UN solidarity with Palestine

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror
29 November 09

In 1977, the UN's General Assembly designated November 29 as "International Solidarity Day for Palestinian People." It was of course no coincidence that the day chosen for this event was the very same day on which the UN had voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.


But this was arguably a rather unfortunate choice: by selecting this historic date, on which the UN endorsed a decision that was rejected by the Arab League and Palestinian representatives, the UN seemed willing to retroactively approve this rejection and the subsequent Arab aggression.


It is worthwhile to recall the straightforward condemnation of the Arab conduct by the first UN Secretary General, Trygve Lie:

The invasion of Palestine by the Arab States was the first armed aggression which the world had seen since the end of the war [i.e. World War II]. The United Nations could not permit such aggression to succeed and at the same time survive as an influential force for peaceful settlement, collective security and meaningful international law."

Even before the partition plan was endorsed by the UN, the Arabs openly threatened war. During a meeting with Jewish Agency representatives David Horowitz and Abba Eban in September 1947, Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha declared:

The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It's likely, Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won't get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it's too late to talk of peaceful solutions."

These few lines illustrate how little today's political discourse reflects the historical reality: Azzam Pasha categorically ruled out any peaceful resolution, openly threatened a war of aggression, and - unrestrained by concerns about "political correctness" - didn't hesitate to frame the conflict in terms of the centuries-old quest for Arab domination.


The threats of the Arab League Secretary were not empty words. During the week after the UN had endorsed the partition plan, Arabs killed more than 60 Jews in Palestine, and by May 15, 1948, more than 1200 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. Jews who lived in Arab countries were also targeted, and a New York Times report in May 1948 described their dire situation. The article also noted that the World Jewish Congress had warned the UN already in January 1948 that "the very survival of the Jewish communities in certain Arab and Moslem countries is in serious danger unless preventative action is taken without delay."


But just three years after Auschwitz had been liberated, these warnings were ignored by the UN and the international community. The Jews were left to fend for themselves - after all, the UN had endorsed their right to set up a state of their own on a tiny piece of land.


Today's political debates about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflect hardly any trace of these events. More than 6000 Jews killed by Arabs in the violence unleashed in the wake of the partition resolution and the subsequent war, some 15,000 wounded and more than 800,000 Jewish refugees from Mideast countries are simply ignored in a political climate that indulges those who relentlessly seek to demonize Israel as evil aggressor, while the Palestinians are cast in the role of the hapless victims.


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