Tags for this video have been changed from 'ass, man, fetish, tush, scrounging, around, looking, for, asses, wanda sykes' to 'ass, man, fetish, tush, scrounging, around, looking, for, asses, wanda sykes, larry david' - edited by Grimm

"Palestine was designated as the Jewish National Home by the League of Nations, enshrining this designation in international law. Why should the Jewish people give up any part of Palestine?"

The Jewish National Home described in the Balfour Declaration, which was later incorporated into the British League of Nation Mandate over Palestine, does not necessarily suggest that there is international legal precedent for an Israeli state encompassing all of historical Israel. One, the Balfour Declaration itself was a wartime expedient designed to build support for WWI among European and, especially, American Jews so its value as legal precedent is suspect. Two, the British Government, who issued the Balfour Declaration, made two other, contradictory agreements: one with King Hussein, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, which gave all Arab speaking lands, except for the Lebanon, to his rule in exchange for orchestrating an Arab uprising against the Ottomans; and the second with the French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided up Ottoman territories for French and British colonization and administration. Three, the League of Nations Mandate was in violation of the League's charter: it denied the right to self-determination to former Ottoman subjects. Four, the Balfour Declaration describes a Jewish National Home within Palestine which shall not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", not a Jewish state. Five, the Balfour Declaration was a declaration by fiat of the British Government that was performed with out consultation with or consideration of the Palestinian people. For these, and numerous other, reasons it is unwise to take the Balfour Declaration as international legal precedent for an Israeli state.

Fortunately, we don't have to take the Balfour Declaration as precedent. The 1948 UN Special Commission on Palestine enshrines the existence of separate Israeli and Palestinian states living alongside eachother. It is important to note however the the borders of these two states look very different from the borders we see today. In the 48-49 war, the Israelis seized territory beyond the '48 borders and declared them unconditionally Jewish. This seizure of land was in violation of international law but was tolerated, largely as a result of European guilt over the holocaust. Israel expanded it's borders yet again in the Six Day War of '67, in which they launched preemptive strikes against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, seizing and retaining territory to this day. The seizure of land by war is in violation of the UN charter and as result numerous UN Security Council Resolutions (242 and 338 among others) have been drawn up condemning Israeli's seizure of land and demanding that it be returned. The point is that Israel has a legal right to exist, but it illegally holds much of the land it currently possesses.

A final legal issue is Israel's denial of right to return to Palestinian refugees, a clear violation of international law. Israel faces a demographic problem, in that if they allow refugees to return, within a generation Arabs will outnumber Jews in the Israeli state. Israel would then have to either give up its Jewish identity, or give up its democracy in order to suppress Arab influence over the state. Israel doesn't have a solution to this problem as the Jewish birthrate is much lower than Palestinian. As a result, their only choice, from their perspective, is to continue to violate international law, with the knowledge the US financial and military back will remain, until a longterm solution can be devised. In the mean time, Palestinian refugees continue to languish in the conditions of refugee camps.

A similar study was done in the U.K. a few years back, documented by Brian Sykes and published for the general public in his book, "The Seven Daughters of Eve". I'd like to know who my ancient clan mother was, I sometimes like to think it was Tara.