Jerusalem attack (7 dead) exposes terror advocates relying on “Israeli crimes” rhetoric disseminated by the United Nations, to justify heinous anti-Jewish violence. Should the UN desist?
The incessant illegality rhetoric, with which United Nations functionaries habitually bombard Israel, must be discontinued. Reports of the Jerusalem terrorist attack this week exposed that its Palestinian advocates were openly using “Israeli crimes” rhetoric to justify this act of barbarism in which innocent worshippers were executed. The murder of seven worshippers was “a natural response to the occupation’s criminal actions”, Palestinian terrorism advocates insisted.
Illegality rhetoric against Israel has actually been fueling murderous terrorism for years. For example, when four worshippers were slaughtered in a Har Nof synagogue in 2014, Islamic Jihad also alleged that the barbaric slaughter was a “natural response” to alleged “crimes” committed by “the occupation” (i.e. Israel).
Given that anti-Israel illegality rhetoric is being openly utilized by terrorist groups to justify slaughter of civilians, the question of whether the United Nations should be disseminating such illegality rhetoric in the first place, becomes a matter of utmost severity. After all, the United Nations’ stated purpose is to maintain, not destroy, international peace.
Contrary to what laymen may have been led to believe, it is inaccurate, un-necessary and unfounded for the UN to allege that there is a single trusted legal authority whose lofty role it is to determine what is and is not legal, in every matter, for the entire world. What is true, instead, is that each country, each “state”, is sovereign over its own territory and actions, and makes its own legal determinations — albeit within a certain spectrum of respectability. But building Jewish communities in the Land of Israel, of all places, clearly falls within that spectrum of respectability; eminent legal authorities have upheld the legality of this elementary life-activity.
Prof. Eugene Rostow, a dean of Yale Law School — one of the most distinguished law faculties in the world – clarified that the right of the Jewish people to settle in Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria was “a right protected by Article 80 of the United Nations Charter” adding that “as an argument of law”, the competing Arab position “cannot be reconciled with the charter of the United Nations”. Note that the UN Charter is the instrument of international law which legally binds essentially all states throughout the world.
Rostow concluded that it was “impossible seriously to contend” that Israeli settlements are illegal. There exist legal professionals who have chosen to lend credence to the opposite theory, the anti-Israel illegality charges that the United Nations is so fond of. But being a sovereign state, Israel was and is fully entitled to rely on the group of authorities which follow Rostow or offer similar logic. Israel is a sovereign state which has determined in reliance on impeccable legal authority that settlements are legal.
International law entitles any sovereign state to do just that. Especially since illegality rhetoric is prompting terrorist operatives to justify slaughtering civilians, even children, discontinuing this form of Israel bashing becomes an immediate moral imperative for the UN.
United Nations staff-members, consider that your medieval ancestors may have felt just as self-righteous as you do now, when they disseminated ritual murder rhetoric targeting the Jewish people some centuries ago. Ostensibly, these ancestral figures were protecting innocent children who were indigenous to Europe. But the true effect of their rhetoric was simply anti-Jewish. So too is the true effect of the settlement illegality rhetoric which United Nations officials have fallen into the habit of hurling at Israel. The UN are urged to confront this unpleasant reality and take themselves firmly in hand.
