Fruit of the poisoned Big Apple tree
So it was same’ ol – same ol’ last week at Turtle Bay in the Big Apple, that site along the banks of New York City’s East River where the United Nations headquarters is located…writes Ted Lapkin.
Ted Lapkin
The commencement of the 2015 General Assembly session set in train the usual parade of despots, tyrants and mass murderers who dragged that international body to its usual inglorious lows.
Start with the election of Saudi Arabia – that beacon of moral virtue – to the chair of a Human Rights Commission panel that chooses international human rights monitors. Much like putting a problem gambling embezzler in charge of the company payroll.
But the big news was supposed to be a speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who promised to deliver a so-called ‘bombshell’ from the UN. In the end though, his address turned out to be much more of a dud than a detonation.
The 80-year-old Abbas did not resign the Presidency that he’s held for the past 10-years of his elected four-year-term. Nor did he threaten to dissolve the Palestinian Authority and force Israel to resume total governance of the West Bank. And his declaration that the Palestinians would no longer be bound by Oslo was full of caveats and qualifications, making it far less significant in reality than what someone might conclude on the basis of media headlines.
In an op-ed published last Tuesday in the Huffington Post, Abbas proclaimed that the Palestinians would refrain bi-lateral talks with Israel while it was an “occupying power”. The only hope, he averred, was through some sort of a multilateral peace process. In other words he is now seeking salvation from that same international institution whose authority was explicitly rejected by Palestinian Arab leaders in 1948 (see below). The irony would be delicious if the consequences weren’t so tragic.
And of course, this 3,300 word address delivered by Abbas was overflowing with all the usual falsehoods, distortions and omissions designed to serve as political red meat for his Palestinian home audience.
To spare the reader from the necessity of doing their own bottom-feeding through this melange of misinformation, I’ve taken the liberty of juxtaposing his falsehoods against the facts.
| The World According to Mahmoud Abbas | Fact |
| “I call on the Israeli government, before it is too late to cease its use of brutal force to impose its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem” | Since 1967 the Temple Mount compound housing the Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is under the joint custodianship of Jordan and the Islamic Wakf (religious endowment)
Contrast Israel’s fastidious respect for Christian and Muslim religious rights with the desecration of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries when Jerusalem was ruled by Jordan prior to 1967 |
| “Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I ask you to consider the history of the question of Palestine and the relevant United Nations resolutions to realize the obvious truth: that a historic injustice has been inflicted upon a people and a homeland, a people that had lived peacefully in their land and made genuine intellectual, cultural and humanitarian contributions to mankind” | Abbas is asking us to ignore the Palestinian rejection of partition in 1937 and 1947
He wants us to overlook the history of rampant Arab anti-Jewish violence beginning with the 1920 ‘Nebi Musa’ riots, the Hebron pogrom of 1929, the Arab rebellion of 1936-1939 and countless individual acts of terrorism and murder that cost thousands of Jewish lives both before and after Israel’s creation |
| “Our people have placed their hopes on the countries of this organization to help them to gain their freedom, independence and sovereignty”. | Never mind that the Palestinians could have had all this in 1937 or 1947 if they hadn’t rejected compromise outright |
| “We are calling for rightness, justice and peace. While Palestine was partitioned into two states – according to which Israel was established 67 years ago – the second part of that resolution still awaits implementation” | Abbas is singing rather different tune from that heard from the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee in its statement to the UN Secretary General on 6 February 1948:
“The Arab Higher Committee Delegation wishes to stress the following: (a) The Arabs of Palestine will never recognise the validity of the extorted partition recommendations or the authority of the United Nations to make them. (b) The Arabs of Palestine consider that any attempt by the Jews or any power group of powers to establish a Jewish state in Arab territory is an act of aggression which will be resisted in self-defense. (c) It is very unwise and fruitless to ask any commission to proceed to Palestine because not a single Arab will cooperate with the said Commission. body into that established homogeneity” |
| “Continuation of the status quo is completely unacceptable because it means surrender to the logic of the brute force being inflicted by the Israeli government, as it continues its illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank” | The physical ‘footprint’ of legal Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria has not been expended, with all construction being done within existing municipal boundaries.
Some illegal Jewish so-called ‘outposts’ exist in Judea and Samaria that are periodically subjected to demolition orders issued by Israeli courts |
| “We do not respond to the Israeli occupation’s hatred and brutality with the same. Instead, we are working on spreading the culture of peace and coexistence between our people and in our region” | To anyone who buys this absurd claim – I have a bridge over the Sydney Harbour I’d like to sell you |
| Is it not time for the racist annexation wall to be dismantled? | Nope, because it brought to a halt the tsunami of suicide bombings that cost over 1,000 Israeli lives – next question? |
| “Is it not time for the humiliating and degrading checkpoints and barriers set up by the Israeli occupying forces in our land to be removed, for the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip to be lifted?” | Nope, not until terrorism stops and rockets are no longer fired from Gaza – next question? |
| “Is it not the time for the six thousand Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails to see the light of freedom and to live among their families and communities?” | Nope, because many of these prisoners have gallons of innocent blood on their hands – these prisoners include child killers, bomb builders and terrorist commanders who between them have wrought terrible death and destruction – next question? |
| “Is it not the time for the longest occupation in history suffocating our people?” | Sure, once the Palestinians abandon their insistence on making non-starter claims to a ‘right of return’ and once they are accept the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination in a Jewish democratic state. |
| At the same time, and based on our commitment to the principles of international law, the state of Palestine will continue in its efforts to accede to international conventions and organizations, and it will move forward in the defense of its people under occupation through all available legal and peaceful means, including as a High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Those who fear international law and international courts must cease committing all crimes. | It would appear Mr Abbas is overdue for a an intimate date with a mirror; as in ‘mirror, mirror on the wall, who’re the biggest war criminals of them all?’
Answer: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, etc … (At this point I’m sure the reader – like me – is reminded of the amphitheatre scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian) |
