The Jewish Virtual Library [https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present] confirms that Jews were 32% of the population in Palestine in 1947.
The Jews were thus approximately one-third of the population of Palestine leading up to the declaration of Israel in 1948, which started a war and initiated and expedited the flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Palestine. That makes the declaration of Israel a clear violation of “respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”, which was declared in Article 1 of the United Nations charter.
A “people” includes the principle of a majority. This principle was clearly acknowledged by Alan Dershowitz in the book The Case For Israel. Dershowitz had a myopic view of who was the majority, but nevertheless, he asserted the principle of a majority for a people to be a state or nation. It is indisputable that Jews were the minority of the population in Palestine in 1948, before the Jews committed an act of war by declaring their state.
Prior to 1948, again from the Jewish Virtual Library, Jews were 16.9% of the population of Palestine in 1931, 13.6% in 1914, and 8% in 1882. By any stretch of the imagination, the population numbers of Jews in Palestine during the early 20th century obliterates the idea that they were the “people” in Palestine deserving of a state or nation.
Clearly, Israel does not have a right to exist.
Justice Percell
