A United Nations General Assembly meeting on Wednesday, organized by Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon, was devoted to the global scourge of anti-Semitism, a refreshing event held at a venue usually consumed by animus against the Jewish state of Israel. The most moving speech was delivered by Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was shot at a San Diego synagogue by a Jew hating gunman on April 27, 2019, the last day of Passover. A parishioner, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, was killed.
Too often, UN leaders have been part of the problem, made excuses for the inexcusable or showed the indifference that Ms. Espinosa Garcés decried.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Lori Kaye did not deserve to die because she came to a synagogue to pray,” Rabbi Goldstein told the meeting’s attendees, who included Lori’s mother and sister. “The reason why she died is because she was a Jew. The reason I got shot is because I was a Jew.” He then described anti-Semitism as more than just a Jewish problem. “This is a problem for the world,” he said. “We need to recognize that.”
“Hitler was defeated,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said in his remarks at the meeting, “yet anti-Semitism has not been extinguished. Far from it.”
General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés said, “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” For emphasis, she quoted Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel, who once observed, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
At a press conference on June 27th, Ms. Garcés said that the rise of anti-Semitism was "a wake-up call for the international community as a whole." She added, "This organization is about zero tolerance to any form of violence, discrimination based on race, religious belief or sexual orientation." Sadly, she is wrong when it comes to anti-Semitism, which too often has poisoned the halls of the UN, including at the General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council. Too often, UN leaders have been part of the problem, made excuses for the inexcusable or showed the indifference that Ms. Espinosa Garcés decried.
General Assembly had previously adopted a series of extremely one-sided anti-Israel resolutions
By way of example, as I reported last December, Ms. Espinosa Garcés, in her capacity as the president of the General Assembly, stood by as the member states, spurred on by the Palestinians and their many supporters, blocked an up or down majority vote on a U.S.-sponsored draft General Assembly resolution entitled “Activities of Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza.” The text would have placed the General Assembly on record condemning Hamas for “repeatedly firing rockets into Israel and for inciting violence, thereby putting civilians at risk.”
The General Assembly had previously adopted a series of extremely one-sided anti-Israel resolutions under the General Assembly’s normal majority vote procedures. Three of the six anti-Israel resolutions adopted by the General Assembly on November 30th under the same agenda item as the proposed anti-Hamas resolution had failed to receive at least a two-thirds vote in favor. Once again, however, the Jewish state was targeted at the UN in a discriminatory fashion and was unfairly demonized – manifestations of anti-Semitism today under the guise of anti-Zionism. The Palestinians’ friends stacked the deck against a simple majority vote on the anti-Hamas draft resolution. They demanded a procedural vote to require that only the anti-Hamas draft resolution receive at least a two-thirds majority to be adopted. The obstructionist two-thirds requirement was then rammed through, with 75 in favor, 72 against, and 26 abstentions. Although more member states ended up voting for the proposed draft resolution condemning Hamas than against it in a recorded vote of 87 in favor to 57 against, with 33 abstentions, it failed to meet the two-thirds adoption requirement applied solely to this resolution and not to the anti-Israel resolutions.
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It’s no surprise that dictatorships such as the Arab bloc countries, Iran, Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela voted for the two-thirds requirement. But the indifference to evil that General Assembly President Garcés lamented this past Wednesday at the General Assembly meeting condemning anti-Semitism was on full display in the General Assembly hall last December as she looked on from her president’s chair. The democracies of Switzerland, Norway, New Zealand, Saint Lucia and Costa Rica abstained in utter indifference to the evil of Hamas, easing the way for the obstructionist procedural maneuver to pass by the skin of its teeth. The Bahamas, Brazil, Trinidad-Tobago, and Japan were even worse. They disgraced themselves by voting for the obstructionist two-thirds procedural requirement.
Ms. Espinosa Garcés said at her press conference on Thursday that under the rules of procedure of the General Assembly she had no choice but to allow the member states themselves to decide by majority vote when to apply the two-thirds voting rule to questions before them. Technically, her hands do appear to have been tied by the rules of procedure, which vest the decision of what constitutes a question that should be decided by a two-thirds vote in the hands of the member states. In her capacity as president of the General Assembly, Ms. Garcés said, she cannot offer her own judgments over the will of the member states. Fair enough, but her claim in defense of the General Assembly’s decisions that it is “a parliament” and that it is “democratic” rings hollow.
Resolutions of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which demonize, discriminate against, and seek to delegitimize the Jewish democratic republic, are inherently anti-Semitic
The General Assembly has no legislative authority except with respect to budgetary matters. It makes non-binding recommendations. But it still generates headlines as if it was speaking with one voice on behalf of the international community. In truth, it is dominated by anti-West states. To call it democratic because each nation – large or small – has an equal vote ignores the reality of a system that accords the same voting rights to dictatorships as it does to true democratic member states.
The resolutions of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which demonize, discriminate against, and seek to delegitimize the Jewish democratic republic, are inherently anti-Semitic. They are the products of a dysfunctional globalist organization too often dominated by its non-democratic member states that cynically manipulate the rhetoric of human rights, international law and moral values. If Ms. Espinosa Garcés is serious about her revulsion at the rise of anti-Semitism and wants, as she often says, to enhance the UN’s relevance in today’s world, she should start by speaking out against the anti-Semitism within the UN itself.
A United Nations General Assembly meeting on Wednesday, organized by Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon, was devoted to the global scourge of anti-Semitism, a refreshing event held at a venue usually consumed by animus against the Jewish state of Israel. The most moving speech was delivered by Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was shot at a San Diego synagogue by a Jew hating gunman on April 27, 2019, the last day of Passover. A parishioner, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, was killed.
