Abdullah al-Mouallimi of Saudi Arabia, Vice-Chair of the UN’s Fourth Committee, addressed its debate on UNRWA on November 9, 2018.
GENEVA, Nov. 15, 2018 – A United Nations General Assembly committee is set to adopt nine resolutions against Israel tomorrow, and zero on the entire rest of the world.
The texts, obtained by UN Watch, condemn Israel for “repressive measures” against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, reinforce the mandate of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and renew the mandate of 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 the nine draft resolutions.)
All 193 UN member states belong to the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) that each year adopts the text with large majorities. Countries’ votes tomorrow are then repeated when the GA plenary formally ratifies the texts in December.
“The UN’s planned 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.
“Days after the Hamas terrorist group assaulted Israeli civilians with a barage of 460 rockets — while the UN’s General Assembly and Human Rights Council stayed silent — the world body now adds insult to injury by adopting nine lopsided condemnations, whose only purpose is to demonize the Jewish state.”
“While EU states are expected to support 15 out of a total of 20 resolutions to be adopted against Israel by December, the same EU states 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.
Condemnations to be adopted today & over next month at UN General Assembly:
🇮🇱 Israel 20
🇮🇷 Iran 1
🇸🇾 Syria 1
🇰🇵 NKorea 1
🇷🇺 Crimea 1
🇲🇲 Myanmar 1
🇺🇸 US 1
🇩🇿 Algeria 0
🇨🇳 China 0
🇮🇶 Iraq 0
🇵🇰 Pakistan 0
🇶🇦 Qatar 0
🇸🇦 Saudi 0
🇸🇴 Somalia 0
🇹🇷 Turkey 0
🇻🇪 Venezuela 0
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe 0— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) November 16, 2018
“One of tomorrow’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, drafted originally by Syria, condemns Israel for holding on to the Golan Heights, and 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 timing of tomorrow’s text is morally galling, and logically absurd.”
“Tomorrow’s resolutions claim to care about Palestinians, yet the UN is oblivious to the dozens of Palestinians who have been slaughtered, maimed and expelled by Assad’s forces, and more than 3,000 victims killed since 2011.”
“Tomorrow’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.
Click here to see the virtually identical 20 UN General Assembly resolutions targeting Israel in 2017, as well an additional one last year on the U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem.
