Photo Credit: DS Levi
Entrance to the United Nations building, New York City.

Israeli UN envoy Danny Danon categorically rejected an address by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in which he expressed “outrage” over a video showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussing the issue of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.

In his statement, issued Thursday, Danon slammed Ban’s remarks, calling them a “distorted vision of the situation in Israel.”

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“The failure of the peace process begins and ends with Palestinian [Authority] incitement to terror and Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to meet Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Danon said.

“Instead of directly condemning Hamas and the building of terror tunnels…the Secretary-General chooses to regularly censure Israel,” he added.

The outgoing UN leader expressed outrage over a video in which the prime minster commented that insisting on ensuring territories are without Jews, constitutes “ethnic cleansing” on the part of the Palestinian Authority. Those who support the PA in this viewpoint likewise support such “ethnic cleansing,” he pointed out, noting that the same definition applies in other places around the world too.

For some reason, however, the prime minister’s logic infuriated Ban, and in an address to the UN Security Council on the “Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question,” he went on and on how the “leaders on both sides have failed to take the difficult steps needed for peace.”

Only, somehow, it has always been the Israeli leader who seems to be the one with more despicable activities, in more grim detail, and more”oppressive” and “outrageous.”

“I am disturbed by a recent statement by Israel’s Prime Minister portraying those who oppose settlement expansion as supporters of ethnic cleansing,” the UN leader said. “This is unacceptable and outrageous.

“Let me be absolutely clear: settlements are illegal under international law. The occupation, stifling and oppressive, must end.

“The international community, including the Security Council and the Middle East Quartet, universally view the expansion of settlements as an obstacle to peace.”

But he calls the “glorification of terror” simply “disgraceful” and just comments that “the Palestinian leadership must put an end to it.”

Oh, you mean it’s not illegal under the internationally-recognized Oslo Accords that gave birth to the Palestinian Authority that is now claiming statehood under the UN? It’s not incitement to violence and more terrorism? It’s not an obstacle to peace, like building homes in areas that would pose a clear security risk to Israel, were they to be left open to occupation by enemy forces – the same territory that was once occupied by Jordan?

Likewise, Ban noted the Palestinian Authority’s High Court decided last week to suspend preparations for the upcoming local elections, but again ducked the real reasons behind it.

He warned that if the pattern does not changed, the trajectory is heading towards “a one-state reality and urged all parties in the Palestinian Authority to find a way to create a unity government, and then to find a way to work together with Israel to create a new Arab state, in peace.

This, after half a century of fratricide, anti-Semitic incitement, hatred and terrorism. War.

It is said that when the Messiah comes, there will be peace on earth…

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Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.