The following is a shortened version of my presentation to the United Nations Youth & Students Association at LeicesterUniversityon 11 February 2007. The subject for debate was “The UN in the world today – relevant or relic?”
I’d like to begin with a question of my own for you all; and I’m sorry there is no prize for the first right answer. Who said the following: “If the Zionists continue their pressures, they will succeed in putting the UN out of business.”
[Nobody in the audience or other speakers knew the answer]
On the matter of the UN in the world today – “relevant or relic”, my view is that, with the exception of some of its specialised agencies, mainly those dealing with global poverty in all of its aspects, the institution has become an irrelevance. And generally speaking there is no mystery about why this has happened.
The UN is notas many citizens presume a self-standing institution with a mind of its own. It is the sum total of the conflicting interests and hypocrises of the governments of the member states, and the five major powers with a veto in particular.
But there is much more to it. The truth is that the UN was corrupted almost from its beginning.In the wake of the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, the corrupting force was Zionism….. Now before I go further, and in order to leave no room for me to be misunderstood or misrepresented by anybody of sound mind, it’s necessary for me to do here what I do on every public platform, and that is to point up the difference between Judaism and Zionism. They are not, as Zionism asserts, one and the same. They are total opposites.
Judaism is the religion of Jews, not theJews because not all Jews are religious. And like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has at its core a set of moral values and ethical principles.
Zionism is a secular, colonialist ideology which created, mainly by terrorism and ethnic cleansing, a state for some Jews in the Arab heartland, Palestine. It was thus an enterprise which made a mockery of Judasim’s moral values and ethical principles, and which continues to demonstrate Zionism’s contempt for international law.(And that partly explains the title of my latest book,.zionism: THE REAL ENEMYOF THE JEWS).
Knowledge of the difference between Judasim and Zionism is the key to understanding.It explains why it is perfectly possible to bepassionately anti-Zionist(opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise) without being anti-Semitic (anti-Jew) in any way, shape or form. And it explains why it is wrong to blame all Jews everywhere for the crimes of the few,the hardest core Zionists in Israel.
Now let’s return to the question of who said “If the Zionists continue their pressures, they will succeed in putting the UN out of business.”
It was Harry S. Truman, the 33rdPresident of the United States of America.
The context in which he said it – actually he wrotethose words in a memorandum that was not declassified until 1971 – can be summarised as follows.
Britain had made a mess of Palestine and walked away, dumping the problem of what to do about it into the lap of the UN. The Palestine problem then became the first test of the UN’s authority and integrity. If it could resolve the conflict of interests in Palestine by diplomatic and political means, or even by enforcement action, the hope that had been invested in the UN as the political institution to oversee the creation of a more fair and just and peaceful world would be justified and given a boost. If it failed, the outlook was fora continuation of jungle law, with might, as ever, prevailing over right.
On the 28thof April 1947, the General Assembly was convened to discuss what to do. It eventually recommended, for approval or not by the Security Council, a PARTITION plan. It proposed that 56.4%of Palestinebe given for a Jewish state to people, many of them recently arrived alien immigrants, who constituted 33%of the population and owned 5.67%of the land.
It was a proposal for injustice on a massive scale. And that’s why it would nothave been approved by the necessary two-thirds majority if all the member states of the General Assembly as it then was had been allowed to vote in accordance with their consciences– in accordance with what they knew to be right and wrong.
As it happened, the Partition Plan proposal didreceive the bare minimum two-thirds majority – but onlybecause the Zionist lobby, with the assistance of a hit-squad of 26 American senators and a highly placed asset in the White House, bullied, bribed and blackmailed the representatives, and in one case the president, of a number of member states.
Fourwere persuaded to change their “No” votes to“Yes”, and another sevenwere persuaded to change their “No”votes to abstention. But even that was not enough to guarantee the necessary two-thirds majority. Zionism’s last minute calculations on the eve of the twice-postponed vote indicated the need to turn threemore “No” votes into “Yes” votes. The countries thenre-targeted for a final round ofdiplomatic terrorism wereLiberia, the Philipines andHaiti.
It was when President Truman was made aware of Zionism’s last minute efforts to bend the world body to its willthat he gave written vent to his view that if they continued with their pressures, the Zionists would succeedin putting the UN out of business.
If Truman had been fully briefed (we don’t know whether he was or not), he would also known that, without the consent of the majority in Palestine (the Arabs), the UN possessed no authorityto decide to partition the land, or to assign any part of it to a minority of mainly alien immigants in order that they might establish a state of their own.
In effect the United Nations was puttting itself above and beyond international law. A UN sub-committee recognised this fact and submitted a draft resolution instructing Secretary General Trygve Lie to transmit the partition resolution to the International Court of Justice in the Haque. He did not do so because the instructing draft resolution was defeated – by 21 votes to 20.
Most people in the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world still believe that Israel was given its birth certificate and thus legitimacy by the Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947. This is nonsense.
