The General Assembly of the United Nations has just passed, by an overwhelming majority, a resolution to investigate Israeli war crimes, including those during the last battle with Hamas and Gaza. There will be no investigation of the Palestinian Territories, which is a nonvoting member of the UN, but it too could have been investigated as well for war crimes since they started the last skirmish by firing 4,260 rockets at civilians in Israel, not to mention the ongoing terrorism of and war crimes of Hamas (using human shields, firing rockets from civilian areas to prompt Israeli retaliation that would kill some civilians, etc.)
The most invidious aspect of this investigation is that it not only singles out Israel (which the UN does repeatedly), but is an open-ended investigation—the first such investigation in the history of the United Nations. You probably haven’t heard about it except in Israeli media, because most of the big media in the U.S. are anti-Israel. There was an article in the NYT in May (third screenshot, click on third link):
But of course time after time the UN issues resolutions against Israel while ignoring countries that have much worse human rights and war-crimes records: North Korea, Syria, Yemen, Iran, Belarus, China, and Saudi Arabia, to name a few. The obsessive single-minded assault by most of the UN on Israel bespeaks to me widespread anti-Semitism. (Dissent if you want, but keep in mind the countries I’ve just named).
You can read about the resolution in the Jerusalem Post (JP: click on first screenshot), or, for a more critical and acerbic take, the website Abu Yehuda (AY; click on second screenshot)
The first step was that in May, the UN Human Rights Council voted 24-9 (with 14 abstentions) to form a committee to investigate any human rights violations by Israel, also including violations in the West Bank and Gaza. As the NYT reported in May (my emphasis):
It was the third time in seven years that the Human Rights Council in Geneva had decided to name such a panel, but this one differed in two important respects:
It is “ongoing,” meaning the panel can pursue the inquiry indefinitely. That gives it a degree of permanence akin to investigative bodies documenting atrocities in Syria and Myanmar.
And the commission is not limited to looking just at hostilities in Gaza and the West Bank, but instead has been charged with examining “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.”
Although the commission could theoretically investigate human rights violations by all parties, the resolution creating it does not mention Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups. Critics who opposed the resolution said it lacked balance.
The 47 members of the council voted to approve by 24 to nine, with 14 abstentions.
Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, Khalil Hashmi, who proposed the panel on behalf of the Organization of Islamic States, said it was needed to hold Israel accountable for what he called decades of human rights violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Note that Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by many nations, but it goes uninvestigated. And Hamas runs Gaza.
Here’s the breakdown of the initial vote from the UN Human Rights Council, given by the UN itself. You can find the resolution here, but it’s too long to add on this site; have a read for yourself. Bolding is mine:
In favour (24): Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, China, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Indonesia, Libya, Mauritania, Mexico, Namibia, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.
Against (9): Austria, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Czech Republic, Germany, Malawi, Marshall Islands, United Kingdom and Uruguay.
Abstentions (14): Bahamas, Brazil, Denmark, Fiji, France, India, Italy, Japan, Nepal, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Togo and Ukraine.
The U.S. was not part of the Human Rights Council then, but is now a member, having been elected in October.
The next step was to get this open-ended committee funded, and since it’s open-ended it would cost a lot of dosh. AY says this—as reported by UN watchdog Anne Bayefsky, whose words I’ve put in italics:
It is permanent in duration. It will have 18 permanent UN staff funded by the regular budget – which means 22% of it will come from American taxpayers, create an in-house legal bureau to seek criminal charges against members of the IDF and the highest echelons of the Israeli government (“command responsibility”). The three members of the “Inquiry” have been appointed – and all have public records of extreme anti-Israel animus. Notorious supporter of Durban and the Goldstone report – former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay – is the Chair. The first report of the “Inquiry” is due in June 2022.
