The UN never ceases to blow our minds although the organization’s barefaced bias shouldn’t surprise any reasonable Israeli.
By JPOST EDITORIALIran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif addresses the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations(photo credit: TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP)
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas vowed to prevent Jews from “defiling Al-Aksa Mosque with their filthy feet.” Was there no-nonsense condemnation of such incitement from the UN? Not a hint thereof.The UN never ceases to blow our minds although the organization’s barefaced bias shouldn’t surprise any reasonable Israeli. Yet somehow we compulsively continue to assume that abundant, incontrovertible evidence before all eyes would finally even the skewed international scales.Invariably, however, we are shown that no absurdity is too absurd for the UN.The UN Security Council for instance managed in one outlandish statement to ignore the in-your-face aggression by Muslims on the Temple Mount while inter alia also expunging all trace of Jewish links to Judaism’s holiest site.It was a fantastic feat of obliterating the truth and propping up the lie.To begin with, there was no mention of the term Temple Mount, thus in effect wiping out 3,000 years of Jewish history (to say nothing of the derivative Christian historiography).All that was mentioned was the subsequent superimposed Arabic Haram al-Sharif (Noble Compound).Repeatedly, that was the one and only appellation used for the site.It was as if Jews were never there, have no connection to the Mount, had invented a bogus narrative about a nonexistent temple and now seek to usurp the rights of Muslims whose sanctuary this was exclusively from time immemorial.All this subscribes to a tee to the outrageous, history- defying contentions blusterously reiterated by Arabs/ Muslims in general and by the Palestinians particularly.
They pose as downtrodden victims denied their minimal religious liberties while at the same time defining these liberties as the right to exclude all others and erase Jewish civilization and beliefs from human chronicles. This is the theology of utter refutation and of unabashed replacement.This is what the Security Council saw fit to bolster at a time in which the entire Mideast is in tatters and its refugees inundate the West.In these explosive and volatile circumstances, the council’s most urgent concern was to affirm that “the members of the Security Council underscore that Muslim worshipers at the Haram al-Sharif must be allowed to worship in peace, free from violence, threats and provocations.”The subtext is clear – Muslim rights “to worship in peace” are being violated and the villain of the piece is Israel. Moreover, the evidence in plain sight of Muslims turning Al-Aksa Mosque into an arsenal of rocks and other projectiles, as well as hoarding pipe bombs and incendiary devices there, is studiously ignored.Why would “peaceful worshipers” stockpile weaponry and in a holy site at that? The intent is surely nothing if not belligerent.Predictably, this goes apparently unnoticed at the Security Council, where fanatical hostility is defined as Muslim “freedom of worship.”The holy sites are annually exploited to ramp up tensions ahead of the High Holy Days when throngs of Jewish worshipers congregate at the Western Wall, directly below the Mount. Habitually attempts are made not only to attack non-Muslim visitors to the Mount (who are forbidden to be seen as even whispering a prayer) but to stone and harass Jewish worshipers at the Wall and disrupt their most sacred services.Israel and Jewish organizations worldwide duly lambasted the Security Council’s shameless declamation of inflammatory Muslim falsifications without an iota of acknowledgment of Jewish attachment to the site, one that preceded all eventual ensuing claims. But all that was water off a duck’s back.The gross misrepresentation of past and present has come to be expected from the UN whenever it addresses itself to Israel. More of the same is likely as the General Assembly’s autumn extravaganza is staged.Preposterous and specious as assorted UN resolutions, documents and declarations unexceptionally tend to be, their detrimental cumulative effect is undeniable. In the very least they implant and inculcate tendentious vocabulary in the minds of the uninitiated. They accentuate and approve prejudices.They affix and appear to quasi-legitimize an agenda of hate – in galling distortion to the original vision of the UN’s mission.