The United Nations

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The General Assembly of the United Nations issued a unanimous resolution declaring January 27 of every year an International Day of Commemoration for the victims of what is known as the Jewish Holocaust in Germany. Israel took the initiative in submitting the draft, 103 countries backed it, and the General Assembly ratified it unanimously. Israel welcomed the resolution, considering that the General Assembly had come back to its senses after having lost its way during the era of the Soviet Union. The Arab states approved the draft, despite grumbling from some of their members about the resolution’s confining itself to the massacres committed against Jews to the exclusion of others. In its resolution, the General Assembly expressed its rejection of any partial or total denial of the occurrence of the Jewish Holocaust, and called on the Secretary-General to undertake the activities necessary to spread awareness at the global level of the events of the Holocaust.

I do not think that we, as Arabs, are concerned with denying any harm suffered by any people on the face of the earth at the hands of others or of despotic rulers, and I do not think we want to argue much about what actually happened in Hitler’s Germany against the Jews. But what certainly concerns us is the use of what happened in Germany to assault us and strip us of our land, as happened in Palestine. Sin is not supposed to be charged to the account of another party that has nothing to do with the matter, and the perpetrator himself is supposed to bear the burden of his own deeds. The Europeans in general persecuted, oppressed, and killed the Jews, and in the end found that the solution was to rid themselves of the Jews by exporting them to the Arab region. In this way, the Europeans expelled the Jews collectively twice: once in the era of the Roman Empire, which expelled the Jews en masse and by force from Palestine, and a second time at the hands of all the Europeans together, gently, into Palestine.

The Europeans and Americans try to say that they are remorseful over what happened to the Jews, and that sincere repentance and atonement for sins are called for. They explained their support for Jewish emigration to Palestine as a response to what Hitler had done, and justified their policies by the mercy that had overtaken their hearts. Of course this is a lie, because the Balfour Declaration was issued long before Hitler, and the consuls of European states such as Austria, France, and Britain, along with the United States ambassador to the Sublime Porte, had been facilitating the transfer of Palestinian lands into Jewish hands since the end of the nineteenth century. If Westerners in general had had mercy toward the Jews, they would have granted them their rights on their own lands, and would not have driven millions of Palestinians into a life of displacement and refuge. How can it be mercy to house someone in a home from which its owner has been expelled?

… the United Nations’ most recent resolution demonstrates for the umpteenth time that the international organization is merely a tool for achieving the aims of the powerful. Since its founding, the United Nations has never been independent of the influence of the world’s competing powers, and has continued to be tossed about by the dominant powers according to their political interests. The organization’s charter contains many noble principles, yet its history teems with many deviations, moral transgressions, and biases. It is even structurally skewed, since the five great powers enjoy the right of veto.

What stands out starkly in the moral contradiction of the United Nations is its forgetting of the Palestinian refugees whom the Jews replaced in Palestine. There are now roughly five million displaced Palestinians living in various places around the world. Of these, about four million are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and have a budget allocated to meet some of their needs. There is also a General Assembly resolution, number 194, calling for their return to their homes and properties. The United Nations bypasses its own resolution, which has caught the fever of neglected shelves, and comes up with a new resolution whose subject matter no longer constitutes a live issue on the international scene. The Holocaust has become a thing of the past, while the refugee issue still stands very much alive before the world, with all its evidence, its portents, and its human dimensions.

Who suffered more than the other: the Jews or the Palestinians? Let us say that Hitler tortured the Jews for nine years and killed of them a great number whose estimate researchers dispute, and let us grant that the number of those burned reached six million. The Jews and the European states have been tormenting the Palestinians since the beginning of the twentieth century. Thousands of Palestinians were killed under the British Mandate, thousands were thrown into prisons along with torture, Britain demolished thousands of houses and spread terror and fear among the ranks of the Palestinians. The Zionist movement carried out a number of massacres against the Palestinian people, amounting to more than twenty-five massacres, and spread terror with the aim of displacing the Palestinians. Millions of Palestinians have been living in camps for about fifty-seven years, suffering the bitterness of life. Palestinians living in the land occupied in ‘48 endure harsh conditions and are subjected to discrimination. As for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza, they have been swallowing the bitter cup of killing, torture, and abuse every day for thirty-seven years.

Is there anyone who can calculate mathematically how much the Jews suffered and how much the Palestinians suffered? Or how much Western mercy has rained down upon the Jews, and how much savagery has rained down upon the Palestinians? Double moral standards are extremely dangerous; they expose global security and stability to danger, and if the United Nations imagines that through its double standards it satisfies certain parties, it should know that it is thereby confirming its lack of neutrality toward other parties. And if the United Nations is to commemorate historical memories, it is wrong for it to be selective. The Native Americans have a right, as do the Russians whom Stalin killed, the Iraqis whose necks the Americans severed, and the Japanese and the Mexicans.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الأمم المتحدة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.