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The U.N. and the Middle East
Is it a proper forum to sit in judgment?
From following what's happening in the United Nations,
it's easy to come to the conclusion that Israel is the source of most
of the problems in the world. And that, if Israel were only less "intransigent"
and if it would yield the administrated territories of the "West
Bank" and Gaza, peace would descend on the Middle East.
What are the facts?
The United Nations seems to be obsessed with Israel.
The level of U.N. preoccupation with Israel is totally out of proportion
with events in that country and in the Middle East. In the course of the
last ten years, the General Assembly has entertained 175 hostile resolutions
dealing with Israel and the "Palestinian problem." During that
entire time it did not once criticize any of the Arab countries. Every
year the General Assembly goes through the charade of considering the
expulsion of Israel from the U.N. In 1985, the General Assembly of the
U.N. covered itself with everlasting shame by declaring that Zionism is
racism. The Security Council has proposed numerous anti-Israel resolutions
during the last three years. All of them would have passed unanimously
or with lopsided majorities had it not been for vetoes most of
them by the United States.
Attention of the United Nations was particularly engaged
by two incidents in Israel, namely the killing of seven Arab laborers
by a demented Israeli solitary gunman, and by the death of 17 Arabs on
the Jerusalem Temple Mount. In that incident, a mob of 4,000 Arabs, thrown
into a frenzy by their clerics, loosed fusillades of rocks and other missiles
on Jewish worshippers gathered for prayers by the Western Wall on the
Jewish holiday of Succoth. In both cases, the Security Council dropped
all other business, promulgated anti-Israel resolutions and requested
that teams of "observers" be sent to Israel, presumably to report
on the alleged abuses perpetrated on the "Palestinians" by that
country and by its government. One wonders why, regardless of the merits
of the anti-Israel accusations, any "observers" at all would
be required. Israel, and the territories administered by it, are not some
remote region in some outlying area of a dark and unexplored empire. There
are more journalists, photographers, television crews, reporters, parliamentary
delegations, professional groups, fact finding missions, and human rights
activists there than in any other spot on the globe. Never in modern history
has there been a spot so microscopically and so meticulously inspected
as the small country of Israel. One wonders why a delegation of U.N. observers
would be required and what mischievous purposes their observations could
possibly serve.
The obsession of the United Nations with Israel and
its alleged violations is the more remarkable considering that organization's
total disregard of the unspeakable barbarities of so many other nations
in the Middle East. For instance, the Security Council meeting that resolved
to send a delegation to Israel to investigate "abuses" was inspired
by the PLO whose numberless outrages including the killing of Israeli
athletes at the Munich Olympics, the bombing of tourist buses, old-age
homes, synagogues, airports, airliners, and so much more have never
received the slightest attention by the U.N. Nor have the unspeakable
human rights abuses and sickening crimes by the Arab states ever been
discussed in that body. These crimes, instigated and supported by Arab
governments, include the slaughter in 1982 of over 20,000 Syrian citizens
in Hama, at the command of Hafez Assad, that country's president (and
our most recent ally!); the poison-gassing of over 5,000 Iraqi Kurdish
citizens by Saddam Hussein; over 100,000 Lebanese civilians killed by
PLO gunmen and other militias and terrorist groups; Egyptian troops cold-bloodedly
killing over 100 rioting police in 1986; the Algerian police indiscriminatingly
machine-gunning hundreds of its own citizens in a few days of rioting;
the Libyans assassinating untold numbers of their opponents inside the
country and outside; hundreds of Iranian pilgrims ruthlessly being gunned
down by the Saudis during the pilgrimage to Mecca; the hundreds of thousands
being killed in the Sudan in inter-racial massacres, Lebanon's rape by
Syria, and so much more. The U.N. did not concern itself with any one
of these.
Among the hypocritical accusers of Israel in the U.N.
Council are the French and the Soviets, merchants of death who, intent
only on maximizing their profits, have supplied Iraq with the weaponry,
the materials and the technology to produce chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons. Without them, the present situation would not have arisen.
These same cynics bitterly denounced Israel for destroying the Iraqi nuclear
capability in 1981. Had Israel not done that, Iran would now in all likelihood
be an atomic wasteland and no U.S. or U.N. presence in the area would
now be possible. And such stalwart democrats and practitioners of human
rights as Yemen, Cuba, Zaire, and Malaysia also sit on the Security Council
and cynically condemn Israel, the only people in the entire Middle East
that have a freely elected government and that contributed to the Western
legacy the very concepts of justice and of human rights. Is the U.N. a
proper forum to sit in judgement about Israel and about the events in
the Middle East? The evidence is clear and the answer is obvious.
This ad has been published and paid for by
Facts and Logic About the Middle East
P.O. Box 590359
San Francisco, CA 94159
Gerardo Joffe, President
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