. . .Bayefsky described the Commission and its objectives here and here. She notes that it is “unprecedented in its funding, staffing, and permanence.” It will cost almost $12 million in its first three years, and almost $5.5 million in each succeeding year. It will have three times as many staff members than were charged with investigating North Korea in 2013 (and those were temporary – this commission has no end date). She adds,
The Israel inquisition is the largest boondoggle in the history of the UN human rights system: it will fund 790 days of travel for experts and staff every year from 2022 on – forever. Those are two UN employees provided food and accommodation and airfare to roam around demonizing the Jewish state every day of every year. That is also more travel days than any of the Council’s current human rights investigations about anything, anywhere.
Finally, the Human Rights Council proposal went to the whole General Assembly which would approve the open-ended Israel investigation as part of its budget, i.e., determine if it should be funded, which means determining if the ongoing investigations should move forward.
If you know the UN and its hatred of Israel, you’ll know how that vote went. As Abba Eban said a while back:
If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.
– Abba Eban
And that’s about it. What happened is that Israel proposed an amendment to remove the Israel-investigating committee’s money from the overall budget, so this vote took place on Christmas Eve. And it went as Eban would have predicted (from the JP; bolding is mine):
The amendment to defund the probe was rejected 125-8, with 34 abstentions.China and the G77 – a UN coalition now including 134 developing countries – called for a recorded vote and urged all countries to reject Israel’s amendment. Nations besides Israel that supported the amendment put forward by the Jewish state were Hungary, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the United States.
Well, at least the U.S. voted against the probe—along with Hungary and Polynesian countries (the latter consistently vote in favor of Israel, but I have no idea why).
Here are the countries that abstained from the General Assembly vote (from the JP; I’ve bolded the Anglophone countries, traditionally U.S. allies):
The 34 countries that abstained were Albania, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Canada, Central African Republic, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Fiji, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Italy, Lithuania, Madagascar, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay and Zambia.
Anglophone countries, including the U.S., explained their votes:
The United States took the floor to explain its vote.
The probe “perpetuates a practice of unfairly singling out Israel in the UN and, like prior US administrations, we strongly oppose such treatment of Israel,” the US representative said.“The US will continue to oppose this [probe] and to look for opportunities in Geneva to revisit its mandate, which unfortunately was passed when the US did not have a seat on the UNHRC,” he said.“Moving forward, the US will work in Geneva, where the debate over the [probe’s] mandate belongs to persuade more member states that it is inherently biased,” the US representative said.“Israel can continue to count on the US to do everything possible to shield it from discriminatory and unbalanced criticism – whether at the UNHRC or elsewhere in the UN system.”
. . .Australia said that it was not a member of the UNHRC and could not vote against the resolution when it was approved in May.
“We oppose anti-Israel bias,” its representative said.“Australia supports human rights resourcing even for mandates we do not support,” he said. But he explained that the mandate for this particular probe “is excessively broad” and “over-resourced,” adding that Australia affirms “Israel’s right to self-defense in accordance with international law.”Canada said that at this point in the process, the UNGA should be looking at funding and not revisiting the UNHRC decisions with regard to investigations.
But he said this probe was a particularly “unacceptable outlier” and that the resources needed were “significantly larger than” those allocated for “all of the investigations we approved resources for today.”
No words from the UK.
Well, the commission is a real thing, and will spend the next gazillion years trying to find war crimes committed by Israel while ignoring the war crimes of Palestine and all the other warring or bellicose countries in the world. Why this singling out of Israel, the one democratic state in the Middle East, with many Arab citizens (other Arab countries harbor virtually no Jews)? I find no explanation other than anti-Semitism. I won’t go as far as Abu Yehuda, but what the site says may be true:
The so-called “United Nations” has reached a new low in its descent from an idealistic organization dedicated to humanizing the behavior of nations, into a massive scam operation whose only consistent objective, aside from the enrichment of its employees, is the destruction of the Jewish state.
Defund the world police.
sub.
I think this piece in the Daily Caller is excellent. Zudhi Jasser is a Muslim.
