133 to 4. Ahh the things we do for Israel... But hey, it must be the ENTIRE WORLD that's on the wrong side, not us! http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/09/19/arafat.un/index.html U.N. vote backs Arafat General Assembly calls on Israel to revoke removal threat Friday, September 19, 2003 Posted: 2032 GMT ( 4:32 AM HKT) UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution Friday calling for Israel to back down from its threat to "remove" Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. There were 133 in favor, four opposed and 15 that abstained. The four voting against were Israel, the United States, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. The General Assembly vote, which is not legally binding, came after the United States vetoed a similar resolution at the Security Council on Tuesday. The resolution demands that Israel "desist from any act of deportation and cease any threat to the safety of the elected president of the Palestinian Authority." The document states "grave concerns" over "extrajudicial executions and suicide bombing attacks, all of which have caused enormous suffering and many innocent victims." An amendment offered by the European Union included a call for the Palestinian Authority to fight terror. Threat to Arafat Israel's Security Cabinet voted last week to seek Arafat's removal, saying he is an obstacle to peace. But it is not clear when and how any removal would be carried out. Before the vote, Nasser al-Kidwa, the permanent observer of the Palestinian mission to the United Nations, said: "We strongly condemn and reject all of this as illegal and insane and consider it to be an assault on the Palestinian national dignity and the democratic choice of our people. "These threats prove once again the intentions of the government of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon to attack the Palestinian national leadership." Referring to the so-called road map to peace, which envisions a Palestinian state existing in peace with Israel by 2005, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, said the decision of the Israeli Security Cabinet "in principle merely states what world leaders have already recognized and what is effectively affirmed in the road map itself -- that Mr. Arafat is an obstacle to peace. "He represents the Palestinians' dark past rather than the bright future," Gillerman said. "He is the region's and his own people's greatest tragedy." U.S. used veto to block resolution On Tuesday, a resolution was considered by the Security Council, but it failed to pass because of the United States' veto. Britain, Germany and Bulgaria abstained from the vote. Only the United States and the four other permanent Council members -- China, France, Russia and Britain -- have veto power. Arab and nonaligned countries asked for an emergency session of the General Assembly to take up the issue, citing the "inability" of the Security Council to "fulfill its [responsibility] for the maintenance for international peace and security." General Assembly resolutions, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not legally binding and cannot be blocked by a veto. The United States vetoed the U.N. resolution because, it said, the text failed to explicitly condemn Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades "as organizations responsible for acts of terrorism" and call for the dismantlement of "an infrastructure which supports these terror operations wherever located."
Damn straight and don't you forget it, commie! As leaders, we must lead even when nobody follows. ... Um, yeah!
Sadly, there are many people in this country and on this board who won't see anything wrong with thinking that...again and again...
Oh bullcrap. We happen to agree with the US stance re: Israel. It's that simple. If you disagree, ok, don't characterize us as idiots.
It hurts you that the US is so powerful, doesn't it, Macbeth? If 133 people jumped off a bridge, would you gleefully follow? I figured you would be a proponent of voting based on how a country believes, not just how everybody else votes.
Who characterized? I simply said that sadly there are people in this country and on this board who repeatedly have no problem with agreeing with the idea of the US being right and the rest of the world being wrong. Do I think that this deifes logic? Yes, of course. Do I think that this is about arrogance and a feeling of superiority? Much of it, yes. There are people in here who routinely dismiss the objections of the majority of the globe as simply jealousy. That kind of close-mindedness will obviously always lead you to the conclusion that we are in the right. Everyone else is jealous, therefore their opinion against us is invalid, therefore I don't need to even consider it, therefore we are in the right. I'm sorry, but a simple intro-psych test on objectivity shows that rational people question their own perception when surrounded by those who disagree with it. Not necessarily reconfigurate their position, but give it serious contemplation to find out if they are missing things. Instead many of us spout out catch phrases about the heroism of defying the majority to do ' what's right' never even bothering to consider for a second that 'what's right' is the issue of debate, and to, as a rational person is supposed to, give some serious thought to the validity of the majority's position. We simply dismiss with rhetoric. On the other hand, 70% of the US population believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11, despite no evidence of that at all. We have developed an insular " the world hates us because we're better" mentality in this country which Bush has exploited, heightened as it currently is by fear since 9-11. This allows us to dismiss being in positions like this, where were it anyone else ( ie, another nation which repeatedly shows a bias towards an issue...say China was the only significant country to oppose a UN motion to grant freedom to Tibet) we would immediately see the blatent one sidedness of that nation's position. We have used the veto more than any other UN nation by far...we have repeatedly vetoed anything against Israel...we used to routinely veto anything against Saddam, when he, too, was our creature...you know, UN motions to do with the mass murders we now say are worthy of an invasion, again contrary to global opinion...we used vetoes to protect several of our pet tyrants...we opposed world opinion when they told us that our treatment of African Americans was contrary to their human rights in the 60's...there are countless examples...we told the UN to screw off pre-war, and now have to go hat in hand because their assesment of the situation is proving more accurate than ours... ...and yet we STILL DON'T LEARN; EVERYONE ELSE can't always be wrong...in fact it usually turns out the other way, but here we are again, believing that we're right and everyone else was wrong...
