​Amid a fresh wave of terrorism in countries including the United States, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel – though all but the latter have been responded to full-throatedly, owing to the base politics and limited focus that now afford singular international attention only to the arm of violent jihadism that brands itself ISIS – annual elections were held last week to fill upcoming vacancies on the body most responsible for global peace: the United Nations Security Council. Despite this responsibility, though – and power surpassing that of any other U.N. organ – the Council, itself frequently deadlocked by the conflicting interests of nations large and small, has become well-known for its inability to concretely address the world’s most pressing problems.

The Security Council, at any given time, has 15 members – five veto-wielding permanent members (the U.S., China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom), with the remainder elected by the General Assembly to serve staggered two-year terms.
 
The U.N. as a whole is comprised of 193 member states; a majority of these have had the opportunity – some repeatedly – to be members of the organization’s most “prestigious” body, while (as of 2017) 67 will never have had the chance. These include many smaller countries. At the same time, while Israel – whose policies and engagements receive unparalleled probing across the U.N. system – has never been elected to the Security Council, countries with a smaller population have: for example, Panama (five times), Denmark (four times), Norway (four times), Ireland (three times), Finland (twice), Uruguay (twice), Singapore (once), Paraguay (once), Luxembourg (once) and Malta (once).
 
Arab states in the Middle East have also been elected. Among them, Egypt has served five times, Syria three times, Algeria three times, Jordan three times, Iraq twice, Libya twice and Lebanon twice.        
 
The current Council members whose term will continue through the end of 2017 are Egypt, Jordan, Senegal, Ukraine and Uruguay.
 
Those whose term ends at the end of this year are Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and Venezuela.
 
In last week’s ballot, the countries elected to serve on the Council in 2017 and 2018 are Ethiopia (for the African Group), Kazakhstan (for the Asia-Pacific Group), Bolivia (for the Latin American and Caribbean Group), and Sweden (for the Western European and Other Group), with the Netherlands and Italy – in a rarity over recent decades, after multiple inconclusive rounds of voting – agreeing to split a term by serving only one year each.
 
It is difficult to predict how the altered makeup of the Security Council may impact voting on resolutions on issues such as those related to Israel – and, by extension, whether such resolutions will be proposed at all – as this is impacted at any given moment by geopolitical circumstances, by the policy orientation of sitting governments and, of course, by the specific content of any prospective motion. In the nearly half-year remaining until outgoing Council members are replaced, much can change or remain the same in the Middle East. The rise of ISIS and warfare regionally, along with related surges of migration to and recurring terror attacks in Europe, have drawn a good deal of attention away from the Palestinian-Israeli rift. However, as Western countries pledge to eradicate ISIS, a reflexive instinct to also pacify Palestinians remains. France, of late very much in Islamist crosshairs, insisted on launching a recent international “initiative” to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but its initial summit meeting excluded the parties to conflict themselves; the Palestinians, who at one point received indication that Paris would simply recognize the “State of Palestine” if negotiations with Israel failed to promptly yield it, came to endorse the effort. Absent any Israeli buy-in, the French also on various occasions have expressed a desire to get the U.N. Security Council to impose a “framework” for the resolution of the dispute.
 
This, that is, assuming the U.S. will not deploy its Council veto. The Obama administration has long defended Israel at the U.N., and affirmed its continued view that the conflict should be settled through direct bilateral negotiations, but it has not clearly promised to oppose any Security Council resolution on Israel during the president’s final months in office, in the absence of progress toward peace on other tracks.
 
Nine affirmative votes, with no veto, are needed for a Security Council resolution to be adopted. If the U.S. were to allow a Council resolution on the conflict this year – whether outlining an anticipated final-status deal or, for example, merely reproving Israel for the presence of Jewish communities in Palestinian-claimed territory – it would all but surely pass with the four other permanent members, and at least six (if not all) non-permanent members, actively supporting it. While several current Council members have shown willingness in other U.N. bodies to abstain on some overtly anti-Israel resolutions, few, if any, would abstain on (let alone oppose) a motion seen to reflect a consensus that effectively includes the White House.
 
