U.N. UPDATE: Nobody Wants To Talk Desertification
Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, has issues with the Palestinian bid for statehood. Not only is it harming the peace process, he said, it is also distracting the international community from the world’s real problems.
“There’s hunger in Africa, millions are suffering of malnutrition, there is a genocide going on in Syria, huge problems of human rights everywhere, and all of this U.N. is going crazy because of the Palestinians,” Ayalon said as he rushed from one meeting to another at the U.N. headquarters. “The Palestinians are taking up resources, both intellectual and bureaucratic, instead of letting the U.N. deal with the real problems of the world.”
As if to stress the point, Ayalon walks into one of the U.N. conference halls to talk about the threat of desertification, and as it turns out, Israel has a lot to say on this issue. In a speech filled with acronyms and scientific lingo, Ayalon, who was elected to the Knesset as part of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, laid out an Israeli offer to help fight the spread of arid lands.
“Israel is not alone,” he said later, “When it comes to international cooperation in fighting terror, agriculture, food safety, we are a country that other nations look up to.” Ayalon believes this is the real world and he refers to the world of debates over Palestinian statehood as a “virtual” one. But as he left the hall reporters from around the world follow him. All wanted to ask about Palestine. None seem to care much about desertification.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO