Amb Danon to UNSG Ban Ki-moon: Terrorists are using your words 8 Feb 2016

Amb Danon to UNSG Ban Ki-moon: Terrorists are using your words

  •   Ambassador sends official letter to Secretary General demanding he retract his statements legitimizing terror
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    Raafat Alian, Fatah's Jerusalem spokesman: Israel's actions against the Palestinian people "cannot go unanswered without natural reaction." The SG said it was "human nature" to react with terrorism to Israel's co-called occupation.
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    Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addresses the Security Council Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addresses the Security Council Copyright: UN photo/Loey Felipe
     
     
    ​In reference to last week's terror attack in Jerusalem in which policewoman Hadar Cohen was murdered by terrorists, a spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement used language identical to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's statements justifying Palestinian terrorism. Raafat Alian, Fatah's Jerusalem spokesman, said that Israel's actions against the Palestinian people "cannot go unanswered without natural reaction." The Secretary General had said it was "human nature" to react with terrorism to Israel's co-called occupation.

    Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon sent an official letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon demanding that he retract his statements legitimizing terror in Israel.

    "The Palestinian leadership has now begun to use your statements to justify deplorable acts of terror," Ambassador Danon wrote.  "The statement you made at the last Security Council Middle East debate has been widely interpreted in the Middle East and around the world as a justification for Palestinian terror and has created two categories of terror: terror directed at Israelis and terror directed at the rest of the world," the Ambassador continued.

    In his letter to the Secretary General, the Ambassador also noted that it was only due to the bravery of a young Israeli policewoman, Hadar Cohen who sadly paid with her life, that a greater tragedy was avoided in Jerusalem this week.

    "At what point has the UN assumed the role of rationalizing the actions of Palestinian terror? At what point did the UN start to differentiate between Israeli and non-Israeli victims of terror?" Ambassador Danon wrote. "The UN must treat any act of terror in the same manner regardless of their motivation... Rather than criticizing Israel, a country that has lost so many of its citizens to terror, the UN should hold the perpetrators responsible..."

    "I call upon you to withdraw your previous statement and unequivocally state that there is no justification for the bloodshed of innocent Israelis."