I understand that he is conservative and I am not politically conservative, but agree with him here.
https://dailycaller.com/2021/12/20/jasser-ilhan-omar-islamophobia-bill-praised-islamic-extremists/
What is Israel supposed to do, spend all their time in bunkers? This nonsense is partly driven by Islamists and increasing wokeness, I suppose.
Undoubtedly motivated by anti Semitism, which includes anti Israel Jewish groups like J St. as well as individual Jews who think that by attacking Bad Jews they will themselves look like Good Jews.
Good Jews keep busy trying to prove their creds by trying to separate themselves from the Bad Jews. The motivation: keeping their Jewish heads down to minimize anti Semitism and worse attacks on the Jews (which are committed mainly by Muslims all over the world). Our government is craven.
It averts its gaze from the murder of Kashoggi and continues having a friendly cup of tea with
the murderous Saudi prince who ordered it. It gives covert approval to terrorist groups, mainly Hamas. Biden deserves impeachment from treasonous behavior. And we should get out of the UN entirely instead of bestowing credibility on it or supporting the appearance of objectivity. All the UN does, when it isnt passing anti Semitic resolutions, is fund expensive cocktail parties and receptions. Its astounding decision in the Rwanda conflict was to prevent peacekeepers from bearing arms to defend themselves and the people. Can anyone give me one compelling reason for NOT leaving the UN? Will someone in congress push for our departure? Isn’t anyone in the White House embarrassed at aligning itself with the most despicable, violent, mendacious and morally defunct countries in the world?
> while ignoring countries that have much worse human rights and war-crimes records
With all due respect, this seems like Tu Quoque, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
I sympathize. The challenge is how to stop all governments – and all other sufficiently government-like bodies – from engaging in abuses, without singling any out.
No, because I don’t think Israel committed war crimes during the last skirmish, so it’s not “tu quoque”. And it’s clear that Hamas did, by firing missiles at Israeli civilians.
I know what “tu quoque” means, so you needn’t give me a link.
I do not see how the UN has any business investigating any country for war crimes or any crimes against humanity. They would need to open investigations on every country in the UN a meaningless exercise. Complete waste of time and money. Next they will investigate the U.S. to see if there is any shred of evidence for democracy in the country.
At this point, I would like to know what is the downside to Israel simply leaving the UN? Would an upside be an end to this “investigation”?
Two points: a) it would make them seem more isolationist, and b) once it left, it would be much more difficult for them to re-join. I would fully expect Palestine to become a member, and expect Israel to be blocked from re-admittance. If Israel ever attempted to rejoin, I would fully expect to see conditions set into place.Is it worth betting the current inconvenience of membership against future membership for generations to come?
I’m not a fan of the UN; there is far too much of a democratic deficit. Still, in the absence of a body that represents all humanity, I guess a body representing governments is more pragmatic than nothing.
Oy vey.
“If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” – spot on , sadly. Barbara Woodward, the UK’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, should be ashamed of herself. (Not to be confused with Barbara Woodhouse, the crazy d*g-training woman on British TV: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Woodhouse )
Indeed, the UN criticism of Israel is unbalanced and clearly biased. I googled “UN open ended investigation of war crimes” and, indeed, the only references I found were to Israel. Yet, it must be said that the UN is currently investigating, or has recently investigated, war crimes in Ethiopia, Libya (which, shamelessly, voted in favor of the anti-Israeli resolution), Yemen/Saudi Arabia, Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, North Korea, and other countries. But again, there is a lot of cynicism involved here. The sad example is the recent UN vote to end the investigation of war crimes in Yemen. The bloody conflict there has claimed 233,000 human lives since 2014. There is a lot to investigate there. In comparison, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed the lives of more than 250 Israelis and of more than 5600 Palestinians (according to the UN). These are also huge numbers, and I believe both sides need to be investigated, but definitely not by such a biased and inefficient organization as the UN.
