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Monday, October 06, 2008
U.N. takes a Holiday!
5. U.N. Takes Holiday — for Muslims, Not Jews
The United Nations General Assembly and the U.N. Secretariat took last Tuesday off to honor a religious holiday.
However, it wasn’t for the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashana, which began Monday evening and is observed by some public and private entities. Rather, it was for Eid al-Fitr, the conclusion of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Judaism is the only major religion that that U.N. fails to recognize in any way. The world body has never closed its doors or delayed any of its activities for any Jewish holiday, reports Newsmax United Nations correspondent Stewart Stogel.
The General Assembly is also the home of the controversial "Zionism is Racism” resolution, which the U.N. has never officially rescinded.
The U.N. habit of ignoring Jewish sentiments came to a highly publicized flashpoint in 1999, when then-President Bill Clinton was scheduled to address the assembly on the first day of its two-week meeting.
That day, Sept. 20, also happened to be Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays.
Clinton, sensing a possible political problem for his wife Hillary, who then was contemplating a run for the New York Senate seat she later won, asked then U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and General Assembly President Theo-Ben Gurirab of Namibia to delay the opening session for one day out of respect for the Jewish holiday.
The answer was no.
Clinton reacted with the unusual response of canceling his U.N. appearance. The world body, stunned at the snub, scrambled to reschedule Clinton for the next day.
The White House accepted, and Clinton delivered a speech insisting that the U.N. take a large role in stopping mass slaughter around the world.
At the time, the U.N. was reeling for allowing the disintegration and subsequent ethnic cleansing of the former Yugoslavia to go essentially unchallenged. Although no accurate records exist, the U.N. estimates that more than 500,000 people may have been killed in the former Yugoslavia.
10/06/2008 07:55:00 AM by Todd Bacon
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