2022 began with the United Nations Human Rights Council establishing a Commission of Inquiry with unprecedented scope to demonize Israel. The year ends with the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly on the “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the OPT including East Jerusalem” seeking to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice.
IINZ has written several times this year, urging the New Zealand government to vote in a fair and balanced way and to stand against the persistent anti-Israel bias at the United Nations. We undertook an OIA request to understand the thinking of the officials who brief New Zealand’s foreign minister. The results showed not only significant gaps in the advice Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) officials give to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but also the omission of some vital pieces of information.
We have urged the government to stop supporting UNRWA, which facilitates the use of antisemitic educational materials in its schools. Disappointingly, to date, we have received no reply to any of our emails.
If there is one thing we can be sure of, it’s that the United Nations with its automatic majority against the one Jewish state, will continue to push its anti-Israel agenda, unless principled actors stand against it.
In other UN News
The annual United Nations General Assembly gathering of its 193 member states and two observer states approved 15 resolutions against Israel alone. All other countries combined – including Iran and Russia – received only 11. The UNGA even called on Russia to host Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.
The most egregious anti-Israel vote was in favour of recognizing the false Palestinian narrative that Israel’s creation was a “catastrophe (Nakba).” Israel’s UN ambassador pointed out the frequently forgotten850,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Islamic countries and absorbed by Israel as the “real Nakba.”
More inflammatory statements were made by UN officials against Israel. The UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians – attending a Hamas-organized conference – told Hamas, “You have the right to [violence]” against Israel.
The UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process claimed to be “horrified” by the killing of a Palestinian terrorist. An Israeli foreign ministry official responded sharply: “This reaction is a total distortion of reality. This incident is a terror attack, in which an Israeli policeman was stabbed in his face and the life of another police officer was threatened and consequently he shot his assailant.”
In an extremely rare move, UNRWA “strongly” condemned a terror tunnel opening found beneath a Gaza UN school. Palestinian terrorist organizations have a long history of building terror tunnels beneath and stockpiling weapons at UN schools in Gaza – with rarely a murmur from the UN.
