UNGA to Condemn Israel 7 Times, Rest of World 0

(UN WATCH) The United Nations General Assembly today will adopt seven resolutions that single out or condemn Israel, and zero on the entire rest of the world.

The texts condemn Israel for “repressive measures” against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights and renew the mandates of the corrupt UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as well as the UN’s “special committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the Occupied Territories.” (Click here for texts and voting sheets.)

The seven resolutions were previously adopted on November 4th by the General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee, known as the Fourth Committee. Today, the votes will be repeated when the General Assembly plenary formally ratifies the texts.

“The UN’s assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental watchdog organization.

“Last month, the Hamas terrorist group assaulted Israeli civilians with rockets from Gaza while the UN’s General Assembly and Human Rights Council stayed silent. The world body now adds insult to injury by adopting seven lopsided condemnations, whose only purpose is to demonize the Jewish state.”

“While France, Sweden and other EU states are expected to support more than two thirds of of the resolutions to be adopted against Israel by the end of this month, the same European nations have failed to introduce a single UNGA resolution on the human rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria, or on 175 other countries,” said Neuer.

“Four of today’s resolutions concern UNRWA — yet none mentions that the agency chief was fired last year after top management engaged in what the UN’s own internal probe described as ‘sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and other abuses of authority, for personal gain.’ All EU states are complicit in this conspiracy of silence.”

“One of today’s resolutions — drafted and co-sponsored by Syria — falsely condemns Israel for ‘repressive measures’ against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights. It’s obscene,” said Neuer.

The resolution condemns Israel for holding on to the Golan Heights, and effectively demands Israel hand the land and its people to Syria.

“It’s astonishing,” said Neuer. “After the Syrian regime has killed half a million of its own people, how can the UN call for more people to be handed over to Assad’s rule? The text is morally galling, and logically absurd.”

“Today’s resolutions claim to care about Palestinians, yet the UN is oblivious to more than 3,000 Palestinians who have been slaughtered, maimed and expelled by Assad’s forces.”

“Today’s farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the UN’s automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone’s human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations is to scapegoat Israel,” said Neuer.

“The UN’s disproportionate assault against the Jewish state undermines the institutional credibility of what is supposed to be an impartial international body. Politicization and selectivity harm its founding mission, eroding the UN Charter’s promise of equal treatment to all nations large and small,” Neuer added.

Rare Progress Last Week on UN’s Anti-Israel Bodies: EU States Changed Votes

“However, in wake of our global campaign, UN Watch welcomes notable progress in countries’ diminishing support for discriminatory annual resolutions targeting Israel at the United Nations General Assembly last week.” For the first time ever, Germany, Austria and Bulgaria changed their votes and opposed the annual resolution that renews the mandate of the 25-nation “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,” one of the UN’s most notorious anti-Israel bodies. Likewise, Iceland and Uruguay moved from voting Yes last year to Abstain. Others who rightly opposed the resolution, as they did in 2019, include Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Colombia, Honduras, Hungary, and the United States.

Similarly, Switzerland and Slovenia for the first time ever voted No to the annual resolution that renews the mandate of the UN’s Division for Palestinian Rights, which employs 15 full-time staffers, at a cost to taxpayers of millions of dollars, to organize anti-Israel events worldwide. Regrettably, France did not oppose the resolution, and once again abstained. For a second year, UN Watch commends the Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia for last week breaking from EU consensus and voting to oppose the UN resolution funding the UN’s 15-member Palestine division. (Click here to see full voting sheets from last week.)

“Now that consensus has been broken, EU states must continue to vote on moral principle,” said Neuer.

Last year, 155 German MPs called on the German government to “dissociate from unilateral, primarily politically motivated initiatives and alliances of anti-Israeli Member States, and protect Israel and legitimate Israeli interests from unilateral condemnation” in the UN.

In 2017, the Dutch parliament resolved to “actively oppose UN organizations that devote disproportionate attention to Israel.”

“Last week’s vote by the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, and others illustrates that pressure from lawmakers and regular citizens can change anti-Israel voting patterns. UN Watch will continue to rally the public to call for fairness and equal treatment of Israel in the UN. The EU and other democracies must stop supporting the disproportionate amount and biased nature of the resolutions targeting the Jewish state each year,” said Neuer.

In testimony delivered last week in the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, Neuer affirmed the importance of calling out the UN’s discriminatory treatment against Israel.

“The UN assault on Israel poisons the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions worldwide. It grants the imprimatur of international legitimacy that fuels the boycott movement. It sends a signal to Hamas and other terrorist groups that the world is with them,” said Neuer.

“We need to demand that democracies like the UK, France and Germany respect the UN’s founding principles—which they claim to believe in—by ending their support for the UN’s obsessive scapegoating of the world’s only Jewish state, and to instead work on protecting human rights for the victims who need it most.”

Click here for all anticipated 2020 UN General Assembly resolutions singling out Israel.