Anti-Semitism: A Cause of "Great Concern" in the Western World

"The member states of the European Union support policy initiatives at European level that aim to combat incitement to antisemitic hatred and acts of violence, as well as the dissemination of antisemitic conspiracy myths online."

"The increase in threats to Jewish persons in Europe including the resurgence of conspiracy myths, public expressions of anti-Semitism, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and an increase in anti-Semitic incidents and hate crime is a cause of great concern."

Council of the European Union  

 

"The UN’s display of hypocrisy continues this afternoon, as the General Assembly continues to debate the so-called 'question of Palestine' resolutions which are all one-sided, all blame Israel and are all detached from reality." 

"Countries that supported Israel today have understood that this package of resolutions does nothing to forward peace but serves instead to entrench the Palestinian’s rejectionist position and deepen the conflict."

"No other country in the world faces such discrimination in the UN ... and it is time for more UN members to join our struggle to challenge the organization's anti-Israel agenda."

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s envoy to the UN

 

"Shame: Canada's Justin Trudeau government just joined the jackals at the UN by voting for a one-sided resolution singling out Israel, co-sponsored by Syria, Venezuela and North Korea."

Hillel Neuer, UN Watch

The United Nations building stands in Manhattan on the first official day of the 75th United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22, 2020, in New York City.  Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Yet again, as predictable as snow in winter, the United Nations General Assembly adopted five anti-Israel Resolutions on December 2nd. Five out of a package of 20 pro-Palestinian texts that are approved by rote on an annual basis every December, passing with an easy majority of the United Nations member states. One of the resolutions' texts is a condemnation of Israeli 'occupation' in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, condemnatory of annexation plans, while a second text addresses Israeli 'occupation' of the Golan Heights. The remaining three relate to UN committee work on the issue of Palestine and its refugees.

What continues to surprise sympathetic onlookers to these annual rites of condemning a democratic nation which has absorbed and given citizenship to millions of Palestinian Arabs, Bedouin, Druze, Christians and B'hai, rescuing black Ethiopians who traditionally identify as Jews from persecution to bring them to safety in Israel, is the cowering hypocrisy of nations that assure Jews and Israel that they support the Jewish state's sovereign presence in their ancestral home and are committed to fighting anti-Semitism and to honour the memory of the Holocaust, yet in the august halls of the United Nations they uniformly vote against Israel's interests.

It is as though a mental block obscures reality, commitment and morality for these nations who see no contradiction in publicly voting against Israel, condemning the state for its existence in essence, while in another breath they claim to be fully supportive of its right to exist. In the one-way street of voting against Israel there is no balance, no recognition that Israel has attempted time and again to satisfy the demands of the Palestinians, only to be turned down time an again. 

 

Similarly there is no recognition of the incitement by the Palestinian Authority for violence against Israel, for refusal of normalization of relations, while it continues to dole out financial awards and honours to Palestinians and their families who have committed violent acts against Jews. Much less the constant refusals to bargain in good faith to achieve a sovereign state of their own, for the covert plan aspiring to Palestinize the geography from the river to the sea. ("From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.") 

 

The sanctimony of government leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who appoints a well-known Canadian human rights activist to the role of envoy to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance by a prime minister who was unable to muster the word "Jew" when unveiling the then-newly-opened Holocaust Memorial in Ottawa while bemoaning the death of six million people, and whose administration overlooked the word "Jewish" on the commemorative plaque is painful to observe.

Under the government preceding his own led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the long-running Canadian tradition of voting in support of Israel on UN resolutions was assured, but it has executed an abrupt and to some, puzzling turnabout under Trudeau, the ultra-progressive, post-nationalist, feminist prime minister anxious to display himself on the world stage as a leading progressive. 

 

 

Canada, like other countries, has seen fit to formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Yet though the IHRA definition has been adopted by countries and groups that agree with the definition per se and want that recognition to signal that they are morally opposed to anything resembling, leading to or aggravating anti-Semitism, they appear to suffer amnesia when a vote in the General Assembly comes up which has familiar content that aids and abets and formalizes and promotes anti-Semitism. Canada's stance a case in point. Anti-Semitism is exemplified by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and by affirming the right of the Palestinians to self-determination without taking Israel's into consideration is ipso facto, anti-Semitism, clear and simple.

The United Nations has entertained 96 resolutions since 2015 condemning Israel, while seven have been allocated for Syria, five for North Korea, four for Iran and three for Myanmar. Canada has company in its hypocrisy given the European Union speaks passionately about fighting anti-Semitism and the promotion of Holocaust remembrance, but again, once at the United Nations all that is forgotten in the obligatory bashing of Israel at the behest of countries notoriously acknowledged for their human rights abuses.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, this week published a piece signed by 122 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals denouncing the definition of anti-Semitism claiming "profound disagreement" with the notion that "Israel in its current reality embodies the self-determination of all Jews", an astounding impudence by self-righteous, anti-Israel belligerents claiming that they know better than Jews themselves what Israel should represent as a Jewish state; the assurance that Jews will never again face the horror of genocide.