Held on November 7PM CET. Dr. Einat Wilf and Dr. Matthijs de Blois interviewed by Andrew Tucker
UN blind to reality
Following the 7th October attack, from day one, the United Nations showed that it is blind to reality. For example, on the 9th of October2023 a minute of silence was held in the Security Council for the Palestinian victims of this conflict; no such silence was held for the Israeli victims of Hamas terror. UN Women have failed to speak out on behalf of Israeli women who have been captured, raped, mutilated, many of them terribly, terribly mistreated. The Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights came out recently with a statement on behalf of UN experts to say that grave violations are being committed by Israel against the Palestinians, pointing to a genocide in the making. Not only does this ignore Israel’s efforts to protect civilians, no such allegation was made against Hamas, whose own Charter speaks explicitly about destroying Israel and killing Jews.
Palestinian Ecstasy and Amnesia– always the same dynamic from 1947 to the 7th October 2023
As Prof. Shany Mor has noted, the Palestinian attitude is characterized by ecstasy and amnesia: they declare war and they’re ecstatic about their intention to butcher Jews and to destroy Israel for there not to be a Jewish state. But then when they lose, amnesia sets in – there’s no responsibility, and all that emerges is a story of pure victimhood. In the same way, they reject any responsibility for rejecting partition on November 29th 1947. This victimhood narrative says that the UN is responsible to have pass a recommendation, totally forgetting that they said no to the Arab state and the only evil thing that remains is that the UN dared support a Jewish state. According to this narrative the whole Balfour Declaration (1917) and the Mandate for Palestine (1922) were inherently illegitimate because this was creating a foreign entity on Arab land. That is a lie, because the Jews have always been living in the land.
The story of the Land
The state of Israel could have already existed in the 1930s if it were not for Arab violence and the British caving into Arab violence. The Arab refusal to allow a Jewish state has deep theological underpinnings.
The reason that Palestinians don’t have a state, it’s not because of Israeli occupation or Israeli actions. The reason they don’t have a state is that in every juncture from 1937 to the present the Palestinians have been singularly focused on the idea that their most noble duty is to destroy the Jewish state.
The role of the UN
Neither the Security Council nor General Assembly has the power to determine Israel’s borders. The Jewish right to self-determination was already embodied in the original Mandate system and in the Charter of the UN Article 80. The UN is essentially creating the environment that created Hamas through UNRWA, through the demonization of Israel and giving legitimacy to the idea that the Jewish state is illegitimate.
The UNRWA refugee system
The perpetuation of the Palestinian identity as refugees possessing a fictional right of return into sovereign state of Israel is the mechanism by which the Arabs hope to keep the War of 1948 alive. UNRWA is a temporary agency but it has never been closed because the Arabs and the Palestinians themselves ultimately hijacked the agency, making it into a Palestinian organization. They argue that this war is over only when they have all returned to Israel and the Jewish state no longer exists. They do this by registering generations as refugees and teaching generation after generation that they have one singular duty, which is to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea, from the existence of a Jewish state.
And that’s where Hamas comes from.
Education
The only solution is re-education of the Palestinians into a positive vision, away from the destructive cause of “from the river to the sea” towards a constructive vision of peace and living next to the Jewish state rather than dismantling it. We cannot expect too much from the UN, as over the decades it has showed itself not as an impartial Institution, adopting more resolutions against Israel than against the whole rest of the world, with dictatorships like North Korea and China and Iran.
