This Year's U.N. Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

Anne Bayefsky was there and reports that the UN outdid themselves this year. You'd never know from Abbas' statement that there is a peace process going on--maybe that's the point.

Lest the simple message of the organizers who refused to fly the Israeli flag be missed, statements of some meeting participants were more explicit. They glorified violence, complained of the evils of “Judaization,” pressed the message of a racist “apartheid” Jewish state, and called for Israel's economic strangulation (boycotts, divestment, and so on.) Paul Badji is Chairman of the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) which sponsors the annual event, and which was created on the same day as the U.N.'s infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution to implement that message. Badji gushed: “It was 20 years ago that the Palestinians as a people stood up to the occupation, and the world learned a new word — intifada.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a statement through Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the Executive Committee of the PLO. This alleged peace partner accused Israel of “the construction of the apartheid Wall” at the same time as he objected to “judaization measures.” Lost on the PLO representative was the contradiction between alleging Israel practices apartheid on the one hand, and objecting to Jews living in “Arab territory” on the other. (He took no notice of the fact that one-fifth of the population of Israel is Arab with more democratic rights than in any Arab state, while Arab states were rendered Judenrein after the creation of Israel.) The logo of the letterhead of the Palestinian U.N. Mission, upon which his statement [PDF] was officially circulated, has a map claiming all of Israel as “Palestine.”

The representative of “civil society” invited by the U.N. Committee to address the audience was Rev. Chris Ferguson of the World Council of Churches. He could only bring himself to refer to terrorism in quotation marks — “‘terrorizing’ Qassam rocket attacks.” He was given a U.N. platform — webcast around the world — to call upon the international community to “strengthen the global campaign for boycotts, divestment and sanctions…against Israeli…apartheid and oppression,” and to laud the latest NGO “campaign identifying and opposing Israeli policies as violations of the International Covenant Against the Crime of Apartheid.”

During the afternoon of November 29, the General Assembly dedicated yet another session to condemning Israel. PLO representative Abed Rabbo — fresh from the PLO’s Annapolis declaration of peaceful intentions — demanded “the right of more than 4 million Palestine refugees to return to their homes and properties” (thus destroying a Jewish state). He also made a point of analogizing Israeli actions to those of Hitler and apartheid South Africa, making wild accusations about Palestinian “ghettos” and “Bantustans.”

Following the General Assembly meeting, Abed Rabbo, and Paul Badji opened a public exhibit in the entrance hall to U.N. headquarters. The exhibit is billed as celebrating “traditional Palestinian costumes and embroidery” and consists of a series of costumes previously exhibited in various parts of the United States — with one exception. Set in the middle, evidently more attuned to a Palestinian cultural exhibit presented “under the auspices of the U.N. Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in cooperation with the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations” is a depiction of Israel’s security barrier adorned with flowers. The barrier, which has dramatically reduced Palestinian suicide bombings and terrorist attacks since it was erected, is accompanied by this description — “The Return of the Soul” Ceramic painting by Najat El-Khairy, 2007. “Spring flowers adorn the ‘Wall’ with motifs taken from the traditional embroidered Palestinian costumes; the flowers climb and hide its ugliness.”

Evidently the ugliness of Jewish men, women and children blown apart by suicide bombers was of less significance then the aesthetics of a barrier keeping would-be-killers out.

The UN is nothing more than a platform--for those who can muster the votes.

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