From Yoni’s Desk: UN bears responsibility for enabling Hamas terrorism

Israeli soldiers and police inspect the scene of a shooting attack at the entrance to the Israeli settlement of Givat Asaf, in the West Bank, on Dec. 13, 2018. (Hadas Parush/Flash90 photo)

Every year around this time, the United Nations turns its attention to one of its pet causes: criticizing Israel. This year’s December package of UN resolutions against the Jewish state, which numbered 20, reaffirmed “the right of all persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 and subsequent hostilities to return to their homes or former places of residence in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967,” and demanded Israel apply the Geneva Conventions in “occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967.” There was also a call for Israel to withdraw from the Golan, “under occupation since 1967,” and – perhaps most egregious of all – a reference to “tensions, provocations and incitement regarding the holy places of Jerusalem, including the Haram al-Sharif,” even though the Temple Mount has never been more open in recent history than under Israeli jurisdiction.

Amid all the Israel-bashing (Canada, as The CJN reported last week, voted against the vast majority of the resolutions, and abstained on the others), however, the United Nations also took a moment to consider an issue it has, astoundingly enough, never tackled before: Hamas. A strong majority of member states, Canada included, came out in favour of a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would have condemned the Gaza terrorist group in the General Assembly for the first time. But Kuwaiti representatives, sensing the vote tilting against the Palestinian group, passed a last-minute motion requiring a two-thirds majority, rather than the usual simple majority rules.

The resolution ultimately received 87 votes in favour and 57 against, with 33 abstentions. It would have been a convincing win but for the fact that, at the UN, when you know you’re about to lose, you can just go ahead and change the rules to favour the anti-Semitic terrorists.

Just days later, Hamas praised a Palestinian terrorist who opened fire at a bus stop in the West Bank. A young, pregnant woman was critically injured, and for the next 48 hours, the Jewish world held its collective breath. The mother survived, but her child, prematurely delivered by Caesarean section at just 30 weeks, did not. The parents – the father is a dual Canadian-Israeli citizen – reportedly got to hold their son before he died. A post on Hamas’ Facebook page called the attack “heroic.”

The day after the baby’s death, just about five kilometres away along Route 60 from the site of the first shooting, two Israeli soldiers, Yovel Mor Yosef, 20, and Yosef Cohen, 19, were killed in another Palestinian attack. “There was massive fire, bullet after bullet, but not in bursts,” a witness told Haaretz. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh congratulated the attackers, adding, “What happened today in the West Bank means the situation is starting to change and a new chapter has opened with the occupier through bloody resistance.”

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Would Hamas have acted any differently if the UN vote had gone the other way? At the very least, it might have made Gaza’s terrorist tyrants think twice – though any group that publicly supports the murder of a baby surely isn’t too worried about optics. Either way, it’s hard not to draw a clear and straight line from the UN’s utter complacency to the death of Jews.