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(FinalCall.com) – It is abundantly clear throughout the Islamic world that Israel’s bombing raid on a Palestinian refugee center in Syria Oct. 6 amounted to “unacceptable aggression.”
The 57-member Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) denounced the raid–the deepest military strike by Israel into Syrian territory since 1974–as “a grave act of provocation and a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty.”
Unfortunately, the United States just does not seem to “get it.”
President George W. Bush declined to even criticize the Jewish state, saying instead that Israel “has got a right to defend herself,” while declaring that he had cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to try to avoid escalating tensions in the region.
At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, called at Syria’s request, Damascus demanded that the Council condemn the attack. Most Council diplomats spoke out against both the air strike and the suicide bombing in the Israeli port city of Haifa that killed 19 people and prompted Israel’s retaliation.
The chief U.S. diplomat at the world body focused his condemnation on the Haifa attack, while blaming Syria for harboring terrorists.
The U.S. positions further isolates this country from the consensus in the Arab world and the Islamic world that the Israeli bombing “exposes the deteriorating situation in the region to uncontrollable consequences which could drag the whole region into a violent whirlpool.”
The OIC called on the international community to “intervene in holding back Israel and assuring that it would not repeat its act which risks plunging the region in a cycle of violence and trouble,” according to dispatches compiled by Tehrantimes.com.
The European Union condemned “a very disturbing weekend” of violence and said the Israeli raid was “unacceptable.” Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini “on behalf of the Italian presidency of the EU, strongly urged Israel against actions which could raise tensions in the region,” according to an official statement released in Rome.
The United Kingdom, one of the strongest U.S. allies on Middle East policy, agreed that the raid was “unacceptable,” saying it represents an escalation of the current Middle East crisis.
“China is shocked at the Israeli military attack on targets within Syria and strongly condemns it,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in a statement on the ministry’s website: www.fmprc.gov.cn, and translated by the Tehran Times. China is one of five permanent members of the Security Council and which has veto power over Council resolutions.
An official at the Syrian Foreign Ministry urged the United States–another of the veto-wielding permanent Council members–not to block a resolution condemning the Israeli strike, saying this country should work to prevent any worsening tensions in the region.
Such requests may, however, fall on deaf ears. Until March 17, 1970, the United States had never employed its veto power at the UN Security Council. The first U.S. veto was cast on March 17, 1970, over Southern Rhodesia. The second veto came two years later when Washington sought to protect Israel from a resolution condemning Israel for an attack, similar to this one, against one of its neighbors.
Since then, the United States has cast its veto a total of 38 times to shield Israel from Council draft resolutions that condemned, deplored, denounced, affirmed, endorsed, called upon or urged Israel to obey the world body, according to research by the Black Radical Congress citing material published by Fouad Ajami and former Illinois Congressman Paul Findley, author of “Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the US/Israeli Relationship”, as well as “They Dare to Speak Out.” Mr. Findley served in Congress for 22 years.
Of the 248 vetoes recorded by the Security Council since the inception of the United Nations, the United States has cast 73–the vast majority of them related to the Middle East and protecting Israel.