As to 2017, the Security Council landscape would seem to be improving a bit for Jerusalem: three countries that dependably vote against Israel (including the vociferous Venezuela) will be out, to be replaced by only two following the same voting pattern (though the incoming three countries that typically abstain on stridently anti-Israel resolutions include Sweden, which has regularly been outspoken in criticizing Israel’s government). Israel’s effort to return to a renaissance in ties with African states like incoming Council member (and moderate-voting) Ethiopia – as well as its recent, behind-the-scenes consultations even with those like Russia, Turkey and the Sunni Arab states – may also yield subtle fruit at the U.N., if only in averting or watering down the most damaging of prospective resolutions. At the same time, of course, factors like the U.S. presidential race and now the selection of a new British premier – though a number of friends of Israel are well-placed in both contexts – offer real wildcards. Additionally, it is yet to be seen how Brexit, and global anxieties and a sense of nationalist resurgences generally, will impact the European Union and its aspiration to a bloc-wide foreign policy.
 
Last Friday, the so-called international Quartet on Middle East peacemaking – which includes high-level representatives of the U.S., U.N., E.U. and Russia – resurfaced with a report that again sought to project an urgent need to end the Palestinian-Israeli stalemate. However, the report provoked a furious backlash from Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who yesterday called on the Security Council to reject the text, which notably included not only Israeli settlements but also Palestinian incitement to violence among the impediments that it perceives to peace.
 
More likely than heeding Abbas’s call, the Council can be expected over the coming weeks to shift focus to the process of selecting a U.N. secretary-general to replace Ban Ki-moon at the start of 2017, after ten years in office. Though formally elected by the General Assembly – which this year has been given the opportunity to interview declared candidates – the world body’s top official is traditionally chosen through intensive private haggling within the Security Council, specifically its permanent members. Like candidacies for Council membership, the role of secretary-general is (unofficially) seen as tied to region, doled out on a basis of rotation. It is now widely seen to be Eastern Europe’s turn to place someone at the helm.
 
While the array of candidates vary in their prior record on Middle East issues – secretaries-general are limited in what they can do to ameliorate anti-Israel bigotry at the U.N., and most have to different degrees disappointed in their efforts to at least try – Eastern European countries have, in the post-Communist era, often been characterized by considerable sympathy for the Jewish state. During a period when Eastern Europe may have some greater autonomy from centralized E.U. decision-making – or, in fact, a more influential part in shaping it – it would be a true contribution to peacemaking, and to the standing of the United Nations, if a senior-most U.N. official from that region were to model bold leadership in promoting fairness and responsibility on Israel at the world body itself.
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The hardest part of this and my other encounters with these bereaved families is bringing the meeting to an end and continuing with my day’s work, knowing that that while perhaps momentarily buoyed by the expression of care and concern by a major international Jewish organization, I would rejoin my hectic reality while the victims will need to spend a lifetime confronting their loss.
 
This was the case with previous years' recipients. Laren Sayif’s father, Druze Police Sgt. Zidan Sayif, was killed in November 2014 as he confronted two Palestinian terrorists who were engaging in a gruesome knife and meat cleaver attack on worshipers at the Kehilat B’nai Torah synagogue in Har Nof, Jerusalem. That attack left 24 children without their fathers and, in recognition of the scope of the tragedy, B’nai B’rith used the B’nai B’rith International Emergency Fund to make an exceptional second grant that year to the four children of one of the four victims, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky, Chief Warrant Officer Kasahun Baynesian, 39, of Netivot, served in the Northern Brigade of the Gaza Division and was killed during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, along with three other soldiers, when his military jeep was hit with an anti-tank missile fired by a Gazan terrorist squad, which used a cross-border tunnel to infiltrate southern Israel on July 17. He left behind four children—the youngest born after his death. Yossi Shushan was killed on Augusut 20, 2011 by a Grad rocket fired from Gaza and left behind three children. Udi and Ruth Fogel who were murdered, along with three children, in their beds in the settlement of Itamar on Friday night, March 11, 2011. They left three surviving children. These heartbreaking stories repeat themselves for all of the ten victims whose orphans the fund has touched over the years.
 
