United Nations Secretary General Displays Double Standard for Jews and Palestinians

The United Nations General Assembly this past November 29, 2012, granted statehood to the representatives of the Palestinians, the PLO, without any requirement for them to negotiate or recognize Israel or perform even the smallest of conditional acts. The very same United Nations General Assembly regularly demands for Israel to enter negotiations with the Palestinians or face denunciations and challenges to their right to be considered an actual country. This double standard appears to present no trouble or difficulty for the United Nations General Assembly as well as numerous of the various United Nations agencies. Now we find that the same double standard by the denouncing of Israel while praising and defending the same activities when committed by the Palestinians by the head of the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The office of the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon released a statement which stated that the Palestinians have “the right to stage peaceful protests that must be fully respected.” The statement further asserted that Ban is “following with concern developments around the E1 area.” The release further noted fallaciously that Israeli construction in the area is “Illegal under international law,” and that “any such settlement plans for E1 must be rescinded.”

It must be noted that the area in question is completely within Area C which is completely under Israeli legal jurisdiction and the security is completely Israeli. Where the Palestinians have similar rights to Area A and Area B is also under Palestinian civilian control, it is also under joint Israeli and Palestinian security jurisdiction. Under previously signed agreements between the Palestinian authority and Israel, new establishment of any form of residence or structures in Area C, permanent or temporary, which includes the E1 area in question, are required to have Israeli permission while Palestinian permission is required in Areas A and B. Apparently this agreement is only to be applied to the areas under any type of control by the Palestinian authority and the areas under Israeli jurisdiction are not recognized by the Secretary General of the United Nations. It is always nice to know that such an august body which is supposedly renowned for being an impartial arbiter of international conflicts and negotiations holds such a double standard from top to bottom. This fully explains the appointment of Richard Falk as the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories with the mission statement to detail and report all transgressions and crimes committed by Israel in their occupation. Richard Falk described his duties as,   “One is evaluating whether the conditions of occupation are such as to give the Palestinians some kind of right of resistance. And if they have that right, then what are the limits to that right? The other issue at stake in this current inquiry is to evaluate how Israel as the occupying power is carrying out its responsibility to protect the society that is subject to its control.” It definitely appears that Ban Ki-Moon agrees with Mr. Falk’s attitude towards all things pertaining to the situations concerning Israel and the Palestinians.

It is always nice to know the base attitudes of those who hold power and may have influence in adjudicating and influencing the conditions or actions pertaining to your very survival. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has made his view pertaining to the Israeli Palestinian situation perfectly clear. Focusing on his statements regarding actions by Israeli Jews and Palestinians who choose to make political statements through setting up temporary tent settlements as a way of building “facts on the ground” where he posits that the Palestinians are fully within their rights and have his blessings to commit such actions wherever they choose while the Israeli Jews are denied this right in any locations, especially if that location might be claimed by the Palestinians. What is even more interesting about Ban Ki-Moon’s released statement is that it denies the right of Israel to make claims while granting the validity of any claims made by the Palestinians. With such a view from the one person who, by his office, is presumed to be unbiased and neutral on all disputes favoring only that they be resolved through passive, nonviolent negotiations of the parties involved, it is astonishing that such a biased statement could be issued in his name out of his office. Of course the majority of the member countries of the United Nations will have no problem and see no bias and will accept Mr. Moon’s statement as a fair and honest assessment of acceptable parameters regarding actions of both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. It is always good to know where your friends are, and even more vital to locate thy enemies. The Secretary General of the United Nations has made his choice most evident.

Beyond the Cusp

Stop the World Because Israel is Striking Back at Hamas

Taking the lead in what is sure to become a breathless scurrying of United Nations ambassadors all screaming that the poor innocent Gazans must be protected from the genocidal attacks of the Israeli menace, Qatar and Egypt demanded an emergency meeting to censor Israel and put an end to the Israeli response to the escalating rocket attacks coming from Gaza. Never mind that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and a plethora of other terror groups have been firing rockets into Israel at a rate of close to, if not over, one hundred per day for over a week and over three hundred yesterday, that is an important piece of minutia. The terror empire in the Gaza Strip and now also taking charge of the Sinai Peninsula, launching rockets of various sizes and impact at Israeli civilians is something that the United Nations only mentions when the United States demands some equality when a motion to condemn the Israelis comes before the Security Council. If the rockets rain down on Israeli civilians, the sole person who takes note of such at the United Nations is whoever is the current Israeli Ambassador. Currently, that honor goes to Ron Prosor who last week sent a petition to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanding the United Nations condemn the daily barrage of Israelis by rockets fired out of Gaza. Ambassador Prosor also called for the convening of the Security Council to debate a resolution that would force actions to end the terrifying assault on southern Israel. Surprise, surprise, nothing materialized and the world continued turning and Israelis continued to have fifteen to thirty seconds to take cover depending on their distance from Gaza.

Finally, after approximately two weeks of such abuse, Israel answered with a series of attacks targeting the rocket launching sites, rocket manufacturing sites, smuggling tunnels, and other terrorist infrastructure. Almost immediately Qatar and Egypt pressed complaints to the United Nations demanding an emergency session be called of the Security Council to put an end to the Israelis unwarranted and unprovoked attacks. The response was almost immediate as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for an “immediate de-escalation of tensions,” And demanded “Both sides should do everything to avoid further escalation and they must respect their obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure the protection of civilians at all times.” Russia also demanded an immediate end to Israeli hostilities as the United States President Barack Obama backed Israel’s right to act in self-defense. Such a furious scurrying to action once Israel decided to defend her people. Where was all this concern over the past two weeks of violence and rockets exploding all over southern Israel? Guess it takes Israel defending itself to spur the United Nations into breathless frothing at the mouth action.

On the ground in Israel and Gaza there has been a consistent ramping of hostilities leading up to the Israeli response which was placed into action yesterday. After weeks of escalated rocket attacks from within Gaza into southern Israel and years of a steady drumbeat of rockets, Israel had reached their tipping point. There had been a number of previous escalations which were then ramped back down after- threats of Israeli reprisals over the past two years. This time the terrorists in Gaza decided to push Israel and ignore the threats. That may have been a mistake on their part. Even with Israel targeting the launch sites and stores of rockets and other weapons, the terrorists are continuing their barrages. Almost unbelievably, the Israeli Iron Dome has intercepted more than one hundred rockets in the past twenty-four hours. It is no wonder that when the United States provided Israel with funding to build a number of additional Iron Dome systems that included in the deal were Israel providing the United States military with the particulars of the Iran Dome system. Without these few Iron Dome systems currently in use the carnage would have been far more extreme.

The one question that remains to be answered is whether or not Israeli leadership will decide that a ground incursion into Gaza will be required to put an end for the time being to the assault on the south of the country. Unfortunately, there is no way short of reoccupying Gaza that will work to actually prevent the terrorists rearming and the rockets to start raining down on the citizens in southern Israel. One other item that needs to be stated is that there exists in southern Israel a relatively large Bedouin community spread throughout the Negev; some Druze communities; and Arab Christian and Muslim residents within the cities and communities in southern Israel. Southern Israel is not just Jewish neighborhoods and in many instances there exists mixed neighborhoods which means that the rockets fired out of Gaza do not threaten only the Jewish citizens of Israel despite what the news stories tend to imply, all the citizens are terrorized and face the fear when the Code Red sirens sound. It is very likely that one would find Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze, and whoever else might seek shelter huddled together behind the walls of the shelters found all over the areas vulnerable to attack. It is for all these citizens that the IDF is now striking at the rocket and other terror infrastructure in the Gaza area. These are some of the items the regular news skips in their coverage as it is not convenient to their story that it is all Arabs in Gaza and all Jewish in Israel. While there are no longer any Jews in Gaza, they were removed by Prime Minister Sharon in the summer of 2005 and were completed before September, but there are citizens of Israel who are not Jewish and whose lives are just as endangered by the terrorist rockets as that of their Jewish neighbors. These rockets do not have any method of determining the racial or religious identities of those they strike and maim or kill. The rockets do not check the door on the houses they strike for the mezuzah that would denote Jewish ownership. The rockets are unguided and are simply launched and they land where they land without any discretion. They are random bearers of death and destruction which, ever so thankfully, usually impact only property. Today, thanks to the sheer numbers of rockets, they found their way to cause the death of three unfortunate victims, one was a woman in Israel to have her baby delivered and was from a Chabad house in India and was to attend a memorial for the Chabad Rabbi and wife who were murdered in the Mumbai terror attack of 2008, and also injured quite a few including some children and infants. May we all awake to find that peace has fallen over the entirety of the area and that no more will needlessly die from these attacks.

Beyond the Cusp

The Levy Report, if Only it Would Matter

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a thorough investigation to be carried out regarding the legal status of the Jewish residents’ rights to live in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, under International Law and a variety of treaties and other appropriate legalities in January 2012. The committee produced a report named after the presiding jurist, retired Israeli Supreme Court Judge, Edmond Levy. The other members of the Committee were retired Tel Aviv District Court Judge Tchiya Shapira and a former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker. They began their investigation with the documents and treaty produced by the San Remo Conference of April 1920 and followed the paper trail which included the League of Nations treaties which set up the Mandate Lands under British control which were dedicated for the expressed purpose of establishing the Jewish State, and on through the establishment of the United Nations in 1945 with the recognition of existing rights of states acquired under the various mandates from under the League of Nations, including of course the rights of Jews to settle in the Land of Israel by virtue of the those documents, which was affirmed in article 80 of the United Nations Charter. After fully reviewing all pertinent documents, conferences, treaties and commentaries, the Levy Committee released their findings which state explicitly the legal status of all Jewish settlement within all of Judea and Samaria.

There have been those who have opposed the findings of the Levy Committee. Many of those in opposition claim that the Levy Committee was unnecessary as the International Court of Justice had already addressed the issue of the legality or lack thereof of Israeli use of lands considered as part of the West Bank when they ruled against the separation fence which Israel was erecting for security purposes with some of it running through these areas. This finding was made without the benefit of access to all the pertinent documents as the office of then Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan was remiss in providing some of the vital documents in the dossier of eighty-eight documents he was required to submit to the Court that were “likely to throw light upon the question” which he was legally required to do under Article 65 of the International Court of Justice’s statute. The most glaringly obvious documents which were omitted were the original League of Nations Mandates and the United Nations Charter Article 80. Ironically, the one justice on the International Court of Justice who expressed warning, sounding the alarm that these documents were absent and deserved to be considered before reaching any judgment, was Judge El-Araby, an Egyptian appointee on the court. Obviously, he was ignored as the majority of the justices sitting on the International Court of Justice had reached their decision likely before the first document or witness had been examined. This had been the exact reasoning behind the Israeli decision not to even have representation to argue before the International Court of Justice as they expressly stated the futility of such an exercise.

What will be the unfortunate result of the introduction of the Levy Committee Report to the litany of decisions, arguments, and related posturing on this subject is that it will not even add any appreciable sound to the fury of the present arguments. The Levy Report will simply be ignored by virtually every NGO, government, world body, international discussions, national leaders or any activity which will address the right of Israel to the lands of Judea and Samaria and all lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as was promised in treaties, conferences, mandates and charters; let alone the fact that Jordan was already carved from lands which had been promised for the Jewish State. But what are promises and 78% of the Mandate lands to be considered when the current question is how to steal even more of the promise from Israel and the Jewish people. The one thing history has noted is that no promise is any stronger or lasting than the force of arms ready and willing to protect and enforce it, and Judea and Samaria will prove to be no different.

What makes this entire episode all the more frustrating has been the reaction of those one might suspect would beck Israel in applying the Levy Report on the international stage. The United States Department of State has already condemned the Levy Committee Report when spokesman Patrick Ventrell, declared: “We do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts.” Even that could be understood despite the fact that after the League of Nations established the British Mandate Lands to fulfill the Balfour Declaration, United States endorsed the idea of a Jewish national home through a joint resolution of the United States Congress. What is almost impossible to swallow is the letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu by some of the American Jewish Leadership expressing concern over the Levy Committee Report stating, “As strong advocates for Israel’s security and well-being as a Jewish and democratic state, we are deeply concerned about the recent findings of the government commission led by [retired Supreme Court Justice] Edmund Levy. We fear that if approved, this report will place the two-state solution, and the prestige of Israel as a democratic member of the international community, in peril.” Among those who signed this revolting expression of politically correct surrender of Jewish rights to claim the lands which were promised by treaty under the declarations of the League of Nations, a world body, and reaffirmed by the United Nations in its founding Charter, include philanthropists Charles Bronfman and Lester Crown; Marvin Lender the Former National Chairman of United Jewish Appeal; Deborah Lipstadt the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University; Bernard Nussbaum who is the former White House Counsel; Richard Pearlstone the former chairman of the Jewish Agency; and Rabbi David Saperstein who is the director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. The signatories of this declaration of treachery and betrayal should be forever held in contempt by every Zionist and sympathizer and supporter of the State of Israel or the Jewish People. May G0d be merciful in their judgment.

Beyond the Cusp