118 Days to Go
A different kind of Counting!

By Sherwin Pomerantz

In my home there are two different kinds of counting going on right now. Each night before we retire my wife and I count the traditional sefirat ha’omer, the counting of the Omer during the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot. For example, today, May 19th, is the 30th day in the counting cycle.

On this blog I am engaged in a different counting, sefirat ha’um, the counting of the United Nations. Today there are 118 days before the opening of the fall 2011 session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

In the first case, we count one more number each day starting with one on the eve of the second day of Passover and ending with 49 on the day before the holiday of Shavuot, celebrating the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai according to tradition, over 3,500 years ago. The Hebrew word for counting, sefira, has as its root “spr” which is also the root word of sippur (story), mispar (the number) and sapeer (the telling).

A high school classmate of mine from my days in the Bronx but now living in Los Angeles shared with me his interpretation that the basic meaning of a “count,” to “account,” or to “recount,” is to cover everything about the subject. He relates that the English word “supper” actually comes from the Hebrew root “spr” and is named so because that’s the one meal of the day when the whole family can get together at the table and interact, recounting the day’s activity. And supper is looked at with anticipation as the culmination of everyone’s individual lives. In our case we count up in anticipation of celebrating the next holiday in the Jewish calendar when our ancestors became a people guided by God’s law.

But in this blog I am counting down, each day reducing the number of days to the General Assembly meeting because of the anticipatory concern and fear of what may happen there in the monolith of a building at 1st Avenue and 42nd Street. And what might that be?

There is actually a double concern about the General Assembly meeting. One, of course, is the press by the Palestinian Authority leadership to get a massive vote of support for the recognition of Palestinian statehood which will then allow the new country to be seated at the UN.

Now I know that there are lots of legal eagles out there who say that the General Assembly voting in this manner has no meaning because only the Security Council can recommend new members and only countries that have declared themselves to be countries can even be considered. So there are those who say don’t worry about it. But, even if there are real legal impediments to the process, the public relations value of such a vote has ramifications that are way beyond any legal considerations. And most of those are not beneficial to Israel and its position in the family of nations.

But there is a second concern and that is the anti-Israel rhetoric that will precede the vote during the discussion of the issue. We already know and it is widely acknowledged that the United Nations has become the biggest forum for Israel-bashing in the world. Counts (there’s that word again) of anti-Israel resolutions show that those far outnumber resolutions against any other nation. The UN has passed more anti-Israel resolutions in its history than it has against all the other nations of the world combined.

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_resolutions_concerning_Israel for details).

Knowing this we must do everything in our power to convince those nations of the world who do not make up the “automatic votes” in the General Assembly as well as all of the members of the Security Council that for it to be true to its charter, the UN cannot, once again, pass yet another resolution that is inimical to the long term existence of a member state.

So, what can we do? We can go to the following web site http://www.un.org/en/members/ where every UN member is listed along with their US mailing address and deluge their representatives there with letters urging them to vote no in favor of Palestinian statehood at this time. We can explain to them that approving the concept of statehood for a group (i.e. Hamas) which has, as one of its basic principles, the elimination of another member of the UN and which concomitantly clearly states that no Jews will be allowed to live in the new country (Fatah) does not qualify to be given the imprimatur of statehood by any UN body.

Those of us living here believe that Israel is the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and, as such, no group whose espoused purpose is to deprive us of the right to live here should be granted credibility by such a respected international body. This is the minimum we must do and we must do it NOW! Unless we do that, the countdown to September 14th will really be the countdown to calamity.