I wish Canada would stop forever abstaining on anti-Israel motions at the U.N. On one level it’s likely Islamophobia (as in, fear of what the Islamists in Canada and elsewhere will do in retaliation if we voted against them), while we aren’t fearful that Israel will retaliate against our abstention — if for no other reason than by being true to form Israel knows to expect it.
On another level it’s likely down to some dark diplomatic calculus that standing up and being counted accomplishes nothing and spends precious political capital which we might prefer to use for some other interest like selling armoured cars to Saudi Arabia or maybe someday getting that temporary seat on the Security Council. The Prime Minister is rumoured to be looking for a retirement strategy. There is little he would be qualified for other than some sinecure at the U.N. and any imaginable selection committee would not look kindly on someone who rubbed them the wrong way on Israel or on human rights.
The U.N. is a gang of cowards, kleptocrats and génocidaires. Nothing good can ever come of them. The best strategy is to thwart and undermine them.
I suppose a small crumb of comfort is that the UNGA is little more than a talking shop, and can get nothing done unless the Security Council agrees it. I would expect any sort of resolution that comes out of this absurd process to be vetoed by at least two, or hopefully three, of the Permanent Members.
But in the meantime a lot of mud will be thrown, and a lot of UN nations’ financial contributions wasted, on a confected spectacle of vilification. I hope that those nations that support Israel will do their best to ensure that this kangaroo court never gets off the ground (sorry for the mixed metaphor).
I can’t find any explanation of the UK’s vote in UNGA, but I guess their rationale would be along the lines of Australia’s: it should not be the role of UNGA to veto or defund the activities of any of the UN’s subordinate Committees. We might want to make use of them ourselves one day.
If Israel wants the support of China, Russia, and similar they should get off their butts and enter the illiberal “democracy” club (something I’m sure the ultras are interested in) with Turkey and Hungary. If there’s one thing the powers that be hate it’s semi-functional democracies.
I do not think China have any opinion on Israel’s democracy or any particular stance on the conflict around Israel. They sided with the Islamic countries purely to show a middle finger to the USA. A collateral of the China vs. USA conflict.
It is also ironic that Hungary supported Israel. He (Great Leader Viktor Orbán) did not do this because he thinks this is the morally right thing. He could not care less about what is right. This is a business favor from one maffia boss to another (Netanyahu).
(And it is ironic, because the agitprop machinery of the Hungarian Clepto-Fascist party have a few rabid anti-Semite in their ranks and they were expressly pro-Palestine, even pro-Hamas several years ago. But Orbán ordered them to tune it down after they got buddies with Bibi.)
The in favour 24? look at that list… it’s little wonder it passed. What a waste of resource and money.
Never has lack of institutional trust been so richly deserved. I loathe the UN with every fiber of my being.
Yes, this is evidence of widespread anti-Semitism, and it also clearly demonstrates why the existence of the state of Israel is necessary. In spite of the fact that their contributions to the welfare of all mankind are astounding given their relatively small numbers, Jews seem to be uniquely suited as a target of outgroup hatred. Tomes could be written about the reasons for this, but a major factor is probably the envy and resentment provoked by their very prosperity and success. At a time when anti-Semitism is rampant, even in such “sanctuaries” as the United States, the existence of their own state gives the Jews at least a fighting chance to defend themselves.
I am glad Australia took the right side. Go Israel.
My favorite was Gadaffi’s Libya being chair of the UN Human Rights Committee a few years ago. You can’t make that up. Parody is dead.
Overall the UN is a great idea and does a lot more good than harm but is isn’t without its absurdities and injustices. The Israel one is a glaring example but representative of an overwhelming anti-Israel bias in the West (by people who know nothing about Middle East politics and history).
This is saddening when it comes from the black community (who were their best friends during Civil Rights again?….. Oh yeah. Oy veh!) as well as university students and professors who SHOULD know better and be better informed.
