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International Affairs
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Israel at the UN: Progress Amid A History of Bias
Introduction
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September 2008
The Jewish community has always held mixed feelings about the United Nations. While the State of Israel was created by the U.N., the international body has a history of a one-sided, hostile approach to Israel.
After decades of bias and marginalization, in recent years there have been some positive developments for Israel at the U.N. Nonetheless, the record and the culture of the U.N. continue to demonstrate a predisposition against Israel, its policies, and its full involvement within the international body. Indeed, in a meeting in April 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged to ADL leaders that Israel has been treated poorly at the U.N. and that, while some progress has been made, this bias still remains an issue.
Examples of institutionalized bias against Israel include:
- From 2007-2008, the U.N. General Assembly (GA) continued to spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, passing 18 resolutions which are one-sided or blatantly anti-Israel.
- Of 10 emergency special sessions called by the GA, six have been about Israel. No emergency sessions have been held on the Rwandan genocide, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, or the two decades of atrocities in Sudan.
- The U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC), which replaced the Commission on Human Rights in March 2006, has been even more hopelessly ineffective than its predecessor, and is permanently engaged in criticism of Israel while ignoring pressing international human rights crises.
- For decades, Israel was the only member state consistently denied admission into a regional group. The Arab states continue to prevent Israeli membership in the Asian Regional Group, Israel’s natural geopolitical grouping. As a result, Israel sought entry into the Western and Others Group (WEOG) and in May 2000 was granted admission to that regional group in New York, but not in Geneva, the seat of several U.N. bodies and subsidiary organizations. Israel's participation in the U.N., therefore, is still limited and it is restricted from participating in U.N. Geneva-based activities.
There have been some recent positive developments at the U.N. with Israel accomplishing a major first when the U.N.’s Second Committee (Economic and Financial) adopted an Israeli-initiated draft resolution dealing with agricultural technology for development. In addition, the U.N. has begun to address other issues of concern to the Jewish community, particularly anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, in a highly visible way.
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