Israel wiped off the map at the UN

Nasser Al-Kidwa

Nasser al-Kidwa, Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority, former UN Ambassador, and nephew of Yasser Arafat, is warmly greeted by UN diplomats and secretariat officials prior to the start of UN Palestinian Solidarity Day. The map with no Israel stands in the background.

Kofi Annan

This clip captures the opening moments of UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. This footage was omitted from the UN webcast which only begins at the conclusion of this episode.

Paul Badji

The UN webcast of the meeting omits the Chairman's opening remarks, including his call for the Minute of Silence. Provided here are the actual verbatim speeches. Compare the cover-up - deliberately filtering out complaints of "Judea-ization" and the calls for "boycotts, divestments, and sanctions" - in the UN press release.

'Zionism is racism' over lunch, as the UN screens three days of a film which pushes a one-state solution, as part of Palestinian Solidarity Day. Says one Arab interviewee in the film, treated sympathetically after describing his racist Jewish neighbors, "All Jews seem to care about is work and money."

Moving right along from the morning's "solemn occasion" and the film screening, the afternoon was a plenary session of the General Assembly on the "Situation in the Middle East" and the "Question of Palestine." Countries such as Yemen, Cuba, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia, lined up to take aim at the only democratic state in the Middle East. Iran described Israel as guilty of "apartheid." Cuba said "genocide." Sudan enjoyed "massacre," "barbaric," and "brutalize." Two full days of this helped accomplish the goal -- directing attention away from their own abysmal human rights records.

Introducing this year's resolutions, Chairman of the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Paul Badji admonished Israel for "provoking" suicide bombing. Without skipping a beat, all resolutions were adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 1, 2005. These six represent the first group of anti-Israel resolutions adopted by the General Assembly this fall. But they are just warming up. Another twelve are expected before December ends. p.s. The single resolution on Sudan was derailed two weeks ago.

The resolutions condemning Israel, and perpetuating the UN apparatus that makes this annual ritual possible, were adopted by substantial majorities. Only the numbers of abstentions in three cases indicated hesitation. With respect to the work of the Committee that organized Palestinian Solidarity Day, and the year-round anti-Israel campaign driven by the Division for Palestinian Rights, the most the European Union could muster was an abstention.

The focus on Israel by the General Assembly and related UN bodies is a year-round affair. It produces multiple reports which convey the same UN-Arab narrative in different ways: the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Hence, fault for the absence of peace between Israel and most Arab states lies first with Israel.

This display is in a public hall at UN Headquarters and is a stopping place for all public tours, including school groups from across the United States. All around it are other displays. They consist only of artwork from various parts of the world, not propaganda on one theme of special interest to the UN secretariat or member states.

The UN Budget reveals some startling facts. In key areas of UN operations only one people is showered with special attention. Everybody else is the "other" – other refugees, other human rights, other political affairs, other information services. The Palestinian vehicle at the UN has infiltrated so many dimensions of UN life because it serves the interests of the majority at the UN for whom freedom, democracy and human rights protection are secondary to non-interference and impregnable domestic jurisdiction. Not to mention that for many of them, the demonization of the Jewish state is also an end in itself.

UN Expansion Plans --- UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People was held in the UN Trusteeship Council Chamber. The film Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel was screened in the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium. The Division for Palestinian Rights is on the 33rd floor of the UN Secretariat Building. All of these rooms are due to be renovated under the UN's 1.9 billion project, 22% of which is to come from American taxpayers. Are the uses of a room relevant to its renovation costs? Congressmen rightly asking about the price-tag include Senator Jeff Sessions, Senator Tom Coburn, Senator Mitch McConnell. See Articles, Documents, Editor's Note

Israel is the number one country subject to UN human rights criticism. In 2004 the UN criticism directed at Israel was more than twice that leveled against its nearest rival, Sudan. The top five countries subject to UN human rights criticism in 2004 were Israel, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and tied for fourth place was the Cote d'Ivoire and the United States of America.

Anne Bayefsky

Time to Say No to UN Hate for the Jewish State
U.S. Deputy UN Ambassador Anne Patterson told the UN's Budget Committee at the end of October that the United States sought the abolition of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and of the Division of Palestinian Rights, as "biased UN programs" whose work is "inimical to...achieving a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." (AB) more