The Edith “Pat” Wolfson Endowment Fund has become an expression of caring for the victims of some of the worst terrorist atrocities that have left orphans over the last decade. The B’nai B’rith World Center will continue to execute this difficult and humbling task while seeking ways to maintain a meaningful relationship with those we have touched.  

The B’nai B’rith World Center has administered the Edith “Pat” Wolfson Endowment Fund for Israeli Youth since its inception in 2005, with Schneider personally presenting the grant to the orphan’s surviving parent or legal guardian each year. The fund supports Israeli youth orphaned by war or terrorism. 

The current wave of Palestinian terrorism that has targeted Jewish Israelis across the country, particularly in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria but also in central Israel, has taken Israelis by surprise. Starting on April 15, 2015 with a car ramming that killed Shalom Yohai Sherki (age 25) at a bus stop at the French Hill intersection in Jerusalem and critically wounded a young woman, and then picking up steam with the murder of Eitam and Naama Henkin on Oct. 1, the wave—that has largely taken the form of knifing attacks but also includes car rammings, rock and Molotov-cocktail throwing against moving vehicles and drive-by shootings—has left 15 Israelis dead and some 150 wounded. In addition, wide-scale rioting on Temple Mount and at Judea and Samaria friction-points, and also for a time in Israeli Arab towns, have caused deep apprehension among Israelis and have forced changes to their daily and leisure activities. Still, even in Jerusalem, I can attest that at least when I have been out and about during day and night, Israelis are not hiding at home. Millions are taking public transport to work and school, restaurants are still relatively full and cultural events continue unabated. And in our particular reality, where Jews and Arabs mix widely at work, at school and in the public sphere, it was not particularly surprising that the chief surgeon who saved the life of a 13-year old Jewish boy knifed by two teenage Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 12 was Professor Ahmed Eid.
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Taking April 15 or any other date as the kick-off point for this wave of terrorism—or the “Third Intifada” as some prefer to call it—is arbitrary and only serves to point to our short collective memories; 1,282 Israelis have been murdered since Sept. 2000 (the “Second Intifada”) in terrorist attacks, among them suicide bombings that took the lives and injured dozens at a time. And only five months before Sherki’s murder, five rabbis at prayer and one traffic policeman who came to their rescue were shot and butchered in the Kehilat Bnei Zion synagogue—the last victim, Rabbi Haim (Howie) Rothman, succumbing to his wounds only last week.

Standing in the front line of defense, Israel Police and Border Police have to be credited for responding quickly and assertively to the changing landscape posed by the new form of terrorism—no longer organized attacks that utilize material and infrastructure that could be detected and thwarted by Israeli intelligence assets in Judea and Samaria (rebuilt since Israel’s "Defensive Shield” operation of 2002 launched in reaction to the Second Intifada when the IDF was at a disadvantage after these assets were abandoned under the Oslo Accords) but impulsive “lone wolf” attacks on Israel’s roads, streets and bus stops with little or no intelligence signature. The officers’ increased presence and quick reaction in neutralizing the terrorists, along with the heroism of many bystanders, have saved lives. At the same time, some say that the government response was not as quick as needed in adopting and implementing more general policies aimed at taking the battle to the opponent’s territory to deter future attacks, such as house demolitions, curfews, travel restrictions and other means that are being widely advocated by concerned Israelis. Government spokesmen have explained that such measures could have the opposite affect and lead to frustration by the bulk of Palestinian population that has not yet participated in riots or violence. A similar dispute arose this week between Minister of Defense Moshe Yaalon and Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan, with Erdan arguing against relinquishing the bodies of killed terrorists to their families for burial—funerals that inevitably turn into anti-Israel hate fests and opportunities for promoting further radicalization—and Yaalon insisting that retaining the bodies in the hope that they can be used in future swaps serves no purpose and only enrages the masses. 

