The UN Denies Itself

A PMW Bulletin claims, correctly, that we witness a

False claim by UNRWA in response to PMW report: Map without Israel that official posed with does not represent today but "pre-1948" Palestine

(The pictures broadcast on Palestinian Authority TV are here)

here

 



and they detail:

UNRWA spokesperson Christopher Gunness, responding on UNRWA's website, rejected PMW's report. He claimed that the map in question was not intended to reflect the present, but reflected the period before Israel was
established:

"...The map in question is an embroidery depicting a pre-1948 map and therefore ante-dates the creation of the state of Israel. The allegations are therefore completely false."
[UNRWA's website, May 14, 2013]

UNRWA spokesperson Gunness' justification that the map "depict[s] a pre-1948 map" is baseless, as the map includes the PLO-PA flag and not a British flag.

And they add a final note, that

Israel's representative to the UN Ron Prosor reacted to PMW's original report about the map, protesting to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a letter:

"The map identified 'Palestine' as the geographic area extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. The State of Israel was conspicuously absent. It doesn't take a PHD in Middle Eastern history or geography to realize that a map of the Middle East that doesn't include Israel is deeply and profoundly prejudiced."

I think the message could have been sharpened.

"Palestine", geo-politically, existed only under the British Mandate, awarded to it by the League of Nations.  There was never any defined "Palestine" previously in history.  Even under Ottoman Empire rule the borders altered and were never fixed in any international legal fashion.  Indeed, there never was a "state of Palestine", ever.  The only time the country was an independent state was when it was ruled by the Jews.

Under the terms of the Mandate, no Arab state was to be established.  Only a Jewish national home was the purpose of the Mandate.  Indeed, the territory of the Jewish national home, in its original configuration, was altered and some 75% of it was separated, Jewish settlement therein was banned, and eventually, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was created east of the Jordan River.

The map shown, therefore, is an ephemeral memory.

The November 29, 1947 UN-recommended partition, and there were previous maps of partition in 1937-1939, included much different borders of what was to be an "Arab state", but that proposal was rejected.  The Arabs have no claim to that map.

The map shown most definitely erases Israel, either today's Israel or the "Jewish state" that the UN itself suggested be established.

In other words, the UN today is denying the UN past and rewarding Arab rejectionism, terror and denial of Jewish nationalism.

Either Gunness is:

(a) ignorant;

(b) lying;

(c) acting on behalf of Arab propaganda;

(d) or all of the above.

^