Dozens of leaders from the Arab and Muslim world, UN representatives, representatives from NGOs, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Neturei Karta rabbi, a representative of the US Department of State, and even two Israeli Arab MKs (Members of Knesset) converged on Doha, capital of Qatar, for a two-day anti-Israel hate-fest, given the auspicious title: “The International Conference on Jerusalem” ( 26-27 February 2012).
The conundrum of an orthodox rabbi and Israeli MKs at the Doha hate-fest is a topic for another essay, as is the thoroughly anti-Israel speech of an American self-proclaimed State Department representative. For now it is illuminating to focus on the broader content and outcomes of the conference itself.
The fundamental goal of the conference, as described on its website, was to legitimize the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital of the independent, sovereign Arab state of “Palestine” within Israel’s current borders. To accomplish this goal the conference sought to legitimize, by the political and moral stature of its attendees and participants, its demand at the UN Security Council for a UN resolution to form an international commission to investigate the actions taken by Israel since 1967 to erase Jerusalem’s Islamic and Arab identity.
To that end, all but one participant was focused on delegitimizing Israel, denouncing its existence within any borders and denying thousands of years of Jewish history. The speakers talked about Jerusalem as if Jewish history did not exist or was a fraud — as if all Jewish claims in the city were just a tactic to dispossess Palestinians. The conference, then, sought to lend credibility to the latest strategy in the Arab political and propaganda war against Israel: the delegitimization of Israel’s history and the creation of a fictitious “Palestinian” history to replace it, thus eviscerating any Jewish claims to an historical and religious attachment to the Land of Israel.
There were two entities that emerged victorious from the conference. Not surprisingly, one was the Palestinian Authority — but the other was Israel.
The Palestinian victory was the “Doha Declaration on the International Conference for Defense of Jerusalem” at the conclusion of the conference. The declaration called upon the UN to create the commission described above; and upon all Muslim states to contribute to a “historic global mobilization for the expression of international solidarity with the Palestinian people in Jerusalem” and for support of their legitimate rights and to identify and confront illegal Israeli efforts to “judaize” (sic) the city; and upon “the international powers who remain silent” towards Israeli violations to assume their responsibility and compel Israel to implement all UN resolutions relevant to Jerusalem; and upon the UN and other international entities to stop Israeli illegal excavations and archaeological explorations which distort the “true history” of the site; and upon UNESCO to force Israel to stop its unilateral policies for imposing a fait accompli in Jerusalem, including the immediate cessation of all settlement activities, the removal of the “apartheid wall,” the preservation of Islamic and Christian sanctities, and to halt Judaization (sic) schemes.
In short, the Doha Declaration demands that the Muslim world compel the UN to impose upon Israel the demands that the Muslim world maintains on behalf of the Palestinians but has not itself been able to impose despite 65 years of war, terrorism, black propaganda, hate education for its youth, rejectionism, and an endless, relentless diatribe of genocide and rhetoric of annihilation by nuclear or political means. Given the Arab oil sheikhdoms’ influence at the UN, such a commission as envisioned in the Doha Declaration is likely to be forthcoming in the near future.
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