27 Apr 2023; MEMO: Israel is trying to persuade country representatives not to attend the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba at the UN headquarters in New York, Israeli TV Channel 13 has reported. The event is scheduled to be held on 15 May.
The channel quoted a senior Israeli official as saying that, "If necessary, [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu will personally participate in these efforts and will not hesitate."
The text of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's message to the delegates of countries at the UN urged them to "refrain from participating in the event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba… Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] will deliver a speech, so ask your colleagues, especially those at the senior level to urge their delegates to the United Nations not to participate in the event that adopts the Palestinian narrative that opposes Israel's right to exist."
In a media comment, the ministry claimed that the Nakba event is "another Palestinian attempt to rewrite history." The Nakba ("Catastrophe") is the name given to the ethnic cleansing of more than three-quarters of a million Palestinians driven from their homes and land by Jewish terror gangs such as the Irgun, Lehi and Haganah, and the creation of the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine in 1948.
In December last year, the UN General Assembly in New York adopted five pivotal resolutions once again, four of which relate to Palestine, and the fifth to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. A clause was added to one of the resolutions that includes the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba.
