Question. Is It ‘Human Nature’ to Kill Jews? - by Jonathan S. Tobin

...On the eve of the day that the international community uses to commemorate the Holocaust, there is something profoundly disturbing about the way Ban and the rest of the world body chose to rationalize the irrational hate that drives the Palestinians to kill Jews. The UN’s treatment of Israel is proof that the indifference to anti-Semitism that allowed the Holocaust to happen is yet with us. If this is “human nature,” it is proof that the vile hate that led the mass slaughter of European Jewry seven decades ago is still alive and well.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
27 January '16..

On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council met to discuss “The Situation in the Middle East.” The situation in question wasn’t a war in Syria that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives or the rise of ISIS. Instead of tackling the difficult problem of how to end that civil war, which has drawn in forces from around the region and created millions of refugees, the UN preferred to devote its time and energy to a more familiar and, therefore, safer topic: Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank. What followed was a dreary and all too familiar debate in which Israeli settlement policies were slammed and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon rationalized Palestinian terror by declaring, “it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as an incubator of hate and extremism.”

Ban’s comments provoked a furious and justified response from Israel. But what is remarkable about a debate that focused almost exclusively on the Israeli presence in the West Bank and gave short shrift to the current Palestinian terror campaign known as the “stabbing intifada,” is that so much of what was said about the policies of the Jewish state were uttered as if the history of the 22 years of efforts to end the conflict had never occurred.

It is a fact that the troubles of the Palestinians are considered uniquely important and worthy of more attention than the greater sufferings of other peoples at the UN. But the corollary to the world body’s obsession with the alleged crimes of Israel is that terrorism committed by the Palestinians is also treated differently.

The question of the disposition of the West Bank is a thorny one and the wisdom of continued building of Jewish homes in the territories is one that has long divided Israelis. Even if we were to set aside the fact that Jews can assert a legal right to live in what is the heart of their ancient homeland that is guaranteed by the League of Nations Mandate, which served as the foundation for international law on the subject, the assumptions behind Ban’s comments are fallacious.

When Ban speaks of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation, he ignores the fact that Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinian Authority statehood and withdrawal from almost all of the West Bank. If the goal of the Palestinians were truly statehood, they would have jumped on the deals put on the table in 2000, 2001, and 2008, all of which would have granted them sovereignty over this territory as well as a share of Jerusalem. Even the Netanyahu government, which is widely derided as intransigent by its critics, offered to withdraw from much of the West Bank and accepted a two-state solution. But Palestinian leaders have never been willing to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn. That’s why all discussion of Palestinian “frustration” is deeply misleading.

Whatever one may think should be the ultimate disposition of the West Bank, the Palestinian refusal to negotiate peace has made it obvious that the widespread belief that the settlements are the obstacles to peace is absurd. Moreover, Israel has already demonstrated what happens when it does what the international community wants and uproots settlements and hands territory to the Palestinians. The withdrawal of every single settler and solider from Gaza in 2005 led to the establishment of a Hamas-run terrorist enclave which effectively functions as an independent Palestinians state in all but name.

Moreover, the recent upsurge in Palestinian wasn’t the “natural” reaction to Palestinian frustration about the failure to bring about a two-state solution that the majority of them continue to oppose. The spark was the lies told by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian leadership about alleged Israeli plans to harm the mosques on the Temple Mount. The driving force since then has been the same spirit of rejectionism that has animated the Palestinian national movement since its inception. Palestinian public opinion continues to view the Jewish presence in any part of the country as unacceptable. Whether Jews are sitting in a café in Tel Aviv or in a West Bank settlement, Palestinians think they deserve death.

The return of the BBC’s political narrative on Israeli construction - by Hadar Sela

...But of course the BBC has amply displayed over time that it has absolutely no intention of providing its audiences with impartial reporting, context, relevant background or alternative views concerning the topic of Israeli construction in locations in which – according to its adopted narrative – Jews should not reside. Instead, it continues to blinker them by limiting the information provided to that which bolsters one politically motivated narrative alone.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
28 January '16..