D.A., B.A. (Hon.) (Middle East politics / clinical psychology) ’92
Writer (about Middle East politics among other things) and atty
NYC
The UN was created by the USSR with the purpose to undermine the West, and it has been heavily influenced by the CPSU from day one. And it seems to continue the same line of actions, despite change of the regime.
I am reading now “Judgment in Moscow” book by Bukovsky — it is something very insightful (and damning).
Here are 4 pages that show the memos of the Central Committee of CPSU about providing weapons for Palestinians:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tpBE09qKMyM4KXXO0Ol2xLRmgqHaDp0A/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PMX9bnm9MX77-xZuYDmFnptif2I1scVD/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fNcCjqZU1RHu0mvxinON9AgjNPOFP84S/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1goB9nfAc2__w95Og_tEwe1rq-wLBheJm/view?usp=sharing
It’s just an investigation. If no crimes were committed, Israel has nothing to fear.
You’re dead right about these other countries with terrible human rights, like Saudi Arabia. The difference is that they’re not on occupied land!! Israel has virtually wiped Palestine off the map, starved Gaza to near-death and is now having settlements in the West Bank. Is this how western democracies work? Israel boasts that it is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East and yet its practices in the occupied territories are reminiscent of apartheid. We Africans know how ‘democratic’ colonialism was. I am a secular humanist and evolutionist and I cannot believe that a newsletter such as yours, purporting to espouse scientific principles, supports Zionism so blatantly!?
I would suggest, that before you make charges about occupation, wiping “Palestine off the map”, and illegal settlements, you take it upon yourself to discover just what were the legal borders of Israel as of May 14, 1948 and the actual history of the region.
Because what you will find is that the borders of Israel under International law are, in fact, from river to the sea. Which makes charges of occupation, illegal settlements, and wiping Palestine off the map completely unfounded. Such charges are based on a fantasy narrative concocted by Palestinian propaganda to deceive those whose understanding of the true history of the region is not well-founded.
You may want to start here: https://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/58-3/58arizlrev633.pdf
Mate, read John Dugard and the UN resolutions.
Did you not read article on which you are commenting? The UN is not an unbiased source when it comes to Israel. UN resolutions have no power whatsoever to change the borders of nations.
I also note that you have give no indication of responding to the crux of my comment and the main relevant issue – the actual legal sovereign borders of Israel. It is not possible to “occupy” territory which belongs to you.
Mandatory Palestine became Israel legally in 1948. Every square inch of it. 3/4 of the original territory of the British Mandate (Palestine) became the Palestinian Arab state of Jordan. Mandatory Palestine was was the only other section of the British Mandate that was not Jordan. There were not three territories, only two.
You seem to be unaware of the history of the region, because you said “Israel has virtually wiped Palestine off the map” which is an historically absurd statement.
The Nazis pretended there was nothing happening to the Jews, while they perpetrated the biggest atrocity against their fellow human beings, leaving a permanent psychological scar on the whole of humanity. I need not remind you that it was too horrific to put into words. Then we had Stalin and his gulags, apartheid in SA, the Rwandan genocide, Idi Amin….and Israel-Palestine! What is wrong with humanity? We launch powerful telescopes, perform wonderful life-saving surgery, crack the atom, map the genome etc. and yet we cannot live with one another?? The holocaust happened in Europe, not in the Middle East. Israel has the might of the western powers behind it, crushing defenseless people. The Saudis are assisted by these very western powers to crush the Yemenis (because they provide oil to the West. before he died, FW de Klerk, the last apartheid leader asked himself, ‘my God, just what have we done’. Do you think that one day the Zionists will ask themselves that? I’m not fighting with anyone, I am asking for fellow human beings to show some compassion against others.