- Leaving aside the fact that the UN did not have the authority to decide to partition Palestine, the General Assembly resolution was only a proposal– meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.
- The truth is that the General Assembly’s partition proposal never went to the Security Council for consideration. Why not? Because the US knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.
- So the partition plan was vitiated (becameinvalid)and the question of what the hell to do about Palestinewas taken back to the General Assembly for more discussion. The option favoured and proposed by the US was temporary UN Trusteeship. It was while the General Assembly was debating what do that Israel unilaterally declared itself to be in existence – actually in defiance of the will of the organised international community, including the Truman administration.
The truth of the time was that Israel, which, as I’ve said, came into being mainly as a consequence of Zionism terrorism and ethnic cleansing, had no right to exist and, more to the point,could have no right to exist UNLESS….. Unless it was recognised and legitimizedby those who were dispossessed of their land and their rights during the creation of the Zionist state.In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved. And that legitimacy was the only thing the Zionists could not take from the Palestinians by force.
Truman’s fears proved to be well founded. The UN failed its first big test, and because of its handling of the Palestineproblem, it was on its way, when it was not much more than three years old, to being “put out of business.”
In Volume Two of my book there’s a chapter with the title Goodbye to the Security Council’s Integrity. It follows two chapters on the 1967 war.
The mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world was conditioned to believe that Israel went to war in June of that year either because the Arabs attacked (that was Israel’s first assertion)or because they were going to attack.The now fully documented truth about that war can be simply stated. The Arabs did notattack and werenot intending to attack.
It was a war of Israeli aggression. It can be said, and I do say in my book, that Eygpt’s President Nasser, to save his face, was daft enough to give Israel’s hawks the pretextthey had long wanted. But that does not change the fact that it wasa war of Israeli aggression. Israel’s assertion that it faced the danger of annihilation, the “driving in the sea” of its Jews, was a propaganda lie, designed to enable the Zionist state to get away where it mattered most, Western Europe and America, with presentingits aggressionas self-defenseand itself as the victimwhen actually it was, and is, the oppressor.
That being so, and it really was so(you have only to read the postwar statements of some of Israel’s leaders to know that), there is no question about how the Security Council oughtto have responded – if it was going to act in accordance with its awesome responsibilities and obligations as defined by its own Charter and international law.
- It ought to have condemned Israel as the aggressor.
- It ought to have demanded Israel’sunconditionalwithdrawal from occupied territory.
- And it ought to have said that the international community would not tolerate the building of illegal settlements on occupied territory.
The truth is that under pressure from President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, which itself was under pressure from Zionism, the Security Council came up with a resolution, 242by number, which was a disaster for all who were seriously committed to working for a just and lasting peace. It paid lip-service to the notion of an Israeli withdrawalfrom occupied land in exhange for peace, but because it allowed Israel to determine the extent of its withdrawals, Resolution 242 effectively gave Israel’s leaders a permanent veto over any peace process… And that proved to be a real problem because Zionism was not, and is not, interested in peace on any terms the vast majority of Palestinians, other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.
The only American President who had the will and the courage to confront Zionism was General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1956 he required the Israelis to withdrawunconditionallyfrom Eygptian territory after they had colluded with Britain and France in a mad attempt to topple Nasser. After reading the riot act to Israel, Eisenhower made a most important statement. He said that if a nation which attacked and occupied foreign territory was allowed to impose conditions on its withdrawal, “this would be tantamount to turning back the clock of international order.”
With Resolution 242 of the 22ndof November 1967, the Security Council turned back that clock. And guaranteed that the Palestineproblem would become the cancer at the heart of international affairs.
A last point for now. Why, really, did the text of Resolution 242 not contain a statement to the effect that Israel should not seek to settle or colonise occupied territory, and that if it did, the Security Council would enforce international law
and take whatever steps were necessary to stop illegal developments?My answer is the following and it takes us, or so I believe, to the heart of the matter for discussion this evening.
At least some of those responsible for framing Resolution 242 were aware that Israel’s political and military hawks were going to proceed with their colonial venture come what may – in determined defiance of international law, and no matter what the organised international community said or wanted.And some if not all of those responsible for framing 242 were resignedto the fact that, because of the history of the Jews and the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust,Israel was not, and never would be or could be, a NORMAL state.As a consequence, there was no point inseeking to oblige it to behave like a normal state– i.e. in accordance with international law and its obligations as a member of the UN. Like it or not, and whatever it might mean for the fate of humankind, the world was going to have to live with the fact that there were two sets of rules for the behaviour of nations – one for Israel and one for all other nations.Because of the way Israel was created – without legitimacy in international law, The System now had a double standard built into it, and because the political will to confront Zionism did not exist, there was nothing anybody could do to change that reality.
That said, it seems to me that if the Security Council is to become relevant, it must serve the best real interests of ALL of the nations and peoples of Planet Earth; and to do that, IT’S GOT TO BE THE ONE FORUM WHERE DOUBLE STANDARDS DO NOT APPLY.
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