{Originally posted to the authors’ website, This Ongoing War}
Remember the murder of Dafna Meir, a Jewish nurse and a young mother of six children?
We wrote about it here [“18-Jan-16: Multiple Arab-on-Israeli attacks and a Jewish mother is murdered at her front door“]. We noted at the time that the BBC had managed to report that savage murder – by a youth who stabbed her to death at the door to her Otniel home in the presence of her children – without mentioning the word “terror” (or any variant of it) even once. A death. Maybe a crime. Perhaps an accident. Next.
Mrs Meir’s husband, at the urging of one of the Israeli terror victim groups, went to the United Nations along with his oldest daughter Ranana, aged 17, on April 19, 2016 to be present at a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East that was scheduled to touch on matters concerning the Arab/Israel conflict. (Background at Israel National News and Jerusalem Post.)
How well do you imagine that went? Our own quite negative experiences at the UN gave us reason to be deeply pessimistic when we read about the Meirs’ impending trip. It turned out to be traumatic and upsetting and they want people to know.
Natan Meir has just sent a brief open letter to the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, reflecting on the quite shocking way he and his daughter and their message were treated and making some serious points about how diplomats view real, live, in-the-flesh terror victims when they occupy the same room. It’s searing.
Excerpts from the letter which he has now published via Facebook:
- “Israel’s UN ambassador introduced me and my daughter and told our story. Not one UN ambassador bothered to come and comfort my 17-year-old daughter. No one came to shake our hands. No one called or met with us before or after. Not one letter.”
- “Even you, Mr. Secretary General, you were sitting at the front of that meeting and you did not open your mouth nor look in the eyes of someone in who is in anguish and pain.”
- “In our presence, the Palestinian representative complained that hundreds of Palestinian children are in Israeli prisons. One of the children he talked about murdered my wife! Despite the terrible scandal of misrepresentation, nobody prevented him from continuing his speech…”
- “How can the United Nations strive to be relevant when there is not a single drop of basic human compassion? How can delegates not look directly in the eyes of a man who has all the right to condemn another person? Where is the honesty? Where is the human aspiration that was the basis of establishing the institution you lead? Can such an organization prevent hatred, animosity and inequality?”
- “Dear Secretary-General, as the UN celebrates the rights of the Palestinians, they must also remember the Jewish national desire to reclaim their cities, which they have longed for thousands of years. Billions of people worldwide know of the Jews and their deep connection to the Biblical land of Israel. A peaceful solution must also take into account the dream of the Jewish people. “
- “If you still insist on helping, please help us to build bridges and connections between people without borders and fences.”
We hope Natan Meir and his family take the shattering reality of their close encounter with the very, very ordinary men and women who populate the world’s most important international organization and turn it into additional inspiration to keep speaking out in the name of their loss and their prayers for a better future. What they have to say is far more meaningful than the delegates’ speeches and studied indifference.
Sitting back and waiting for a political or diplomatic process to bring something constructive and sustainable to our side or for that matter to the Arabs is, it has to be said, not only a waste of time but, as we have seen ourselves, deeply humiliating and harmful to the human spirit. This, emphatically, is not how things should be.
We plan to come back to this issue later in the week.
