Guy Millière • November 1, 2011
In his speech to the UN General Assembly last month, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke of the United Nations as the «house of lies » and the «theater of the absurd.» One could go farther and state the whole truth: The United Nations has become a sham.
The new United Nations Human Rights Council is composed overwhelmingly of countries in perpetual violation of human rights, and should more accurately be called the Council against Human Rights and for the Promotion of Global Anti-Semitism. The General Assembly is a place where dictators and tyrants have an automatic majority to pass absurd motions and obscene texts, such as the one that defines Zionism as racism, adopted in 1975, and repealed only sixteen years later with the greatest difficulty, thanks to U.S. Ambassador John Bolton. The US veto in the UN Security Council is the sole obstacle to the enactment of equally racist decisions.
Originally intended to foster peace on earth and to end totalitarian regimes, the UN has become a place where Western democracies are hostages to brutal, barbaric regimes. No one has yet even been fired for « the biggest heist in history », over $117 billion, the Oil-for-Food scandal of 2004, in which the UN set up a program supposedly to provide food for impoverished Iraqis under the regime of Saddam Hussein, but instead accepted kickbacks from the Iraqi regime while the food never reached the people. Supposed UN peacekeepers in Africa still continue to distribute goods to underage children in exchange for sex.
The tribune from which Benjamin Netanyahu spoke is the same from which other world leaders also spoke. The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, uttered genocidal recommendations to cheers. The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was acclaimed as he accused Israel of using « excessive force » against a Turkish flotilla's attempt to break a perfectly legal naval blockade.
But, as UN recognition of a Palestinian state, or at least an upgrade from which to continue making Israel's existence as unpleasant as possible, was the featured act this year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the General Assembly with lies -- about everything from who was responsible for stalling negotiations for the past two years (the Israelis had agreed to a requested construction freeze, after which the Palestinians still refused to come to the table until few weeks before the deadline, and then demanded another construction freeze) -- to who had failed to fulfill its side of the Oslo accords (the Palestinians had agreed to stop incitement, but, among other violations since day one, never even tried). Abbas descended from the podium to sanctimonious applause.
Western representatives walked out when Ahmadinejad spoke, but when it was Abbas's turn, they remained. Many even applauded. Does this mean they endorse lies? It appears they do, and that is a shame.
Who can fail to understand that when Abbas describes the creation of Israel in 1948 as a « Nakba » [catastrophe] for Palestinians, he deliberately obscures the war of extermination waged against Israel the day of its birth by five Arab nations: Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq?
At the time, the Western countries remained passive observers of the war, and Israel's survival seemed a form of miracle.
Who can fail to see that when Abbas speaks of occupation of Palestinian lands for « sixty-three years, » he is saying the whole of Israel is an « occupied land »?
Who can fail to feel addled hearing Abbas describe the security fence as an « annexation Wall » against Palestinians, when everyone knows - or should know - that it was precisely incessant terrorist attacks committed by Palestinian Arabs that forced Israel to erect the barrier?
Who can fail to know, hearing Abbas refer to « return of all refugees » to Israel as a condition for peace, that Palestinian leaders -- both of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hamas -- have made clear both in their charters and every day on their media as well as every outlet available [see www.pmw.org], that their aim is to drown Jewish Israel in a stream of millions of Muslim Arabs?
Why would anyone accept Abbas's references to « Palestinian territories » and « Palestinian people » ? The term « Palestinian people » is of recent coinage. The « Palestinian people » was a term invented in the mid-1960s, when the Egyptians and Soviets decided to market the war against Israel as a war of « national liberation .» What was to be "liberated," it turned out, was all of Israel, "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, " as Faisal al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, put it.
There has never been a « Palestinian territory » belonging to a « Palestinian people, » let alone a Palestinian nation.
