Monday, November 01, 2010
Elder of Ziyon
They nicely gave a list of email addresses to send their letter to.
So, I used their list and sent a letter to the same UN officials, saying my opinion. You might want to modify my letter and do the same.
To: inquiries@un.org
CC: f.grandi@unrwa.org; c.gunness@unrwa.org; s.mshasha@unrwa.org; j.ging@unrwa.org; r.cook@unrwa.org; r.hearn@unrwa.org; b.shenstone@unrwa.org; a.whitley@unrwa.org; l.takkenberg@unrwa.org; maher.nasser@unvienna.org
His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
The Secretary General of the United Nations
Your Excellency,
I was gratified to read the words of Andrew Whitley, where he spoke - for once - a basic truth: that the vast majority of the descendants of Arabs who fled Palestine will never return.
It is not a kindness to keep millions of people in misery, living under the false hope of "returning" to a country that most have never seen. Yet that is what UNRWA is doing by perpetuating their status as "refugees" - the only people in the world to be defined as such when it is only their ancestors who truly had that legal status.
It was disheartening that UNRWA immediately distanced itself from Whitley's comments, thus ensuring the lengthening of the misery and stateless status of millions of people.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child says that every child has the right to a nationality, and that "States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights." Yet the UNRWA's unique definition of the descendants of refugees as having refugee status themselves has given the green light for Arab nations to purposefully keep Palestinian Arabs in perpetual limbo. They argue that this is done to ensure the Palestinian Arabs' "unity" - disingenuously claiming that they are doing it for their own good.
Yet when are human rights so cavalierly dismissed on such scale? Why can't individual Arabs of Palestinian descent be given the choice to become citizens of their host countries, a right given by to any other Arab?
The only way to truly solve the problem of the Palestinian Arabs is to resettle the vast majority of them in their host Arab countries. This simple truth has been known for generations, and even UNRWA did some work in the 1950s to solve the problem in that way. Yet Arab intransigence, and the UN's weakness, did not force Arab nations to accept their so-called "guests" as millions of other refugees from the 1940s integrated into their respective host countries.
UNRWA's position, rather than helping the Arabs of Palestinian descent, is designed to keep the problem festering for generations to come. The Palestinian Authority has shown no interest in naturalizing millions of additional Arabs in any potential state. And most Arab states fight tooth and nail to keep the "refugee" issue alive.
Andrew Whitley made a small contribution to sanity by speaking the truth. His words should not be distanced; they should be embraced - if the UN really wants to solve this so-called "refugee" problem. Otherwise, by pretending that these millions of humans will one day go to homes that no longer exist, the UN is simply part of the problem - one that is growing daily.
Sincerely,
[name]
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