The upcoming United Nations vote to recognize Palestinian statehood should be a foregone conclusion, especially given the overwhelming support and sympathy for Palestine among the developing world. By the end of May, 112 nations had agreed to recognize statehood, and Palestinians expect to have 135 votes by September--more than the needed two thirds of the 192-member General Assembly. There are no moral, legal or logical reasons to oppose recognition, but morality, law and logic have little relevance where Palestine is concerned.
Already Israel and its legions of client states and hasbarats are bullying, bribing and blackmailing the UN and its member states into scuttling the vote. Just a few weeks ago Benjamin Netanyahu bribed Romania and Bulgaria to vote against Palestine with the promise of allowing 1,200 citizens from each country to work in Israel. Amazing how cheap an Arab life is on the world market.
We shouldn't be surprised, though, because these are the same tactics the Zionist lobby used 64 years ago to coerce the UN into "creating" the state of Israel. By late November 1947, the issue of a Jewish national home had yet to be settled. On one side were those who sympathized with partition of Palestine because of Jewish suffering under Hitler"s Reich. On the other were those who recognized that such a plan was grossly illegal and a violation of fundamental UN principles of justice. By the 25th, the Zionist lobby realized that it did not have the requisite two-thirds majority in the General Assembly to support partition. Extraordinary measures had to be taken.
Vijayalakshmi Pandit, head of India's UN delegation and sister of India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, received daily death threats warning her to change her vote. Nehru, though, refused to buckle in the face threats or lucrative bribes. Other, smaller, countries could not afford to stand on principle. In Palestine and Israel--A Challenge to Justice, Professor John Quigley recounts how Liberia, the Philippines, and Haiti--all financially dependent on the U.S.--were forced to switch their votes:
"Liberia's ambassador to the United Nations complained that the U.S. delegation threatened aid cuts to several countries. Some delegates charged U.S. officials with "diplomatic intimidation.' Without terrific pressure from the United States on governments which cannot afford to risk American reprisals, said an anonymous editorial writer, the resolution would never have passed. The fact such pressure had been exerted became public knowledge, to the extent a State Department policy group was concerned that "the prestige of the UN' would suffer because of "the notoriety and resentment attendant upon the activities of U.S. pressure groups, including members of Congress, who sought to impose U.S. views as to partition on foreign delegations.'"
On Nov. 29, the partition plan, known as UNGA Resolution 181 narrowly gained the required two thirds--33 in favor, 13 opposed, 10 abstaining and 1 absent--yet the resolution was illegal and a violation of the UN Charter . One of the most enthusiastic supporters of this violation was Canada; in fact, Supreme Court Justice Ivan Rand wrote the odious resolution.
After the vote, U.S. Cdr. E. H. Hutchinson, later chairman of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Commission, rightly declared that Resolution 181 overran the rights of Palestine's indigenous Arab population. From November 29, 1947, until the state of Israel was proclaimed on May 15, 1948, Zionist forces had dispossessed more than 300,000 Palestinians. By the end of the year, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine registered 726,000 refugees. Walter Eytan , Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, referred to the UNRWA's figure as "meticulous" and believed that the real number was closer to 800,000. Moshe Dayan would later admit: "There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." (Ha'aretz, April 4, 1969)
Thomas Reid, British MP for Swindon, called Resolution 181 "an iniquitous scheme": "Let us be frank about it. One of the chief motives is that the Jews have a controlling voice in the election for the President in the States of New York, Illinois, Ohio and elsewhere in America. I suggest that the chief reason for this evil proposal of U.N.O. is that the political parties in America, or their party machines, are partly at the electoral mercy of the Jews. That is public knowledge." (Hansard , Dec. 11, 1947)
Reid was clearly correct but there was another, more significant, aspect to Resolution 181 : it was never ratified by the Security Council. Therefore, it is no more than a recommendation that was never adopted. As such, Israel's "creation" was just as illegal and absurd. Even if we accept Resolution 181 on its face, we must necessarily accept the existence of a Palestinian State because the resolution made repeated, explicit reference to "Jewish State" and "Arab State." Jump ahead to 2011 and the same bullying, bribery and blackmail are used to deny Palestine a victory it has already won. The Zionist argument that a Palestinian state has to come about through direct negotiations must be dismissed as irrational obfuscation.
As for negotiations, Nahum Goldman, president of the World Jewish Congress said in 1977: "In 30 years, Israel has never presented the Arabs with a single peace plan. She has rejected every settlement plan devised by her friends and by her enemies. She has seemingly no other object than to preserve the status quo while adding territory piece by piece."
U.S. subservience to the Zionist lobby, as Reid noted in 1947, is on display in the new intimidation campaign. UN ambassador Susan Rice said the prospect of Palestinian statehood being endorsed was the single greatest threat (!) to continued U.S. support for the UN. A Senate resolution, signed by 407 of 435 members, threatens to suspend all financial assistance to Palestine if it goes ahead with the vote. None of these decisions makes any sense from the perspective of serving the U.S. national interest or world peace. They do, though, harm the U.S. national interest and world peace by tacitly supporting Israel's declared policy of keeping Gaza on the brink of starvation.
What's more, Canada, now Israel's most enthusiastic lackey, has been "lobbying" smaller countries to oppose the vote. Many of these countries are in need of debt relief and overseas trade, and Canada, as a member of the G8 and OECD, has plenty of leverage to do to these countries what the U.S. did to the Philippines, Haiti and Liberia.
Zionist coercion has also forced financially vulnerable Greece to blockade the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Georgios Ayfantis, a consular official in Vancouver, admitted that Greece is afraid of Israel, and that the sabotaging of Palestinian relief efforts is a quid pro quo for getting an undersea natural gas pipeline and liquefied natural gas plant on Crete.
Securing UN recognition of Palestinian statehood would carry great moral weight, and presage a formal request for membership. Normally, such a request requires a recommendation from the Security Council, but any such attempt would be vetoed by Israel's proxies. In fact, Obama publicly declared that no vote at the United Nations would ever create a Palestinian state, as if he were in a position to make such a claim or had the authority to dictate to the General Assembly. Nevertheless, Palestine has away around Israel's Security Council blockade--UNGA Resolution 377 "Uniting For Peace."
Passed in 1950, Resolution 377 allows for an emergency session of the General Assembly to deal with matters a deadlocked Security Council can't resolve: --if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security."
"Uniting For Peace" was first used to resolve the November 1956 Suez Crisis after Security Council belligerents France and Great Britain vetoed Resolution 119. The result was UN General Assembly Resolution 1001 , which restored international peace and security through the establishment of the UN Emergency Force.
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