Guy Bechor: Israel must use UN as an offensive tool
On the fifth year of the Middle Eastern destruction, which is going to last for decades, it's time to determine that the United Nations has become irrelevant here, except in regards to one country, which is the last remnant of the old regional order – Israel.Fear and defiance in Paris, 6 months after kosher market attack
Can the UN do anything in Syria? In Iraq? In Yemen? In Saudi Arabia? In Egypt? In Libya? That's why it focuses on Israel.
It gives this organization's institutions a feeling that they have some advantage, that they are useful. The larger the failure in the region, the more the obsession towards Israel will grow, to the point of a farce. The more the Arab regimes fall apart, their attempt to divert the attention towards us becomes more desperate.
Israel is defending itself – at the grotesque "Human Rights" Council, which is controlled by dictators, at the delusional UNESCO and at the Security Council, where some members don't even recognize Israel. So it might be time to change direction, to turn the regional void into something which could assist us. It's time to use the UN as an offensive tool, not just as a defensive tool. It's time to move the warfare into enemy territory.
From now on, the UN institutions should be flooded with complaints, reports and information about the destruction taking place around us. Every day, a complaint, a report to the media, a resolution in the different institutions. The quality will create the quantity. Even if it isn't accepted, the conscious effect will eventually become fixated. We should embarrass them, just like they seek to embarrass us.
Every day, we should file a report about the Mahmoud Abbas gang which is carrying out mass arrests, including torture, which is persecuting minorities, where UN funds have been disappearing for years, which is responsible for racist incitement against Israel on a daily basis.
On her way home from food shopping, Mirelle Bensason pauses to rearrange wilted wreaths and posters hanging on the perimeter fence that police set up around the kosher supermarket where an Islamist gunned down four Jewish shoppers six months ago.14 French Islamists sentenced for targeting kosher shops
Bensason, who does not keep strictly kosher, is not a Hyper Cacher regular, but sees the continued flow of customers into the shop as proof of the Jewish community’s resilience.
Hyper Cacher reopened in March, about two months after Amedy Coulibaly entered the chain’s Port de Vincennes location and took its patrons hostage. Since it reopened, the store is guarded during its hours of operation by police officers toting machine guns.
“I take care of the commemorations on this fence to remember the victims and my pain, our pain,” said Bensason, a blue-eyed grandmother of four who was born in Morocco and now lives on the eastern edge of Paris, not far from Hyper Cacher. “But we’re not afraid to come shopping here. We refuse to be cowed by our enemies. Life has not changed much, except for the pain that comes with loss.”
A Paris court on Friday jailed 14 Islamists for planning jihadist attacks on French Jews and other targets.
The Correctional Tribunal of Paris sentenced 39-year-old Mohamed Amchalane, the leader of the banned terrorist group Forsane Alizza, to nine years in prison, Le Figaro reported.
He and 13 of his accomplices, all members of the group, were convicted of “participating in a group formed with a view to preparing terrorist acts.”
The accomplices received lighter punishments of varying severity, ranging from a suspended sentence of one year to six years in prison, Le Figaro reported.
Among the group’s alleged targets were five Jewish supermarkets of the Hyper Cacher chain, the news website ouest-france.fr reported, and several other Jewish businesses. A Hyper Cacher market in the Paris area was the scene of January’s deadly terrorist siege, in which four French Jews were murdered.