How 'The Collective Voice of the Muslim World' Weaponizes the UN against Israel
OPEC and the OIC are infused with nearly incalculable wealth and most member states of the OIC have found themselves upbraided for questionable ethics.Fisking Mira Fox at the Forward on Jenin
One critic suggested: "If the OIC Summiteers are serious about the burning issues of justice, freedom and good governance, then they should schedule a special debate on the Transparency International's (TI) 2003 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) which ranked 38 of the 57 OIC member nations in its latest chart of the corruption levels of 133 countries... [it] is dismal reading for OIC as it is an overall indictment of the failures of the OIC countries to grapple with the problem of corruption..."
The UN itself is certainly not above reproach in the corruption department, as evidenced, among other cases, by the "Oil-for-Food Program;" the extensive history of "food for sex" with children by "peacekeepers" who enjoy immunity from prosecution; or the trial of Chinese executive Julia Wang, who attempted to purchase an influential UN post.
One may wonder why Nicaragua, not an Islamic country, and with significant problems on its own home front, would trouble itself with submitting the motion. A cursory investigation reveals some significant motivation: "With the majority vote of the Sandinista Caucus, the National Assembly today approved the Loan Agreement signed between the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and the Republic of Nicaragua... The project, which has an estimated investment of 23 million dollars, of which the OPEC Fund will finance 20.5 million..."
The OIC even attempted to co-opt UN forces as a pretext for Islamic military support of Lebanon's offensive against Israel.
Returning to the pre-1967 lines -- simply the armistice lines from 1949 where fighting had happened to stop -- is nothing short of suicide for Israel; it would be virtually indefensible, and the UN and all of its sponsors are well aware of that.
It would seem... that protecting freedom of religion, outside of Islamic fundamentalism, is not of any particular concern to the OIC or what now stands mostly as its legitimizing but rapidly crumbling front, the UN. The collaboration between the OIC and UN is simply a pretext to twist international law -- and public opinion -- to their own purposes, whether they are promoting themselves or delegitimizing the State of Israel.
I wrote a chapter in my book on the Jenin “Massacre” as the supreme example of Lethal Journalism turning into Own-Goal Journalism with Western demonstrators, at the news of invented Israeli massacres, cheering on Jihadi suicide terrorists who would soon attack them. Now, over two decades later, a journalist writing in the (Jewish) Forward presents a remarkably twisted account of what happened then in which she channels the Palestinian libels, in order to characterize what is happening now in Jenin.
When I first read the words of the apocalyptic Saudi theologian in 2001 about the intifada
it is the Zionist’s duty to fight for the opposing side
I thought, how ridiculous. What Jew, much less Zionist, would fight for the insane hatreds of apocalyptic Jihadis with their ambitions to conquer the world and their weapon of suicide terror? Well, here we are in 2023. And Jewish Own-goal Journalism is thriving at the Forward. (Don’t they have any fact-checkers?)
A controversial documentary upended the narrative on Jenin 20 years ago. Has anything changed since?
Last week’s violent killings in Israel and the West Bank echo events from decades ago
Two decades ago, during the Second Intifada, Israeli forces raided the Jenin refugee camp. In the aftermath of the 10-day battle, Israel blockaded the camp for days, forbidding medical teams, journalists and a U.N. fact-finding mission from entering. But Muhammad Bakri, an Arab-Israeli actor, snuck into the camp with a camera, interviewing numerous residents.
Bakri did not slip into the camp during the fighting, but came (weeks) after to interview Palestinians (only). In the opening footage he dates the end of filming around June 23, 2002. Anyone who has actually seen the film would know these interviews were not during the fighting.
The resulting film, Jenin, Jenin, which Bakri released shortly afterward,
If several months later is shortly afterwards…
told the Palestinian side of what West Bank residents refer to as the Jenin massacre, painting a very different story — with a much higher civilian death toll — than the version from the Israeli government.
This formulation is strange and, as will be seen below, disinformative. The Western media, with the help of Human Rights NGOs, had been circulating the Palestinian claims of massacre for weeks. The Israeli narrative took time to take shape, and was widely ignored even after the evidence came to light. Also note the post-modern take: two versions, two stories, as if de facto, the evidence of honesty in the narratives were irrelevant.
And yet, the most outstanding trait of Bakri’s film was the extensive, consistent, pervasive, dishonesty of the “witnesses,” from the old man whom Israeli’s helped but claimed they shot at him in cold blood, to the head of the hospital who claimed the israelis shelled his hospital and denied them deliveries of food and medical supplies. All of this was refuted by subsequent documentaries including Pierre Rehov’s The Road to Jenin, and Martin Himmel’s Jenin: Massacring the Truth.
