The United Nations' Pernicious Landscape

"Caught in a dreamscape, President Obama and his secretary of state are still gazing. Devoted both to left-wing politics, where a pro-Palestinian disposition has become almost de rigueur, and Washington's peace-process obsession, they have retreated from the Middle Eastern chaos to the safe zone of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They may well believe they are doing the Jewish state an enormous favor by saving its liberal democracy from, as Obama's former coordinator on the Middle East, Philip Gordon, recently put it in the New York Times, everything from "European boycotts to prosecutions by the International Criminal Court to the loss of support from American Jews uncomfortable with the prospect of perpetual Israeli rule over millions of disenfranchised Arabs." Obama, Kerry, and Gordon, who blessed the American withdrawal from Iraq and watched hell descend on Syria, talk about Israel and the Arab world as if the Arab state system, dominated by secular dictators, wasn't cracking up, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, great urban centers in ruin or decay, and Sunni and Shiite Islamists as the primary force reimagining the Middle East."                                              Reuel Marc Gerecht, Protecting Palestine
 

"We support a peaceful resolution of the disputes between Israel and the Palestinians. We support a two-state solution just as the government of Israel does. [Any deal] can only be negotiated between the parties."

"It is not assisted by one-sided resolutions made at the councils of the United Nations or anywhere else and that is why Australia has not, and does not, support one-sided resolutions."

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

"The settlements are far from the only problem in this conflict. In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long." 

"We do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally. We do not … believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex."

"[We] believes that negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between the two parties supported by the international community."

British Prime Minister Theresa May spokesperson

British PM Theresa May (AP/Alastair Grant)  

British Leader Slams Kerry’s Unbalanced Approach to Israeli ‘Settlements’

The infamous United Nations Resolution 2334, brokered in secret by the Obama administration, supported unanimously by the UN Security Council's permanent members as well as by its revolving roster of elected temporary members, despite the abstention by the United States, plainly exhibited ill will toward the State of Israel. Using the issue of 'illegal settlements' as the excuse for this display of spiteful ire, Israel suffered the ignominy of being singled out yet again, to be informed by the world body's representatives that though itself a legal entity, its settlement policy flies in the face of international expectations.

Palestinian late-comers to the region have been given the stamp of approval withheld from Israel. And despite Israel's presence in Judea from its ancient heritage predating Islam and the Arab presence in Judea by thousands of years, for good measure, the resolution, while insisting that Israel be prepared to surrender its heritage land won back from Arab usurpers who attacked it repeatedly in efforts to destroy the Jewish State, upholding the Palestinian insistence that it has priority rights in the geography. This, despite repeated dismissals of offers to partition the land in question.

Moreover, the Security Council saw fit to delegitimize history and Judaism, along with the nation's sacred sites to the Palestinians' claims of authentic and prior claims on those very sites. The Islamic Waqf, the religious authority appointed by Jordan, and tolerated by Israel, acts as though the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are interloper sites of artificial presence, and there never existed upon the former, two iterations of the Temple of Solomon, the latter being the sole remnant of that ancient place of Judaic worship in east Jerusalem.

The disingenuous statements by Britain, following the vote which they supported is clearly difficult to take seriously. Wishing to appear principled, Great Britain has lost the capacity to claim that status for themselves on this unfortunate occasion. High-minded after the fact, but inconvenient during the vote. Australia's declaration, on the other hand, can be appreciated coming from a country that took no part in the vote and in all likelihood would have voted against it, unlike its neighbour, New Zealand, which is on the temporary, revolving UN Security Council membership.

The Waqf, and Palestinians, along with the extended Arab/Muslim unity, refuse to acknowledge Judaism's two most sacred historical sites of ancient heritage, claiming no such site ever existed, and that Jewish presence there defiles the third most sacred site in Islam, where the Prophet Mohammad was said to have ascended to Paradise on a flying horse. To avoid violence and rioting, Israeli authorities have agreed with Muslim demands that Jews not be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount. Jews and tourists appearing there are vocally derided and sometimes stoned by Palestinian thugs.

The Temple Mount, representing the Second Temple of Solomon when the first was destroyed in 587 BCE, rebuilt when Herod was King of Judea in 39 BCE, was not incidentally dismissed by UNESCO of having any historical connection to Jewish history. These resolutions by UN bodies bring shame to them, but do not deter them from their course of infamy, led by the influential and malevolently benighted Organization of Islamic Cooperation in the United Nations and their minion nations among the Non-Aligned group.

What, however, explains members of the permanent Security Council, Britain, France and Germany, supporting these pernicious moves to delegitimize Israel in the world body? Plain and simple anti-Semitism? Intellectual, philosophical and historical laziness? It is demanded of Israel that it make peace with Palestinians whose violent attacks against the Jewish State have become viciously congenital, abetted by the Palestinian Authority's continual grooming of that violence in the name of "resisting the occupation".

French CRS anti-riot police officers patrol as the Israeli flag is projected onto the facade of the Hotel de Ville in Paris on the night of January 10, 2017, in tribute to the victims of an attack in Jerusalem on January 8.     (AFP PHOTO / CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT)

It is an 'occupation' of survival-necessity, a military presence deployed for the simple assurance that the peace can only be kept between Palestinians and Israelis, if the opportunity to attack on the part of the Palestinians is kept to a minimum. No Western-oriented, democratic nation has to suffer the consequences of an unprotected Israel, and nor do any suffer the implacability of a neighbour intent on continuing the violence. Where is the principled ideology of Britain, France and Germany when they sanctimoniously condemn Israel, when such action encourages the Palestinians to ever greater heights of violence against Israel?

Where, in the sanctified chambers of the United Nations they lend themselves to condemnation of Israel, yet have the unmitigated gall, having placed that tiny nation in ever greater danger by a UN-entitled Palestinian Authority urging incitement on a population whose needs they have repeatedly failed, in the process promoting violence against Israel, and when the latest of the lethal attacks take place, they piously flash the Israeli flag on their seats of government?

The Brandenburg Gate was lit up with the Israeli flag following a terrorist attack, Jan. 8, in Israel that killed four. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty)