Autumn in New York City will never be the same. The traditional atmosphere that marks this time of the year such as cooler temperatures, changing leaves and post-season play for major league baseball have been abruptly usurped by the menacing tone of geo-political realities. As most of us are already aware, the United Nations General Assembly will be convening for its annual session. In addition to hosting a veritable rogues gallery of assorted miscreants such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and playing chief sponsor to yet another round of infamous Israel bashing as manifested in the Durban III conference, this year the international spotlight is on the unilateral Palestinian bid for statehood.
Before noon on Wednesday, September 21st, scores of stalwart Christian supporters of Israel along with sizable contingents of Jews poured into Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the United Nations to express their indignation over the unilateral Palestinian bid for statehood expected to take place on Friday as part of the annual UN general assembly meeting. Sponsors of the rally said that a coalition of close to 50 Christian and Jewish organizations along with the Israeli government had taken part in mobilizing over 5000 people to attend under the banner of the “Eagles Wings Coalition Council”, named for the Buffalo, New York based organization of the same name, headed by Robert Stearns. Many rally participants had traveled from across the United States and Canada to attend.
Six Jewish activists including Rabbi Avi Weiss, director of Amcha-Coalition for Jewish Concerns, were arrested on Tuesday morning September 20th at the corner of 1st Avenue and East 40th Street as they blocked traffic in a symbolic protest against the Palestinian bid for independent statehood at the United Nations annual general assembly conference. Their arrest was part of a rally co-sponsored by Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI) and Amcha that drew over 35 people, many of whom also stood in street with them.
Agence France Press reports that the Palestinian bid for UN recognition of unilateral statehood is “causing diplomatic panic” in the United States and Israel.
While Israel is certainly concerned, I think “panic” is totally wrong as a description. After all, Israel’s overwhelming interpretation is that the UN event will change nothing. As for U.S. panic, where has the Obama Administration been for the last year when this outcome was totally predictable?
The Associated Press says that Israel is “increasingly isolated” ahead of the vote. I don’t think that’s how Israelis look at this either. We know that cynicism makes sense — various countries will vote for the resolution or abstain purely to get popularity points with Arab and Muslim-majority states and then do nothing.
As the United Nations prepares to vote next week on the issue of Palestinian statehood, it might be worth bearing in mind that whatever the outcome, the result will certainly not be the creation of an actual Palestinian state, any more than the November 1947 partition resolution spelled the inevitable creation of a Jewish one.
In 1948, Israel came into being due to the extraordinary cohesion of Palestine’s Jewish community (the Yishuv). Armed with an unwavering sense of purpose and an extensive network of institutions, the Yishuv managed to surmount a bevy of international obstacles and fend off a pan-Arab attempt to destroy it. Likewise, it was the total lack of communal solidarity — the willingness to subordinate personal interest to the collective good — that accounted for the collapse and dispersion of Palestinian Arab society as its leaders tried to subvert partition.
There are many lands around the world that have been occupied not so long ago by other countries. Many of them are still subjugated to the rule of an occupying power. They were conquered during offensive or defensive wars, throughout the process of establishment of statehood or as a part of colonial and imperial policy. The following is a far from complete list of the lands currently occupied under such circumstances:
Great Britain still occupies Gibraltar, 17 provinces of Ireland, and is holding on to the many residual symbols of her former colonial glory around the world.
The apparently imminent eclipse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has re-ignited hope among some Western commentators concerning the so-called Arab Spring. The entry of Libyan rebels to Tripoli is being depicted in some circles as the removal of a major obstacle to the onward march toward freedom alleged to be taking place this year throughout the Arabic-speaking world.
Some of the more enthusiastic observers are now turning their hopeful gaze toward Syria. They hope that with liberty victorious in Libya, the Assad regime will be the next to fall.
The White House engaged in two furtive gambits last week that painfully exposed the Obama administration’s amateurish, deceitful Middle East-Islamic policies.
The first case concerned the thorny issue of Jerusalem’s legal status in American law. In 1947, the United Nations ruled the holy city to be a corpus separatum (Latin for separated body) and not part of any state. All these years later and despite many changes, U.S. policy holds that Jerusalem is an entity unto itself. It ignores that in 1950 the Government of Israel declared western Jerusalem to be its capital and in 1980 declared the whole of Jerusalem to be the capital. The Executive Branch even ignores U.S. laws from 1995 (requiring a move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem) and 2002 (requiring that U.S. documents recognize Americans born in Jerusalem as being born in Israel). Instead, it insists that the city’s disposition be decided through diplomacy.
As September approaches, many are waiting with bated breath to learn if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver on his threat to unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state and seek recognition of it through the U.N. But in putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization’s longstanding solution to the Arab Israeli-conflict — U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 — with unpredictable results.
In a few weeks, an overwhelming majority in the United Nations General Assembly will likely vote for collective recognition of a Palestinian state. But which Palestinian state? Of the three Palestinian states the assembly could recognize, two are real and arguably could meet the requirements for statehood. But it is the third, purely imaginary one that the assembly will endorse, one that neither has a functioning government nor meets the requirements of international law.
On October 22, 2010, the outgoing director of the New York office of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Andrew Whitley, stunned his listeners at a Washington conference by arguing that “the right of return is unlikely to be exercised to the territory of Israel to any significant or meaningful extent,” and that UNRWA should help resettle the refugees rather than perpetuate their refugee status.[1]
Confronted with a barrage of criticism from the Palestinian Authority and many Arab states, Whitley quickly backed down, claiming, “It is definitely not my belief that the refugees should give up on their basic rights, including the right of return.”
John Bolton, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, had some strong words for the world body on Monday evening, July 18th as he delivered a broad-based foreign policy speech during the Chairman’s Club dinner at the sixth annual Christians United For Israel (CUFI) national summit in Washington, DC.
Speaking from the podium of the Washington Convention Center, Ambassador Bolton addressed the upcoming vote, scheduled for September at the United Nations General Assembly in which the Palestinian Authority will call for nation states to cast their vote for the establishment of an independent state.
The recent declaration of independence by South Sudan from its northern neighbor is certainly a welcome event. After two civil wars (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) that took the lives of more than 2.5 million Christians and animists, secession was the only reasonable option. Of course, there are immediate challenges for South Sudan, as it seems unlikely that 7,000 UN peacekeeping troops can protect a new nation that has vast oil reserves and a population living largely in abject poverty.
I cannot hide the fact that I am pleased with the failures of the flotillas and the BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel) movement in general. These are movements that were borne out of ignorance, propaganda, lies and hate and, more significantly, the people involved want to do harm to others — physically, economically and emotionally. As protest organizers disguise their objectives as legitimate protests against Israel, they come to the aid of terrorists who have slit the throats of their own people just as Hamas did to their brothers in Fatah. Imagine a young man going off on a flotilla expedition telling his father and mother that he is risking his life for the sake of terrorists. What responsibility does western society and media have to expose the pure anarchy that is involved in such a decision and that is rampant and goes unchallenged in universities, unions and in Islamist groups?
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