a settled post-war territorial arrangement agreed by the sovereign state concerned. Could you walk me through the specific legal mechanism by which you believe Resolution 242 should have addressed Kaliningrad or Silesia? Because as it stands, the reference appears in your comment as a non sequitur, and I want to give you the opportunity to show me the thread I may be missing.
  
  On “wars determine borders” versus international law
  
  You cite Alsace-Lorraine and the loss of Prussia as examples of wars determining borders, and you state plainly: “Wars classically determine international borders.” I will take you at your word and ask you to follow that principle to its conclusion.
  
  If wars determine borders, and the strongest party simply keeps what it conquers, then international law, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Security Council are all irrelevant. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the acquisition of territory by force. Resolution 242 calls for withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967. The ICJ has issued advisory opinions on the matter. But if your position is that wars settle borders and that is simply how the world works, then why do you spend the rest of your comment invoking UN resolutions, international law, and legal precedents? You cannot argue simultaneously that “might makes right, borders are set by conquest, and that is the natural order” and that “the UN is applying international law inconsistently and Israel’s legal rights are being violated.” Those are two incompatible frameworks. In one, law is meaningless and only force matters. In the other, law is the standard and its misapplication is the grievance. Which framework do you actually endorse? If you endorse the first, you do not need the UN or the Geneva Conventions, and your entire complaint about their inconsistency evaporates. If you endorse the second, then you must accept that the conquest of territory in 1967 does not automatically confer sovereignty, regardless of what happened in 1871 or 1945.
  
  On the Chamberlain analogy
  
  You compare criticism of Israeli settlements to Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich. I want to ask you to think carefully about what this analogy requires you to assert.
  
  At Munich, Chamberlain handed a sovereign democratic state to a genocidal totalitarian regime in exchange for a promise of peace, and that regime then launched a war of annihilation that killed tens of millions. For your analogy to hold, you would need to identify: who is Hitler, who is Czechoslovakia, and what is the Sudetenland in the Israel-Palestine context. Are you suggesting that the Palestinians, or the UN, or the British government, are analogous to the Nazi regime? Are you suggesting that the West Bank is analogous to a sovereign state being handed over to a genocidal power? Could you map each element of the Munich analogy onto the current situation explicitly? Because if you cannot, the analogy is not an argument. It is an emotional invocation of the most traumatic event in modern European history, deployed to shut down criticism by associating the critic with the architects of the Holocaust. That is not reasoning. That is a rhetorical grenade thrown into a room to prevent anyone from speaking further. I am asking you to pick up the pieces and show me the structure underneath.
  
  On the expulsion of Jews from Arab states
  
  You raise the forced displacement of Jews from Iraq, Egypt, and other Arab states, and you describe these events as horrors that “pale the Night of Broken Glass pogrom in horrors and scope.” I will not diminish the suffering of those communities; it was real and it was grave. But I must ask you several questions.
  
  First: you say these events should generate compensation and that the lands confiscated from Jews were “5 times or more larger than ’67 Israel.” Could you tell me where you sourced that specific multiplier? I am not aware of any mainstream historical estimate that frames it in those terms, and I would like to understand the basis.
  
  Second: you present the expulsion of Jews from Arab states as a reason to dismiss Palestinian claims. But why does one injustice cancel another? If a Jewish family was expelled from Baghdad in 1951, does that mean a Palestinian family expelled from Jaffa in 1948 forfeits any claim? You seem to be constructing a moral ledger in which suffering is netted out. Could you explain the principle by which one historical crime extinguishes the legal rights generated by a different historical crime? International law does not operate by offsetting grievances. The rights of one displaced population are not contingent on the prior suffering of another.
  
  Third: you use the phrase “Nakba Allah dead God defeat.” I will not pretend that is anything other than inflammatory. I would ask you whether that phrasing is intended to advance a legal argument or to mock a religious and national trauma. You ask me to take your legal reasoning seriously. I ask you to consider whether language like that invites me to do so.
  
  On slavery, the sports car, and “16 tons”
  
  You write that Dickens’s depiction of urban poverty “far surpasses the cruelty of slave labour.” You then compare an enslaved person to “an exotic sports car that costs over a million dollars” and argue that a slave-owner would not “run that car off the side of a cliff,” implying that the economic value of an enslaved person acted as a protective constraint against abuse.
  
  I will ask you plainly: do you believe that the condition of being owned as property, subjected to forced labour, separated from one’s family at the owner’s discretion, denied legal personhood, and liable to physical punishment without recourse, is meaningfully comparable to the maintenance costs of a luxury vehicle? Do you believe that the economic incentive not to destroy one’s investment is morally equivalent to the recognition of another human being’s inherent dignity and right to self-determination? You are arguing, in effect, that slavery was a form of asset management and that this made it more humane than being a poorly paid factory worker in Manchester. Is that genuinely the position you wish to hold in writing, under your name, on a public blog?
  
  You invoke “16 Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. That is a song about the exploitation of coal miners in company towns. It is a song about people who were, crucially, free to leave, however difficult that was in practice. They were not chattel. They were not bought and sold. Their children were not automatically the property of the mine owner. Could you explain why you chose that song as evidence that wage labour was worse than slavery, when the entire moral weight of the song rests on the fact that the singer is a person, not a possession, crying out against exploitation?
  
  You also state that only about two percent of the white Southern population owned slaves. That figure is broadly accurate for the antebellum South. But I would ask you: does the fact that most white Southerners did not own slaves make the institution less monstrous for those who were enslaved? You seem to be constructing an argument that slavery was a marginal economic phenomenon and therefore its moral weight is overstated. Could you explain how the concentration of ownership mitigates the experience of the enslaved?
  
  On “Palestine never existed as a state”
  
  You write: “Never in all human history an Arab Palestinian state. No currency and no Capital.” You also say: “In 1948 Palestine ceased to exist yet the UN pretend it still remains.”
  
  I will ask you to consider what this argument actually proves. If the test for a people’s right to self-determination is that they must previously have possessed a sovereign state with a currency and a capital, then very few peoples on earth qualify. The Polish state did not exist between 1795 and 1918. The Czech state did not exist before 1918. Israel itself did not exist as a state before 1948. By your logic, none of these peoples had a right to self-determination because they had “no currency and no capital.” Do you wish to apply that standard consistently? If not, why is it reserved exclusively for Palestinians?
  
