The UN Lies to John Bolton

A reader brings to my attention this fascinating article by Eye on the UN, on the recent controversy surrounding the UN's exhibition of a map that did not contain Israel. US Ambassador John Bolton complained. The UN responding by minimizing the whole thing as a nonevent and weakly apologizing.

Well, it turns out that the UN wasn't being very forthcoming in its response to Bolton. In fact, I think the word is "lie."

The UN's most volumble defender on this was, of course, the Payola Pundit, UN consultant-correspondent Ian Williams, famed for covering the UN while writing pamphlets and performing media training for UN officials. Williams cranked out a shrill defense of his sometime employer -- which employs his wife to write fake news for UNICEF -- in a rant that advised his pals to show sterner stuff:

The UN apologized, but was wrong to do so, both in principle and tactics. Of
course the map did not show Israel. The country did not exist in 1948, which is
the year the map was drawn. What existed was the UN trusteeship of Palestine,
which did exist.

Let's hope the Greeks or Italians do not have an exhibition on Mediterranean civilization with maps of Alexander's or Hadrian's empire. Just imagine how many countries they would have to apologize to, from Afghanistan to Britain, that would not appear on the map.

Well, there never was a UN trusteeship for pre-Israel Palestine -- but why let facts get in the way of a good rant? In any event, that glaring boo-boo did not detract from the central point of the UN spin so loyally parroted by Williams, which was that an old map just happened to be lying around, and that Bolton was making a fuss over nothing.

But as Eye on the UN points out, the no-Israel map was placed there deliberately by the organizers of the hate-Israel "Palestine Solidarity Day," and its use was a longtime tradition designed to show just how lovely it would be if the hated Zionist entity would just disappear.

Eye on the UN notes that the decision -- linked here -- was made at the first "solidarity day" in November 1981:

The Chairman [the ambassador from Senegal]: I should like to draw memberattention to the map and flag now positioned just outside this chamber; they are those of Palestine as it existed in 1948. If there is no objection I shall ask for that map and that flag to be brought into the chamber, where they will remain until the end of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. If there is no objection, it will be so decided.

One of the other jackasses in attendance, a "Mr. Gurirab" from the South West Africa People's Organization, piped up:

I cannot miss this opportunity to note the map that has just been brought into the room, which shows Palestine as it existed in 1947, and the flag, which symbolizes the aspirations and legitimate demands of the Palestinian people. It is therefore my pleasure to be speaking at this point, and I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for directing the Secretariat to bring the flag and the map into the room.

And so it has been since then -- a hallowed UN tradition.

Now, back to the fifth-rate hack who loyally carried water for the UN on this and on many, many other occasions.

As I've said before, the time has come for Bolton to clear up the mystery surrounding the payments that have gone to Williams and the other UN hacks. When the matter was pursued by Accuracy in Media, and later by FrontPage Magazine. the UN stonewalled. It's time for some answers.

Keep in mind that this is no ordinary group of journalists. The UN press corps' coverage is so slavishly deferential to the UN that even defenders of the UN find it embarassing. Commenting upon the recent Kofi Annan press conference tantrum, a good friend of the UN, former UN bureaucrat Samir Sanbar, recently observed:

"A main problem was that the U.N.-accredited press in particular has been so adoring and accommodating for the last seven years that questions reflecting a shift, however limited, seemed disappointing -- even rebellious."

Time to find out how much of that "adoring and accomodating" attitude has been bought and paid for.

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