UN Boss To Speak At New York Orthodox Synagogue’s Shabbat Service
Ban Ki-moon Image by Getty Images
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will speak at a Shabbat service at an Orthodox synagogue in New York.
The service this Saturday at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan is in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was observed around the world last week. Ban will be accompanied by Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon.
The event is sold out, according to a notice on the Park East website.
Ban’s appearance will come nearly two weeks after he said in an address to the U.N. Security Council that Palestinian violence against Israel is a result of “frustration” over “a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.”
“Security measures alone will not stop the violence,” Ban said in remarks that Israeli officials said appeared to justify Palestinian terror. “They cannot address the profound sense of alienation and despair driving some Palestinians – especially young people. It is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the U.N. leader of “giving terror a tailwind.”
Days after the Security Council address Ban, who also condemned Palestinian terror attacks, doubled down on his remarks in an Op-Ed in The New York Times headlined “Don’t Shoot the Messenger, Israel.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