  You also say Israel “expelled the British just as did American revolutionaries.” I will ask you to consider whether a war of national independence against a mandatory power is the same legal and moral event as the displacement of a civilian population during and after that war. The American Revolution did not involve the expulsion of the Loyalist population as a matter of state policy on the scale of the 1948 Nakba. You are drawing a parallel that, on examination, does not hold. Could you identify the specific mechanism by which the two events are equivalent?
  
  On the broader pattern
  
  Moshe, I want to step back and ask you one overarching question, because I think it is the question your two comments are circling without ever quite landing on it.
  
  You have now invoked Ireland, the Falklands, India, South Africa, French Algeria, Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine, the American Civil War, the Crimean War, Stalin, Mao, Chamberlain, Hitler, the UN Charter, four Geneva Conventions, at least six UN resolutions, the Peel Commission, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dickens, the Roman Empire, and the etymology of “Czar.” You have drawn connections between all of them. You have asserted that they form a coherent pattern.
  
  But I would ask you: what is the single legal question you are trying to answer? Is it “Are the settlements lawful?” If so, the answer is found in the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Hague Regulations, Security Council resolutions, and the ICJ advisory opinion, and none of the above historical episodes alter the text of those instruments. Is it “Is Britain a hypocrite?” Possibly, yes, and many people have made that argument with greater precision. But British hypocrisy does not constitute a legal defence of the settlements. Is it “Should the UN apply its standards more consistently?” That is a legitimate and serious question, as you yourself acknowledge. But the answer to inconsistent application of law is more consistent application of law, not the abolition of the standard for the one party you wish to defend.
  
  You say: “Law stands upon precedents. The examples brought attempt to explore similar cases through classic compare and contrast.” I accept the method. But compare and contrast requires that the cases actually share the relevant legal features. A naming dispute between two sovereign states over a remote archipelago is not the same legal question as the transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into territory under belligerent occupation. You can compare them. You can contrast them. But you cannot conclude from the comparison that they are governed by the same rules, when the legal frameworks are different, and then declare victory when the rules produce different outcomes.
  
  I hope you will consider these questions. I am not trying to silence you. I am trying to ask you to say precisely what you mean, to identify the single principle you are defending, and to test it against your own stated commitments. Because at the moment, your argument is a cathedral built on a foundation of “it is all connected, and I will show you how.” And when I ask you to show me how, the connections turn out to be rhetorical, not legal.
  
  You are welcome to respond. But I would ask you, respectfully, to pick one thread, state it as a proposition, and defend it. I will engage with that.
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Bob
  
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3. moshe kerr
  
  11/09/2026
  
  Howdy Bob this ערב שבת וראש השנה
  
  [[[You argue that the Falklands and the West Bank are analogous cases, and that the naming dispute (Falklands versus Malvinas, Samaria versus West Bank) proves the parallel. But consider what you have just told me about the Falklands. The UN reclassified them. It removed them from the decolonisation framework and said: this is a sovereignty dispute between two member states; negotiate. The West Bank has never received that classification. It is treated under the law of belligerent occupation, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and Security Council resolutions including 242 and 2334. These are different legal frameworks with different obligations.]]]
  
  Jewish common law Torts courts have a minimum of 3 Justices – NOT one. Why? Lateral courts assign one Judge to serve as the prosecutor and a 2nd Judge as defense attorney. These opposing justices write “briefs” based upon “similar” Case\din judicial prior Judicial rulings. Obviously the בניני אבות – “precedents” brought by the Prosecutor different than the בניני אבות – “precents” brought by the Defense attorney. The point of these precedents brought by two opposing perspectives (compare the Front vs Side perspectives of a blue-print; another opposing contrast … two separate witnesses who testify seeing the “New Moon”) A common law Torts court the one justices attempts to “convince” the opposing justice that his precedents closer to the case heard before the court than the precedents brought by the opposing justice.
  
  If one or the other persuasive then that resolves the case. Goyim vertical courtrooms prioritize proof/winning – in a jury courts all must agree; whereas lateral common law courts prioritize achieving a majority; if both sides remain dead-locked, then the 3rd Justice swings the majority opinion one way or the other.
  
  [[[So here is my question. If you accept, as you have just argued, that the UN classifies territories differently and that the Falklands were deliberately moved out of the decolonisation category and into a sovereignty-dispute category, then on what basis do you insist they are legally identical to the West Bank? You cannot simultaneously say “the UN’s classification is what matters, and it classified the Falklands differently” and “the Falklands and the West Bank are the same case.” Which is it? If the classification is what determines the applicable legal framework, then the two territories are governed by different bodies of law, and your analogy is not a comparison but a conflation.]]] Refer on many occasions to the UN as “The Women’s Quilting and Terrorist Society – Stitch N’ Bitch”. Neither the League – which Senator Long lead the opposition to Wilson in the Senate nor the post WWII substitute UN have police\detective capabilities. Instead they “forum” promotes block-voting alliances and in the P-5 great power beauty contest promotes policies wherein the so called great powers dominate the balance of power in any given region of the world. Its my sincere hope that the UN closes the UN clap trap in NY and pulls out as Senator Long rejected the League treaty.
  
  Why? Some 11 minutes after Ben Gurion declared national Independence in ’48 President Truman the first country to recognize Israel, followed by the USSR. Whoooooooop that’s high praise. HOWEVER the Korean War/Chapter VII UN “police action” raped the US Constitution – it permitted a President to take America to War without a Congressional Declaration of War! Boooooooooo. Post the disaster of Vietnam – an utter disgrace! Congress passed the War Powers Act.
  
  A blessing to President Trump that he casts the 1913 Wilson abomination of Central Banking and IRS onto the dung heaps of history ie Europe. Yes free banking established by Jefferson/Jacksonian democracy had its boom\bust “style”. But revolutionary America in less than a Century – despite a Civil War – where Congress set the precedent post war of shrinking/constricting the flow of greenbacks (fiat currency) by 25% or more – which concentrated the wealth into the hands of Robber Barron monopolies who then backed Wilson to establish the Federal Reserve on Xmas eve with a rump Congress.
  