Visitors to the BBC News website’s Middle East page on the morning of January 27th found two reports – one written and one filmed – ostensibly about the Israeli prime minister’s response to remarks made by the UN Secretary General the previous day.UNSG remarks Bryant filmed

The filmed report (made for BBC television news programmes) appears under the title “Netanyahu: ‘United Nations encouraging terrorism’” and it opens with the BBC’s Nick Bryant telling viewers that:

“It’s Israel’s settlement building that’s particularly angered the UN Secretary General and the government’s latest decision to approve plans for over 150 new homes in the West Bank: moves that most of the international community regards as illegal or illegitimate.”

Viewers would therefore quite reasonably conclude that there has been an official announcement from the Israeli authorities concerning “plans for over 150 new homes” but that is not in fact the case.

(Go to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Kushner - From Israel: A Clown

Arlene Kushner..
13 February '12..

Ben Gurion famously referred to "oom shmoom," which is a derisive reference to the UN that cannot quite be translated. ("Oom" referring to the United Nations and "shmoom" being a nonsense putdown.) Well, attitudes have changed here in Israel since then, but I fall back on this Ben Gurion reference every so often because it remains so fitting at one level.

I bring it up now because Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the UN, visited this region recently, at which time he urged Netanyahu to make "goodwill gestures" to advance peace. On returning to NY this past week, he delivered a talk to the UN Security Council in which he discussed his visit. According to UN radio, as reported by the official Jordanian news agency Petra (Jordan having been intimately involved in recent negotiations), Ban says, "the right moment has come for the peace process in the Middle East."

Say what?

It would be easier to dismiss this with "oom shmoom," if it weren't for the fact that the UN is part of the Quartet. And what Ban also said was that the Fatah-Hamas unity agreement does not conflict with Abbas's negotiations with Israel. This is worrisome, although not unexpected. Anything can be rationalized where there's a will to do so.

IMRA - Re: Use of Phosphorus Shells Against a Civilian Population

www.imra.org.il
02 January '12




The following is the text of a letter from Eshkol Regional Council Chairman Haim Jelin to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon regarding Gaza Strip terrorist organizations' use of phosphorus shells against a civilian population.
January 2, 2012

Mr. Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General
United Nations
Dear Sir:

Re: Complaint regarding Gaza Strip terrorist organizations’ use of phosphorus shells against a civilian population

For ten years now, residents of the Eshkol Regional Council, bordering the Gaza Strip, have absorbed Kassam rocket fire and mortar rounds fired under the auspices of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, and targeting innocent civilians living here since the founding of the State of Israel. The sole interest of the residents is to work their agricultural lands in peace. These lands provide them with their livelihood, their daily bread.

Yesterday, January 1st,2012, at 07:00 AM, two salvos of mortar shells were fired from the territory of the Gaza Strip towards farmers working fields in the Eshkol Regional Council. After the firing, two shells were identified on the ground and had a phosphorus explosive head. As you know, use of phosphorus as munitions directed at civilians is prohibited by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (Geneva, October 1980).

The Israel Defense Forces, charged with protecting the residents of the State of Israel, are criticized and judged due to their being the military of a UN member state. In contrast, Hamas, the “neighborhood bully,” is not subject to international laws, and feels free to use illegal weaponry against an innocent civilian population – without being judged or criticized by any international body. I call upon you to put an end to this hypocrisy! In the western Negev region lives an entire population that suffers the consequences of prolonged regional combat, and attention must be paid to this.

This letter is written to you as an official complaint in the name of 13,000 residents of the Eshkol Regional Council, regarding the firing of phosphorus shells toward a civilian population.

I request of you to receive this complaint as the internationally accepted method of protest, in our democratic and enlightened world, for the purpose of condemning use of illegal weapons and enforcing international rules even on our neighbors to the west.

Sincerely,

Haim Jelin
Chairman, Eshkol Regional Council

Copies:
Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel
Mr. Ehud Barak, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense
Mr. Avigdor Lieberman, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister
Mr. Ron Prosor, Israel Ambassador to the UN

For further details (including photographs), please contact Eshkol Regional Council Spokeswoman Ronit Minaker at 052-4269969

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.
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PA Goldstone commission says Qassams do not violate int'l law

Elder of Ziyon
18 August '10

I just started going through the Palestinian Authority's second response to Goldstone as required by the UN. It is attached to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's second report to the General Assembly on the followup to the Goldstone recommendations.

