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Criticizing Israel Has Become a Permanent Obsession

(Jerusalem Post) Amb. Alan Baker - The penchant for criticizing Israel, whatever it may or may not do, appears to have become a permanent obsession. Whether such criticism relates to Israel's internal policies, or to governance of the territories, responses to terror attacks, or whether it relates to situations with no apparent linkage to Israel, the necessity to find linkage to Israel inevitably emerges. No society or country is beyond rational criticism, but as a member of the world community, Israel has never benefited from the equality to which every other state is entitled. Since its establishment, Israel has been denied one of the basic principles guaranteed to all states by the UN Charter - the principle of sovereign equality. This discrimination takes the form of exclusion from UN regional groupings and preventing Israel's right to submit its candidacy and candidates to main UN organs such as the Security Council or the International Court of Justice. Palestinians voice concern that the international community is overly immersed in the Russia-Ukraine war rather than pursuing Israel. Their expressions of indignation seek to equate the low-intensity Israeli-Palestinian dispute with the high-intensity open warfare conducted by Russia against Ukraine, with its massive bombardment of civilians, use of illegal weaponry and millions of refugees. This malicious attempt to invent a false equation is indicative of the blindness caused by the obsession to criticize Israel. The writer, who heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, served as legal adviser and deputy director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2022-04-28 00:00:00
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