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Um-Shmum (Hebrew: או"ם שמום, where um is the Hebrew acronymic pronunciation for "U.N.", and the "shm"-prefix signifies dismissal, contempt or irony) is a phrase coined by Israeli Ministry of Defense (and former Prime Minister) David Ben-Gurion on 29 March 1955 during a debate within the Israeli cabinet regarding his plan to take the Gaza Strip from Egypt in response to the increasing fedayeen terror attacks. This utterance towards the United Nations is an expression that reflects, even as to date, the way many Israelis feel about the institution. And in a way the feeling that the UN is not impartial when it came to Israel, and in the best case anti-Israeli.
The original expression was uttered as a response to Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, who had stated in the previous cabinet session that if it hadn't been for the UN resolution of 1947, the State of Israel would not have been founded. According to Sharett's account in his diary, Ben-Gurion shouted: Not at all! Only the daring of the Jews founded this country, and not some Um-Shmum resolution".
A month later, on 27 April 1955, Israel's 7th Independence Day, Ben-Gurion gave a speech in Ramat Gan Stadium during the main event of the Israel Defense Forces parade. The speech was primarily a response to the anti-Israeli declarations made in the Bandung Conference (the founding conference of the Non-Aligned Movement), which took place a few days earlier. In the concluding sentence, he stated: "Our future does not depend on what the goyim will say, but rather on what the Jews will do". This sentence also became a winged word (often in a disrupted version: "It does not matter what the Gentiles will say, but rather what the Jews will do").
Ben-Gurion viewed the UN as heavily biased against Israel, as have many other Israeli politicians over the decades, including current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who referred to the UN as a "theater of absurd" and "a place of darkness for my country" in his 2011 UN speech.
In 1998, Kofi Annan quoted this phrase while visiting the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), and made a rebutting pun himself by saying that in the world that we live in today, "without the UM we will all have klum." (Klum is part of expressions that mean "nothing" in Hebrew.)
Acourding to Tel Aviv University survey more than 50% of Israelis believe "the whole world is against us", and 67% of Israelis believe "that no matter what Israel does or how far it goes towards resolving the conflict with the Palestinians, the world will continue to criticize Israel".<ref name="peace index">
See also
References
- או"ם pronounced "oom", acronym for אומות (pr. "oomot") "nations, peoples", and מאוחדות (pr. "m'ookhadot") "united"; "the U.N." is האומות המאוחדות (pronounced "ha-oomot ha-m'ookhadot")
- "Tel Aviv University, Israel Democracy Institute, Peace Index August 2010". Retrieved 2010-12-07.
- Moshe Sharett, Yoman ishi , vol. 3, Tel-Aviv: Sifriyat Ma'ariv, 1978, p. 874 (Hebrew).
- David Ben-Gurion, Hazon ve-derekh , vol. 5, Tel-Aviv: Ayanot, 1956, p. 166 (Hebrew).
- Israel savages UN, Dispatch Online website
- כלום (pronounced kloom)
- Full Transcript: Netanyahu's 2011 UN Speech, MWC News Website