29 Oct UN call for a ceasefire in Gaza is slammed by former Australian PM John Howard
FORMER Australian prime minister John Howard has said that the United Nations is not fit for purpose, in response to the Secretary-General’s call for a halt to fighting in Gaza.
Asked about comments, Howard told GB News: “I don’t think he’s contributed anything in the long run. The only basis of a proper settlement is to have a genuine two state solution.
“Well, it’s not going to be possible just by the Secretary-General in the United Nations calling for it, or calling for a ceasefire. We’d all love to have a ceasefire, we’d all love violence to stop tomorrow, but that’s not going to happen.
“And the latest element in his long-running saga was the terrible attack by Hamas on the seventh of October. That happened.
“Notwithstanding the desire of a lot of peaceful Palestinians, a lot of peaceful Israelis to live together in harmony, until the reasons for that are routed out and destroyed, it’s got to happen again.”
Asked by Camilla Tominey if the UN was fit for purpose, he said: “I don’t think it is fit for purpose. But having said that, I think some of its agencies do good work. UNICEF does good work. I think the High Commissioner for Refugees does some good work.
“But I think it’s plenary administrations, if I can call it that, that often fall well short of the mark.”
On race relations, he said: “I have my doubts about multiculturalism. I believe that when you migrate to another country you should, as far as can be reasonably expected, absorb the mainstream culture of that country…
“If we put more emphasis on what our nation has achieved, and what the Western world has achieved, and we’re less apologetic and less inclined to say, ‘oh, we’re all to blame’, the better we will be.”
He added: “We’ve had some absolutely unacceptable – I mean, that demonstration outside the Sydney Opera House was shameful.
“People saying ‘gas the Jews’, that was a deliberate invocation of the Holocaust, which was the most foul deed in human history – six million people gassed to death because they were Jewish. Now that is something that we should all be offended by.”
Asked if he backed Donald Trump as the US Republican presidential candidate, he said: “I couldn’t vote for Trump, if I were an American, no.
“Somebody else, because he wouldn’t leave the field when it was given out!”
