Comment & Debate
MJ Rosenberg. “Obama Should Support Palestinian Statehood at the United Nations.” Huffington Post. July 22nd, 2011: “The Jews of Palestine (who would later become Israelis) knew that the United Nations was the only forum to achieve recognition of a state when they turned to it in 1947. As any Israeli will tell you, it was the United Nations General Assembly that granted Israel its birth certificate. Israel’s own Declaration of Independence says as much: On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. The Israelis went to the United Nations for precisely the same reason the Palestinians will. Attempts at negotiations had failed. The Palestinian leadership in the late 1940s was dominated by extremists who had no interest in compromise with the Jews. The Israeli leadership today is similarly inflexible.”