United States Vice President Mike Pence attended an event in New York on Tuesday to mark the 70th anniversary of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 that recommended partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and Arab state.
The event was organized by the World Jewish Congress and the Israeli mission to the UN and was held in the Queens Museum in New York where the UN General Assembly met in 1947. Representatives of the 33 countries that supported the resolution were in attendance.
Pence said, “I bring the congratulations and support of a champion of Israel, President Donald Trump” and that “The president sent me with a simple message: Under our administration, America will always stand with Israel.” Pence said that 70 years ago, “the United Nations declared to the world an ancient truth. That the Jewish people have a national, irrevocable right to an independent state in their ancestral and eternal homeland.” He also said that “the days of Israel-bashing at the UN are over.”
Pence also said that U.S. President Donald Trump was “actively considering” moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the event via video link and described Israel as “a thriving democracy that helps so many people around the world” with many allies, “including the United States.”
PM Netanyahu: "I have no doubt that we will gather together again in another 70 years to celebrate Israel's continued progress, its prosperity, its power, and the peace that it achieved with its neighbors because of all of you, and all of us" pic.twitter.com/QDk4fByQbI
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 28, 2017
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin published a video on Tuesday to mark the anniversary of the partition plan in which he said that “The United Nations vote on the 29th of November 1947, will stay in the memory of the Jewish people forever.” The President recalled that on the night of the vote, as a small child aged nine years old, he had fallen asleep only to be awoken by the cheers from his family who were huddled around the radio listening to the vote.
Rivlin said, “We always knew and we know to this day, that our independence, our sovereignty in this land, was not based only on diplomats making votes. And the State of Israel has not flourished into a thriving economy and a vibrant democracy, because of a ‘yes’, a ‘no’, or even an ‘abstain’. The State of Israel, was born out of the 2,000 year old hope of the Jewish people to return to our homeland: to return to Zion, to Jerusalem. But the vote in the UN, 70 years ago, gave Israel something very special: a place among the nations.”
UN General Assembly Resolution 181 passed on 29th November 1947. 33 countries voted in favor, 13 against and 10 countries, including the United Kingdom, abstained.
(via BICOM)
[Photo: Image Magazine / YouTube]