It will take a while to go through, but this part shows pretty much where the PA is coming from. Practically the entire report is about alleged Israeli abuses of international law, of course, but it is forced to address Qassam rockets:

65...The PIC [Palestinian Independent Investigation Commission] affirms that, should it be acknowledged that the armed resistance groups in Gaza did intentionally target Israeli civilians, then such a practice would undoubtedly represent a violation of international
humanitarian law. The PNA has on many occasions condemned rocket firing and called on armed resistance groups in Gaza to respect international law and to exercise their right to self-defence in a manner that ensures that the Palestinian people maintain their moral high ground and does not harm their national cause and interests....

68. It is, however, important to understand that one of the salient features characterizing the dynamics between the Palestinian armed resistance groups in Gaza and the Government of Israel is their extremely asymmetric nature. The enormous disparity in military capabilities between the two sides is self - evident and need not be repeated. The Palestinian resistance’s capability to
respond to Israel’s full arsenal of weaponry, including fighter airplanes, helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery, as well as substantial ground forces, is limited to sporadic “crude rocket” firing and mortar shelling. Yet it is also imperative to recall that this is a situation of an occupying Power versus an occupied people, who constitute a defenceless civilian population entitled to protection under international law.

69. If and when civilian targets or populations have been affected by such “crude rocket” firing, it was essentially because of the crude nature of the weapon and the inability to control where the fired projectile lands. While this is in no way intended to justify any harm caused to innocent civilians, it cannot be considered a violation of international humanitarian law, per se. Furthermore, each alleged incident of harm to civilian persons or civilian property would have to be investigated on an individual basis, and the Palestinian Independent Commission is not in a position to do so without the cooperation of both the Government of Israel and the armed resistance groups in Gaza.

The PA's position is that the shooting of rockets at populated areas, aimed at towns in which there is no military objective, is not a violation of international law because you cannot prove that Hamas was deliberately aiming at civilians! This is even though Hamas brags about aiming at civilians!

(Read full post)

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Bibi May Have Gotten More than He Bargained for with UN Panel

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
10 August '10

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assented last week to Israeli participation in a United Nations panel investigating the May 31 Gaza flotilla incident, he said that his country had “nothing to hide” and that he had been assured that the group would only review the results of previous investigations — including Israel’s — and that it would not conduct its own inquiry. But at the same time that Netanyahu spoke as though he had gotten the better of his country’s foes at the world body, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave a mandate to the panel that was vague enough to also convince Turkey — whose goal at this point is to brand Israel as the criminal in the affair — that the UN effort serves its interests as well.

Unsurprisingly, one week later, it appears as though the Turks had better cause to be pleased by the UN than does Israel. At a news conference yesterday in New York, the AP reports that Ban denied that the UN panel would refrain from calling its own witnesses about the incident, including Israeli army soldiers who had taken part in the seizure of the Turkish ships that sought to break the blockade of Hamas-run Gaza. Israeli officials had previously said that their participation had been conditional on the promise that their soldiers would not be hauled in front of a UN star chamber. In response to Ban’s backtracking on that promise, Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying that “Israel will not cooperate with and will not take part in any panel that seeks to interrogate Israeli soldiers.”

(Read full post)

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Israel on Trial

P. David Hornik
frontpagemag.com
21 June '10

Israel is trying hard to contain the damage from the Gaza flotilla incident. But it doesn’t seem to be working.

In addition to an announcement on Sunday that all nonmilitary goods can now enter Gaza, the incident is now under no less than three investigations within Israel. In the military sphere, a commission headed by Maj.-Gen. Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser, is investigating the conduct of the army top brass in the affair including Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. The existence of the Eiland Commission is not controversial in Israel. People want to know—to the extent that the military echelon was responsible for the foul-up—why naval commandos were sent inadequately armed into a trap, and almost killed, aboard the Mavi Marmara, and whether faulty intelligence, judgment, tactics, or some combination of those played a part.

Legal dimensions of the affair—like the naval blockade of Gaza and the interdiction of the flotilla in international waters—are being looked into by the Terkel Commission headed by retired Supreme Court judge Yaakov Terkel. Along with two other Israeli jurists it includes two foreign observers, Northern Irish politician David Trimble and former Canadian military judge-advocate-general Ken Watkin.

