Posted on 11/04/2003 7:01:06 AM PST by areafiftyone
Israel, which has seen hundreds of UN resolutions passed against its policies over the years, circulated its first resolution ever to the General Assembly as part of a new effort to engage the United Nations and to test whether the organization is capable of taking a balanced approach to the Mideast.
The Israeli resolution, a copy of which was given to The Associated Press on Monday, calls for the protection of Israeli children victimized by Palestinian terrorism. It closely mirrors a similar draft submitted by Egypt last week highlighting the plight of Palestinian children affected by more than three years of bloody conflict in the region.
Israeli diplomats said they would be happy if the General Assembly decided to drop the two drafts or adopt them both.
"The test will be if they pass the Palestinian one but not ours," said deputy Israeli Ambassador Arye Meckel in an interview with The Associated Press.
For years, Israel has refused to take seriously the hundreds of resolutions Arab states sponsor, all of which condemn Israel's actions against the Palestinians while making little, if any, mention of Palestinian attacks against Jews.
But Meckel said the pattern of dismissal only led to mounting anti-Israel resolutions. Twenty such resolutions passed in the General Assembly in 2002. The United States vetoed several that were brought to the Security Council, arguing that they were unbalanced and didn't condemn Palestinian groups responsible for suicide bombings against Israelis.
"It's time to stop being passive," Meckel said. Meckel will send a letter later this week to 155 ambassadors at the United Nations asking for their support for Israel's first resolution.
Israeli diplomats will also lobby world capitals. Both the Israeli and the Egyptian resolutions are expected to come up for a vote in the UN's human rights committee within the next two weeks, he said. If either one passes, it will go to the full General Assembly for a final vote in December.
For most of its history, Israel has found itself nearly alone at the United Nations, supported only by the United States and a few other countries, when facing dozens of Arab and Muslim states which have pushed anti-Israel resolutions.
It was in the wake of the Holocaust, when Europe's Jews were nearly wiped out by Nazi Germany in World War II, that the United Nations voted in 1947 to carve out two countries in Palestine, one Jewish, the other Arab. The Palestinians' share was lost, however, in the 1948 Mideast war with parts divvied up among Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
In its younger years, Israel was an active member of the United Nations. But after the 1967 and 1973 Mideast wars, a coalition of developing nations in the Mideast, Africa and Asia began concerted attacks on Israel.
In 1975, the General Assembly voted to equate Zionism with racism, a move that all but shattered relations. It was repealed in the 1990s but "even so, deep and painful scars remain," for both sides, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said.
As bad as it may seem for Israel, it is still much better than The Republic of China (Taiwan). The United Nations will not even consider the possibility of allowing Taiwan join the UN. There is no "coalition" against Taiwan except Mainland China and all the countries that don't want to upset China.
What?! Let's look at this absurd statement a bit more closely. Arafat & Co. publicly claim the "West Bank" (including Old Jerusalem) and the Gaza strip. Presumably, if part of Israel proper (i.e. that part which is within the 1948 boundaries) had been promised to the Arabs, Arafat would have been screaming for it since Day One - but he hasn't. The Gaza Strip was, without any question, owned completely by Egypt after the 1948 war. The "West Bank" including Old Jerusalem was owned lock, stock & barrel by Jordan. How, exactly, did the Israelis get the blame for this - and from the Jerusalem Post, no less? Oh, in case anyone out there either forgot or is simply ignorant of the history involved, the Israelis begged the leadership of what became the Pallies to live in peace with them, and promised equal representation in a joint state. All of the Arab leaders refused.
Oh, and let's not forget that the Arabs already had a nation carved out for them under the British - it was known then as Transjordan, now as Jordan. It comprised 7/8 of the land area originally promised to the Jews by the Brits under the League of Nations mandate - a fact that is little known and cared for even less. So the UN did a big favor for the Jews - it carved up their 1/8 portion and gave 50% of that to the Arabs (who already had approximately 100 times the land belonging to the Jews). Since that time, the UN has done nothing but condemn Israel for trying to defend that 1/16 share of its land, as if that were some sort of crime against humanity (of course, it is was no crime when the Chinese invaded Tibet - territory that was never claimed by any Chinese government in history, or when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan - again, territory that was never claimed by any Russian or Soviet government in history, but I digress).
I, personally, am sick to death of those who don't know history either implying or outright spouting off about how everything over there is Israel's fault (or that of "the Jews"). I am particularly intolerant of that point of view coming from Jewish Israelis, who damned well ought to know better, and also to know that such activities make war and continued terrorism MORE likely, not less so. To be sure, the actions of the Israeli government over the last 55 years haven't been perfect in any sense of the word, nor have the actions of each and every one of the Jews who have lived there since 1948 - but to concentrate on those imperfections to the exclusion of fault on the part of the Arabs and their governments is not only morally blind, but suicidal.
In a sense it’s accurate, though palestinians hadn’t been invented yet. The Arabs turned down a second Arab state in what was left of the Jewish Homeland after the creation of the first Arab state in Palestine in 1946, Jordan, the Arabs attacked, lost, and Jordan and Egypt retained the physical spoils, confining the populace in refugee camps.
The term "Palestinians" didn't refer to just Arabs at the time, but the hate filled people were certainly there. After all, who but the people we now call Palestinians mudered 6,000 Jews during the Arab Riots of 1936-37? Who killed or drove out the Jewish population of Hebron in 1929 if not those people we currently call Palestinians? Indeed, organized Palestinian violence against the Jewish people has been continuous and orchestrated since at least 1924.
Of course, there was no Jewish state, no occupation, no "Israeli aggression" back in the 1920s and 1930s. There were Jews long before that in Israel. In 1854 the majority of Jerusalemites were Jewish even before the first Zionists came.
The problem is, and always has been, an utter intolerance towards Jews in the Middle East, or any meaningful Jewish presence in the ancient Jewish homeland we now call Israel.
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