By Daniel Hennessy
The United Nations has yet again disgraced itself by allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to address a gathering of its General Assembly… for the second time.
Thank goodness for the New York Police Department who denied his request to lay a wreath at the site of the 9/11 attack at ground zero. New York’s finest knows a criminal and a security risk when they see one… and treats them in light of the truth. What the U.N. doesn’t apparently understand is that at this stage of the world’s most volatile developing international show-down, the inflammatory words of the apocalypse-focused Ahmadinejad provide a great pre-war threat to global security. As it is, the U.N. willingly advanced the propaganda aspect of Ahmadinejad’s overall terror program once already, back in September of 2006 when he lectured the world, largely on spiritual matters, closing his speech with the following petition to Allah:
“0, Almighty God, all men and women are Your creatures and You have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.”
Of course, becoming “his followers” is U.N.-appropriate speech for "convert to Islam" — or else. Afterall, this is the same Ahmadinejad who, in October of 2005, declared that Israel, “must be wiped out from the map of the world.” The same Ahmadinejad whose regime actively trains, finances, and arms terrorists and extremists while hosting international conferences that advance the lie of Holocaust denial. All in the hope of fulfilling his main mission, as he recounted in a Nov. 16 speech in Tehran, to "pave the path for the glorious reappearance of Imam Mahdi, may Allah hasten his reappearance." He is also the same Ahmadinejad who just this past June publicly reaffirmed his genocidal intent toward Israel, stating in a speech, “God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime.”
The U.S. State Department is showing off a comparable capacity for hypocrisy in it’s own weak-kneed defense of Ahmadinejad's speaking engagement, hiding beneath the vague, flimsy veil of "maintaining diplomatic openness." This is a tragic, insulting position to take, as a recent Washington Times editorial rightly points out:
“Under the shadow of the Holocaust, the United Nations was founded in 1945 by a war-torn world weary of conflict and was ready to embrace peace, social progress and human rights. Mr. Ahmadinejad has chosen not to engage in a respectful dialogue and is instead calling for another genocide—and of the same original victims. This is in flagrant disregard of the U.N.'s mission.”
The U.N. continues to behave along the lines of its antisemitic character. (But more on that in a next posting.)
This most recent development in the U.N.'s toothless oversight of the Iranian nuclear threat calls to mind the bold past actions of one individual who did not sit passively by when another international terrorist was treated by the U.N. General Assembly as a legitimate statesman.
In 1995, as mayor of New York City, Rudi Giuliani set the proper tone for Western leadership in the war against Islamic jihadism.
When the pioneer of modern terrorism, the late Yassar Arafat, was in New York to address the United Nations, Mr. Giuliani declared him unwelcome at city-sponsored events. Having been informed by a spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations that the Clinton Administration had made it clear that Mr. Arafat could be invited to local events during his visit, Firestone described the clear conviction evident in Mr. Guliani's response: “…the Mayor, explaining his decision… called Mr. Arafat a murderer and a terrorist, and said he was not impressed by the fact that Mr. Arafat had twice been invited to the White House to sign the Middle East peace accords, or that he shared the Nobel Peace Prize.”
When Mr. Arafat showed up at the Lincoln Center for a United Nations-sponsored performance by the New York Philharmonic, Mayor Guliani had the then-chairman of the PLO ejected. As one version of the story goes, when told that Mr. Arafat had entered the concert hall, Mayor Guliani told his chief of staff, Randy Mastro, to ask him to leave. “Randy told him that he wasn’t invited, he wasn’t welcome, and we would prefer that he leave,” Mr. Giuliani said. “He stayed for a while, then he left.”
According to a New York Times article by David Firestone on October 25, 1995, after being sharply criticized by the Clinton Administration, Mr. Giuliani, “...clearly relishing the controversy, insisted that he could never forgive and play host to Mr. Arafat even though the Palestinian leader has been embraced as a peacemaker by the Israeli and United States Governments.”
“Mr. Giuliani said his antipathy toward Mr. Arafat – like his antipathy toward the Cuban leader Fidel Castro – went back to his days as a Federal prosecutor. As United States Attorney, he investigated several terrorist incidents to which the P.L.O. was linked, including the hijacking in 1985 of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. As far as he was concerned, the Mayor said, the statute of limitations on those incidents has not run out.”
That's the tone of effective leadership that must prevail if we are to win the war against Islamic jihadism.
Why? Because whomever blesses Israel will be blessed and whomever curses them will be cursed. It is through Israel that all the nations are blessed (Genesis 12:3).
Rudi Guliani continues to move in one direction. Watch the United Nations closely. It's overall effect upon the world is moving just the opposite.