Lesson in Syrian Diplomacy: The Nazis Would Be Ashamed of What Israel Does

Here's a lesson in Syrian diplomacy from contacts in Europe. On September 15, the UN Conference on Disarmament met in Geneva, and the following exchange took place towards the end of the meeting. Apparently, the Conference's annual report was far from substantive, and the Syrians were to blame.

The Israeli representative, Meir Itzchaki, joined the others in thanking the President of the Conference for his tireless efforts to try to bring together many differences. Israel regretted that the Conference had been unable to adopt a substantive report. Everyone knew who was responsible for this failure. Israel hoped that this example would not repeat itself. Some delegations had spoken of rewriting history, and he hoped to remind Syria of the historical facts. Israel was a sovereign State and would continue to be so.

In response, the Syrian representative, Hussein Ali, said this:

Quite frankly if I didn't have so much respect for this august body, I would have burst out laughing at listening with what was said by the respresentative of Israel. Facts speak for themselves and I have already spoken about these facts by mentioning a journalist yesterday.

Syria is a country which respects international law. Syria is a country that does not occupy neighboring countries. Syria does not destroy cities, does not kill children, does not use weapons which are prohibited internationally and we all know on the other hand what Israel does.

Over the recent years and months Syria has repeated its offers and invitations to resume peace negotiations with Israel and we record the Arab peace initiative confirmed in Beirut in 2002 to resume negotiations and to restore a just and comprehensive peace in the region. But Israel rejected those offers and at the time it was said pressure was exerted by another country which lead Israel to refuse these offers in recent days also. Syria asked for negotiations to be resumed but the response from the Israeli prime minister was that Israel had other tools and weapons in its possession which it had not used and could use against Syria.

That is Israel's faith and I say this despite the fact that I didn't really need to repeat these things because we all in the press and media have seen what Israel does. If Nazism were to exist today, Nazism would have been ashamed of what Israel does.

That of course infuriated the other members. The French said "coming from a country that suffered from Nazism, and a family affected by it... I protest and ask that the last sentence would be omitted from the records..." The U.S. then associated itself with France, as did Britain, Germany, the EU and Finland.