Letter from Richard Sherman, Florida, to New York Times Editor on the zinophobic claim by Ben Rhodes that the Israeli government is hostile to international law, May 7, 2026

Dear Letter to the Editor:

Ben Rhodes like so many Zionophobes today claims that there is " an Israeli government...hostile to international law". (" Graham Platner Went to Hell and Back. He Has A Simple Message for Democrats"). But Rhodes like every Zionophobe...Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mandami, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, etc, etc, etc... never mentions what international law that he is referring to.

Zionophobes never answer that question. The reason is simple. The controlling international law concerning Israel is Article 80 of the United Nations Charter, an international treaty, that supercedes any resolution of the Security Council or General Assembly that may conflict with it. Article 80 incorporates by reference the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and the 1920 San Remo Agreement. Article 80 declares that all of what is Israel including Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the 3500 year old indigenous RECONSTITUTED homeland of the Jewish people and the land is sovereign Jewish terrority.

Eugene Rostow, Dean of Yale Law School(1955-1965) and Under Secretary of State in a Democratic administration(1965-1969) wrote:

"Legally the West Bank and Gaza are unallocated parts of the Palestine Mandate...and as far as the claims of the Arabs who live there goes, it must be remembered that, in contrast to other League of Nations mandates, the Palestine Mandate was not established as a trust for the indigenous population of the area, to be terminated when the population was ready for self government. It was set up under a different article of the League Covenant as a trust for the Jewish people, in recognition of their historic connection to the land on the condition that the civic and religious rights of the Muslims and Christians be respected.

"Moreover the right of the Jewish people to settle in the West Bank has never been terminated...Jewish settlement in the West Bank ...is..the exercise of a right protected by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter and hence necessarily part of the domestic law of the West Bank". Eugene Rostow, "Commentary Magazine",  " A False Start in the Middle East", October, 1989.

Further, " those Jewish rights that had existed under the Mandate remain in full force and effect, to which the UN is still committed by Article 80 to uphold, or is prohibited from altering. "As a direct result of Article 80, the UN cannot transfer these rights over any part of Palestine, vested as they are in the Jewish People, to any non-Jewish entity, such as the 'Palestinian Authority.' Among the most important of these Jewish rights are those contained in Article 6 of the Mandate which recognized the right of Jews to immigrate freely to the Land of Israel and to establish settlements thereon, rights which are fully protected by Article 80 of the UN Charter." ("Article 80 and the UN Recognition of a 'Palestinian  State' ", Howard Grief, The Algemeiner, 9/22/11).

Salomon Benzimra, author of The Jewish People’s Rights to the Land of Israel. Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights (2018) has written that Article 80 is “relevant in preventing any action contemplated by the United Nations to alter existing Jewish rights and title to any part of the Land of Israel–Palestine, rights that are legally preserved under Article 80” (Page 70).

In fact Zionophobes including Ben Rhodes are projecting their own hostility to the controlling international law, Article 80, onto Israel. Israel has no hostility to Article 80.

Richard Sherman,  Florida

Member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism