Dec

Israel, Obama and The UN

Israel got bashed again at the UN this week – so what else is new? Only this time it was without even her best friend and ally looking out for her as they have done in the past. But it was all for Israel’s own good, security and future, of course, and had nothing to do with personal animosities, score settling and peevish behavior – the sort of behavior we would not tolerate from our kids, let alone the President of the United States or his Secretary of State.

But I worry not for Israel. In the past number of years there have been too many times to count when seemingly well-meaning countries and leaders have offered unsolicited erroneous advice with dire consequences predicted that have never come about. And too often we have seen Israel pressured into poor decisions and seen the negative fallout. Thankfully Israeli leaders and the public have learned their lessons and really could care less what the rest of the world thinks. Claims from so-called friends notwithstanding, Israel now understands better than ever that no one has their back other than their Father in heaven.

No, I worry not for Israel; instead I worry more for the other needy groups that will once again suffer from the disproportional focus and fixation on Israel. Even the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was forced to acknowledge this, as reported recently in the UK’s Independent paper:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said the organisation has a “disproportionate” volume of resolutions against Israel, which he believes has “foiled the ability of the UN to fulfill its role effectively”. Addressing the UN Security Council on Friday, Mr. Ban said: “Over the last decade I have argued that we cannot have a bias against Israel at the UN. Decades of political maneuvering have created a disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel. In many cases, instead of helping the Palestinian issue, this reality has foiled the ability of the UN to fulfill its role effectively.”

In response, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said Mr. Ban “had admitted the clear truth”, adding that the UN’s hypocrisy towards Israel had “broken records over the past decade”. Mr. Danon continued: “During this time the UN passed 223 resolutions condemning Israel, while only eight resolutions condemning the Syrian regime as it has massacred its citizens over the past six years. This is absurd.”

Over six years ago I addressed the terrible consequences to needy groups that do not get the attention they deserve because of the distraction of the so-called Palestinian/Israel crises. I utilized the parable of The Boy Who Called Wolf to illustrate the point. Here is an updated version:

Most are familiar with the famous child’s tale about The Boy Who Cried Wolf. On too many occasions he would claim that he was being endangered by a wolf and fool the well-meaning village folks who came running to his aid. They would be met with the boy giggling at their gullibility. Alas, when his life was really in jeopardy by a wolf and he cried out for help, none came to assist him. He had totally destroyed his credibility and the good-will of his neighbors by his repeated lies.

Today we are witnessing a tragic expression of this lesson on a global scale. And what makes is all the more distressing is that the victims generally are not the perpetrators of the lie; they do not deserve the punishment, as the boy in the fable did.

For too long the United Nations and their many enablers such as Arab nations, the media, European leftist and university professors have thrust the Palestinian case to be the cause célèbre on the international scene. And this is having very serious repercussions for millions of people who suffer all over the world. The Palestinian have cornered the market on world sympathy, and for no good reason. As Robert Fulford from the National Post (Canada) so eloquently wrote in an essay entitled, “Frozen in Time, Addicted to Pity” about the sham of Palestinian refugee status:

Refugees? Canadians (and Americans) know something about refugees. We know Hungarians, we know Vietnamese, we know many others. We admire their energy and their accomplishments. Observing them can be a bracing lesson in human tenacity under adverse circumstances. But that pattern doesn’t cover Palestinian refugees. They are a special case. For many reasons, various populations across the planet are displaced; only the Palestinians cling to their “refugee” status decade after decade. They present themselves as helpless victims of Israeli aggression. They await rescue – as they have been awaiting it for three generations, since Israel was founded in 1948. Members of other history-battered groups choose to live by an urgent ethic: Get up, get going, make a new life. Palestinians have a different approach: Sit down, wait, stay angry till the world provides for you.

The Palestinians are the only people who have their own private section of the UN, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It defines “refugee” as someone who lived in Palestine between June, 1946, and May, 1948, and “lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.” The definition includes all their descendants. Entirely credible numbers don’t exist, but UNRWA believes there were 711,000 such refugees in 1948, and now more than 4.7 million. The enemies of Israel have taught the world to pity the Palestinians and grant them an almost sacred position among the victims of colonialism. They deserve pity, of course, but pity for what their fellow Arabs have done to them.

Over 400,000 Syrians have been killed in the last six years, millions more have been displaced. Children are dying in Venezuela because they cannot get basic medicines thanks to the dysfunctional economic policies of its government. But these and numerous other humanitarian crises do not get the attention they deserve because the United Nations has spent so much time, energy, effort and dollars in its demonization of Israel for the so-called Palestinian crises.

It is heartbreaking that so many lives will continue in wretched suffering and be ignored because the organization that is supposed to speak for them has completely lost all credibility through its continual claim about a crisis that doesn’t exist and did not have to be. And then when real calamity takes place, its voice falls on deaf ears, ignored from all the years it cried wolf, in the name of Palestine, when none existed.

Sadly the American president has became a part of this world body lynch mob. He could have told the world, “You want me to not exercise my veto power for Israel, fine, but on one condition – if you, China and Russia stop vetoing resolutions in this same forum to protect the atrocities committed by Syria.” Obama could have really made a difference in fighting for the oppressed and downtrodden but, alas he did not and became part of the problem that is the UN.

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man

His enemies say he’s on their land

They got him outnumbered about a million to one

He got no place to escape to, no place to run

He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive

He’s criticized and condemned for being alive…

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land

He’s wandered the earth an exiled man

Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn

He’s always on trial for just being born

He’s the neighborhood bully