Israeli Envoy Urges UN to Take Honest Look at Middle East and Dispel "Myths" / Ron Prosor

25 April 2012
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, has told the UN Security Council that the time had come “to sweep out the cobwebs of old illusions and plant the seeds for a truly open debate on the Middle East.”

Speaking at a debate on the situation in the Middle East, the Israeli envoy took the world body to UN task for losing “any sense of proportion.” While thousands were being killed in Syria and other Arab countries, “this debate again repeatedly is focusing on the legitimate actions of the government of the only democracy in the Middle East,” Prosor said. He called on the members to take an honest look at the region and its history and said certain “myths” about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had become “a permanent hindrance” to the discussion at the United Nations.

Prosor said other conflicts such as Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Bahrain had nothing to do with Israel, and resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “won’t stop the persecution of minorities across the region, end the subjugation of women, or heal the sectarian divides. Obsessing over Israel has not stopped Assad’s tanks from flattening entire communities…has not stopped the Iranian regime’s centrifuges from spinning.” He also refuted the myth of a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip: “There is not a single civilian good that cannot enter Gaza today. Yet, as aid flows into the area, missiles fly out. This is the crisis in Gaza.” He added: “The Security Council has not condemned a single rocket attack from Gaza. History’s lessons are clear: today’s silence is tomorrow’s tragedy.”

Prosor then addressed the issue of settlements, which many at the UN regard as the main obstacle to peace. He refuted this idea by citing Gaza, where all Israeli settlements had been uprooted, but which had become an anti-Israel terrorist mini-state. The ambassador said the real obstacle to peace was the Palestinian ‘claim of return’, which was tantamount to denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. “You will never hear Palestinian leaders say ‘two states for two peoples’… the Palestinian leadership has never, ever said publicly that they will give up the so-called ‘claim of return’ – neither to the Palestinian people, nor to the Arab World, nor to the international community, or to anyone else,” said Prosor.

As to the myth being perpetuated in the Islamic Middle East that Israel was “Judaizing Jerusalem”, he said that the “accusations come about 3,000 years too late. It’s like accusing the NBA of Americanizing basketball.”

UN silent about Jewish refugees from Arab lands

Prosor also raised the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands: “In all of the pages that the UN has written about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in all of its reports and fact-finding commissions, and in all of the hours dedicated to debate about the Middle East, there is one great untold story. Or – to be more specific – there are more than 850,000 untold stories...

The Israeli diplomat explained: “The pages that the UN has written about the Palestinian refugees could fill up soccer stadiums, but not a drop of ink has been spilled about the Jewish refugees. Out of over 1,088 UN resolutions on the Middle East, you will not find a single syllable regarding the displacement of Jewish refugees. There have been more than 172 resolutions exclusively devoted to Palestinian refugees, but not one dedicated to Jewish refugees. The Palestinian refugees have their own UN agency, their own information program, and their own department within the United Nations. None exist for the Jewish refugees. The word ‘double-standard’ does not even begin to describe this gap." He said that "the time has come for the UN to end its complicity in trying to erase the stories of 850,000 people from history.”

Prosor also dismissed out of hand “the myth that peace can somehow be achieved between Israelis and Palestinians by bypassing direct negotiations,” declaring: “History has shown that peace and negotiations are inseparable.”


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