AJC's Annual Report on Treatment of Israel at UN A Subject of Talks with More Than 50 Countries

American Jewish Committee
Monday, 18 September 2000

Though Israel's status at the United Nations has begun to improve and tangible progress in the Arab-Israeli peace process has been made, Israel remains the object of "obsessive" and "relentless" criticism in the world body, concludes the American Jewish Committee's annual report, One-Sided: The Continuing Campaign Against Israel at the United Nations (www.ajc.org).

"In the context of recent alterations in the political landscape in the Middle East and at the UN itself, the continued hostility shown Israel in the General Assembly was and remains anomalous and disturbing," said Jason Isaacson, director of AJC's Office of Government and International Affairs, who authored the report.

AJC delegations presented One-Sided to the heads of state or foreign ministers of more than 50 countries this month in private meetings around the UN Millennium Summit and the opening of the UN General Assembly session – meetings comprising AJC's annual series of diplomatic meetings, unparalleled among non-governmental organizations.

One-Sided provides a detailed review of more than 20 resolutions regarding Israel – and country-by-country voting records – adopted by the General Assembly this past year. As in previous years, the General Assembly in its 1999-2000 session "continued a ritual series of resolutions sharply critical of Israel and attempting to prejudge issues that are the proper subject of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel and neighboring Arab states," the AJC report states. "These resolutions disregard the spirit of the 1991 Madrid peace conference on the Middle East and the 1993 Oslo accord."

In May, following an intensive five-year advocacy campaign led by AJC and pressed vigorously by U.S. diplomats, members of the UN regional bloc known as the Western European and Others Group granted Israel conditioned temporary membership. While less than what Israel sought and deserved, this step nonetheless represented an important diplomatic and psychological breakthrough for Israel at the UN, as for decades Israel remained the only UN member state ineligible to serve on the Security Council and other key deliberative bodies because it was excluded from a regional group.

Under the new arrangement, Israel's membership in the Western Europe and Others Group applies only to UN activities in New York. AJC is leading a new effort to support Israel's participation in WEOG throughout the UN system in Geneva, Nairobi, Rome and Vienna.

As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has pointed out, discrimination against Israel goes well beyond the regional group system. "The exclusion of Israel from the system of regional groupings; the intense focus given to some actions taken in Israel, while other situations sometimes fail to elicit similar outrage; these and other circumstances have given, regrettably, the impression of one-sidedness" within the UN system, the Secretary-General told an AJC dinner in New York last December.

The American Jewish Committee, one of 42 organizations invited by President Roosevelt to advise the U.S. delegation at the founding of the UN, has long been supportive of the world body, but also has pressed for the UN to fulfill its Charter by treating all member states equally. AJC monitors UN activities from its headquarters in New York and its Geneva office, UN Watch.

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