When five Arab armies (with irregular groups from other Arab countries plus local Arabs) invaded one-day-old Israel 1948, the only help the Jews got was from tiny Czechoslovakia. The Jordanian Arab Legion fought under the British command and was armed by the British against the Jews. Te Arabs boasted that they would massacre the Jews. They lost not because Jews had help from the West, but because they had nowhere else to go. Massacred in Europe, expelled from Arab countries, they had to fight or disappear from the face of the Earth. Later, Arabs were armed by Soviet Union. Palestinians had the help of the whole huge Arab and Islamic world. Yes, Israel was supported by the democratic West. Without this support, tiny Israel would be wiped off the map as Iran wishes now. Iran is arming both Hamas and Hezbollah and is smuggling plenty of weapons to the West Bank. Iran is arming diverse Islamic militias (inclusive Huthiin Yemen). Palestinians are far from innocent and defenseless— and even Israel does everything humanly possible to target terrorists and not to harm civilians. Sometimes it’s not humanly possible to avoid civilian casualties when terrorists use their own civilian population as human shield.
Of course you’re fighting with people: you are taking issue with those saying that the new UN resolution is ridiculous, which it is. Have you thought about asking the Palestinians to show some compassion for Israelis, since their terrorists deliberately target civilians. (Israel doesn’t do that.) Your compassion, it seems, extends towards only one group of people. I don’t hear you asking Palestinian fellow human beings to show some compassion against Israeli Jews; as far as I know, their actions are okay. Will you ask them to stop firing rockets at civilian targets in Israel? I don’t think you will.
I have stated publicly that I abhor violence. I’ve spoken out against suicide bombings and agreed with Edward Said when he called it abominable. I do not wish to see a Palestinian or Israeli child maimed or killed! Like so many of my fellow human beings I cringe, when Israel retaliates disproportionately by striking Gaza every time HAMAs launches rockets. So many innocent civilians die needlessly during these air raids.
Why create a situation that turns people to desperation and then acts of wanton violence?
We are all the descendants of a band of African migrants that left this continent 70 000 years ago to colonize the world. I believe we can live together if we absorb this fact and treat everyone with respect. Coming from apartheid SA where I was a second-class citizen in the country of my birth, i watched with horror the disrespect shown to Palestinians in Israel.
We can disagree with each other but respect one another’s fundamental humanness and humanity’
My views here have been shared in the public domain.
No, you didn’t say that in your post. NOW you say it when I point out the war crimes of the Palestinians. Do you agree that firing rockets at Israeli citizens and fostering acts of terrorism are war crimes.
You give your hand away when you say this: “Why create a situation that turns people to desperation and then acts of wanton violence?”
You are blaming the Palestinian war crimes on Israel. I think that’s enough to show where you stand. Your kumbaya act doesn’t impress me.
It’s not desperation which is making young Palestinians, who could have a bright future for themselves and give so much to human advancement, to grab a knife and plunge it into a Jewish woman or man passing by on the street. It’s the constant incitement to hate which is coming from Palestinian leaders, from Palestinian schools, universities, media and mosques. Israel tried time and again to achieve peace with Palestinians. Their leaders always refused. Both Hamas Charta and the never corrected (in spite of Arafat’s promises) PLO Charta call for annihilation of Israel. All maps published by Hamas and by Palestinian Authority are without Israel. Children are taught that all Israeli towns are Palestinian towns and that one day there will be no Israel and no Jews, only Palestinians.
For example, on page 61 of the Arabic Language Study Book for 14-years old Palestinian children (a textbook published by Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education) there is a reading comprehension exercise that contains a story describing the burning with Molotov cocktails of an Israeli bus belonging to the Psagot settlement near Ramallah.The purported attempt to burn Jewish passengers alive is proudly described in the book as a “barbecue party.” This was found in the school bag of a Palestinian 14-years old girl who stabbed and wonded a Jewish woman who was pushing a stroller with a baby on her way with her older children to their school.
If not for this bloodthirsty antisemitism, supported by UN, Palestinians would have their own country a long time ago and would live in peace and prosperity. Do not blame Israel for their horrible fate. Blame their leaders, from the Nazi-lover, Haj Amin Al-Hussein to today’s Mahmoud Abbas and Yahya Sinwar.
