(JTA) — United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will speak at a Shabbat service at an Orthodox synagogue in New York.
The service this Saturday at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan is in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was observed around the world last week. Ban will be accompanied by Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon.
The event is sold out, according to a notice on the Park East website.
Ban’s appearance will come nearly two weeks after he said in an address to the U.N. Security Council that Palestinian violence against Israel is a result of “frustration” over “a half century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.”
“Security measures alone will not stop the violence,” Ban said in remarks that Israeli officials said appeared to justify Palestinian terror. “They cannot address the profound sense of alienation and despair driving some Palestinians – especially young people. It is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the U.N. leader of “giving terror a tailwind.”
Days after the Security Council address Ban, who also condemned Palestinian terror attacks, doubled down on his remarks in an Op-Ed in The New York Times headlined “Don’t Shoot the Messenger, Israel.”
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