Val Hoyle: Oregon's Representative for Israel

Oregon's newly-elected U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle is a big disappointment. Although she amassed an impressive record while serving in the Oregon legislature as a representative for the Eugene area, she has established an unbroken record of loyalty to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

She apparently has not noticed the political earthquake created by the attack on Israel by Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, on October 7, 2023.

Our President, Genocide Joe Biden, has certainly noticed. His polling numbers have plummeted because of his support for Israel in its war against Hamas. That suggests that Hoyle might not want to ride Biden's coattails, particularly on the Palestine issue.

But on November 28, 2023, Hoyle voted "yea" on H.Res.888, Reaffirming the State of Israel's right to exist, which was adopted. That resolution "recognizes that denying Israel's right to exist is a form of antisemitism." Oh, no, Rep. Hoyle, as a retired lawyer I can tell you, that's a legal question and you gave it the wrong answer. Israel was established illegally in defiance of the U.N. Charter's decolonization provisions and as a matter of law must be abolished to be succeeded by the form of government chosen by plebiscite of all citizens of the former Mandate Territory of Palestine. See my missive, Palestine: The Two-State Solution Is Illegal.

The U.S. House of Representatives on December 5, 2023 passed Resolution 894 "clearly and firmly stat[ing] that anti-Zionism is antisemitism." The resolution passed but 92 Democrats voted "present." Among them was Rep. Val Hoyle.

Voting "present" should not be confused with disapproval. That would have been expressed by a "no" vote. By allowing the bill to poss without expressing disapproval says, in effect, "I do not care."

The semanticists amongst us vehemently disagree. Anti-semitism is hostility or hatred directed at Jews. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the contemptible ruling ideology in Israel that privileges Jews over the rights of indigenous Palestinians. Israeli hasbarists attempt to conflate the two terms, but they might as well conflate the meanings of elephants and mice. It's a matter of what the English language means.

As if that were not enough, Ms. Hoyle voted "yea" on "H.Con.Res.57 - Expressing the sense of Congress supporting the State of Israel," a bill passed both by the House and by the Senate, then signed into law by our President on January 3, 2023.

That law in its entirety reads as follows:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that—

(1) the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state;

(2) Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia; and

(3) the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.

To say that "the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state" simply blinks past reality. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B'tselem are unanimous after considerable investigation in holding that Israel in fact is a racist or apartheid state, legally a crime against humanity and a violation of the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute. See ibid.‌, article 7.

Expressing blindness to reality and eternal loyalty to Israel asks that those who would vote for her join her in that cesspool. No thanks.

Ms. Hoyle may feel that her chances of reelection are improved if she swims with the Democratic Party AIPAC crowd. But that would be to swim in a sea of Jewish supremacy, racism, and dishonesty that just may lead to her defeat in the 2024 election. She's certainly lost my vote if she does not quickly change course away from AIPAC toward far more humanitarian values.

We will probably learn just how enamored Val Hoyle is of Israel's continuing slaughter of innocents in Gaza in the coming days when Congress will vote on Genocide Joe's requested funding to continue that massive war crime. Now over 20,000 killed, two thirds of them women and children. Over 70,000 killed, maimed, or missing.

Will Val Hoyle continue to stand with Israel?

Palestine: The Two-State Solution Is Illegal

Zionism is the Jewish people’s right to self-determination … that’s not something that can be taken from me, and how dare you try and do that.

Dani Zborovsky, as quoted in Shiri Moshe, Ohio State University Student Leaders Overwhelmingly Reject Anti-Israel Boycott for Fifth Time, The Algemeiner (6 December 2018),

The "peoples" entitled to self-determination as a group do not include Jews. Rather, the right of self-determination belongs to the people of the world's former colonies and trust territories, one of which is the former Mandate Territory of Palestine. See the decolonization provisions of the U.N. Charter, Articles 73, et seq.

The applicable law is unambiguous:

States have consistently emphasized that respect for the territorial integrity of a non-self-governing territory is a key element of the exercise of the right to self-determination under international law. The Court considers that the peoples of non-self-governing territories are entitled to exercise their right to self-determination in relation to their territory as a whole, the integrity of which must be respected by the administering Power. It follows that any detachment by the administering Power of part of a non-self-governing territory, unless based on the freely expressed and genuine will of the people of the territory concerned, is contrary to the right to self-determination.

Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, International Court of Justice (25 February 2019), pg. 38.

This language clearly covers merger and secession but the right to decide belongs to the whole population of a particular territorial unit. However, it is a very pragmatic view of the international community for preventing disorder because under a “speedy decolonization” it is almost impossible to consider every opinion of every ethnic group: who wants to unite with whom and who wants to secede. … The principle of self-determination prevails only under the condition that the term “a people” means the entire population of non-self-governing territory.

Vita Gudeleviciute, Does the Principle of Self-Determination
Prevail over the Principle of Territorial Integrity? 2:2 Int. J. Baltic Law (2005), pp. 57-58. Indeed, if Jews have a right to determine the form of their own government, then why not Mormons, Presbyterians, and Methodists? The world is awash with peoples who have no legal right as a group to their own form of government.

The "people" of Palestine did not in 1948 decide to carve off a portion of their territory to be governed by Zionist Jews. And just as the passage of time and changes in the situation on the ground did not warrant an exception in the Chagos Archipelago case, it follows necessarily that the nation of Israel was illegally formed, that it was and is up to all citizens of the former British Mandate Territory of Palestine as a group to determine the form of their government. If they desire a two-state solution or a single-state solution, that is up to them to decide, not to any group of outsiders who wish to impose their own solution.

We should be deciding how to enable a plebiscite on that issue in Palestine, not endlessly debating whether a two-state solution should be implemented. The two-state solution is the product of ignorance and mendacity justifying an apartheid system of government that deserves no further serious consideration. It is past time for the abolition of the illegal state of Israel and recognition of the nation of Palestine, to be determined by a vote of its people.

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RIGHTS: This brief's author, Paul E. Merrell, J.D., hereby waives all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this document, pursuant to the Creative Commons CC0 Universal relinquishment of rights found at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.

Israel's Dahiya Doctrine and Its Use of Unnecessary Force

Those who have not studied Israel's military strategy probably have not come across reference to Israel's Dahiya doctrine and its deliberate use of disproportionate force, which is a war crime. This post aims to provide an overview of that topic.

The Dahiya doctrine, or Dahya doctrine, is a military strategy of asymmetric warfare, outlined by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of General Staff Gadi Eizenkot, which encompasses the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of regimes deemed to be hostile as a measure calculated to deny combatants the use of that infrastructure and endorses the employment of "disproportionate force" to secure that end.

Anon., Dahiya Doctrine (undated) Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine (Accessed: 25 October 2023) (footnotes omitted).