Excuse me, but who defines the word ‘disproportionately”? It’s a matter of opinion, i.e. subjective. I suspect that those who use it to protest Israeli defense actions choose the term only when the Palestinians suffer more casualties than the Israelis. Were it reversed, would they criticize the Palestinians for “disproportionate” killing? I think not. I wrote a parody on my web site where the Palestinians call for a temporary
cease fire in order to allow them to kill more Israelis and close the “disproportionate” gap.
@Whyevolutionistrue, you’re right when you talk about the palestinian crimes against Israel and – I would add – against their own children: Palestinians often use their own children as a human shield and that’s why many palestinian children die during the Israeli defensive actions. As Golda Meyer said: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
Unfortunately, Suleman Mall is right when saying: “My views here have been shared in the public domain.”
Both, public domain and UN share that view and the result is this unfair and imbalanced investigation against Israel.
This is only the first step. I’m afraid it wouldn’t stop here and Jews will be persecuted once again. Not by Nazis this time, but by muslims and woke together. This terrible alliance will make the Nazism resurface.
FW de Klerk “said Tuesday that it was “unfair” to refer to Israel as an apartheid state.”:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/south-africas-de-klerk-israel-not-an-apartheid-state/
“starved Gaza to near-death”?
Gaza is among the top ten most obese areas in the world. You have been duped.
“Only 18% to 25% of the Strip’s residents have a normal weight,” Ata Qaisi, health care consultant and owner of Gaza City’s Diet Center told Al Monitor:
“https://www.albawaba.com/mena_voices/battle-bulge-obesity-gaza-strip-rise-672854
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-08966-1
yes obese with bad malnutrition. if you cannot see a gross human rights violation, to the scale and extent this one is, then you are ‘duped’
Starved to death to the point of obesity, is it now?
Here are actual recent photos from Gaza which show the falsity of your position:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96198796@N05/albums/72157713205229448
Well, saying that “Palestinians are obese with bad malnutrition” is about the funniest thing I’ve heard on this website. You do know, Anwar, that bad malnutrition doesn’t make you obese, don’t you? You are making self-conradictory statements to save your flawed hypothesis. In other words, you’re suffering from something worse than confirmation bias: making up stuff yourself!
Starting with Zionism, it changed its definition from a “liberation movement of Jewish people with aim to have state which would be a safe haven for a minority persecuted worldwide” to (after re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948) a “movement supporting the right of Jewish people to live in their state on their ancestral land in peace and security”.
The bulk of the Jewish population in Israel consists of two group of people: refugees (and their descendants) from Arab and Islamic states who were expelled (or escaped out of fear for their lives) leaving all their belonging behind, and, second, the remnants of European Jews who managed to survive the Holocaust and were not welcome to come back to their homes from the death camps. Some colonialists!
Why can Arabs live as equal citizens in the state of Israel (Arab population of Israel is 20%) but Jews cannot live in Judea and Samaria (renamed “West Bank in 1950 by Jordan which illegally occupied this area from 1948 to 1967)? If someday Palestinians agree to build their own state, why should this state be Judenrein?
“Palestine” couldn’t be “wiped off the map” because never in the history of mankind did a “state of Palestine” exist. Starting from 1937, Palestinian Arabs rejected every proposal to get their own state because their objective was not to build a “Palestinian” state but to destroy the Jewish state.
Israel left Gaza voluntarily in 2005. Since then it is under constant threat of rockets launched by terrorist groups (Hamas, the ruling group, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad). That’s why there is a blockade on arms delivery and material of double use. But Israel delivers electricity, water and allows free movement of all goods, food, medicines, even luxury cars into the Palestinian territories. Moreover Israel daily gives medical treatment to thousands of Gazans.
I’m not surprised. Although we seem to have voted against the original proposal back in May, I would be pleasantly surprised if any member of our incompetent corrupt government had any idea that anything at all is happening in the Middle East.