United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appears to be retracting his condemnation on Saturday of last week’s kidnapping of three Israeli teens by Arab terrorists.
In his statement at the time, Ban had spoken of his “deep concern over the trend towards violence on the ground and its attendant loss of life, including today of a child in Gaza as a result of a recent Israeli air strike.” The reference to an IAF bombing that following four missiles fired from Gaza at Israeli civilian population centers, ended with Ban’s plea that Israel and Gaza terrorists both “exercise restraint and lend urgent support for the release and safe return of the three youths.”
Thus it makes no sense that Ban’s spokesperson would follow such a statement on Tuesday night by telling journalists the U.N. has “no concrete evidence” that 19 year old Eyal Yifrach, and 16 year old Naftali Frenkel and Gilad Sha’ar were “actually” kidnapped by terrorists last Thursday as they hitchhiked home for the Sabbath from Gush Etzion.
Israeli public radio quoted Farhan Haq, the spokesperson, as saying the United Nations also does not have an independent investigative unit that could even confirm the incident.
Perhaps, however, Haq’s statement had something to do with a letter sent to the United Nations by Yisrael Beytenu MK Orly Levi-Abekasis.
“Last Thursday evening, June 12, 2014, three Israeli youths were abducted, two of them only 16 years old,” the MK wrote. “The kidnapping highlights, among other things, the breaking of all humanitarian boundaries and is a blatant violation of the rights of Israeli children to live their lives safely and without fearing for their lives.”
Since the Palestinian Authority unity government is now a member of the U.N. International Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC), which states “member states shall take all appropriate measures at the national level … in order to prevent the abduction, sale or trafficking of children for any purpose or in any form,” – and since the PUG has been celebrating the kidnapping on its television programs and its population has been passing out sweets in the street to encourage children to perpetrate similar acts in the future – this places the U.N. in an awkward position.
“The CRC provides that ‘member states must undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law relating to the child, applying them in situations of armed conflict,” the MK pointed out in the letter.
Since Ban had already acknowledged his awareness of the teens’ abduction last Saturday, his spokesperson appears to now be doing his best to help his boss climb down from the tree. They may even be trying to pretend the incident may never have happened – because if it did, what action will have to be taken against the United Nation’s newest non-sovereign member?