- The UN General Assembly condemned Israel yesterday in five separate resolutions, for a total of 15 resolutions targeting the Jewish state in 2022 - compared to 12 on the rest of the world combined. (Click here for texts and voting sheets.)
“The UN’s latest 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. “Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy, yet instead the UN is empowering the region’s despots.”
“It’s absurd that out of a total of 27 UN General Assembly resolutions that criticize countries this year, more than half are focused on one single nation - Israel. Make no mistake: the purpose of these lopsided texts is not to promote human rights, but to demonize the Jewish state,” said Neuer.
Five New Resolutions Against Israel
Three of yesterday’s resolutions perpetuate the UN’s decades-old anti-Israel infrastructure, ensuring continued UN funding and staff for agencies, committees and programs that seek to demonize, delegitimize, and isolate the Jewish state and undermine peace.
One text, renewing the mandate of the UN’s Palestinian staff division dedicated to diffusing anti-Israel propaganda the world over, institutes a 2023 event to “commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba.” This will lend the UN’s imprimatur to the rejectionist narrative that the independence of Israel constitutes a “catastrophe.”
Another of the resolutions adopted yesterday renews the mandate of the 25-nation “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People,” which produces one-sided reports that only examine Israel, turning a blind eye to terrorism by Hamas and other Palestinian groups. It is the General Assembly’s only human rights committee that is devoted to a single cause.
“Why is there no 25-nation UN committee devoted to gross and systematic human rights violations by the regimes in Iran, China or Russia?” asked Neuer.
One of the resolutions - officially co-sponsored by Syria’s Assad regime - determines that Israel’s “continued occupation of the Syrian Golan” constitutes “a stumbling block in the way of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region,” and demands that Israel withdraw from “all the Occupied Syrian Golan.”
“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, even as it turns a blind eye to Iran’s aggressive military build-up in the area, including by arming Hezbollah terrorists? The text is morally galling, and logically absurd.”
Yet another resolution blames only Israel for the lack of peace, giving a free pass to the Palestinian Authority.
“The General Assembly has adopted a slew of resolutions about the Palestinians that name and shame Israel throughout but which fail even once to name the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad for their acts of terrorism and other gross human rights abuses,” said Neuer.
“For example, though one of the resolutions includes a preambular clause with an indirect and generic condemnation of rockets fired at Israelis, none of the texts makes any explicit condemnation of the Islamic Jihad for having bombarded Israeli civilians with over 1,100 rockets fired from Gaza in a three-day period in August, even as each missile fired amounts to a war crime under international law.”
“Nor was there any mention of at least 29 Israelis murdered in Palestinian terror attacks in 2022, including three killed in a car-ramming and stabbing attack just two weeks ago, the two killed and 21 injured in synchronized bomb attacks in Jerusalem last week, or of 300 significant terror attacks against Israelis this year.”
“These resolutions claim to care about Palestinians, yet completely ignore more than 3,000 Palestinians who have been slaughtered, maimed and expelled by Assad’s forces, and do not even attempt to promote democracy, accountability and the rule of law to actually help Palestinians living in the areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.”
“The latest travesty of justice 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.
Several Shift Votes Toward Israel, Australia Nudges Away
UN Watch’s comprehensive database, which documents the UN’s bias against Israel, shows that since 2015 until the present day, the General Assembly has passed 125 condemnatory resolutions against Israel and only 55 against the rest of the world combined.
In wake of our global campaign for countries to change votes to be more favorable to Israel, UN Watch welcomes modest yet notable progress in countries’ diminishing support for discriminatory annual resolutions targeting Israel.
Compared to votes on similar texts in previous years, several countries yesterday made voting shifts toward Israel, including Albania, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czechia, India, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK. However, Australia moved in the other direction on one vote.
The resolution on the “Division of Palestinian Rights,” was adopted by a vote of 90 to 30, with 47 abstentions. Perhaps due to the new clause creating a “Nakba” commemoration for next year, several more countries voted in opposition this year than in 2020, the last time the text was introduced. Albania, Croatia, Italy, Romania, Sweden, and the UK were among the countries that changed their votes to No this year. India also improved its vote by changing it from Yes to Abstain.
The resolution on the “Special information program on the question of Palestine” was adopted by a vote of 149 to 11, with 13 abstentions. Three more countries, including the Czech Republic, voted No this year compared to 2020, the last time the resolution was presented.
The resolution on the “Committee on the Inalienable Exercise of the Rights of the Palestinian People” was adopted by a vote of 101 to 17, with 53 abstentions. Albania and Slovakia improved their votes by changing from Abstain to No. Likewise, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic changed from Yes to Abstain.
Regrettably, Australia yesterday changed its vote from No to Abstain on the resolution entitled “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine,” which was adopted by a vote of 154 to 9, with 9 abstentions.
