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Secretary Ban: “Being born in Gaza is not a crime”-but what Hamas did to its people is

UN Secretary General Ban just visited Gaza and Israel. He expressed shock of the devastation visited upon the people of Gaza as well as the damage done UN facilities during this summer’s conflict.
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October 17, 2014

UN Secretary General Ban just visited Gaza and Israel. He expressed shock of the devastation visited upon the people of Gaza as well as the damage done UN facilities during this summer’s conflict.  

“I met so many of the beautiful children of Gaza. More than 500 hundred were killed during the conflict—many more were wounded. What have they done wrong? Being born in Gaza is not a crime”, Ban declared. Of course, little children are innocent, but it was what Hamas did to Gaza’s children and their parents, along with innocent civilians in Israel that is the real crime. 

Bottom line is by his statements and actions in Cairo and the Holy Land  the UN chief blamed—not the arch-terrorists, but their targeted victim—Israel as the criminal. 

It gets worse. During the height of the Gaza war this summer the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish groups met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon who expressed sympathy for Israeli concerns. None of that was present at the Gaza donor's conference in Cairo last week, where Ban repeated the politically correct mantra that, 

“We must not lose sight of the root causes of the recent hostilities: a restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century, the continued denial of Palestinian rights and the lack of tangible progress in peace negotiations…” 

It is a theme he continuously returned to during his visit to the Holy Land. 

That incensed many Israelis. “Occupation”, in Gaza? Israel ended its occupation there, uprooting 9,000 Israelis from their homes, while handing the keys to Gaza to the Palestinians nine years ago—no strings attached. Israelis have been suffering from terror attacks, ever since.  The Secretary General's visit with the parents of a four year old killed by Hamas did nothing to assuage the anger and disappointment over his blistering attack against Israelis for defending themselves.

In reality, the root cause of the conflict in the Holy Land isn’t about Israeli occupation, but the unwillingness of much of the Arab world to acknowledge the 3,500-year presence of the Jewish people on a tiny sliver of the Middle East. Most politicians, pundits and Imams simply refuse to accept that Israel is here to stay. And the Palestinians themselves have some responsibility for the mess, especially those who squandered the good will of Israelis who left Gaza voluntarily by voting into power genocidal Hamas

Lost again in all the tumult and rush to address Palestinian concerns are tens of thousands of innocent traumatized Israelis; of frontline communities like Sderot, where children suffer from ailments usually reserved for battle-scarred veterans. Not a kind word from the international community —only demands that the Jewish state live up to an impossible standard applied to her and her only—on and off the battlefield. And the UN Human Rights Council’s latest Gaza Commission (read kangaroo court) is headed by a serial abuser of the Jewish state.

As for Hamas, don’t tell them crime doesn’t pay.

Looks like it is about to get its explosive hands on as much as 5 billion in international aid pledged at a donors conference in Cairo. Forget the promises from the US, which kicked in over $200 million, the European Union, terror-funder Qatar, along with dozens of other countries and 20 humanitarian NGOs, that the aid will be used exclusively to rebuild Palestinian houses. That’s what they said every time during the last decade when Israel was forced to take military measures to try stop Hamas’ terrorist onslaughts via rockets, kidnapping/murders and suicide terror. Since the terror rulers of Gaza brazenly intertwine their military hardware within Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, significant damage to civilian areas is guaranteed. A ceasefire is then arranged, followed by Gazans asking the world for money to rebuild. Which they have– again and again. And each time, a significant portion of those funds and donated building materials were siphoned off to replenish Hamas’ missile arsenals and rebuild their underground terror tunnels. 

After the latest ceasefire, the US and EU had apparently agreed to Israel’s baseline demand that Hamas be disarmed— but that apparently is not going to happen. In addition, there seems to be no verifiable and transparent mechanism in place that would ensure that billions in cash and construction materials won’t again be diverted to terrorism central.

With all the talk of taking down arch terrorist ISIS, it is truly mind-bending that the civilized world does nothing to bring down arch-terrorist Hamas. Quite the contrary—they’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, already preparing to inflict the next round of destruction and suffering guaranteed upon Palestinians and Israelis alike and bury under the rubble any hopes for peace in the Holy Land.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization with over 400,000 family members.

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