The world sends a message: Israel should just accept Jews being murdered

From Times of Israel:

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday said Israel used excessive force in the counter-terror operation in Jenin earlier this week and blamed Israel for the violence in the West Bank city.

During a press briefing at UN Headquarters in New York City, Guterres said he had been “deeply disturbed” by news of the Jenin operation and “strongly condemns all acts of violence against civilians.”

Asked if his condemnation applied to both sides of the conflict, Guterres said, “It applies to all use of excessive force and obviously in this situation there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces.”

“Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in a crowded refugee camp were the worst violence in the West Bank in many years, with a significant impact on civilians,” Guterres said, blaming Israel for disruptions to water and electricity services, and blocking people from accessing medical care, a charge that Israel denied.

“I once again call on Israel to abide by its obligations under international law, including the duty to exercise restraint and use only proportional force,” Guterres said. “The use of airstrikes is inconsistent with the conduct of law enforcement operations.”

“I understand Israel’s legitimate concerns with its security but escalation is not the answer,” he added. “It simply bolsters radicalization and leads to a deepening cycle of violence and bloodshed.”

The article goes on to quote other UN officials also claiming that the Jenin operation was excessive and disproportionate.

Guterres is the least anti-Israel UN Secretary General in many decades.  But his statement reveals the thinking of much of the Western world, even from Israel's putative allies. When they frame their criticisms in terms of proportionality, they are saying that Israel should simply accept that terrorists will kill Jews every few days, and only use token methods to try to stop them.

Jenin's camp had turned into a locus for terror. The PA didn't do anything to stop that from happening. The Jenin Brigades have been building a Gaza-style military center in the midst of a civilian area - just like Gaza. The longer Israel would wait, the more difficult the inevitable counter-terror operation would become, and the more it would affect civilians. 

The IDF managed to destroy critical terror infrastructure, something that could not easily be done with only ground troops. The operation took months to plan and clearly the Israeli intelligence on targeting crucial infrastructure was excellent. The additional force and airpower used reduced the number of casualties compared to what a ground-only operation would have done. And every single Palestinian killed was an armed militant - a valid military target.

In other words, this operation was successful by every metric, including proportionality.  And while the IDF cannot stop all "lone wolf" operations, it can stop much bigger attacks that were being planned.

But Guterres and much of the Western world, outside of military analysts, simply do not understand the facts. They don't see that the increased firepower is necessary because of the increased capabilities of the terrorists. And they cling to how they pretend things are, not the reality on the ground.

Which brings up another point from another UN official:

On Tuesday, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk decried the cycle of violence in Israel and the West Bank... Turk said the scale of the Jenin operation, including the use of repeated airstrikes, along with the destruction of property, raised serious issues regarding international human rights norms and standards.

Some of the methods and weapons used “are more generally associated with the conduct of hostilities in armed conflict, rather than law enforcement,” he said.

“The use of airstrikes is inconsistent with rules applicable to the conduct of law enforcement operations. In a context of occupation, the deaths resulting from such airstrikes may also amount to willful killings,” he said.

Turk is saying that as an occupier, Israel is only legally allowed to do "law enforcement" and not  treat this as an armed conflict.

He has it exactly backwards. Israel doesn't occupy Jenin - if it did, then the terrorists there would never have been able to build such an extensive infrastructure.  Jenin is not under Israeli control, and it is clearly not under Palestinian Authority control - it is under Iranian control by proxy. The terrorists are not "criminals." Criminals don't walk around openly with M-16s. 

If Israel would wait longer, Jenin would become another Gaza, and the steps necessary to protect Israeli lives would be much harsher. If these UN officials really cared about human rights, they would want terror groups combatted earlier rather than wait until it is too late. 

Israel's actions are the only way to minimize civilian casualties (outside of really re-occupying much of Area A.) People whose very jobs are to uphold human rights should understand these basic facts - and when they are so ignorant of the realities on the ground, they shouldn't say anything until they learn the entire story. 

(That being said, Israel once again did not do a good job explaining this operation.)

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Yair Lapid's excellent letter to the UN Secretary General points out the hypocrisy of the UN

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid wrote an excellent letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in response to the statements by one of the members of the Commission of Inquiry, Miloon Kothari, that were antisemitic, claiming that the "Jewish lobby" controlled social media.

