According to the Western media, Israel’s renewed construction of settlements receives criticism from the community of nations. Does that sound like an appropriate framing of the issue? Moving settlers unto occupied land is against international law. Yet Israel’s actions are “criticized for endangering peace talks” instead of being denounced for being patently illegal.

Imagine if we criticized criminals and debated each time whether what they did was a crime. Nations long ago agreed that wars of aggression were illegal, that seizing land from another was illegal, and certainly displacing one population for another was illegal. Regardless the pretext, because there will always be a pretext.

East Jerusalem has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. West Jerusalem is itself territory occupied since Israel’s war of independence, when the Zionists used Arab resistance to the initial UN land grant to seize areas not given Israel by the UN. Now Israel asserts possession of the whole of Jerusalem, on the usual Zionist pretext, that it is land promised them by G-d.