  The bureaucrapic Central bank without authorization of Congress (A police action of Chapter VII Korean War) unilaterally made huge loans to Britain and France such that when the time came for the President to decide to join Europe’s “Civil War” the decision made by the Federal Reserve NOT President Wilson. Had Wilson the puppet of those carpet-bagger bureaucraps joined the Central Alliance the Western Allied governments would have refused to pay back the loans – just as did the Bolshevik government when it cut a separate peace with Germany!
  
  Common law works through making dynamic inductive reasoning logic whereas statute law works by making static deductive reasoning logic. This distinction defines the ‘k’vaana of lighting the lights of Hanukkah!’. Another similar precedent: which separates dynamic logic from static frozen logic – To design the flight path of a rocket sent to the Moon requires advanced Calculus variable moving logic to solve problems. While building a bridge that spans the Mississippi River or Amazon – basically only requires static Algebraic mathematics. A mathematical precedent: the 5th Axiom of Euclid’s plain geometry restricts reality to 3 physical dimensions like Greek mythology promotes belief in a physical Hercules father by Zeus, the “Father” of the Gods of Mt. Olympus! פרדס inductive logic – rabbi Akiva’s kabbala analysis of the “k’vanna” of the revelation of the Oral Torah at Horev which defines how NaCH prophets interpret the Written Torah through mussar (Mussar not a static “fulfilled” idea by a dynamic “rebuke” that all generations of Israel can grow within their Yatzir Ha-tov hearts; this dynamic interpretation rejects the wood and stone Shlomo Temple as but only a משל whereas Shekinah “that I may dwell within you” the נמשל of the Torah revelation revealed through the Mishkan and its repetition in the Book of שמות.
  
  Dynamic inductive reasoning requires of the readers to make for themselves the required דיוק/logical inference. For example: in the 19th Century German philosophers perfected by Hegel’s The Hegelian dialectic method involves a process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, where conflicting ideas are reconciled to form a new understanding. This method influenced Marx, who adapted it to develop his own theories on social and economic change which so dominated the 20th Century!
  
  Have you ever worked on a farm, even with all the equipment modern farms employ – its still labor intensive. The south an agricultural based economy no different than Russia during the Crimean War! Both the Confederate South and Feudal Russia autocracy defeated by Industrial based economies through a bitterly contested war. That’s the cold hard facts simplified to their essence kernel.
  
  I write and respond not to prove but rather to convince you that an entirely different possibility exists which merits consideration.
  
  Shabbat Shalom and a Happy New Year to Ya
  from Moshe in Beer Sheva Israel.
  
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4. Bob Lynn
  
  11/09/2026
  
  Moshe, Shabbat Shalom and a happy New Year to you as well. I appreciate the greeting and the wish. I will try to honour the spirit of the season by being as honest and as direct as I can.
  
  I am going to work through your comment section by section, because I think you owe it to yourself, and to anyone reading this exchange, to see what your argument looks like when it is asked to stand still and be examined. In your previous two comments, there was at least a discernible thread, however tangled. In this one, I confess I am struggling to find the thread at all. So my questions will be more pointed than before, and I hope you will receive them in the spirit they are intended.
  
  On your Jewish courts analogy
  
  You describe the structure of a Jewish Torts court: three justices, opposing advocates bringing precedents, the process of persuasion, the swing vote breaking a deadlock. You present this as a justification for your method of bringing the Falklands, Ireland, Algeria, and South Africa as “precedents” alongside the West Bank, arguing that opposing perspectives are simply part of the adversarial process.
  
  I will take your framework seriously and ask you to apply it to itself. In the system you describe, the precedents brought by each side must be relevant to the case before the court. A litigant in a property dispute cannot bring a precedent from ritual slaughter law and declare it analogous simply because both involve a knife. The entire mechanism of din depends on the precedent sharing the legally operative features of the case at hand. The binyan av must actually be a binyan av, not merely a superficial resemblance.
  
  So I will ask you, using your own framework: what is the legally operative feature that the Falklands share with the West Bank? In the Falklands, there is no belligerent occupation of a neighbouring sovereign state’s territory. There is no active settlement programme directed by the government of a military occupier into the territory it holds. There is no application of the Fourth Geneva Convention because there is no occupation within the meaning of Article 2. The Falklands were reclassified by the General Assembly in 1965 as a bilateral sovereignty dispute. The West Bank is governed by the law of occupation, by Security Council resolutions, and by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.
  
  In your three-justice court, if the defence advocate stood up and said, “Your honours, I bring as precedent a case about a maritime boundary dispute in the South Atlantic,” and the case before the court concerned the transfer of civilian population into occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention, would the bench accept that precedent as a binyan av? Or would the presiding justice ask the advocate to identify the shared legal principle? I am asking you to do what the presiding justice would do. Identify the shared legal principle. Not the shared word “settler.” Not the shared fact that two governments disagree about a name. The legal principle.
  
  You also write: “Goyim vertical courtrooms prioritize proof/winning.” I will ask you to consider whether that phrasing is one you would use in a courtroom, in a lecture, or in a published essay. You are entitled to prefer one jurisprudential tradition over another. But the dismissive framing of every non-Jewish legal system as a lesser “vertical” apparatus, set against the implied superiority of the “lateral” system you describe, does not strengthen your argument. It signals to the reader that you are not engaging with international law on its own terms. You are dismissing it. And if you dismiss it, you cannot simultaneously invoke it when it suits you. Which brings me to the next point.
  
  On the United Nations
  
  In your first two comments, you built your entire case on UN frameworks. You cited Resolution 1514, Resolution 242, Resolution 2334, the decolonisation committee, the General Assembly’s classification of territories, the Security Council, and the tension between self-determination and territorial integrity. You corrected my framing of 1514 with precision and I acknowledged the correction. You argued, in detail, about how the UN classifies the Falklands differently from the Western Sahara. You invoked the Fourth Geneva Convention. You invoked the ICJ.
  
  In this comment, you call the United Nations “The Women’s Quilting and Terrorist Society – Stitch N’ Bitch.” You call its headquarters a “clap trap.” You express your “sincere hope that the UN closes.” You compare it to the League of Nations and celebrate Senator Long’s opposition to Wilson.
  
