"One-Sided: The Ongoing Campaign Against Israel In The United Nations"

American Jewish Committee
Tuesday, 23 September 1997

"During 1996-97, the United Nations General Assembly reversed progress that had been made since 1993 in curbing a decades-old campaign of isolation and condemnation of Israel, and Israel alone, over issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict….Heightened virulence in attitudes, speeches, number of resolutions and actions against Israel in the UN since the fall of 1996 suggests that the world body has entered a new and regrettably familiar phase, reminiscent of the UN in the 1970s and 1980s."

This assessment is among the conclusions of a just-released special American Jewish Committee report, "One-Sided: The Ongoing Campaign Against Israel in the United Nations," which summarizes key 51st Session and Emergency Session General Assembly resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict and provides tables that catalogue every member country's votes.

In a foreword by Jason Isaacson, AJC's Director of Government and International Affairs, the report observes: "In this vast and strife-torn world, no other country is subject to the relentless, indeed obsessive, attention that is focused on Israel, year in and year out, in the General Assembly and other UN bodies. No other country is the subject of an even remotely similar number of critical resolutions, agenda items, committees of the Secretariat, and intolerant remarks….These repetitive and ongoing attacks contribute to a climate of vilification not only of Israel but of Jews in general.

"In its singularly discriminatory treatment of Israel - in measures before the 51st General Assembly Session and in its very institutional structure - the UN not only lends legitimacy to purveyors of hatred and violence but corrupts its purpose and effectiveness as an international organization. The tone, virulence, and intolerance of General Assembly resolutions on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict undermine the UN's credibility. And the millions of dollars that support the committees and institutions which routinely condemn Israel fail even to advance their ostensible purpose, to assure press freedom, security, or economic development for the Palestinian people; these funds, which now sustain an entrenched bureaucracy of censure, could be and should be more wisely spent."

The report notes that lopsided majorities routinely support General Assembly resolutions highly - and exclusively - critical of Israel. Debating such matters as the status of the Golan Heights and the Israeli-Palestinian territorial dispute, the General Assembly has become a political arena for Arab bloc denunciation of Israel - and a distraction from the difficult but far more constructive work of Arab-Israeli bilateral negotiations. Indeed, the report concludes, that while most UN members support the Arab-Israeli peace process, and voted for the resolution commending the process in last year's Assembly session, their overwhelming support for 23 other, more antagonistic, resolutions acted to undermine the very bilateral formula they purport to favor.

"This report is meant as a guide to the vote-by-vote support of UN member countries to the peace process in practice - not just when they are presented with non-controversial opportunities to commend the Madrid and Oslo constructs, but when they are asked to intercede in an ongoing negotiating process by weighing in politically on the side of one party," the publication asserts.

In addition to this report, AJC has launched a major public education campaign, including advertisements in U.S. and international newspapers and periodicals, urging Israel's acceptance as an equal member of the United Nations system, eligible to sit on the Security Council and other key UN bodies. While Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria - all sponsors of terrorism according to the U.S. State Department - are eligible to sit on the key deliberative body of the UN, only Israel remains ineligible.

The AJC ad provides coupons which readers can mail or e-mail (at http://www.ajc.org on the "What's New" page) to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; Ambassador M. Jean-Louis Wolzfeld, Permanent Representative of Luxembourg to the UN and Representative of the Presidency of the European Union; and Ambassador Bill Richardson, Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN.

Currently in the midst of critical meetings with Foreign Ministers from more than 40 nations, in conjunction with the opening of the 52nd Session of the UN General Assembly, AJC leaders are placing this issue high on their agenda in all of their discussions.

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org