UN incompetence and correcting Israel’s history

As we didn’t have newspapers over the weekend, we read mostly international news and since it is the Christmas holidays the main news focused on the town Bethlehem where our Lord Jesus Christ was born. Apparently the reports show that the United States issued a warning for American citizens to avoid visiting the Holy Land because in the first week of December, US Pres. Donald Trump declared Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and would move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

This move has caused America to be isolated from the rest of the Muslim world. But was Pres. Trump given the proper advice to make this move? On the other hand, previous American Presidents never dared to correct Jewish history. Even to many of us Bible reading Christians and Catholics alike, you will never see the name of Tel Aviv in the Bible because it has always been Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The only problem is… Jerusalem is also the capital of Palestine… something that the United Nations (UN) did not consider when it created the State of Israel in 1948.

Again this is an issue that the UN never came to solve. Israel was already a State long before many of the UN member states became states in their own right. Over the weekend, I watched again the movie “Kingdom of Heaven” about the crusades fighting for Jerusalem and lost to the great Muslim leader Saladin. This was when the Roman Empire ceased to exist and Christianity became a power against the Muslims and this has been the world since that time.

Last Thursday, some 128-member nations of the UN voted against the US despite the threat by the US to cut funding to countries that would vote against it. Only small nations, notably, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Honduras and Guatemala voted in favor of the US. The Philippines apparently abstained. Again, let me point out that these are small nations that didn’t even exist when Israel was already a great nation.

So the Middle East is literally back to square one fighting for the survival of the Palestinian people. Its biggest problem is its repeated refusal to accept the State of Israel. So if we go back to recent history back to the creation of the Israel State in May 1948, it produced a turmoil in the Middle East that ended with the Six-Day War and finally in the Yom Kippur War. In all the wars that the Muslim countries fought, Israel was always victorious, partly because of the backing of the United States.

So in the end, nearly 70 years since the creation of Israel, the region has never found peace, even with the UN supporting both the Palestinians and Israel. In my book, US Pres. Trump did the right thing for the sake of Israel’s history to declare what history has taught us all these years that Jerusalem was indeed the capital of Israel. So when 128 UN members that did not exist when Israel was a state voted against the US decision to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, that really doesn’t matter to many of us, especially those who read the Holy Bible.

Finally, this issue reminds us of the incompetence of the UN as a world body. It cannot even solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor has it solved the conflict between the North and the South Koreans, which would explode into a nuclear holocaust… it could not even solve the small issue of the Island of Cyprus. So what US Pres. Donald Trump has done in telling the truth about the history of Israel… is he has also exposed the incompetence of the UN, which was one of his campaign promises.

So with the Year 2018 coming in a week’s time, are we going to witness another major conflict in the Middle East, which has been predicted in the Holy Bible as Armageddon? Or will the North Koreans beat the Middle East and create his own world holocaust? While we can only hope for the best for our country and people, however in other parts of the world, hope is fading fast.

* * * Back here at home, I read a report that Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon warned of the possible impact on security if the government permits the entry of Chinese companies into the country’s telecommunication industry. While Sen. Drilon welcomes the move of President Rodrigo Duterte to allow a third player into the telco industry dominated by only two giants – Smart PLDT and Globe Telecoms – he warns that the government should exercise caution and look into the security aspect of the deal. Sen. Drilon is just cautious. A third telco will surely improve our slow internet speeds, but the Chinese would have to move fast in getting more cellsites all over the country, something which Globe Telecom and Smart Telecommunications had difficulty in setting up because of the LGU issues.