Why do we have to do what the rest of the world wants? We are the most powerful nation on Earth. The rest of the world is wrong about Israel and the Arafat issue. I hear he's going to kill himself if they throw him out. In that case, Israelis, boot him out! Do the world a favor and maybe the so-called "palestinians" will have a leader who can come to a realistic peace, possibly becoming part of the general Israeli population or assilimated into the surrounding Arab countries, such as Jordan. In any case, the U.S. and Israel are right, Arafat must go. There's nothing sad about standing up for what's right.
See, Mr. C., this is what I mean...see the linkeage between our power and our being right? Sheer arrogance defying logic...
What's the principle behind voting based on what the country believes again? Oh, right...majority is usually right. Wanna explain our invasion of Iraq to me again? And the bridge analogy is so obviously prejudicial it's not worth answering...
So basically democracy is ok unless we don't like the result(Arafat). In that case threats to remove him or kill him are the right thing to do. I could care less if it was Arafat or Sharone, if someone wins an election, the way for them to be removed is by another election. It seems like some people don't really want democracy in other countries, they just want things to go the way they believe it should regardless of democracy. And the point being made isn't that the U.S. should just vote for it because the rest of the world did. The point is that the U.S. didn't dislplay any leadership in convincing the rest of the world to vote the way they wanted the vote to go. That's not good leadership. Or maybe the rest of the world was correct and all the great leadership still couldn't convince the other countries to vote with Israel on this one.
There is no logic to the UN trying to insinuate itself into the Israeli/Palestinian situation. Arafat is a terrorist and no....he is not the legally "elected" leader of the "palestinians." His people control everything over there and stuffing the ballot box would be little trouble for him. He is nothing more than a two-bit dictator who has enriched himself at the expense of his people and convinced thousands to committ murder in the name of freedom. People who are anti-Israeli/pro-"palestinian" always say that he desires peace, blah, blah, blah..... Thousands have been killed by the "palestinians" and their cowardly homicide bombers since the Oslo accords and yet, he still wants "peace?" If he is their leader and if he had a sincere desire for peace, wouldn't he stop the violence? But no, his apologists claim, he can't stop the bombers....it is beyond his control. Well, explain the massive arms shipment from Iran to the "palestinians" filled with C-4, rifles, RPGs and other methods of mayhem that the Israelis stopped last summer. Not the work of a man who desires peace. Kill Arafat and hopefully the "palestinians" will find a real leader who doesn't convince his people that the only way out is to butcher innocent Israeli civilians.
Yes he is the democratically elected leader of the Palestinians. I don't deny that he isn't stopping terrorists. I'm not a fan of his. I don't fall into the Pro Palestinian/ Anti-Israeli camp. I am anti Israeli government, which is as bad or not worse than the Apartheid government of South Africa that I was also against. Does that mean I was pro ANC when they were using violence? No. In fact it was only after they stopped using violence that things went better for their cause. Another thing that helped bring down Apartheid was world wide condemnation of that form of government. Despite Reagan's veto, congress had enough votes to push it through anyway, and Apartheid was eventually brought down. The U.S. joining world wide pressure against an unjust system was the right thing to do then, and it's the right thing to do now.
Nice one. This thread is a goldmine. Folks (bama, bigtexxx, and maybe Mr. C): Honestly, does it give you a bit of pause when that many countries line up against us? I'm not asking you to say that we're in the wrong or anything like that. If we're the leaders of the "free" world, why is the free world upset with so many of our actions? Sure, they might be ingrates or fair-weather fans, but are they all really stupid and wrong? It defies all statistics.
Regardless of your thoughts on the Israel/Palestinian situation, a lopsided 133-4 vote shows that either: 1. Israel/U.S. didn't convincingly make its case. 2. It's a stupid-ass idea. Either way, *something* needs to be re-evaluated.
HA! That's some funny sh*t....... BTW, so is the Philippines! NEVER forget about the Philippines, they have our backs.....
FB, I just don't buy that the Israeli govt is as bad as you say they are. Cripes, people are exploding themselves in the middle of crowds of their sons, daughters, cousins, neices, nephews, friends, whatever and you think the Israelis are as bad as the South Africans? I know if that was happening here, we'd be blowing up the houses of suspected terrorists and killing them with Hellfire missiles and other goodies. Israel is at war for their very survival. Worrying about killing a few civilians is small potatoes compared to having your nation destroyed. I just think it all stems from the Europeans not wanting to piss off their source of oil and of course, the Muslim nations hate Israel to a fault. Otherwise, there would be no pressure on them to let Arafat live and continue to plot for the destruction of Israel, which is his ultimate aim. The thing that bothers me is when we threaten Israel with cutting off their aid money and make them put kid gloves on dealing with these terrorists. If we really are fighting a war on terror, we need to give the Israelis an open hunting license so they can win a military victory over the "Palestinians," kicking them back across the Jordanian border where they belong (eighty percent of the Jordanian population is "Palestinian," making it the real "Palestinian" state). Eliminating that nest of cowardly, terrorist vipers and booting them back to the rest of the Arab states where they belong is the only solution.
If everyone decided to jump off a bridge, I guess that makes it ok....RIGHT? I mean that is the moronic logic that some of you are using on this board. The bottom line is the US would have supported the bill if the UN put some language in there about terrorism. They didn't so we could not support it. Heck, the EU just got around THIS FRICKEN year to saying that Hamas was a terrorist organization. Yeah..right.....we should follow those clowns. DD
