Good Morning Bibi (Enlarged)
Paul Eidelberg
In the wake of the Orwellian Goldstone Report of the UN Human Rights Council, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warns that “Israel’s right to self-defense is under attack.”
Good morning Mr. Prime Minister! Please be advised that Israel’s right to self-defense was under attack by the United Nations while you were Israel’s ambassador to that anti-Semitic organization. Were you asleep while the UN’s General Assembly and Security Council were passing resolution after resolution denouncing Israel for defending itself against the PLO? Let me tell you what happened while you were away or dozing Mr. Van Winkle.
The UN’s official attack on Israel’s right to defend itself began at least as early as 1975 when the General Assembly equated Zionism with “racism.” Here are the facts.
On November 7, 1975, Kurt Waldheim, who had successfully concealed his former Nazi affiliation, was secretary-general of the United Nations.* On that momentous day, the Palestine Liberation Organization, a consortium of terrorists, was given observer status at the UN General Assembly and in other international conferences held under UN auspices.
Three days later, that is, on November 10, 1975—the 37th anniversary of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)—the General Assembly adopted Resolution 3376, establishing a Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the (fictitious) Palestinian People. On that same day, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), which states that “Zionism is Racism.”
The resolution also severely condemned Zionism as a threat to world peace and security and called upon all countries to oppose this “racist and imperialist ideology.” Thus commenced a worldwide campaign to deJudaize and delegitimize Israel. In fact, the PLO had adopted the Arab line that the Jews do not constitute a nation but a religion and therefore are not entitled to statehood.
The resolution was adopted despite strong opposition by Israel's supporters, most notably the United States delegation under the leadership of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Moynihan believed that the resolution would revive anti-Semitism: “A great evil has been loosed upon the world. The abomination of anti-Semitism ... has been given the appearance of international sanction.”
John Bolton, then Assistant U.S Secretary of State for International Operations, went further: “In the UN, words take on a life of their own. To declare as ‘racist’ the historical and cultural underpinnings of a state is tantamount to branding that state an international criminal, for racism is a crime enumerated in the Genocide Convention and numerous other instruments accepted under international law.”
Jeanne J. Kilpatrick, who succeeded Moynihan at the UN, fearfully observed that a racist state has “no rights at all, not even the right to defend itself.” Kilpatrick’s remark anticipated and clarifies the shameless Goldstone Report of September 2009.
Alex Grobman of Hebrew University has pointed out that the UN, by passing Resolution 3379, “maliciously” and “deliberately branded Israel as illegitimate on the same day it recognized the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organization” and thus made Israel “fair game for armed ‘liberation.’”
What did Israel’s government do to counter UN Resolution 3379? And what will it do now to counter the logical consequence of that resolution—the Goldstone Report?
Let me go to the heart of the issue. Why has Israel’s government made it a policy of remaining on the defensive, of suffering the indignities of the United Nations? Why does it remain in this conceptually absurd, this corrupt, this criminal, this shameless, this obviously anti-Semitic organization? Why does it remain in and therefore dignify an organization dominated by cruel and repressive Arab-Islamic and other dictatorship? What good has it served for Israel to have a forum in this ignominious organization whose very name is belied by the anarchy of international politics?
Can you answer his question Bibi? Can you muster the candor and courage to say more than the obvious banality that Israel’s right to self-defense is under attack?
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