  Moshe, I must ask you: which is it? Is the UN a legitimate legal body whose resolutions, classifications, and frameworks constitute binding international law that you can invoke to defend Israel’s position? Or is it a quilting circle whose pronouncements are worthless and whose existence you wish to see ended? You cannot spend two comments building an intricate legal argument on the foundation of UN law and then, in the third comment, kick the foundation out and declare it a farce. If the UN is a “Stitch N’ Bitch” society, then Resolution 242 is a quilting pattern. Resolution 2334 is a quilt square. The Fourth Geneva Convention is a sewing circle’s output. The ICJ advisory opinion is a piece of embroidery. And your entire argument about inconsistent classification collapses, because there is no classification. There is no framework. There is no law. There is only a quilting bee in New York.
  
  If you genuinely believe the UN is illegitimate, then you must tell me what legal framework you do accept. What is the source of law by which you judge the legality or illegality of settlements, borders, occupation, and self-determination? Because you have now rejected the UN, you have dismissed the ICJ, you have called the Geneva Conventions framework into question by implication, and you have referred to non-Jewish legal systems as inferior “vertical” courtrooms. What remains? If the answer is “Jewish common law as I have described it,” then I will ask you: does Jewish Torts law, as you have outlined it, contain provisions governing belligerent occupation of foreign territory, the transfer of civilian populations, and the rights of an occupied people under international humanitarian law? Because if it does not, then you have no framework at all, and your argument is not a legal argument. It is an assertion of preference dressed in the language of law.
  
  On the Korean War, the Federal Reserve, and President Wilson
  
  You have introduced, without apparent connection to the preceding or subsequent material, a passage about the Korean War violating the US Constitution, the War Powers Act, the Federal Reserve, the 1913 income tax, Jeffersonian free banking, the Robber Barons, and the claim that the Federal Reserve, not President Wilson, made the decision to enter the First World War.
  
  I will ask you three questions.
  
  First: what does any of this have to do with Israel, the West Bank, the Falklands, or the United Nations? You have not connected it. You have simply placed it in the text. Could you draw the line for me, step by step, from the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to the legality of Israeli settlements in 2025?
  
  Second: the claim that the Federal Reserve “unilaterally made huge loans to Britain and France” and thereby forced the United States into the First World War is not a mainstream historical interpretation. The US entered the war in April 1917 after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, the Zimmermann Telegram, and a complex set of diplomatic and economic pressures. The Federal Reserve had existed for barely three years. Could you identify the specific historian or primary source that supports the claim that the Fed, rather than the executive branch and Congress, made the decision to enter the war?
  
  Third: I will ask you to look carefully at the language you have used in this passage. You refer to “carpet-bagger bureaucraps” who established the Federal Reserve “on Xmas eve with a rump Congress.” You describe the international banking system as the hidden hand forcing sovereign nations into war. You frame the institution as an alien, unaccountable cabal operating against the true interests of the nation. I do not believe you intend this, but I must ask you to consider whether this rhetorical structure – a hidden financial elite, operating in secret, manipulating governments, associated with international banking, positioned against the authentic people – is one you would recognise if you encountered it in a different context. I am not accusing you. I am asking you to read your own paragraph back and consider what company it keeps.
  
  On dynamic and static reasoning, Hanukkah, rockets, and Euclid
  
  You devote a long passage to the distinction between “dynamic inductive reasoning” and “static deductive reasoning,” connecting it to Hanukkah, the Mishkan, Rabbi Akiva, Kabbalah, the pardes, Euclid’s fifth axiom, Hegel’s dialectic, Marx, rocket calculus, and bridge-building algebra. You appear to be arguing that my approach is “static” and yours is “dynamic,” and that the dynamic approach is superior because it is living, evolving, and capable of growth, whereas the static approach is frozen and dead.
  
  I will ask you to consider whether this distinction actually does the work you want it to do.
  
  International humanitarian law is not a frozen text. The Fourth Geneva Convention was drafted in 1949. Its commentaries have been updated. The ICJ has interpreted it. The International Criminal Court has applied it. The Security Council has passed resolutions under it. It is a living body of law, amended, interpreted, and applied by courts and legislatures around the world. It is not a stone tablet. It is not the Temple of Shlomo. It is a legal instrument with a jurisprudence. Your characterisation of it as “static” and “wood and stone” does not survive contact with the actual practice of international law.
  
  Conversely, I will ask you: does the Kabbalistic kavanah of Hanukkah candle-lighting provide a legal standard for determining whether a settlement in the West Bank violates Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention? Does the mussar tradition offer a test for whether the transfer of civilian population into occupied territory constitutes a grave breach? Does Rabbi Akiva’s pardes methodology yield a ruling on the applicability of the Hague Regulations? If the answer is no – and I suspect it is – then you have not offered an alternative legal framework. You have offered a metaphor. And a metaphor, however beautiful, is not a legal argument. You cannot cross-examine a mashal. You cannot appeal a nimsal. You cannot file an amicus brief citing the Mishkan.
  
  You also invoke Hegel’s dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. I will take you at your word and apply it. Your thesis, across three comments, is that the Falklands, Ireland, Algeria, South Africa, and the West Bank are analogous cases governed by the same principles. The antithesis, which I have offered, is that they are governed by different legal frameworks, arise from different factual circumstances, and the relevant legal features do not overlap. I have asked you three times now to identify the synthesis: the single legal principle that unites these cases. You have not provided it. You have provided instead a meditation on Euclid, the oral Torah, and the flight path of a rocket. The dialectic requires the synthesis. You owe the reader the synthesis. What is it?
  
  On the farm, the South, and Russia
  
  You ask whether I have worked on a farm. I will not answer that, because it is not relevant. You then restate your point that the Confederate South and feudal Russia were agricultural economies defeated by industrial ones. You call this “the cold hard facts simplified to their essence kernel.”
  
