The international legal justification for the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East lies in a 1922 document issued by the League of Nations, the precursor organization of the United Nations. It gave Great Britain a mandate to govern Palestine, which the Turks had ruled for centuries, recognized "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and [favored] the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." The Arabs rejected that document then and, except for Egypt and Jordan, they reject it now. They have done what defeated peoples have often done: gone to war to try to undo what the League of Nations had done, and to undo the outcomes of what the League of Nations had done. It has always been an axiom of war that the winners win and the losers lose. Being on the losing side, as Turkey was in 1914, has usually led to negative consequences.  That's what happened when the Persians conquered the...(Read Full Post)