By Stan Goodenough
Nov 26, 2008
United Nations General Assembly President, Nicaraguan national and Roman Catholic Priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann leveled a broadside laced with antisemitism at the State of Israel, Monday, accusing the Jews of "crucifying" the Palestinian Arabs, libeling Israel as an "apartheid" state, and calling for global trade and economic sanctions to be imposed on Israel.
Brockmann's tirade was delivered on the UNs' "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People."
It is held annually to mark the United Nations vote, in 1947, to partition the ancient Jewish national home - then known as Palestine - between Arabs and Jews
Instead of applauding the outcome of its vote, the UN gathering condemns the Jews - who accepted that dividing up of THEIR land - and supports the Arabs - who through war at the time, and terrorism in the ensuing decades, rejected the partition even though it offered them a homeland for the first time in history.
During the two day-event, a variety of anti-Israel exhibits were posted to showcase the "suffering of the Palestinian people" at the hands of the Jews. Films attempting to parallel Israeli actions with Nazi practices were screened, and speaker after speaker stood to denounce Israel.
Speaking from the podium, Brockmann said Israel was responsible for "crucifying the Palestinians."
His choice of phrase echoed that employed by such enemies of Israel as the Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian and former Anglican canon who founded and heads up the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
Ateek has compared Israel's "abuse" of the Palestinian Arabs to Herod's mass-murder of Bethlehem's baby boys in an effort to kill Jesus Christ.
And in a 2001 Easter sermon Ateek said:
"Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows. In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull."
Brockmann, not willing to make do with just this antisemitic accusation, went on to wield the most recent libelous charge against Israel.
"It has been 60 years since some 800,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes," Brockmann said, perpetuating the myth that the Jews were responsible for the "Palestinian refugee problem."
The fact that these Arabs did not yet have their State of Palestine was the UN's "single greatest failure."
Israel was perpetrating "a version of the highest policy of apartheid" against the Palestinian Arabs.
As the world had forced South Africa to abandon apartheid, the UNGA president said, it must rally to boycott Israel and sever its financial ties to the world, imposing sanctions against Jerusalem until the Jewish state likewise buckles under the pressure.
The Anti-Defamation League Tuesday reacted angrily to Brockmann's speech in a letter calling on UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon to denounce the rhetoric.
"It is outrageous that the president of the General Assembly could accuse Israel of 'crucifying' Palestinians, knowing full well that this is a term loaded with symbolism and history
"For centuries, the charge that the Jewish people were responsible for crucifying Jesus was used as an excuse for pogroms and other violence against Jews. It is irresponsible, indeed unconscionable for a world leader to stand up and to charge Israel with, in essence, 'doing it again.'"
Israel supporters argue that the message to Israel should be clear by now:
The ancient Jewish people, in their multi-milennia-old homeland today called the State of Israel, have recognized the historically non-people now known universally as the Palestinians; have offered them a state of their own for the first time in history comprised of the most sacred parts of the Jewish homeland; have handed control of great swathes of that territory to those people, helping them to establish security forces and administrative institutions, facilitated and given their blessing to the Arabs' holding of elections for self-governing bodies, and uprooted their own Jewish countrymen in order to hand more land to them. And all this has been done in the face of unrelenting hatred, violence, terror and murder.
And despite it all, the hatred persists. Persists and grows only stronger. Not only from the Palestinian Arabs or their other Arab brethren. Not only from the Islamic nations. Not only from Near Eastern and Middle Eastern and Far Eastern countries. But also from many in Scandinavia, Europe and Africa. And it's also manifesting in the Americas, north and south; in Australia and in New Zealand.
As Israel's new ambassador to the UN, Professor Gabriela Shalev has quickly learned (Ynetnews November 21, 2008) double language is the order of the day: One language at the corridors, in private talks backstage, with a lot of appreciation for the Zionist state, and poisonous remarks against Israel in the official speeches.
[Ed note: If antisemitism continues despite Israel's unprecedented and repeated gestures proving the sincerity of its quest for peace; despite Israel's efforts to ingratiate itself with the world - then it will without question erupt once again with full force when the Jews reach the place where they have nothing more to give sacrifice but themselves.]