Basically, it has nothing to do with morality or even legality, but everything to do with power and hypocrisy. For Israel's only actual "crime" is that it is only one, very small, state, the only Jewish state in the world, the fruit of the legitimate national aspirations of a tiny people only (in this post-Holocaust world) some 13 and a half million strong. As such, it has few natural allies. Democracies, of which it is one, are famous for refusing to make common cause for their own group welfare, which is why there still is no counter-weight to the U.N. made up of genuine liberal democracies alone.

But frankly opposed to the Jews, and often seeking to wipe them out, on the other hand, is a fascist coalition, led by a global religious group numbering a hundred times more people and dominating more than 56 nations, intimidating very many more, and undermining even the Christian West (but many of whose policies are applauded by friends of authoritarianism and totalitarianism in the West, the far right and leftist sectors). The Palestinians are only a front for that annihilatory coalition. Following its usual course, most of humanity, aside from a very few decent countries, are quite happy just to stand aside and to pretend it does not affect them (scan the list of the countries who "abstained" on the UN vote), or even to claim as so-called "friends" of Israel that Israel has a moral obligation to capitulate to its enemies and its own eventual obliteration, just as those same "friends" try to accommodate themselves by these and other equivocal policies to the fascist enemies of the West.

Ironically, Palestinians, including Gazans, have a higher standard of living than any of their immediate Arab neighbours. Moreover, they claim that they love to suffer: theirs is a religion of death, they say. Bring on more suffering, they say. And then pose for the media with the weeping mothers of the children they have sacrificed to their Moloch.

Enough, Valerie with the knee-jerk blaming of Israel for all the Palestinians' problems: those are entirely self-made. Criticise them instead for their racist call for ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian territories, their aims to wipe out all Israeli Jews, their open endorsement of every moral depravity and atrocity against Jews, their corruption and cruelty to their own people, etc., etc. How telling that even in Gaza and the West Bank the Palestinians refuse normal rights to "Palestinian refugees," imprisoning them in "refugee camps," refusing them work or even native citizenship. They have set up an apartheid system, living off of the international aid to the sacrificial "refugees" who are already living in "Palestine," while falsely claiming that Israel is the "apartheid" regime.

you are right youa re no lawyer , you also aren't much of a journalist.

The US and Israel argued first that statehood was dangerous for peace, and then, when they'd lost, that it didn't matter and the vote was just symbolic. But if it were just symbolic they wouldn't have done everything to try and stop it. And after years of bad-faith negotiations and Israeli comfort with the status quo as they steadily colonize more Palestinian land, this move shows the US and Israel that if they do not engage in good faith, the Palestinians and the world are prepared to move forward without them. It's a more balanced basis for real peace talks. And that's the best alternative to the kind of violence we saw Israel's government and Hamas offer in Gaza this month.

For decades the Palestinian people have suffered under a stifling Israeli military dictatorship, repressive controls on their travel and work, continual denial of their rights and the constant threat of insecurity and violence. 65 years ago today, the UN recognized the state of Israel, beginning a path to the establishment of a safe home for the Jewish people. Today the Palestinians take a step down the same path, and gain a dignity in the eyes of the international community that they have been denied for a generation. And from that dignity, we can build the foundations of peace.