  I will ask you: what conclusion do you draw from this fact? You appear to be arguing that agricultural societies were economically and militarily inferior to industrial ones, and that this explains their defeat. Very well. But what does that tell us about the legality of Israeli settlements? Are you suggesting that because Israel has an industrial economy and the Palestinians do not, Israel is entitled to their land? Are you suggesting that economic development confers sovereignty? If so, I will ask you to apply that principle consistently. Does it entitle China to sovereignty over Tibet? Russia over Crimea? The United Kingdom over every territory it industrialised before its colonies? You invoked these cases in your first comment as examples of illegitimate occupation. If economic power confers title, your entire first comment is void. If it does not, then the farm analogy is irrelevant. Which do you choose?
  
  On “I write not to prove but to convince”
  
  You close by saying: “I write and respond not to prove but rather to convince you that an entirely different possibility exists which merits consideration.”
  
  Moshe, I want to sit with this sentence, because I think it is the most honest thing you have written across three comments, and I think it is also the most revealing.
  
  You are telling me that you are not making a proof. You are not making a legal argument. You are not making a historical argument. You are not making a logical argument. You are making a persuasion. You are asking me to feel that a different possibility exists. You are asking me to be convinced, in the rhetorical sense, not in the evidential sense.
  
  I will ask you: what is the reader supposed to do with a persuasion that cannot be tested? If I cannot verify it, if I cannot check it against the text of the Geneva Conventions, if I cannot compare it to the actual classification of territories by the General Assembly, if I cannot run it through the logic of your own Jewish legal framework, then what is it? It is a mood. It is an atmosphere. It is the feeling that if you pile enough examples on top of each other, Ireland and the Falklands and Algeria and South Africa and Prussia and Alsace-Lorraine and the Confederate South and the Crimean War and the Federal Reserve and Hegel and Rabbi Akiva and the Mishkan and Tennessee Ernie Ford, eventually the sheer weight of allusion will create the impression of an argument, even if no argument is present.
  
  That is not a binyan av. That is not a precedent. That is a mound. And a mound, however large, does not become a structure until someone lays a foundation, raises a wall, and puts a roof on it. I have asked you three times now for the foundation. The single legal principle. The single testable proposition. The one claim that could be supported or refuted. You have given me Hanukkah candles and rocket calculus instead.
  
  I will ask you one final time, as simply as I can. If the UN is a quilting circle. If the Geneva Conventions are static and dead. If international law is a “Goyim vertical courtroom.” If the only valid reasoning is dynamic, inductive, Kabbalistic, and Hegelian. If you are not trying to prove anything but merely to convince. Then: by what standard do you judge the settlements lawful? Not by the UN. Not by the Geneva Conventions. Not by the ICJ. Not by the Security Council. By what standard? Name it. Cite it. Show me where it is written. Because if you cannot name the standard, then you are not defending the legality of the settlements. You are defending the feeling that they should be legal. And feelings, however sincerely held, do not constitute law, in any courtroom, Jewish or otherwise.
  
  I wish you a peaceful Shabbat and a sweet new year. I hope the coming year brings clarity. I will be here if you wish to continue, but I will ask you, with genuine respect, to bring me one thread, one principle, one testable claim. I will engage with it seriously. I promise you that.
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Bob
  
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5. moshe kerr
  
  13/09/2026
  
  Howdy Bob
  
  Now completed the first two days of the 10 days of t’shuva. T’shuva does not at all to repentance as Xtianity declares. The concept of “Sin” a defining “need” for a savior to atone for the fall of Man/original sin – Pauline theology. Torah mandates justice- interpreted as restoration of damages inflicted by the guilty upon some other bnai brit “Israel” victim. T’shuva learns from remembering the oaths sworn by the Avot to cut a brit/alliance to father the Cohen nation in the future – called O’lam Ha’bah. This vision radically differs from the Xtian and Muslim ideas of “life after death”. A precedent for t’shuva – the private domain of the Sukkah. The substance of this wisdom-time oriented commandment – the s’chach. The tallit/tzitzit learns from the Mishkan and a similar precedent the s’chach of Sukkah.
  
  [[[I will take your framework seriously and ask you to apply it to itself. In the system you describe, the precedents brought by each side must be relevant to the case before the court. A litigant in a property dispute cannot bring a precedent from ritual slaughter law and declare it analogous simply because both involve a knife. The entire mechanism of din depends on the precedent sharing the legally operative features of the case at hand. The binyan av must actually be a binyan av, not merely a superficial resemblance.]]]
  
  If you examine any Gemara on any given Mishna within the whole of the Sha’s Yerushalmi and later Bavli פרדס inductive logic operates completely different from ancient Greek syllogism deductive logic. The sages of the Gemara bring halachic precedents from all over Sha’s; a Mishna of ברכות the Gemara brings halachic rulings that on the surface bear no relationship whatsoever with interpreting the language of the Mishna. Then comes the Aggadic portions which includes wild “totally unrelated stories” which make a drosh back to how prophetic NaCH mussar interprets Torah commandments as mussar as opposed to external actions. It takes years to learn this wisdom – with a master as your guide.
  
  My rav Aaron Nemuraskii a talmid of rabbi Shalom Shalom Elyashiv taught me the kabbalah of פרדס inductive logic reasoning which defines how the Gemara “interprets” the language of any given Mishna. During the Middle Ages, after the re-discovery post Arab invasion of Spain, the ancient Greek literature – concealed by the church after emperor Constantine converted – greatly contributing to the Dark & Middle Ages.
  
  Starting with one of the earliest generation of the Reshonim period scholars’ “The Rif”, rabbis sought to address the problems g’lut Jewry confronted: A) isolation B) no international travel C) rabbinic poskim who would establish halacha such that Jews living in one community who not radically differ their culture and customs from Jews living in scattered distant communities. Contrast black slaves from from Africa to the New World, within a generation or two blacks lost their cultural identities.
  
  A thousand years earlier approximately Jews living under the Syrian Greek empire attained Independence from the Greek empires both in Egypt and Syria (two major Generals of Alexander the Great who conquered the Persian empire. Throughout the banana republic period under the Persians and the Greek empires the 2% of the Jewish population Tzeddukim (the Great NT gospels written some 100 to 150 years after the Maccabees achieved for the 1st time since the Babylonian exile achieved political national Jewish Independence. Not till 1948 did Jews duplicate that achievement once again!
  