The Terkel Commission is already intensely controversial both domestically and abroad. In Israel, the Left charges that it doesn’t have enough teeth and will whitewash the political level; the Right says the inclusion of the two foreign observers is a grave capitulation to international pressure. Abroad, it’s charged that Trimble is too friendly toward Israel and that the commission lacks sufficient independence from the government.

Complaints that the Terkel Commission won’t probe the government have led the Israeli state comptroller, Micha Lindenstrauss, to launch yet another investigation focusing on the political echelon’s role in the flotilla incident—both in the decision-making leading up to it and in the alleged defective PR after it. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have already been accused, including from within the government, of deciding on the interdiction exclusively by themselves and failing to consult with other bodies like the cabinet and the National Security Council.

Three separate probes of one incident, then, including one—the Terkel Commission with its two foreign participants—that was set up under intense pressure from the Obama administration to ward off, or so it was believed, an international investigation and get the issue off the international agenda.

(Read full article)

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Backstabbing 101

Anne Bayefsky
foxnews.com
16 June '10

Last week in response to a story by The Weekly Standard's William Kristol, the Obama administration denied it was busy stabbing Israel in the back on the issue of how to investigate the Turkish-backed campaign to break the Gaza naval blockade.

On Tuesday, however, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, and a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, suggested the backstabbing was indeed in high gear.

Mansour was speaking at a press stakeout at U.N. headquarters outside a Security Council session on the situation in the Middle East. He was asked about U.S. approval of a U.N.-sponsored investigation in light of Israel having launched its own investigation on Monday. Mansour responded:

“We support the Secretary General’s decision to proceed with his idea of having an international investigation under his auspices and we know that there is no objection to the effort of the S.G. in this regard inside the Security Council.”

The Secretary-General’s move to discredit the Israeli investigation was confirmed a few minutes later by Robert Serry, U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the Secretary-General’s Personal Representative to the Palestinian Authority. Serry told reporters that the Secretary-General has not dropped the idea of launching his own investigation.

Serry released a statement which reads:

“The Secretary-General...has proposed an international panel, one that is under the aegis of a third party seen as impartial...The Secretary-General has taken note of Israel’s announcement and recognizes that a thorough Israeli investigation is important, and could be consistent with the Secretary-General’s own proposals for an international panel – the two combined would fully meet the international community’s expectation for a credible and impartial investigation. The Secretary-General’s proposal is not incompatible with domestic inquiries, in fact, the two approaches are complementary, so his proposal, accordingly, remains on the table.”

Israel’s new investigative team is unprecedented in light of its inclusion of two international observers on a subject at the heart of the country’s national security and sovereign right of self-defense. The decision to include international observers was immediately subject to internal criticism from some of Israel’s leading international law jurists.

(Read full article)

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Debunking the Gaza Seige Myth

Jacob Shrybman
Huffington Post
03 May '10

This May, thousands of activists on a convoy of ships, one of which is named after the extreme left-wing American activist, Rachel Corrie, killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, plan to sail to the coastal territory in the context of breaking the widely popularized myth of the Gaza siege.

On March 18th, just three days after a man was killed by a Gaza rocket in the Negev, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited the Gaza Strip and told the people of Gaza: "We stand with you." Ban called for an end to the so-called Israeli siege of the terrorist-controlled territory, saying it was causing "unacceptable suffering of human beings."

Without questioning the apparent Gaza suffering, one has to ask what siege Ban is referring to, when, in 2009 the IDF Spokesperson reported that 738,576 tons of humanitarian aid was transferred into the Strip.

The UN claims there is a siege when it has given $200 million to Gaza following a military operation that left 1,300 dead and wounded among a population of less than 1.5 million, and yet has only given $10 million to Haiti after the natural disaster there claimed the lives of an estimated 230,000. Of course, that is without noting that Haitians have not been attacking an innocent nearby civilian population for nine years.

International humanitarian aid has been flowing freely into the Strip for years, and in no way stopped after Operation Cast Lead, as 30,576 aid trucks entered the territory in 2009 while in the same period, 4,883 tons of medical equipment was also transferred to it. This past month during the week of April 11-17th 500 trucks of over 17,000 tons of humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip.

(Read full article)

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A Usurpation of National Sovereignty

Israel fights back against a U.N. power grab.


Peter Berkowitz
National Review Online
10 February '10

Tel Aviv — The controversy sparked by the Sept. 15, 2009, publication of the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, otherwise known as the Goldstone Report, may appear to exclusively concern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, it involves a usurpation of national sovereignty by international law that has implications well beyond Israelis, Palestinians, and their neighborhood.

