Allegations of Anti-Israel bias
Many perceive the UN to be deeply prejudiced against Israel. As evidence, they cite what they say is the disproportionately long list of resolutions concerning Israel,[10] especially the 1975 Resolution 3379, which qualified Zionism as a form of racism (revoked by Resolution 4686) and the alleged complicity of UNIFIL in the October 2000 Lebanon abduction of three Israeli Engineering Corps soldiers, by Hezbollah. In September 2004, the bereaved families announced that they intended to sue the UN for its part in the abductions. No legal challenge has to date succeeded in substantiating these claims against the UN. [citation needed]
The perception amongst Israelis that the UN is biased against their country helps explain the refusal of successive Israeli governments to pay attention to the numerous motions passed against Israel by the General Assembly. [citation needed]
Starting in the mid-1970s, an Arab-Soviet-Third World bloc joined to form a pro-PLO lobby at the United Nations. This was particularly true in the General Assembly where these countries frequently voted together to pass resolutions attacking Israel and supporting the PLO.[11] An early example would be in 1975, soon after the award of permanent representative status to the PLO, at the instigation of the Arab states and the Soviet Bloc, the Assembly approved Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism and racism.[11]
U.S. Ambassador Daniel Moynihan called the resolution “a reckless and obscene act.”[12] Israeli Ambassador Chaim Herzog told his fellow delegates the resolution was “based on hatred, falsehood and arrogance.” Hitler, he declared, would have felt at home listening to the UN debate on the measure.[13]
In her June 21, 2004 speech [14] at a Conference on Confronting anti-Semitism: Education for Tolerance and Understanding sponsored by the United Nations Department of Information and in her articles [15], a human rights scholar and activist Anne Bayefsky, attending as representative of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, advocated the necessity of deep reforms within the UN and criticized some of the UN policies and practices:
There is only one entire UN Division devoted to a single group of people: the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights [16] (created in 1977).
The only UN day dedicated to a specific people is November 29, the annual UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
There is only one refugee agency dedicated to a single refugee situation: UNRWA (in operation since 1950).
One of the General Assembly six committees, "the Fourth Committee, routinely devotes 30% of its time to the condemnation of Israel."
"The General Assembly emergency sessions... began in 1956, and since then six of the ten emergency sessions ever held, have been about Israel. The 10th such session began in 1997 and has been reconvened 13 times. A million dead in Rwanda or two million dead in Sudan might have warranted one General Assembly emergency session."
"...the UN's primary human-rights body is the UN Human Rights Commission. 30% of the resolutions condemning specific states ever adopted over 40 years are directed at Israel." [17]
In August 2004, the United Nations Association of the United Kingdom (UNA-UK) published a report analyzing thirteen years of United Nations resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In light of the study’s conclusions, Malcolm Harper, speaking on behalf of the UNA-UK (of which he was director until recently), called for an examination into how, if at all, the lopsided resolutions contribute to the Middle East peace process. The 76-page report [18] makes the following principal findings:
The texts of UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions are "often unbalanced in terms of the length of criticism and condemnation of Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories as against Palestinian actions such as suicide bombings."
The United Nations is "palpably more critical of Israeli policies and practices than it is of either Palestinian actions or the wider Arab world. However criticism is not necessarily the product of bias."
In resolutions of the UN General Assembly, "violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians, including the use of suicide bombers, is mentioned only a few times and then in only vague terms."
The report also stated "However, criticism is not necessarily a product of bias, and it is not the intention here to suggest that UNGA and UNSC reproaches of Israel stem from prejudice. From the perspective of the UN, Israel has repeatedly flouted fundamental UN tenets and ignored important decisions."
The event celebrating an annual "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" on November 29, 2005 was attended by Kofi Annan and other high-ranking diplomats. In his January 3, 2006 letter to Mr. Annan, the US ambassador John Bolton criticized the UN for promoting anti-Israel agenda and noted that the map prominently displayed at the event "erases the state of Israel" only days after Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech calling to wipe Israel off the map. The organizer of the "solidarity" event is the Division for Palestinian Rights (2004-2005 UN budget: $5,449,600). Other bodies include the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories ($254,500), the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People ($60,800), and the Information Activities on the Question of Palestine ($566,000). Similar funding has been approved for the next biannual budget.
