Progress: UN’s Anti-Israel Committees Opposed by Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Bulgaria

In wake of its global campaign, UN Watch welcomed 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.

(Click here to see full voting sheets from last week.)

Other nations who opposed the mandate of the UN’s 15-member Palestinian division as they did in 2019 include Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, and the United States.

On all votes targeting Israel last week, Uruguay moved from Yes to Abstain. This followed an outcry in that country after UN Watch exposed Uruguay’s support in September for an absurd resolution, at the UN’s Economic and Social Council, that singled out Israel alone for violating women’s rights.

As a result, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Francisco Bustillo apologized for that vote—and he fired the ministry’s director-general for political affairs. Now, it seems, Uruguay is also changing its votes on many of the anti-Israel resolutions at the UN General Assembly.

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