Tuesday marks the first day of high-level presentations at the 75th United Nations General Assembly, which provides an opportunity to look back at the challenging relationship that Israel has had with members of the international body.
While the UN did vote for the establishment of a Jewish State in what was then Mandatory Palestine in November 1947, the subsequent struggle for acceptance has endured. Israel applied for UN membership on May 15, 1948, one day after the declaration of its independence. The UN Security Council did not even bother to review the application.
Israel applied a second time and on December 17, 1948 the Security Council rejected the request. Finally, on March 4, 1949 the Security Council voted to accept Israel as a member of the UN. On May 11, 1949 the General Assembly formally admitted Israel by a vote of 37 in favor, 12 against, with 9 abstentions.
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The acceptance was conditional on Israel accepting and implementing two resolutions: 181 – the Partition Plan allowing for a Jewish state alongside an Arab state, which Israel had already agreed to; and 194 which says that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” Israel similarly accepted this resolution in principle, while reserving the right to determine if a refugee truly seeks to “live at peace” and decide on the “earliest practicable date” for such a return. (The Arab side interpreted the resolution as a blanket support for the right of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Israel.)
Israel was not a major topic at the UN for the next few years. Then, in 1956 Egypt closed the Suez Canal, leading to a military struggle with Israel. In response, the UN began its now-familiar practice of intervening and trying to resolve conflicts between Israel and surrounding Arab countries. Resolution 242, passed in the wake of the Six Day War, which began when the Arab armies in the region ganged up to attack and destroy Israel, spoke of “the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in the area can live in security.” It established the “land for peace” model in which Israel would theoretically withdraw from some lands captured during the war: the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank and Golan Heights.
In return, Arab states would recognize Israeli sovereignty and independence and commit to ending the perpetual state of conflict.
While Israel withdrew from the Sinai in return for peace with Egypt, and evacuated all soldiers and civilians from the Gaza Strip, it has been routinely criticized by the UN for not withdrawing from the West Bank and the Golan Heights; this, “in violation of resolution 242.” In response, Israel points to the resolution’s clarity that security is an essential component of peace in the Middle East and that surrendering the Golan Heights to Syria and the West Bank to the Palestinians would put Israel at great risk.
The 1970s led to a major shift at the UN and an outright anti-Israel bias. A 1973 General Assembly Resolution (#3151) about apartheid said that the UN “condemns in particular the unholy alliance between Portugese colonialism, Apartheid, and Zionism.” Then, in 1974, UN documents began referring to the disputed territories won by Israel in 1967 as the “Occupied Arab Territories.” (Note: Jordan and Egypt held these areas under military occupation from 1948-1967 and the UN never referred to them this way.)
All of this culminated with the passage of UN Resolution 3379 which declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The resolution was sponsored by 25 Arab states and received 72 votes in favor, 35 against, and 32 abstentions. Chaim Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, famously tore up the resolution from the main UN podium and told the General Assembly that “Hitler would have felt at home” with the antisemitic language used during the preceding debate.
The General Assembly also invited former Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat to give an address in 1974. He infamously appeared wearing his gun belt and holster, reluctantly removing his weapon before taking the stage. In 1975, long before the Oslo peace process began, the PLO was awarded permanent UN representative status.
The anti-Israel efforts continued in 1975 with the UN’s establishment of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and the UN Division for Palestinian Rights in 1977. Since then, more than 15 additional committees dedicated to the Palestinian issue have been formed, including the Division for Palestinian Rights that is funded to the tune of millions of dollars annually, and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs in the Occupied Territories.
There is also now an official “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” at the UN complete with anti-Israel exhibits, films and speeches. It is held on November 29, the very date that the UN voted to establish Jewish and Arab states side by side in the partition plan.
During the 1980s there were several attempts to expel Israel from the UN. Those efforts were only unsuccessful due to the involvement of the United States.
The 1990s brought a significant development for Israel regarding the “Zionism is racism” resolution. On December 16, 1991, 111 countries voted to repeal the resolution (25 against, 13 abstentions). However, on the very same day 152 countries voted to call on Israel to rescind a parliamentary declaration of Jerusalem as its capital, and to require Israel to withdraw from “the occupied territories including East Jerusalem.” Another resolution expressed support for Palestinian self-determination and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The UN’s anti-Israel bias continued into the 21st century with continued UN criticism of the security barrier which Israel erected to stop Palestinian terrorists from attacking innocent Israelis and constant condemnations regarding Israel’s military efforts to deal with rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. In 2003, the UN went so far as to hold an “International Conference of Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People.”
From 2012 to 2019, the General Assembly passed 163 anti-Israel resolutions compared to just 39 for all other countries combined. Previous US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley (2017-2018) pointed out the absurdity of there having been so many resolutions against Israel and none against Hamas, a recognized terror organization.
Despite all of this anti-Israel bias in the UN General Assembly (we address the anti-Israel policies of the UN Human Rights Council and the Palestinian refugee issue in other articles), there have been some positive developments in recent years.
In September 2006, then-Secretary General Kofi Anan acknowledged during his opening address to the General Assembly that Israel is “harshly judged by standards that are not applied to its enemies,” resulting in a “disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel.” The General Assembly passed its first Israeli-sponsored non-political resolution in December 2007, relating to combating drought in desert nations through agricultural technology. In 2016, Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Danon was elected to chair the UN Legal Committee, becoming the first Israeli to lead a permanent UN committee.
Then, in April and May 2017, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke to Jewish groups and committed to fighting the rise in antisemitism around the world and stated that denying the right of Israel to exist is a form of antisemitism. Also in May of that year, Israeli ambassador Danon was elected to serve as vice president of the 72nd annual General Assembly which gave him the responsibility of enforcing the rules when the president was not present.
Given the reality that most of the abuse against Israel at the UN has been spearheaded by Arab countries, the recent normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, coupled with reports that additional Arab countries are expected to follow suit, could foreshadow an even more significant change for the better regarding the Jewish state’s standing at the United Nations.
