OPINION:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday accused U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of encouraging and supporting terrorism. “The U.N. Secretary-General’s remarks give a tailwind to terrorism. There is no justification for terrorism,” stated Mr. Netanyahu.
Ban Ki-moon, during a U.N. Security Council Meeting gave his views on the Palestinian situation, “As oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism,” he said. “So-called facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank are steadily chipping away the viability of a Palestinian state and the ability of Palestinian people to live in dignity.”
Mr. Netanyahu responded that the Palestinians do not want a state and have shown that over and over again by rejecting Israeli offers, “The Palestinian murderers do not want to build a state. They want to destroy a state, and they say this openly. They want to murder Jews simply because they are Jews, and they say this openly. They do not murder for peace, and they do not murder for human rights,” Mr. Netanyahu said in his statement following the meeting, adding that he believed the United Nations lost its neutrality “a long time ago.”
The Israeli ambassador to the U.N. followed up with comments of his own, “The secretary general encourages terror instead of fighting against terror,” Ambassador Danny Danon said in a statement. “The secretary general forgot what the U.N.’s role is. Terror must not be encouraged for any reason whatsoever.”
Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mr. Netanyahu asked, “Where is Europe, where is the rest of civilization? A state like Iran, movements like Daesh and Hamas openly declare their goal of committing another Holocaust. We will not let it happen. But Europe and the rest of the world must stand up together with us, not for our sake, but for theirs.”
Not only is “the most outrageous anti-Semitism” finding its way into the doctrines of the extremist Islamic movements, but ” even respected western opinion leaders become afflicted with hatred for the Jewish people, and the Jewish state.”
Mr. Netanyahu said that “the obsession with the Jews, the fixation on the Jewish state” defies any rational explanation. For instance, he said, while Islamic militants are brutalizing entire populations across the region, raping and enslaving women and murdering Christians and gays, the U.N. Human Rights Council condemns Israel more than North Korea, Iran and Syria combined.
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