“Don’t Shoot the Messenger, Israel,” UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon wrote in the NY Times Sunday, turning very personal his ongoing trash talk with the Jewish State, especially with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ban was deeply hurt when his original comment, “a simple truth,” as he put it, that “history proves that people will always resist occupation,” was received by “twisting my words into a misguided justification for violence.” After all, hadn’t he already agreed that “the stabbings, vehicle ramming and other attacks by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians are reprehensible?”
But how is any of those terrifying acts of blood lust come even close to anyone’s idea of “resisting occupation?” The civilized world, including South Korea, expects “resisting occupation” to feature ambushing enemy soldiers, brazen attacks on police stations, the stuff old WW2 movies are made of. Does anyone recall a resistance flick where the hero knifes pregnant ladies? Slash mothers while their children watch? Drive into 11 civilians waiting for the bus?
“Nothing excuses terrorism. I condemn it categorically,” insists the secretary-general, in which case, how does he distinguish between it and freedom-fighting occupied people? Simple: he makes up a third category, for frustrated occupied people who get the urge to stab mothers.
“Palestinian frustration and grievances are growing under the weight of nearly a half-century of occupation,” warns Ban, disregarding the fact that the occupation followed a 19-year Jordanian occupation in which mentioning a Palestinian State was not something people did openly, and before that a British occupation that stretched 31 years, and an Ottoman occupation going back to the 1500s.
“No one can deny that the everyday reality of occupation provokes anger and despair, which are major drivers of violence and extremism and undermine any hope of a negotiated two-state solution,” Ban states emphatically. Except this is not true. Some of the worst Arab terrorist attacks against Jews took place under the Rabin government, which established the Palestinian Authority, signed a slew of documents ushering in Palestinian independence, and furnished the PA’s police force with guns. Buses were blown up in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, rivers of blood ran in the streets, car bombs and suicide bombers were a regular, almost daily affair. Granted, it all took place before Ban’s term at the UN, but Israelis remember.
The next paragraph is truly silly. Apparently, Ban actually believes that Arab teen girls go after Israeli soldiers with scissors because the Israeli government “approved plans for over 150 new homes in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank,” and “last month, 370 acres in the West Bank were declared ‘state land,’ a status that typically leads to exclusive Israeli settler use.” This while “thousands of Palestinian homes in the West Bank risk demolition” due to Israeli legal obstacles. Risk demolition, mind you. Israel barely manages to demolish the homes of terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands, demolitions that are regularly challenged in court by Israeli left-wing NGOs — so it’s going to send in a bulldozer to take down an Arab home because the owners added an illegal porch? Seriously?
Here’s another gem: Ban writes, “We continue to work with Israel and the Palestinian Authority to rebuild Gaza and prevent another devastating conflict, and to press Palestinians for genuine national reconciliation.” This while Hamas declares openly that the cement being allowed into the Gaza Strip is used to build attack tunnels leading into Israel, this while stocking up on rockets to ignite the next war. And the Palestinian reconciliation of which Ban speaks often ends up with Hamas activists dropping PLO activists off Gaza rooftops.
“Israeli authorities need to unequivocally support the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian institutions,” Ban insists, which “requires significant shifts in policies toward the West Bank and Gaza, while safeguarding Israel’s legitimate security concerns.”