Palestine was an area controlled for hundreds of years by the Ottoman Empire until it was disbanded in the 1920s. The area was then governed as the British Mandate of Palestine until Israel was declared a state in 1948, and Arab armies immediately went to war to try to destroy it. Between 1920 and 1948, Jews had « Palestine » stamped on their passports as their country of origin, and were « Palestinians » every bit as much as the Arabs were. The people who now call themselves « Palestinians » are those Arabs who left that land when the war
started: some fled not to be in the middle of the fighting; others were told on bullhorns to leave to make it easier to kill the Jews so the Arabs could sooner come back.
After Israel beat back the invaders, the Arabs who had fled from Palestine wanted to return; the Israelis refused on the grounds that, as they had not stayed to help, they had not been loyal and could therefore considered fifth-columnists. The Arabs who did stay, the Israeli Arabs -- in this allegedly « apartheid » state -- still make up about 20% of the population, over a million and a half. They have their own political parties; their own members elected to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset; sit on the Supreme Court; hold senior positions in the Israeli diplomatic corps; work as physicians in the top hospitals and as professors at the leading universities, and even serve in the Israeli army only if they wish.
If they are not as integrated into the society as they might wish to be, it is because they have chosen so -- not because any opportunities have been denied them. As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used, to say, «Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own set of facts .»
When Abbas returned to Ramallah from his September trip to the UN, the slogans chanted by the crowd were clear: « A million martyrs marching to Jerusalem! » and, « We will liberate Palestine in blood! »; but it seems no Western diplomat heard them and drew the undisguised conclusion.
Most Western countries – the United States apart – have rarely conducted themselves other than disgracefully regarding Israel, right from the beginning. The United Nations is where much of this conduct not only takes place, but is pantingly encouraged.
When the PLO carried out waves of terror attacks that culminated in the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972, the Western world could see it was dealing with terrorists and murderers. When, however, two years later, Yasser Arafat was invited to the UN, and gave a speech as distorted as that recently given by Mahmoud Abbas, no Western UN representative seemed to recall that Arafat was, at that time, chief of all the terrorists and murderers who not only killed athletes in Munich, but also, among other acts, had an elderly, wheelchair-ridden man thrown off a boat into the sea.
When the PLO was admitted to the UN as an observer, no representative of any Western country refused to sit alongside the representative of this terrorist organization. When, in Madrid in 1991, the discussions that would lead to the Oslo Accords were initiated, Western pressure was instrumental in pushing Israel toward a « peace process,» opening the door to the legitimization of the Palestinian Authority and a decade of suicide bombings that killed more than 1,400 Jews. Israeli leaders have bowed to pressure; this does not excuse those who exerted the pressure.
Meanwhile, in speech after speech, the PLO leaders have spread a falsified version of history describing Israel as an artificial and colonial state. After 1921, however, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, virtually all the states in the region -- The Republic of Turkey, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, and the British Mandate of Palestine -- were born, a fact that seems to have been forgotten. Jordan, formerly Transjordan, and now consisting 70% of Palestinians, was created then, too, on 80% of the land of the British Mandate that was supposed to become the Jewish national home -- another fact that seems to have been forgotten.
At that time, what is now called the West Bank was annexed by Jordan, and Gaza by Egypt.
If the PLO had ever spoken about a plan to "liberate" these territories, or had called them « occupied Palestinian territories, » it would immediately have been crushed by the Arab armies.
For many years, the PLO, founded in 1964, was nothing more than an instrument in the Arabo-Soviet aggression against Israel. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the Western world became the PLO's major financier; while the PLO could then have disappeared, the West did everything to save it.
It was at this point that the West gave the PLO massive financial aid that makes the « Palestinians » the world's most subsidized « people .»
The Palestine Liberation Organization agreed in 1993 to Israel's right to live in peace, and accepted the UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, rejecting "violence and terrorism." Since that moment, however, the PLO has never ceased embodying terror, hatred, and a rabid desire to destroy Israel. It pretends to be less radical than Hamas, but, as its own charter, which was never rescinded, and Mahmoud Abbas's UN speech guilelessly attest, cherishes the same goal: to exterminate Israel as a Jewish state..
