PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF ISRAEL

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF ISRAEL

Discussing Israel’s decision today to withdraw its draft resolution on the situation of and assistance to Israeli children (document A/C.3/58/L.30/Rev.1) in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon that the United Nations had failed to live up to its Charter and mandate, after Israel presented the Organization with a “golden opportunity to salvage its reputation and regain some of its relevance”.

He said the decision to put the Israeli children resolution forward was made after the General Assembly Emergency Session on the Middle East.  During that session, a world-renowned American surgeon in Birmingham, Alabama, was fighting to save the eyesight of Oran Almog, a 10-year-old Israeli boy whose father, brother, cousin and two grandparents were killed in the recent suicide bombing at a Haifa restaurant.

When Israel presented the draft resolution, he said, it did so aware of the possible outcomes, but wanting to give the United Nations a chance to elevate itself above petty politics and rise to a moral level.  “We put the United Nations to the ultimate moral test and it failed this litmus test miserably, demonstrating just how far the hypocrisy, duplicity and double standard of the General Assembly and its committees can go”, he added.

He said the voice of the “immoral majority” was once again heard loud and clear and Israel had been denied the basic right of having its draft resolution voted on.  It was a shameful day for the United Nations and a sad day for humanity.  Countries like Malaysia, “headed by a despicable anti-Semite”, and others were the ones to introduce the amendments to Israel’s resolution.  Those countries, he continued, were a part of the unenlightened community in which people were arrested and tortured for their sexual orientation, where little girls were mutilated in the name of religion and where women were brutally executed to protect the family’s honour.

Egypt, he affirmed, fiercely demonstrated “the immorality and illegitimacy of the United Nations General Assembly”.  It had willingly taken it upon itself to promote the Palestinian child resolution and bring it to a vote, but fought to deny Israel the opportunity to present an equivalent resolution.  Israel regretted the continuing efforts of Egypt to use the United Nations organs as well as other international and multilateral arenas, as a platform for attacking and isolating Israel, he added.

He said the United Nations General Assembly claimed to have a moral standing on issues like the Middle East conflict, but its actions and their outcome today proved its inability to be an objective and trustworthy partner.  Rather, it made it clear that it was an unreliable, biased body.

The message sent out by the General Assembly’s Third Committee to the Israeli children was that their lives were worth less than the lives of Palestinian children, he said.  Members of the Third Committee effectively told Palestinian terrorists to “strap on their suicide belts, load their guns and continue butchering Israeli children”.

He said the draft resolution withdrawn by Israel would forever exist in the archives of the United Nations as a sad testimony to the body’s hypocrisy.  As a country that was created with the blessing of the United Nations, Israel had hoped that the Organization would return to its days as a moral leader.  Unfortunately, that had not happened and the United Nations continued to be abused and poisoned.

Israel, he stressed, was a country that believed in the United Nations and its ideals and was thus compelled, a day before the Thanksgiving celebration, to thank its founders while mourning the abusive actions of some of its members.

In response to a question, he said the Egyptians and some other countries had proposed amendments to the Israeli resolution, which mirrored the one about the Palestinian child, which called for the elimination of any reference to Israeli children and to the State of Israel.

He said Israel would no longer sit back and be the target of one-sided, biased and unfair resolutions.  Instead, it would try to be much more proactive, even aggressive in the future.  “We intend to continue to present our case with great pride, with great dignity, with great integrity, without a trace of apology or shame”, he said.

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