The UN’s Eternal Hypocrisy on Israel
Opinion: United Nations General Assembly last week passed 7 anti-Israel resolutions on the very day we learned Morocco will normalize ties, one even reaffirmed rights of Palestinian refugees but again ignored Jews expelled from Arab lands
Millions around the world have been transferred to re-education camps, vast territories have been occupied, thousands of civilians have been killed, journalists have been imprisoned and much, much more. But none of these are of interest to the international community. Just Israel.
One of the resolutions reiterates Resolution 194 of the 1948 UN General Assembly, which deals with Arab refugees from Palestine, who later became Palestinians.
The decision is a reminder to the world that every person has the right not to be deported from their homeland, and that every Palestinian refugee has the right to their property.
Really? Tens of millions of Europeans became refugees in the first half of the last century. Tens of millions were expelled from their homeland after World War II, in precisely the same years as the Palestinian Nakba. Who among them received the right of return? Who got their property back?
Of all the Western countries, only Canada and the United States – and Israel of course – voted against the decision. Germany, unfortunately, voted in favor.
This is interesting because among the tens of millions of refugees created in those years, at least 12 million were German-speakers deported after WWII from the Czech Republic, Poland and other countries. They had paid the price for German aggression.
They even set up an organization in Germany to represent them by the name of BdV.
Is there a difference between refugees from Palestine and refugees from Poland or the Czech Republic? No, there is not.
Each group identified with the aggressors, and each paid a price for that, even if they themselves were not part of the war machine.
The difference is that BdV is considered an extreme right-wing organization and even a neo-Nazi one in the past, which even the German government disregards along with its demands for property restitution.
It is clear that if the Germans and tens of millions of others were granted the “right” to return or property restitution, Europe would have found itself in the middle of World War III.
But when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Germany, like all other European countries, automatically supports the Palestinian demand for the “right of return” to their former homes. And according to those who insist on it, this is in fact a demand for the elimination of Israel.
This may not be the intention of Germany or Denmark or France. But when these countries vote over and over again in such a disgraceful and hypocritical way, they are not helping to get the Palestinians to climb down from the tree. Quite the opposite.
There is no chance in the world that the Palestinians will ever drop the demand for the elimination of Israel when it is supported by Israel’s friends in Europe.
It is unclear why Israel has not presented one simple question to Germany: Why do you support the “right of return” when it comes to the Palestinians, but oppose it when it comes to Europe?
And when you keep bringing up the Palestinian Nakba, why the hell do you forget and reject the Jewish Nakba?
The Jewish refugees did not declare war on the Arab countries in they lived. And yet they were expelled or forced to flee, and most of them had their property seized and confiscated.
The working definition of anti-Semitism adopted by many countries including Germany, defines it as, among other things, “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
So yes, Germany is behaving in an anti-Semitic manner and there is no reason not to point this out.
Another of the UN draft resolutions passed last Thursday focused on the Golan Heights, which, according to the majority that voted in its favor, is solely Syrian territory.
There was not a single word about the Syrian civil war that has claimed a massive half a million lives.
There was not a single word about the fact that the residents of the Israeli side of the Golan Heights enjoy peace and tranquility and not a single one lost their life in the war.
There was no need to cheapen this newfound peace with Morocco, and certainly not with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
