#820 9/18/16 Report This Week: U.N. Uses “Entirely Different Rhetoric and Set of Legal Concepts When Dealing With Israel”

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  A new study of U.N. concepts and terminology, summarized in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, makes clear that the legally-loaded terms “occupation” and “settlements” are not only liberally sprinkled by the U.N. in resolutions on Israeli communities beyond the 1949 ceasefire lines, but appear in U.N. Israel-related resolutions, in contrast to their non-appearance in “seven major instances of past or present prolonged military occupation,” close to exclusively.  We must do more than avert our eyes.

Report This Week:  U.N. Uses “Entirely Different Rhetoric and Set of Legal Concepts When Dealing With Israel ….”

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this week, Prof. Eugene Kontorovich and a researcher at the Kohelet Policy Forum characterized their conclusion of a research study comparing U.N. language and standards regarding Israel versus that regarding other countries allegedly engaging in “occupation” and “settlements”:

“Our research shows that the U.N. uses an entirely different rhetoric and set of legal concepts when dealing with Israel compared with situations of occupation or settlements world-wide.”

One example cited is that the General Assembly has referred to Israel as the “Occupying Power” 530 times in resolutions, but zero times in referring to “seven major instances of past or present prolonged military occupation,” involving Indonesia, Turkey, Russia (in two instances), Morocco, Vietnam and Armenia.  Since 1967, the term “occupied” appeared in 90% of 2,342 GA resolutions on Israeli-held territories, and only 16 times (14%) in resolutions on these other situations.  “Similarly, Security Council resolutions refer to the disputed territories in the Israeli-Arab conflict as ‘occupied’ 31 times, but only a total of five times in reference to all seven other conflicts combined.”

Terms like “grave … condemn … deplore” are “sprinkled into Israel-related resolutions tens more times than in resolutions about other conflicts,” the study found, “setting a unique tone of disdain.”

As for “the legally loaded word ‘settlements,’” the General Assembly has used it 256 times, and the Security Council 17 times, “to describe Israeli civilian communities,” yet “neither body has ever used that word in relation to any other country with settlers in occupied territory.”

The professor’s op ed’s conclusion is that the free world’s leaders should not use the U.N., which began its annual session this week, to seek an Arab-Israeli conflict solution.

My own conclusion, addressed to ourselves and only ultimately to the free world’s leaders, is that we, Israelis and Israel’s supporters in the Diaspora, not just refrain from using legally-loaded terms like “occupation” and “settlements” ourselves, but strongly object to journalists, officials and others using them in defamatory reference to Israel.

Case in point, recounted in BSMW #673 in November, 2013:

Israel’s Economy Minister, Naftali Bennett, confronted CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who referred in an interview with him to “occupied territories,” with the response “One cannot occupy his own home.”  When the CNN anchor countered, “It’s an international term, Mr. Bennett,” he answered, “I know, and I don’t accept it.”

‘nuff said.