  To date Jews have NEVER established the Written Torah as the Constitution of the 12 Tribe Republic. Not in the pre Assyrian & Babylonian exiles nor even today. The Talmudic literature takes years of hard word to learn how to learn. The Mishna written some 70 to 75 years after the Bar Kochba revolt Judea no longer existed! As such the Mishna with its ensuing Gemara/Talmud and Midrashic literature addressed the subject of “EXILE”.
  
  In the 1896 Herzl wrote “The Jewish State”. It reached radical conclusions based upon the Dreyfus Trial coupled with the Russian pogroms. The Mishna like the Jewish State did not address the past but rather the future. This “perspective” changes how a person reads both authors.
  
  Contrast the NT and Koran – both sets of literature 400 or so years gap separation read their Bible and Koran as past tense historical events. The Hebrew T’NaCH by stark contrast — never in the kingdom of David or any other king of Israel – they all failed to establish Liberty for the 12 Tribes of the Republic; they all failed to establish a lateral common law Sanhedrin Federal Court system. Then the Assyrian and Babylonian empires destroyed both failed kingdoms. During the 2nd Temple period the Talmud openly teaches that Jews failed to restore the Republic of 12 Tribes in the land – the mitzva of Yovel! No Yovel NO Sanhedrin common law Federal Court system either!
  
  Its this simple reality that baffles Jews and Goyim today what the vision of Zionism evolves to achieve the “Manifest Destiny” (so to speak) of a Torah Constitutional Republic which mandates Sanhedrin legislative review of laws passed by Tribal governments statute law. A quick reading of the prophet NaCH Book Shmuel it becomes obvious that the idea of a king a בדיעבד idea. The prophet warned the people of the curse for asking for a king like as have the Goyim. It rained during the dry season as a sign of this Torah curse.
  
  [[[I will ask you one final time, as simply as I can. If the UN is a quilting circle. If the Geneva Conventions are static and dead. If international law is a “Goyim vertical courtroom.” If the only valid reasoning is dynamic, inductive, Kabbalistic. If you are not trying to prove anything but merely to convince. Then: by what standard do you judge the settlements lawful? Not by the UN. Not by the Geneva Conventions. Not by the ICJ. Not by the Security Council. By what standard? Name it. ]]] An Independent Nation state determines its own national interests. The Monroe Doctrine where the newly Independent US stated clearly its strategic interests in the Americas! Senator Long opposed led the Senate rejection of the League of Nations. Contrast the disaster of the Korean War/Police Action based upon a UN Chapter VII dictate – it circumvented the Constitutional requirement for a US President to go before Congress to declare war. Vietnam masked Presidential imperialism based upon the Korean precedent! Contrast MacArthur seeking to conquer North Korea with West Morland’s limited US police action to Southern Vietnam; and Nixon’s illegal bombing of Cambodia which resulted in the Pol Pot Abomination!
  
  The Post WWII US Great Power establishment of the replacement UN Congress accepted. Why? WWI Britain and France the Great Powers NOT the US. Post WWII the US & USSR the Great Powers NOT London or Paris! Examine the 1956 Suez Crisis wherein IKE slapped down the status of London and Paris and please compare it with London and Paris now attempting to boycott Israeli private businesses in Samaria. If London and Paris can force Israel to sit & heel at their command then these 2nd rate powers transform into great powers again – effectively reversing the ’56 disaster!
  
  UN SC 446 & 2334 supported by Obama’s pro international/EU alliance – effectively seeks to duplicate the 1939 White Paper. David Ben Gurion at the time introduced the policy: “We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.” – September 1939.
  
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6. moshe kerr
  
  13/09/2026
  
  ooops Shalom repetition an first draft error along with Great rather than Greek NT etc. Ethiopian Jews – Beta Israel … an example of an isolated Jewish community.
  
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7. moshe kerr
  
  14/09/2026
  
  [Conversely, I will ask you: does the Kabbalistic kavanah of Hanukkah candle-lighting provide a legal standard for determining whether a settlement in the West Bank] The Jordanian illegal annexation which it titled “West Bank” … the equivalent of the UN insistence of the Roman name “Palestine”. Bunk. Israel won the Wars of ’48 & ’67. A precedent Prussia today divided between Poland and Russia. Since the Germans lost the war (which they started) they lost title to Prussia.
  
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8. moshe kerr
  
  14/09/2026
  
  Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention was adopted in 1949, after the Shoah and World War II, and was shaped by wartime atrocities, including mass deportations and forced population transfers.
  
  The slander that declares that post ’67 Israel guilty of a shoah – simply bat shit crazy.
  
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9. Bob Lynn
  
  14/09/2026
  
  Moshe, thank you for all four emails. I have read them carefully, including the correction in the second one. I will address them in sequence, though I will confess that several of the points recur across all four, so I will consolidate where it makes sense. I will also try to be more focused than you have been, because I think focus is what this conversation now needs.
  
  I wish you a meaningful continuation of the Aseret Yemei T’shuva. I understand from your opening that t’shuva is not the Christian concept of repentance and atonement but rather a process of restoration, of learning, of return. I respect that distinction, and I will not conflate the two. I mention it only because I think the spirit of t’shuva – of returning to examine what one has built, of testing the foundations rather than adding further storeys – is rather what I am asking you to do here. Not to repent. To return to the question and sit with it.
  
  On the Gemara and your method of precedent
  
  You respond to my point about the binyan av requiring legally operative features by telling me that the Gemara brings precedents “from all over Sha’s” that “on the surface bear no relationship whatsoever” to the Mishna being discussed. You tell me this method takes years to learn under a master. You cite your rav, Aaron Nemuraskii, a talmid of Rabbi Elyashiv. You invoke the pardes, the aggadic portions, the drosh, the mussar of the prophets.
  
  Moshe, I do not doubt that the Gemara is a vast and intricate system, or that it takes years of study under a master to navigate. I do not doubt your reverence for your rav or for the tradition. But I must ask you to notice what you have done. I asked you to identify the legally operative feature that makes the Falklands analogous to the West Bank. You responded by telling me that in the Gemara, connections are sometimes hidden and only revealed through deep study. You have not shown me the connection. You have told me it exists, that a master could reveal it, and that I lack the training to see it.
  
