Thousands Rally for Israel in New York ahead of Paris Mideast Conference

News Staff : Jan 13, 2017
JNS.org

"We are asking the U.S. to stop funding the U.N. until it does what it's supposed to do." -Hillary Markowitz

(New York, NY)—[JNS.org] Roughly 5,000 people turned out Thursday at the French Mission to the United Nations in New York City to rally in support of Israel ahead of the Jan. 15 international Middle East peace conference in Paris. (Photo Credit: The North American Coalition for Israel/via JNS.org)

The rally, organized by The North American Coalition for Israel, which represents 50 pro-Israel groups, demanded that the United Nations "immediately cease its unjust targeting of Israel and focus on real issues such as Syrian genocide and Global Islamic terror."

"The U.N., [President Barack] Obama and [Secretary of State John] Kerry have really been attacking Israel," rally organizer Hillary Markowitz told the Jerusalem Post, slamming the recent U.N. Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements as an "abomination."

"We are asking the U.S. to stop funding the U.N. until it does what it's supposed to do," she added.

The upcoming Paris conference is expected to host officials from more than 72 countries, including Kerry, to seek a solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Israel, which will not attend the conference, believes the gathering will undermine prospects for peace by imposing outside solutions and instead has called for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

In a meeting with Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Paris summit a "rigged conference." 

"We're all faced here with a great challenge against the forces of terrorism that not only seek to destroy Israel, but seek of course to render any possibility of peace totally hopeless," he said. "There are other such efforts that render peace hopeless and one of them is the Paris conference. It's a rigged conference, rigged by the Palestinians with French auspices to adopt additional anti-Israel stances. This pushes peace backwards. It's not going to obligate us. It's a relic of the past. It's a last gasp of the past before the future sets in."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.