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Filed under: Israel, Open Thread, United Nations

9 comments

It’s Tuesday at The Punch

Israel joined the United Nations today in 1949.

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- PB says:
  
  09:08am | 11/05/10
  
  Yep and Israel holds the record for the number of resolutions passed against it, and resolutions ignored. But obviously that’s because everyone is just so anti-Semitic and spends every waking hour obssessing about Jews. We know because that’s what Israel tells us, and they would NEVER lie.
  
  Reply
- Zeta says:
  
  09:33am | 11/05/10
  
  More importantly Lucy, on this day in 1310, dozens of Knights Templar - the holy military order and first global bankers - were burned at the stake after confessing to charges of demon worship and sodomy, after they refused an order from Pope Clement to merge with another holy order to difuse their growing influence on European banking. The Knights Templar invented the ‘letter of credit’ for pilgrims traveling to the holy land, the first kind of traveler’s cheque.
  
  There are some paralels there with the global financial crisis - predatory lending practices create corporation that’s ‘too big to fail’ - only Pope Clement, instead of bailing them out, burned them at the stake.
  
  There is a lesson there for modern legislators…
  
  Reply
- stephen says:
  
  10:02am | 11/05/10
  
  Israel is unpopular with the UN, because she is in breach of Resolutions 242 and 338, which are instructions to withdraw to pre-1967 borders.
  The West bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are the disputed territories, which Israel is under pressure to share with the Palestinians, and so far, the latter remain in refugee camps.
  This is an old conflict (but certainly not by Arab standards!), but still needs to be resolved, and the suspicion is, is that Israel is stalling for either a friendly US President to replace the current one, or that this dispute will deteriorate into a simple and harmless diplomatic squabble.
  If either is true, then israel is wrong (as she has so often been before).
  There are people like myself - lots of them - who are neither Jew nor anti-semetic, that wish Israel to have a home, but the world has changed since 1949. We don’t have a white australia policy, and no-one should have.
  It’s true that the Arab world, up to a point, is living an old-begotten life, but Israel, too, is living in an old world. Change, not repetition, is the only source of Culture.
  
  Reply
Matt says:

01:55pm | 11/05/10

I’m not sure why Israel should have to return to the pre 1967 borders given what it achieved at that time. While the rest of the world wrung its hands (or sat on them or assisted their enemies as the case may be) the entire Arab world united to wipe them off the face of the map. Ironically this created the Palestinian displacement when they decided to “evacuate to allow the land to be cleansed of the Jews.

So you can probably forgive the Jews for being a little “us against the world” in attitude as back then it literally was (the States didn’t help, nor did Britain or the allies and the Russians helped to arm the Egyptians).

The UN itself is full of double standards (witness the resolutions that were debated after Israel extracted its citizens held captive in Entebbe by terrorists - in full cooperation with Idi Amin). It has no credibility on the Jewish/Arab problem until it starts taking a more balanced approach to the issues.

Having said that, the expansionist settlement policies adopted by Israel are causing more harm than good and should be stopped if any form of peace is to be achieved. I don’t think you’ll ever sort the problem out so it’s best not to even try and ascribe blame to one party - it’s just a big mess.
- rod says:
  
  10:27am | 11/05/10
  
  My daughter informed me this morning that her friend Olivia at school is “all the way from Queensland, and she can even speak English!” Might be a Punch thread - all the great stuff that kids say.
  
  Reply
John A Neve says:

11:18am | 11/05/10

Rod,

Are you sure? Have you heard your daughter’s friend speak?
- TheRealDave says:
  
  10:48am | 11/05/10
  
  If morons would stop lobbing the odd rocket or two into Israel on a daily basis then maybe real talks could actually start and actual progress be made….but thats not what countries like Syria, Iran, Jordan etc actually want which is why they continue to arm, train, supply, mentor, hide these murdering scumbags anyway isn’t it? War by proxy…since they know they can’t defeat Israel militarily.
  
  Reply
Comedian says:

12:07pm | 11/05/10

Those morons as you put it did stop for a while but no progress was made, hence the return of the odd rocket or two…More to it than that as I’m sure you already ready know…for the record there are bigger issues than rockets, like who can make the most Homus, Israel or Lebanon..
- shabangabang says:
  
  02:06pm | 11/05/10
  
  Have just noticed that Harry Jenkins is speaking but the punch live blog has yet to appear. Are you guys covering question time anymore?
  
  Reply

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