  But the Gemara does not work by assertion. When the Gemara brings a seemingly unrelated Mishna into a discussion, the sugya then demonstrates the connection. The editors of the Talmud show the work. The reasoning is laid out, debated, challenged, refined. The connection is not left as a mystery to be taken on faith. You have not shown the work. You have said, in effect: “The connection is there, but you are not learned enough to see it.” That is not a binyan av. That is an appeal to esoteric authority. And I will ask you: if your argument can only be perceived by those with years of Kabbalistic training under a specific rav, is it an argument at all? Or is it a chiddush that you have not yet written down? Because a chiddush that remains in the mind of the mechaddesh cannot be tested, cannot be challenged, cannot be verified, and cannot function as a legal precedent in any court, Jewish or otherwise.
  
  You also tell me that the Rishonim, starting with the Rif, sought to establish halacha that would unite scattered communities. I accept that. But I will ask you: the Rishonim were working within a single legal system. Halakha. The precedents they drew were from within that system, addressed to that system, and binding within that system. You are attempting to draw precedents from international law, from British colonial history, from French Algeria, from South African land acts, from the Falklands sovereignty dispute, and apply them within a framework you describe as Torah constitutional law. These are different legal systems with different sources of authority, different methodologies, and different binding mechanisms. The Rif did not cite Roman law as a binyan av for a question of Shabbat observance. Could you explain why you believe you can cite the Falklands as a binyan av for the legal status of the West Bank, when they arise from entirely different legal orders?
  
  On the Monroe Doctrine as your answer
  
  I asked you, as clearly as I could: by what standard do you judge the settlements lawful? You answered: “An Independent Nation state determines its own national interests. The Monroe Doctrine where the newly Independent US stated clearly its strategic interests in the Americas!”
  
  Moshe, I must press you on this, because I do not think this is an answer. The Monroe Doctrine was a unilateral foreign policy declaration by the United States in 1823, addressed to European powers, stating that further colonisation of the Americas would be viewed as a hostile act. It was not a principle of international law. It was not adopted by treaty. It was not ratified by any international body. It was a statement of American strategic interest, backed by the implicit threat of American naval power.
  
  I will ask you three questions about it.
  
  First: does the Monroe Doctrine establish a general principle that any state may settle civilian populations in territory it has captured in war, provided it declares the territory to be within its national interest? If so, please show me where the text of the Monroe Doctrine says this. If not, how is it a standard by which the legality of settlements can be judged?
  
  Second: the Monroe Doctrine was, at its core, an anti-colonial statement. It was directed against European empires seeking to extend their dominion over the Western Hemisphere. You are invoking an anti-colonial doctrine to defend a settlement enterprise. Could you reconcile that?
  
  Third: if the standard is simply “an independent nation determines its own interests,” then every state may do as it pleases within its own declared sphere, and international law is meaningless. Russia may declare Crimea within its national interest. China may declare Tibet and Xinjiang within its national interest. You raised both of these cases in your first comment as examples of illegitimate occupation. If the Monroe Doctrine is your standard, you must accept those occupations as lawful. Do you?
  
  On wars determining borders, and Prussia
  
  In your third email, you write: “Israel won the Wars of ’48 & ’67. A precedent Prussia today divided between Poland and Russia. Since the Germans lost the war (which they started) they lost title to Prussia.”
  
  Moshe, you have now made this argument three times. I will ask you to hold it up to the light one more time, because I think it contains a contradiction you have not yet noticed.
  
  You say Germany lost the war it started, and therefore lost title to Prussia. I accept that as a historical fact. But I will ask you: who decided that Germany lost title to Prussia? Was it the fact of military defeat alone? Or was it the Potsdam Agreement of 1945, the subsequent expulsion of German populations, the formal renunciation of claims by Germany in the Two Plus Four Treaty of 1990, and the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line by a reunified German government? In other words, was it the war alone, or was it the war plus a legal settlement agreed by the parties and ratified by treaty?
  
  If it was the war plus the legal settlement, then military victory alone does not confer title. There must also be a legal instrument. I will ask you: where is the legal instrument by which Israel’s military victory in 1967 conferred sovereignty over the West Bank? Where is the treaty? Where is the act of annexation recognised by the international community? Where is the equivalent of the Two Plus Four Treaty? If there is none, then the Prussia precedent does not support your case. It undermines it. Because Prussia was not simply “won” by Poland and Russia. It was legally transferred through instruments that Germany itself signed. The absence of any equivalent instrument for the West Bank is not an oversight. It is the point.
  
  You also say Jordan’s annexation was illegal. I will ask you to follow that logic. If Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank in 1950 was illegal and therefore void, and if no other state acquired sovereignty over that territory, and if military victory alone does not confer sovereignty, then the West Bank is not sovereign territory of any state. It is not Israel’s. It is not Jordan’s. It is not “Palestine’s,” because no Palestinian state has exercised sovereignty. Under international law, it is occupied territory whose final status is unresolved. That is precisely the legal framework you reject. But I will ask you: if you reject Jordan’s claim, and you reject the occupation framework, and you reject the UN’s authority, and military victory alone is insufficient without a legal instrument, then what is the West Bank? Whose is it? By what mechanism did it become Israel’s? You must name the mechanism. You have now been asked four times.
  
  On Article 49 and the “slander” of the Shoah
  
  In your fourth email, you write: “The slander that declares that post ’67 Israel guilty of a shoah – simply bat shit crazy.”
  
  Moshe, I will ask you to reread my previous replies. I will ask you to reread the text of Article 49. I will ask you to identify, by name, a single person in this entire exchange – me, the UN, the ICJ, the Security Council – who has accused Israel of committing a shoah. You will not find one, because no such accusation has been made. Nobody in this conversation has said that Israel is committing genocide, or a shoah, or anything remotely analogous.
  
  Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer by an occupying power of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. It was drafted in 1949 in response to the Nazi practice of deporting populations and settling German civilians in occupied territories. Its purpose was to prevent the demographic alteration of occupied territory by the occupier. Applying that provision to the settlement enterprise is not a comparison to the Shoah. It is the application of a legal rule to a set of facts. The rule exists because of the Shoah. Its application to a different factual situation does not equate the two situations. A speed limit exists because people have died in car accidents. Its application to a particular driver does not mean the driver has killed anyone.
  