Israeli leaders are constantly badgered to reach out to adversaries who will never sign a peace agreement, not only because they are at war, but because they are committed to wage the war until, they hope, Israel is wiped off the map, just as it is in all of their maps [www.pmw.org].
The United Nations, meanwhile, not only has never even attempted to enforce its own resolutions, but has been enthusiastically working with the PLO to subvert them. If the UN, or the Quartet, or anyone now accepts the unilateral creation of a "judenrein" [cleansed of Jews: in other words, really apartheid] ], anti-Semitic, Palestinian state that still calls for annihilation of Israel, it would be a pitiful surrender, as well as a negation of all the values that both the UN and the West claim to embody.
Although the American position makes creating a Palestinian state impossible at this time, no doubt the pressure on Israel will continue on, as always.
Which leaders in the West, seized by an onset of moral dignity, will have the courage to affirm that just as the UN has become a sham, the « Palestinian cause » is itself just a sham? The problem could be solved overnight if the Arabs cared as much about their people as the Jews do about theirs. In 1948, 800 000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands and arrived in Israel, while at the same time around 700 000 Arabs left Israel for Arab lands. The Jews took in every one of their people; the Arabs, instead, preferred to consign their « brothers » to squalid refugee camps, and let the West pick up the bill.
To maintain the current situation may seem to be the lesser evil, but is not a solution. It might be an worthwhile idea to ask Western countries to suspend funding the Palestinian Authority if it continues to ask for a State, as the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress recently discussed.
Western countries might be asked to suspend funding any branch of the UN that promotes the unilateral creation of a Palestinian State, as the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress also recently discussed.
Western countries might also be asked to set strict conditions for continued funding, and to refuse to pay if anti-Semitic propaganda and the glorification of terrorism continue to appear in Palestinian media and classrooms, or there is no doubt that anti-Semitic propaganda and glorification of terrorism will never disappear.
The territories conquered by Israel in the defensive war of 1967 are not occupied territories; they are disputed territories. Should Israel seriously be expected to hold them in perpetuity for countries that repeatedly wage war on it until such a time as perhaps its militant neighbors might feel like reclaiming them?
As a country constantly threatened and regularly attacked by its neighbors, Israel's right to set its borders in accordance with its security requirements and apply Israeli law within the resulting area, should be recognized. The Palestinian Authority, especially if it links up with Hamas, is a rogue entity and should be treated as such.
The status of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria will have to be resolved from there. Pre-1967, these Arabs had the same status as Palestinian Arabs in Jordan. They are fundamentally one and the same population. Palestinian Arabs constitute the vast majority of Jordan's population, The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria are the same people as Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan -- where millions more Palestinian Arabs live than in Judea and Samaria -- although they have been dispossessed of their rights. They should recover them. Jordan is a Palestinian state already. As Muhdar Zaran recently wrote, « It is not certain that King Abdullah's regime will be able to survive a revolt from the frustrated and angry Palestinian majority, should one take place.» He added, « It might be time to start at least considering a Plan B for Jordan.». I would add: It might be time to consider a Plan B for Palestinian Arabs.
At present the Middle East is a zone of turbulence and extreme Islamist agitation. Nobody in the area cares about the « Palestinian cause » except as a pretext for whipping up hatred toward Israel. What really should concern Western leaders today is Islamist imperialism and the deeper meaning of the hatred of Israel.
Appeasement and cowardice will not decrease Islamist agitation. No one ever won a confrontation by abandoning the battlefield to the enemy.To abandon Israel would not be without far-reaching consequences, resulting in yet another Islamist terrorist State based on heavy Islamist supremacy, malicious lies and anti-Western racism.
Seeing Gaza under the control of a rogue entity, Hamas, shows the stupidity and futility of creating yet another rogue entity to fix the problem. It could only exacerbate the difficulties of a region that is already problematic in a world that is even more problematic.
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