UN 'Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,' November 29, 2005
Israel Wiped Off the Map at the UN

Webcast of November 29, 2005 Solidarity Day Meeting

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Webcast

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The UN broadcasted, via the web, on November 29, 2005 a meeting of the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. The occasion was the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, first sponsored by the UN General Assembly in 1977. The webcast omits the Chair's opening remarks which include a call for a minute of silence honoring, among others, suicide-bombers or the "memory of all those who have given their lives for the cause of the Palestinian people."


The Speeches

  • Introduction to the Meeting of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Paul Badji, Chairman (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE. DELIVERED IN FRENCH.)
  • Paul Badji, Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People
  • Jan Eliasson, President of the General Assembly (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE.)
  • Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE.)
  • Andrey I. Denisov, President of the Security Council
  • Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO statement read by Riyad Mansour
  • Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam, Chairman of the Special Committee to investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories statement read by Mohd Radzi Abdul Rahman
  • Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia statement read by Hamidon Ali
  • Abdullah M. Alsaidi, on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE. DELIVERED IN ARABIC.)
  • Olusegun Obasanjo, President of Nigeria and Chairman of the African Union - statement delivered on behalf of the African Union (read by Amin Bashir Wali)
  • Yahya A. Mahmassani, on behalf of the League of Arab States (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE. DELIVERED IN ARABIC.)
  • Chris Doyle, NGO Representative, Member of the International Coordinating Network on Palestine and Director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE.)
  • Paul Badji, Chairman reading messages from others (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE. DELIVERED IN FRENCH.)
  • Closing remarks, Nasser al-Kidwa, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Palestinian Authority (TRANSCRIPT FROM AUDIO TAPE. DELIVERED IN ARABIC.)


Comment

The webcast, archived and available around the world, includes repeated statements with the same underlying message, namely, that Israel is responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people. Israel is the perpetrator. Palestinians are the victims. Terrorists, who happen to be Palestinian, are random individuals or members of wayward groups who have misused violence as an unfortunate consequence of their plight. There is no suggestion of systematic anti-semitism in Palestinian society, or generations raised to hate and reject their Jewish neighbors with devastating, but foreseeable, results.

There is no mention of the five decades-long policy of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to maintain Palestinian refugees in camps for three generations, rather than applying the UN refugee policy to which all other peoples are entitled. UNRWA practices are the vehicle for the long-standing use of the Palestinian people as human pawns. The policy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, by contrast, is to avoid a lengthy perpetuation of refugee status, and after some time to encourage and facilitate integration, social benefits and citizenship in their host countries. Palestinians are denied citizenship by almost every Arab state, after living in them for more than five decades. The same number of Jewish refugees, forced to flee Arab states in the wake of the creation of Israel, were all welcomed and absorbed by the nascent Jewish state.

Israeli measures taken in self-defense, such as the security fence and the direct targeting of terrorists, are denounced as illegal. The historical context of five successive wars, plus two protracted armed insurgencies, launched against Israel from the moment of its birth, is never provided. The historical rejection by Arabs of the partition of the British Palestine mandate into a Jewish and an Arab state is never discussed.

It is revisionism at its worst. It takes the survivors of the Holocaust and turns them into violent and racist human rights abusers, who will not be allowed to live in peace and security until they meet a long list of UN demands.

The UN serves as a major contributing factor to the perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli conflict by minimizing the responsibilities of the parties to recognize and negotiate with each other. Why come to terms with your neighbor of fifty-six years when the judge is on your side? In the language of today's UN resolutions, the recipe for perpetuating rejection and violence reads: "Reaffirming that the United Nations has a permanent responsibility towards the question of Palestine until the question is resolved in all its aspects in a satisfactory manner in accordance with international legitimacy."

The holding of this unique day in solidarity with only one people involves abundant UN resources, time and effort. It is held in a major UN facility at UN Headquarters, with simultaneous translation into six languages. It spawns press releases, a webcast, bulletins in UN journals and briefing papers, and documents translated into six languages also transmitted globally via the web.

The message sent by the UN speakers on this day was as follows: Israel is engaged in "all kinds of oppression including killings," "the violation of all forms of international law," "ethnic cleansing," "torture," placing "landmines" and "burying nuclear waste" close to civilian populations, "violence, death and suffering inflicted upon the Palestinian people," "terror tactics," "schemes hatched by Israeli extremists concerning Al Quds Sharif and the Al Aqsa mosque," and "the Judea-ization of Jerusalem."

The solution? One NGO representative was invited to speak and he provided this answer: "At this year's UN International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Middle East Peace in Paris, there was a clear emphasis from NGOs on boycotts, divestments and sanctions campaigns."

There were no such UN days of solidarity with the peoples butchered by the millions during the Rwandan genocide, slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands during the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, destroyed by the millions over two decades in Sudan, or with the hundreds of thousands of victims of genocide in Darfur.

"UN Solidarity Day with the Palestinian People" is unique -- an opportunity for those who still fail to recognize Israel to press the case for continued rejection and violent struggle, rather than co-existence with the Jewish state.


The UN Whitewash

The UN Department of Public Information Press Release omits the language of the minute of silence, the details of complaints of "Judea-ization" and the calls for "boycotts, divestments, and sanctions."