Level: 7th grade and up

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to divide the bitterly disputed territory of Palestine, which was then under the British Mandate, into two states – an Arab state and a Jewish state. This did not happen (see Time Line B, page 10). At the United Nations today, where Arab and Islamic states constitute a powerful voting bloc, the State of Israel remains what it has been for many long years – a second-class citizen. How so? Read on.

• Of the 189 member nations of the United Nations, 188 may be elected to serve on the powerful Security Council. Libya, for example, may serve on the council. So may North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (President Bush called them the “axis of evil”). So, too, may Syria, which is now serving a two-year term on the Security Council. Only one country in the world today may not sit on the Security Council. That country is Israel.
• In order to be eligible to serve on the Security Council, a country must be a member of one of the UN’s five regional groups. In geographical terms, Israel is part of the Asian group. But, for years, Arab and Moslem countries have denied Israel the right to be a member of this group. As a result, Israel was the only country that did not have the required affiliation.
• The American Jewish Committee led an international campaign at the highest levels of both private diplomacy and public debate to secure Israel’s inclusion in the “Western European and Others Group,” which includes the United States and the democracies of Europe.
• In May 2000, the Western European and Others Group extended an invitation to Israel to join its caucus on a tempo- rary basis. The New York Times attributed this victory to the American Jewish Committee’s relentless diplomatic and public relations campaign. But, Israel’s invitation is only temporary. It was extended on the condition that Israel does not seek a seat on the Security Council. Nor, under the terms of this invitation, is Israel a member of any regional group in Rome, Vienna, Nairobi or – importantly – Geneva, the meeting place of the UN Human Rights Commission, which has spoken out against Israel many times.
• In 1975, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution equating Zionism to racism.
• When a most outrageous and unforgivable event occurred a few months ago when UN peacekeeping forces on the Israel- Lebanon border videotaped Hezbollah guerrillas kidnapping three Israeli soldiers. At first, UN officials flatly denied the existence of this tape. Next, they stonewalled. And, by the time they grudgingly provided Israel with an edited version of this tape, it was too late to rescue the young soldiers, all of whom probably were killed by Hezbollah.
• In September 1999, the United Nations General Assembly opened its debate on the Arab-Israel conflict on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, even though there were protests from the United States and Israel.
• The UN Commission on Human Rights blatantly discriminates against Israel: It pays 30 times more attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict than to other conflicts in the world, to the detriment of other pressing situations, such as AIDS in Africa. The Commission spent two days criticizing Israel and less than two hours on AIDS.
• Nineteen anti-Israel resolutions are adopted by the General Assembly annually.
• The automatic majority enjoyed by the Arab-Moslem bloc makes it easier for anti-Israel resolutions to be adopted by the UN’s General Assembly, no matter how one-sided a resolution may be. This same automatic majority can block the adoption of any resolution that has any hint of criticism against the Palestinians or any Arab State.
• The “Special Committees” and “Palestinian Units” of the UN (which investigate Israeli practices in the disputed terri- tories) spend more than five million dollars a year, essentially to spread vicious anti-Israel propaganda.
• In the last 55 years, since the establishment of the UN, there have been at least 80 conflicts between states in which refugee situations have developed. Nevertheless, only the Palestinian situation has been focused on by the UN, while many other people have suffered and are still suffering.
• There are increasingly frequent cases of blatant anti-Semitic remarks by Arab representatives at UN forums that are ignored. Examples:
  • In 1991, Syrian representatives at the Commission on Human Rights accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their rituals.
  • On March 11, 1997, the PLO representative in Geneva, Nabil Ramlani, used the same forum to accuse Israel of injecting 300 Palestinian children with the AIDS virus.
  • In May 2000, Lebanon’s representative to the UN declared Zionism to be an “elitist racist movement.”
  • In addition, anti-Semitism as a phenomenon has long been ignored or deliberately omitted in resolutions, forums, and events throughout the UN, even in commemorations of World War II.
  • UN watch is the American Jewish Committee’s Geneva office. UN Watch Executive Director Andrew Srulevitch has sharply criticized the UN Commission on Human Rights. Srulevitch reminded the Commission that at last year’s session, five of the 16 resolutions adopted condemned Israel, while 11 other situations were addressed with one res- olution each. “Even using the Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian maximalist figures for the effected populations, the five anti-Israel resolutions address the human rights of 3.5 million people, while the combined effected populations for the other 11 situations are 315 million,” Srulevitch told the Commission.

1. Read more about the role of the UN General Assembly, the UN High Commission on Human Rights, and UN resolutions:
   • For the General Assembly, visit its website, www.un.org/ga/56.
   • For the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR), visit its website, www.unhchr.ch.
   • Read about the UN resolutions at the Jewish Virtual Library’s website, www.us-israel.org/jsource/UN/gatoc.html
   • Go to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs website, www.jewishpublicaffairs.org.
   • Visit the part of the Hadassah website that contains information about the UN - www.hadassah.org/homenew.htm and www.hadassah.org/izaia/ziontext/un.htm.
   • Visit the American Jewish Congress website, www.ajc.org/InTheMedia/PressReleases.asp?did=496.
   • Read current stories about the UN at UN Wire’s website, www.unfoundation.org/unwire/index.asp.
2. Please list some examples that show that Israel is treated by the UN as a “second-class citizen.”
3. Discuss with your teachers, parents, and friends why they think Israel is treated as a “second class citizen?”
4. Go to the CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) website, www.camera.org. Print out and read the ad that this organization placed in the New York Times that asks the media to stop distorting UN resolution 242, a binding resolution adopted after the 1967 war and agreed to by Israel and the Arabs (including the Palestinians, in the original 1993 Oslo agreement) and serves as a basis for peace negotiations. The resolution calls for the withdrawal by Israel from occupied territories in return for peace. What is the CAMERA ad trying to teach us?
5. Write a letter to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, asking him to help change the UN’s attitude to Israel.
6. Study the petitions that various advocacy organizations ask people to sign and circulate. Be active. Look at the petitions on websites such as these:
• American Jewish Committee, www.ajcadvocacy.net.
• Jewish Council for Public Affairs, www.jewishpublicaffairs.org