Local Arab rejection of Zionism and the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel can be traced back to the first large-scale Arab riots of 1920, led by none other than the notorious Haj Amin el-Husseini. Then, as today, the immediate trigger for the violence was incitement by the local Arab leadership that “al-Aqsa is in danger.” In pre-state Israel it was el-Husseini (who despite his conviction for fomenting the riots that left six Jews dead and 200 injured, was released and appointed Grand Mufti the following year by the British authorities) who inspired and organized Arab pogroms. Today the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Jihad Islami and an assortment of other terrorist organizations who lionize him do the same, utilizing mass media and social media to carry graphic images extoling martyrdom to every Arab household and cell phone, overheating religious fervor and driving individuals to violence. This extreme anti-Israel and anti-Semitic indoctrination pervades Palestinian society already aroused by the tragic fallout of the Arab Spring and by the atrocities of ISIS.

Although the recent attacks have been undertaken mainly by “lone wolves,” the instigators cannot be acquitted of responsibility for both the Jewish and Arab deaths in the current wave of violence. As detailed in a recent report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, a research institute with close ties to Israel’s intelligence community,     Palestinian politicians and media commentators continue to exploit the events to promote Palestinian national objectives, with the PA favoring continued violence and terrorism based on the concept of "wise popular resistance" – the kind that can be maintained over time with increasing and decreasing levels of intensity, on the assumption that eventually the Palestinians will exhaust Israel and force it to make political concessions; and Hamas that calls for turning the "popular arising" into an "armed intifada" in which shooting attacks, abducting IDF soldiers as bargaining chips and suicide bombing would be combined with military-type terrorist attacks to launch the “Third Intifada.” 

The sheer scope of Arab demonization of Israel has led Ambassador Alan Baker, director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and former Israeli ambassador to Canada, to conclude in a recent article that “Arab anti-Semitism is not only a matter of government manipulation, Islamist demagogy, organized propaganda, social backwardness, or raw, primitive hatred – though all of these elements are indeed present. It has cultural and intellectual legitimacy. Moreover, the ubiquity of the hate and prejudice exemplified by this hard-core anti-Semitism undoubtedly exceeds the demonization of earlier historical periods – whether the Christian Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, the Dreyfus Affair in France, or Tsarist Russia. The only comparable example would be that of Nazi Germany, in which we can also speak of an ‘eliminationist anti-Semitism’ of genocidal dimensions, which ultimately culminated in the Holocaust.”
 
As Israel marks 20 years since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the current wave of violence has reinforced the deep confusion and cognizant dissonance felt by all Israelis, except for the most ideological committed on the Left and Right, about the future prospects for peace and security as the country also faces looming threats from ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas along its borders. A recorded message from President Obama and a live appearance from former president Bill Clinton at Saturday night’s rally marking two decades since the assassination—both of whom seemed, to many,  to place the onus for the stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace making on the Israeli government—rang particularly hollow in the face of continued Palestinian rejection of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s offer for condition-free negotiations and their failure to build on successive Israeli concessions to develop a trajectory for peaceful coexistence.  Rabin’s parting, and therefore principal, legacy, the Oslo Accords with Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat -remain a point of deep contention within the country and seem particularly valueless in the prevention of incitement, noted repeatedly in the Accords and subsequent agreements as an essential element to achieving any peaceful resolution to the conflict.

One of the more recent examples came on official Palestinian television on Oct. 23 when PA Chairman Mahmud Abbas' advisor on Islamic Affairs and Supreme Shari'ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash demonized Jews and Israel in a sermon using classic anti-Semitic hate speech, presenting Jews as "evil" and Israel as "Satan's project." According to the reliable Palestinian Media Watch, Al-Habbash described the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as an expression of "the historic conflict" between "good and evil, between two projects: Allah's project vs. Satan's project."

It is hard to envision how any progress can be made until a different kind of discourse prevails or is enforced.