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After searching through some 27,000 documents in the British archives that referenced the "Mandate of Palestine," Eli Hertz, chair of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), discovered a page describing the boundaries of Jewish Palestine.

"Jewish Mandate Palestine is Haifa, Akko, Tel Aviv, Judea, and Samaria," Hertz told the audience in a lecture at Temple Beth-El Mekor Chayim in Cranford May 26. "The whole area is Jewish. It's ours."

In addition to his involvement with CAMERA, Hertz, an Israeli native who lives in New York City, is the founder and president of the pro-Israel organization Myths and Facts and author of "This Land is My Land, Mandate for Palestine -- The Legal Aspects of Jewish Rights," first published in 2006 and updated in 2008. Hertz said he has given his book to every member of the Israeli Knesset and the United States Congress.

In his lecture, entitled Whose Land Is It? -- The Legal Basis for Israel's Claim to the Land, Hertz argued that under international law, Jews are the rightful inhabitants of the land of Israel.

Hertz maintains that the 51-country League of Nation's unanimously passed 1922 resolution, the "Mandate for Palestine," codifies the Jewish people's right to the all of the land west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, including Gaza.

The resolution, in which the Great Powers divided the area into five separate "Mandates" (Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Trans-Jordan), apportioned Palestine as the Jewish national homeland, he said.

"It wasn't the case that Jews came in and took over the land. Everyone got a piece of land and Jews actually got the smallest piece of land," Hertz said, noting that Palestine only constituted 3 percent of the entire land that was divided.

"We are not occupiers of Judea and Samaria," he added. "This document and the countries behind it gave us the right to be in that place."

Hertz said that under the resolution, which he called "a totally acceptable legal document today," Jews were granted political sovereignty over Palestine. Arabs residing in Palestine were granted "religious and civil rights, but not political rights."

"The League of Nations knew that if this area would be simply democratic then the Arabs, who would be more than the Jews, would take the Jews and take them to the see," he said.

Political rights for Arabs were satisfied under the four other Mandates. Palestine, he said, is not a people or a nation but rather "a geographical area."

The fact that the Arabs never established a Palestinian state in the 19 years from 1948-67 that the West Bank was under Jordanian rule and Gaza under Egypt reaffirms that Palestine is not a nationality, Hertz said.

"It's only when the Jews come in and develop that the Arabs come in and want it," he said.

The "Mandate of Palestine" continues to be international law, Hertz said, since the resolution was carried over "in essence" as well as acknowledged in Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Hertz speculated that Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, do not point to this document because they are "ashamed" to raise the issue after ignoring it for so long. This, however, might be changing with the rise of Israeli politicians, like Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who are willing to broach the issue, he said.

The event was sponsored by the Israel Support Committee, a joint venture of Temple Beth-El Mekor Chayim, Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains, Temple Beth O'r/Beth Torah in Clark, and Temple Emanu-El in Westfield.

"There are lots of facts that are not known about the question of whose land it is. Mr. Hertz has done a great deal of research on the question of the legal rights that the various parties have," Conrad Nadell, chair of the Israel Support Committee, told The Jewish State. "It is important that this community be educated and understand the facts."

Nadell added that people like Hertz and organizations like CAMERA help inform the public about the facts on the ground. "Israel is fighting a war on many fronts, and one of those fronts is the media and people's minds," he said. "The other side is doing a great job of public relations and distorting the reality."