all-encompassingly

This article is reprinted with permission from FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East). Visit FLAME’s website, factsandlogic.org, to read every one of their excellent articles debunking common misconceptions about the history and current events of the Middle East. — Admin

From following what’s happening in the United Nations, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that Israel is the source of most of the problems in the world. And that, if Israel were only less “intransigent” and if it would yield the administrated territories of the “West Bank” and Gaza, peace would descend on the Middle East.

What are the facts?

The United Nations seems to be obsessed with Israel. The level of U.N. preoccupation with Israel is totally out of proportion with events in that country and in the Middle East. In the course of the last ten years, the General Assembly has entertained 175 hostile resolutions dealing with Israel and the “Palestinian problem.” During that entire time it did not once criticize any of the Arab countries. Every year the General Assembly goes through the charade of considering the expulsion of Israel from the U.N. In 1985, the General Assembly of the U.N. covered itself with everlasting shame by declaring that Zionism is racism. The Security Council has proposed numerous anti-Israel resolutions during the last three years. All of them would have passed unanimously or with lopsided majorities had it not been for vetoes — most of them by the United States.

Attention of the United Nations was particularly engaged by two incidents in Israel, namely the killing of seven Arab laborers by a demented Israeli solitary gunman, and by the death of 17 Arabs on the Jerusalem Temple Mount. In that incident, a mob of 4,000 Arabs, thrown into a frenzy by their clerics, loosed fusillades of rocks and other missiles on Jewish worshippers gathered for prayers by the Western Wall on the Jewish holiday of Succoth. In both cases, the Security Council dropped all other business, promulgated anti-Israel resolutions and requested that teams of “observers” be sent to Israel, presumably to report on the alleged abuses perpetrated on the “Palestinians” by that country and by its government. One wonders why, regardless of the merits of the anti-Israel accusations, any “observers” at all would be required. Israel, and the territories administered by it, are not some remote region in some outlying area of a dark and unexplored empire. There are more journalists, photographers, television crews, reporters, parliamentary delegations, professional groups, fact finding missions, and human rights activists there than in any other spot on the globe. Never in modern history has there been a spot so microscopically and so meticulously inspected as the small country of Israel. One wonders why a delegation of U.N. observers would be required and what mischievous purposes their observations could possibly serve.

The obsession of the United Nations with Israel and its alleged violations is the more remarkable considering that organization’s total disregard of the unspeakable barbarities of so many other nations in the Middle East. For instance, the Security Council meeting that resolved to send a delegation to Israel to investigate “abuses” was inspired by the PLO whose numberless outrages — including the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, the bombing of tourist buses, old-age homes, synagogues, airports, airliners, and so much more — have never received the slightest attention by the U.N. Nor have the unspeakable human rights abuses and sickening crimes by the Arab states ever been discussed in that body. These crimes, instigated and supported by Arab governments, include the slaughter in 1982 of over 20,000 Syrian citizens in Hama, at the command of Hafez Assad, that country’s president (and our most recent ally!); the poison-gassing of over 5,000 Iraqi Kurdish citizens by Saddam Hussein; over 100,000 Lebanese civilians killed by PLO gunmen and other militias and terrorist groups; Egyptian troops cold-bloodedly killing over 100 rioting police in 1986; the Algerian police indiscriminatingly machine-gunning hundreds of its own citizens in a few days of rioting; the Libyans assassinating untold numbers of their opponents inside the country and outside; hundreds of Iranian pilgrims ruthlessly being gunned down by the Saudis during the pilgrimage to Mecca; the hundreds of thousands being killed in the Sudan in inter-racial massacres, Lebanon’s rape by Syria, and so much more. The U.N. did not concern itself with any one of these.

Among the hypocritical accusers of Israel in the U.N. Council are the French and the Soviets, merchants of death who, intent only on maximizing their profits, have supplied Iraq with the weaponry, the materials and the technology to produce chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Without them, the present situation would not have arisen. These same cynics bitterly denounced Israel for destroying the Iraqi nuclear capability in 1981. Had Israel not done that, Iran would now in all likelihood be an atomic wasteland and no U.S. or U.N. presence in the area would now be possible. And such stalwart democrats and practitioners of human rights as Yemen, Cuba, Zaire, and Malaysia also sit on the Security Council and cynically condemn Israel, the only people in the entire Middle East that have a freely elected government and that contributed to the Western legacy the very concepts of justice and of human rights. Is the U.N. a proper forum to sit in judgement about Israel and about the events in the Middle East? The evidence is clear and the answer is obvious.

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