US envoy to the UN Samantha Power on Monday night told a Model UN group at a school in Even Yehuda near Tel Aviv that the world body is biased against Israel. She gave as an example the plight of the ZAKA volunteer organization which has been trying to join the UN since 2013 and received rejections year after year “simply because ZAKA is an Israeli organization.” (In late January 2016, ZAKA finally received its official consultative status at the UN, following a four-year struggle for recognition.)
“Bias has extended well beyond Israel as a country, Israel as an idea,” Power said, referring in particular to the UN Human Rights Council. “Israel is just not treated like other countries,” she said.
She explained: “When we see bias, injustice or the continuation of strife within the United Nations, it is not because the UN created all of this, it is because the UN gathers governments and gathers problems, and being in the UN doesn’t change the biases of those governments.”
And then, just when everybody was certain the US State Dept. had finally gotten it right, Ambassador Power reverted to the familiar chant regarding the inevitability of the “Two State Solution.”
Possibly still unaware that Jews get nervous whenever the word “solution” is mentioned, Power resurrected that golem, dusted it up and tried to sell it to the Israeli crowd, in the middle of a five-month intifada, the pursuit of the TSS: “I would expect that pursuit to continue, and right now we hope the parties will take steps to move them closer again to restart negotiations, which is not a position they are in now,” she said. “We will dedicate ourselves to that as long as we are in office.”
That’s just a little over 10 months now, and counting.
She even added, creatively, that some day the boys and girls playing the UN Model will also have a card on the table for the State of Palestine.
Yes, but will there still be a card for “Israel?”