The latest round in this controversy got underway on January 29, when Israel delivered “Gaza Operation Investigations: An Update” to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The carefully crafted 46-page document affirmed Israel’s unequivocal commitment to the law of armed conflict, and it reported substantial progress in investigating allegations of unlawful conduct against Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and commanders arising from Operation Cast Lead.

Operation Cast Lead took place from Dec. 28, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009. Israel carried out the operation because Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups had launched approximately 12,000 rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip since 2000 against civilian populations in southern Israel. Paradoxically, given that Hamas’s deliberate and premeditated attacks on Israeli civilian populations and its use of fellow Palestinians as human shields were flagrant war crimes, international ire has from the outset swirled around the alleged criminality of Israel’s operation.

(Read full article)
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Forgetting the Two-State Solution

Joseph Klein
FrontPagemag.com
04 December 09

Ever since 1977, the United Nations has sponsored the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” to mark November 29th, the date in 1947 when the UN General Assembly approved its partition resolution. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called November 29th a “day of mourning and a day of grief.” It takes place every year at UN headquarters in New York and at the UN Offices at Geneva and Vienna and elsewhere. This year it was observed on November 30th since the 29th was a Sunday.

In honor of this year’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a special “Message” stating that sixty-two years ago, “the General Assembly, resolution 181, put forth a vision of two States.” He said that the “State of Israel exists” but the “State of Palestine does not.”

I asked the Secretary General’s spokesperson at the press briefing at UN headquarters on that day if Ban Ki-moon has a position on whether the two-state solution should include specific protection of Israel as a Jewish state. After all, the whole purpose of establishing the state of Israel in the first place was to create a Jewish homeland where Jews would no longer be a persecuted minority who were told that they do not belong in the country in which they happened to reside. The international community at the time passed the partition resolution knowing full well that its vision of two states included a Jewish state living side by side with a Palestinian state. But the Arab states rejected the UN partition resolution – the original two-state solution. The Jewish state accepted it.

(Continue article)
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Ban Ki-Moon vs. George W. Bush

FresnoZionism.org
30 November 09

Could he be more wrong?

Palestinian statehood is a “vital” component necessary for regional peace, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said, in a message to mark Monday’s annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

I’ve only recently touched on the UN, so I won’t get off on that again. I do want to mention that the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” is held on November 29 for a reason. In the words of Our United Nations,

In 1977, the General Assembly called for the annual observance of 29 November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (resolution 32/40 B). On that day, in 1947, the Assembly adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine (resolution 181 (II)).

So I suppose this ’solidarity’ is their way of making up for what they must view as the terrible mistake of 1947!

Just two years before, on November 10, 1975, the UN had passed the notorious resolution 3379, which asserted that Zionism was a form of racism. The sponsors of that resolution also must have had a keen sense of the significance of dates, since November 10 was also the day, 37 years before, of Kristallnacht, the day that marked the beginning of the Nazi Final Solution.

Back to Ban Ki-Moon’s remarks. It’s obvious that Palestinian statehood, far from being vital to peace, would be a cause for war.

(Read full article)

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Obama to Israelis: Jerusalem Is a “Settlement”

P.David Hornik
FrontPageMag.com
20 November 09

Asked by Fox News in China what he thought of Israel’s plans to build 900 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood in southeastern Jerusalem, President Obama responded:

“The situation in the Middle East is very difficult, and I’ve said repeatedly and I’ll say again, Israel’s security is a vital national interest to the United States, and we will make sure they are secure. I think that additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel’s security. I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbors. I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous.”

To most Israeli ears the statement is discordant. The avowal of commitment to Israel’s security doesn’t jibe with describing building in Gilo as “dangerously embittering” the Palestinians. Gilo, now a neighborhood of 40,000, was annexed by Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 war as part of the reunification of Jerusalem. Gilo is a fact; ordinary Israelis live in it, and calling them settlers would be laughable.

Not that Obama was breaking new ground in calling a Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood a settlement. Less than two years ago then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of another such neighborhood, Har Homa, that “Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning” and that the United States “doesn’t make a distinction” between settlement activity in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Har Homa, however, only goes back to the 1990s and is a good deal smaller than Gilo. “Gilo” and “settlement” sounds even more jarring.

