Riyad Mansour Implicitly Compares Israel's Actions to Nazi Germany

The Palestinian Authority's ambassador to the United Nations, following a verbal altercation with the Israeli ambassador, held a press conference where he implicitly compared Israel's actions to those of Nazi Germany. According to the Jerusalem Post, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian representative at the UN, condemned the Israeli efforts to label all Palestinians as terrorists, asserting that Palestinians have the legitimate right to resist occupation. On Wednesday, April 27, in response to statements made by the Israeli ambassador at a Security Council meeting, Mansour said, "You know that all colonizers and occupiers, including those who suppressed the Warsaw Uprising, labeled the rising nations as terrorists." The Palestinian observer's reference was to the uprising of Jews in the besieged ghetto of Warsaw during World War II against the Third Reich, Nazi Germany. Although the Nazis suppressed that uprising, it is remembered as one of the strengths of the besieged Jews in history. Mansour's remarks came after a severe verbal confrontation last week between him and Israeli ambassador Danny Danon at the UN. The Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli ambassador brought a teenage Israeli girl to the Security Council meeting, whose mother had recently been stabbed to death by a Palestinian near her home in a West Bank settlement. The Israeli ambassador stated that Riyad Mansour should condemn the "terrorist acts" of Palestinians in recent months upon seeing this teenage girl. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli ambassador also said after Mansour's statements at the press conference on Wednesday that comparing Israel, which is a "democratic government," to the Nazis is "ridiculous and absurd" and that "the international community should condemn it." Despite the intense verbal conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian ambassadors, the Security Council approved a proposal from several non-permanent members to hold an "emergency" session on May 6, aimed at "defending Palestinian civilians against Israeli occupation." Egypt was among the non-permanent Security Council members that supported the formation of the "emergency" meeting against Israel. Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, protested this Security Council decision, stating that Palestinians seek global support by "lying to the world and playing the victim." These discussions come in the wake of seven months of escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians. Just hours before the Palestinian observer's press conference at the UN, a brother and sister from Palestine were killed in northern Jerusalem. The 23 and 24-year-old siblings from the "Al-Ram" settlement near Ramallah were shot dead while passing through the Qalandiya camp checkpoint towards Jerusalem. This was the first time in recent violence that a Palestinian brother and sister were killed simultaneously. Israel claimed that the "two terrorists" intended to stab its forces and that the girl "was trying to reach into her bag to pull out a knife," with a knife also found in her brother's bag. Israeli border guard forces stated that because the "brother's hand was behind his sister," they became "suspicious" that the sister intended to pull out a knife. This incident occurred while thousands of Israeli police and security forces were deployed in sensitive areas of Jerusalem and its surroundings during the Jewish Passover holiday. Security measures were intensified ahead of Passover after a passenger bus in Jerusalem was bombed for the first time in five years, resulting in the death of a 19-year-old Palestinian Hamas supporter, Abdulhamid Abusurour, and injuring 20 Israelis. In the past seven months of violence, 29 Israelis and several foreigners have been killed, and dozens of Israelis have been injured, while the Palestinian death toll has approached 210, with many Palestinians also injured in Israeli security forces' gunfire near Palestinian areas.