  I will ask you: do you believe that the drafters of the Fourth Geneva Convention, many of whom had lived through the war and the Shoah, intended Article 49 to apply only to situations identical in scale and horror to the Nazi occupation of Europe? If so, the Convention would have no application at all, because no situation in human history is identical to the Shoah. The provision would be a memorial, not a law. Is that what you intend? That Article 49 is a monument to the dead, with no living legal force?
  
  On the Suez Crisis and the “second-rate powers”
  
  You argue that the 1956 Suez Crisis proved Britain and France are no longer great powers, and that their current criticism of Israeli settlements is an attempt to “sit and heel” Israel and thereby restore their former status. You contrast this with Eisenhower forcing them to withdraw.
  
  I will grant you the historical observation. Suez was indeed a watershed. But I will ask you: does the geopolitical status of the critic determine the validity of the criticism? If a second-rate power states a legal fact, is the fact rendered untrue by the diminished status of the speaker? If Britain and France had been great powers in 2024, would the settlements be more illegal? If they had ceased to exist as states entirely, would the settlements be lawful? You are making an ad hominem argument against nations. The legal question does not change depending on whether the person raising it is a great power, a second-rate power, or a quilting circle. The law is the law. Or you have told me the law is meaningless. You cannot have both.
  
  On Ben Gurion and the White Paper
  
  You quote Ben Gurion’s 1939 statement: “We must assist the British in the war as if there were no White Paper and we must resist the White Paper as if there were no war.” You present this as a precedent for resisting UN Resolutions 446 and 2334.
  
  I will ask you to consider the context. Ben Gurion was responding to a British policy that restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine at the very moment that European Jewry was being systematically murdered. The White Paper of 1939 limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years and restricted land purchases. Ben Gurion’s resistance was directed at a policy that would have prevented refugees from escaping genocide.
  
  Resolution 2334 addresses the construction of civilian settlements in occupied territory. Resolution 446 addresses the same. Neither restricts immigration. Neither prevents the existence of the State of Israel. Neither threatens the survival of the Jewish people. Could you explain the mechanism by which a resolution addressing the placement of housing units in the West Bank is equivalent to a policy that sealed the borders of Palestine to Jews fleeing the Holocaust? Because if you cannot, then the Ben Gurion quote is not a precedent. It is an invocation of the most traumatic period in Jewish history, deployed to lend moral weight to a policy disagreement about planning permissions. And I will ask you, with genuine respect for the weight of that history: is that fair to the memory of those who lived through it?
  
  On the comparison you drew in passing
  
  In your discussion of the Rishonim and the maintenance of Jewish identity across the diaspora, you write: “Contrast black slaves from Africa to the New World, within a generation or two blacks lost their cultural identities.”
  
  Moshe, I will ask you to reconsider this sentence. Enslaved Africans did not simply “lose their cultural identities.” They were subjected to systematic, deliberate cultural destruction: families were separated, languages were forbidden, religious practices were banned, names were changed, and children were raised without knowledge of their origins. The survival of African-American cultural traditions – in music, in religious practice, in oral tradition, in cuisine, in community structure – against that machinery of erasure is one of the great acts of cultural preservation in human history. To describe it as a simple loss, contrasted with Jewish resilience, is historically inaccurate and, I would gently suggest, beneath the dignity of the argument you are trying to make. I ask you to withdraw the comparison or to correct it.
  
  On what remains
  
  Moshe, across four emails and three prior exchanges, I have asked you the same question in different forms. By what standard, by what legal instrument, by what mechanism, do you judge the settlements lawful? You have offered me the Monroe Doctrine, the Prussia precedent, the wars-determine-borders principle, the Kabbalistic pardes, the Gemara’s binyan av, the memory of the Maccabees, the vision of Herzl, the Monroe Doctrine again, and the assertion that an independent nation determines its own interests. None of these is a legal standard that can be applied to the specific question of whether the transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention. You have offered me everything except the one thing I asked for.
  
  In the third email, when I asked whether Kabbalistic kavanah provides a legal standard, you did not answer the question. You pivoted to “Israel won the wars.” In doing so, you quietly abandoned the entire dynamic-inductive-Kabbalistic framework you had spent the previous email constructing. The pardes is gone. The mussar is gone. Rabbi Akiva is gone. The Mishkan is gone. What remains is the simplest and oldest argument in the world: we won, therefore it is ours.
  
  I will ask you, with the respect that the season demands: is that really where you wish to land? After all the Torah, all the Gemara, all the kavanah, all the t’shuva, all the prophets and the Mishkan and the s’chach and the tzitzit and the twelve-tribe republic and the Sanhedrin and the vision of Zion as a Torah constitutional commonwealth – is the foundation of the argument simply “we won the war”? Because if it is, then you do not need the Torah. You do not need the Gemara. You do not need the pardes. You need only a sword. And a sword is not a binyan av. A sword is not a precedent. A sword is not a legal standard. A sword is the absence of law.
  
  And if that is your position – if the law is the sword, and the sword is the law, and the UN is a quilting circle, and the Geneva Conventions are a dead letter, and the only din that matters is the din of victory – then I will ask you one final question, and it is the question I have been circling since the very first comment you left on this blog.
  
  If the only standard is power, then you have no grounds to object to anything. You cannot object to Russia in Crimea, because Russia won. You cannot object to China in Tibet, because China won. You cannot object to the British in Ireland, because Britain won, for centuries. You cannot object to the French in Algeria, because France won, for 132 years. You cannot object to the Confederacy’s claim on its own soil, because it held it by force until it was overwhelmed by superior force. You spent your first comment cataloguing every one of these as injustices. If the sword is the law, they were all lawful. Every conquest was lawful. Every occupation was lawful. Every plantation, every code de l’indigénat, every Bantustan, every forced transfer was lawful, because the conqueror held the sword.
  
  You cannot call those things monstrous and call this thing righteous if the standard is the same. You must choose a standard that is not the sword. And when you choose it – when you name it, when you cite it, when you show me where it is written and how it applies – I will be here to discuss it with you.
  
  Until then, I wish you a sweet new year, a meaningful fast, and a peaceful Sukkot. May you dwell in the s’chach and find the shade you are looking for.
  
  Best wishes,
  
  Bob
  
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