As if one annual festival of anti-Jewish hate — the so-called al-Aqsa Day — was not enough, now we also have to contend with “Nakba Day”, after the UN voted in December to introduce it.
We choose our words carefully. Theoretically, both al-Aqsa Day and Nakba Day are about Israel. In practice, however, on every occasion and in every place when they are marked, both are full of unambiguous antisemitism and Jew-hate alongside whatever anti-Israel material organisers also include.
Appalling as it is that the UN should sanction a further such hate-fest, there is something grimly appropriate about it as a demonstration of the moral and political collapse of the organisation, which, before its malaise, called in 1947 for a Jewish state through Resolution 181.
Today, the UN is gripped by a loathing of Israel that is almost deranged in its obsessiveness. Between 2015 through 2022, for example, the UN General Assembly adopted 140 resolutions on Israel with just 68 on every other country in the world put together.
Hearteningly, some 50 states — including the UK — boycotted Monday’s ceremonies in New York, including a typically bizarre speech by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in which he compared Israeli leaders to Goebbels: “They continue to lie until people believe their lies.”