Nor was Obama, of course, alone in his statement; he was leading the international charge. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokeswoman said “such actions [as building in Gilo] undermine efforts for peace and cast doubt on the viability of the two-state solution.” The British Foreign Office said that “Expanding settlements on occupied land in east Jerusalem makes [a] deal much harder. So this decision on Gilo is wrong and we oppose it.” French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, in Israel for talks, also condemned the building plans.

And back in Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration was “dismayed” and that both parties should avoid actions that could “preempt, or appear to preempt, negotiations.”

Just as the official international reaction was unanimous in opposing the building, the internal Israeli reaction was unanimous in supporting it—and included leading figures from both the government and the opposition.

(Continue reading...)

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Celebrating 60 years of perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem:

World leaders pay tribute to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency

Dr. Aaron Lerner

IMRA

18 September 09

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: The international community typically aids in
solving refugee problems on a humanitarian basis by assisting in absorbing the refugees in host countries. But the welfare of Palestinian refugees and their progeny of several generations has taken second place to their role as pawns in the ongoing struggle against the Zionist identity (aka Jewish state, aka Israel).

And that's where UNRWA comes in, helping to feed, cloth, educate, etc. these political pawns (with a payment system designed to encourage one of the highest birth rates in the world to help increase the number of Palestinian pawns) .

From an institutional standpoint its a win-win situation. After all, if the refugees, their children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren were formally absorbed then the folks making a career working for UNRWA would be unemployed.. ]


UNRWA
Press Release
UNRWA, New York
18 Sept 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EMBARGOED UNTIL 14h30 GMT / 17h30 Jerusalem time

World leaders pay tribute
To the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
On its sixtieth anniversary

United Nations, 18 September 2009: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, has announced a week-long series of events beginning in New York next week to mark the 60th anniversary of its creation. These include the unveiling of a commemorative banner that will adorn the façade of the iconic UN General Assembly building by the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Deputy Secretary General, Asha-Rose Migiro.

The centrepiece of the week is a Ministerial Level Event on September 24 at which governments will pledge support for UNRWA and pay tribute to six decades of achievement and service to the world's largest and longest standing refugee population and to the Palestine refugees themselves.

In addition, there will be academic conferences at Columbia University and the Princeton Club on UNRWA's humanitarian role in current peace efforts and an assessment of the Agency's contribution to human capital in the Middle East.

The Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, commended UNRWA as a "symbol of the international community's determination to end the state of limbo the Palestine refugees endure", and praised the Agency's staff for its "dedication and courage". He is expected to warn of "painful" cuts in UNRWA services and call on the General Assembly to "look again" at its responsibilities and put the Agency on a firm financial foundation.

Looking forward to the High Level Event, UNRWA Commissioner-General, Karen AbuZayd said, "This is an occasion for reflection on why after sixty years of exile and dispossession, millions of Palestine refugees remains stateless. With increasing talk about an emerging peace deal, let us all recommit ourselves to finding a peaceful solution in which the tragic situation of the refugees will be resolved". "This week is also an opportunity for UNRWA to tell the world about its achievements. The war in
Gaza and our continued presence side by side with the people there may have raised some headlines. During this coming week we want to remind the world of the less-publicised work we do day in and day out for a refugee population larger than the populations of over a third of the UN's member states," said AbuZayd. "That is UNRWA's lasting contribution to peace".

UNRWA has published a commemorative book in which nearly one hundred statesmen and women pay tribute to its work. President Mahmoud Abbas praises the Agency for its role as a "stabilizing force" and commends UNRWA for "ameliorating the plight of the Palestine refugees by giving them "protection, hope and a sense of human dignity". The US Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton, gives her support to the Agency, which has been confronting "difficult and challenging circumstances", working "tirelessly to ensure the dignity and human development of those they serve". Her
Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan says, "We owe so much to UNRWA. Their selflessness and perseverance in the face of indescribable adversity have kept Palestine refugees alive for sixty years: healing their wounds, sustaining their bodies, nourishing their minds and giving them hope in their darkest hours".

UNRWA provides education to half a million children in approximately 650 schools across the Middle East and maintains 138 health centres in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In addition, it runs extensive relief, social services and microfinance programmes in the region.
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