Sir, – Lara Marlowe (World News, September 24th) looks at US president Barack Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly and sees behind it Mr Obama’s desire for re-election and the power of the American pro-Israeli lobby, evidenced in the roll-call of senators and House representatives who greeted Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Washington.
I wonder what power she sees as lying behind the massed ranks of the delegates at the General Assembly who greeted Palestinian chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s request for statehood with a standing ovation and sat in frosty silence throughout the speech of Mr Netanyahu? Most of these states lie far away indeed from the tiny arena of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, yet have passed more resolutions against Israel than against all other countries combined, staying silent on larger conflicts much closer to themselves.
They have absurdly elected Gaddafi’s Libya to the Human Rights Council and Saudi Arabia to the Commission on the Status of Women, while sponsoring the sham “anti-racism” Durban conferences.
Could it be Arab oil money? The influence of the Arab-Islamic lobby? Fear of the long arm of Islamic terrorism? – Yours, etc,
Sir, – The US has stated that it will once again use its UN Security Council veto to influence events in the occupied lands – in this case to stop Palestine becoming a full member state of the UN. Surely it is absurd that this is the same country that is involved in the mediation of peace talks in this region. In a sane world, a genuinely neutral party would mediate talks with the US and Israel on one side and practically the rest of the world on the other.
This is in no way meant to be an exaggeration. I would encourage anybody interested in this conflict to look at past UN General Assembly voting records. One will find that in almost every vote concerning the Palestinian people, the US and Israel are against the overwhelming majority, with their rejection of even the most benign proposals. – Yours, etc,