Significantly, Lapid's letter does not only call out the antisemitism of that statement. It also points out that Kothari's suggestion that Israel does not belong in the United Nations altogether is also an example of antisemitism - according to the words of Antonio Guterres himself!

But more than that, he points out that the commission itself was biased from the start, and its reaction to this episode only solidifies how biased it is.

As is often the case, the Prime Minister's Office stupidly did not release the letter in a way that is could be easily copied and pasted - it only released a photograph of the letter. This is simply unforgivable. The basics of public relations are ignored and only people who make a great effort to view the letter and quote it can do so.

So I am reproducing it here.

Your Excellency,

I am writing to you to demand the immediate removal of all three members of the COI tasked with investigating Israel, and the disbanding of the Commission. The COI has been fundamentally tainted by the publicly expressed prejudices of its leadership, who do not meet the basic standards of neutrality, independence and impartiality required by the United Nations.

In a recent interview (July 25th), one of the commissioners, Mr. Miloon Kothari, made several outrageous comments, including some which are clearly antisemitic.

During the interview, Mr. Kothari said, “We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by- whether it is the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs, a lot of money is being thrown in to try to discredit us.” He further questioned Israel’s right to exist as an equal member of the community of nations, in an unacceptable and cynical attempt to discredit the very legitimacy of the one and only Jewish state. He stated, “I would go as far as to raise the question as why they are even a member of the United Nations.”

These antisemitic remarks are a stain on the entire United Nations and are not befitting of a person with such a position of responsibility. As such, they were firmly condemned by representatives of the United States, France, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria, the European Union and others.

Instead of taking a moral stance and repudiating these comments, Ms. Navi Pillay, who chairs the COI, chose to defend and excuse them, in a public letter sent to the President of the Human Rights Council on July 28th. She doubled down on the Commission’s support for Mr. Kothari’s comments. Pillay’s claim that the comments were taken out of context are false and were even rejected by the President of the UN Human Rights Council. I urge you to listen to Mr. Kothari’s interview and judge for yourself.

I recall your principled comments at a New York conference in 2017, that “a modern form of antisemitism is the denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist.” Furthermore, you pledged to take a stand “in the front line of the struggle against antisemitism, and to make sure the United Nations is able to take all possible actions for antisemitism to be condemned, and if possible, eradicated from the face of the earth.” You stressed that "Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules."

Excellency, I call on you today to honor your word in this egregious case, to set the record straight. This cannot stand. Slurs about a “Jewish lobby” that acts to “control” the media, are reminiscent of the darkest days of modern history.

The fundamentally flawed nature of the COI has been widely discussed, and a group of 22 nations, led by the United States, issued a joint statement during the June HRC session expressing their deep concern about this. This latest shameful episode is a further example of its flawed and biased nature.

The fight against antisemitism cannot be waged with words alone, it requires action. This is the time for action; it is time to disband the Commission. From Mr. Kothari’s outrageous slurs to Ms. Pillay’s defense of the indefensible, this Commission does not just endorse antisemitism — it fuels it.

I therefore ask you to take all necessary measures to bring about the immediate resignation of Ms. Pillay and the other commissioners, and the disbanding of the Commission.

Sincerely,

Yair Lapid

I cannot find the full text of Antonio Gutteres' 2017 speech to the World Jewish Congress where he said  “a modern form of antisemitism is the denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist.” Arguably, the more important statement was where he said "Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules." This commission, by its very existence and the fact that it is the only open-ended commission in UN history, violates that rule and is prima facie evidence of the UN's inherent antisemitism. 

Gutteres has also said, “You can be absolutely sure, as secretary-general of the United Nations, I will be in the front line of the struggle against antisemitism, and to make sure the United Nations is able to to take all possible actions for antisemitism to be condemned, and if possible, eradicated from the face of the earth.”

It is past time to turn these words into action.

If the fight against antisemitism is to have any meaning at all, this commission of inquiry must be disbanded. But there is no procedural method to accomplish that - antisemitism is baked into the UN and in its rules allowing something like this to begin with. All we have left is to expose the hypocrisy of a commission that is supposedly meant to advance human rights when the UN's leader has said, explicitly, that "Antisemitism threatens all people’s human rights. It is a menace to democratic values, to social peace and stability. "

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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