Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, talks with reporters on April 5, 2024 outside the U.N. Human Rights Council. Credit: Nathan Chicheportiche/Israel in Geneva.
After the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on “Human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and the obligation to ensure accountability and justice,” Israel’s envoy to the United Nations in Geneva denounced what she said was that body’s 105th anti-Israel resolution.
“This council spoke loud and clear: To the overwhelming majority of its members, Israelis do not matter. The murder of Jews does not matter. The hostages do not matter. The rape of Israeli women does not matter,” Meirav Eilon Shahar told reporters on Friday. “Where is the accountability for the Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism?”
“All that matters to this council and many of its members is condemning Israel, singling out the only Jewish state, and protecting Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and all those who seek to destroy our country,” the ambassador added. “This resolution is a stain on the Human Rights Council and on the United Nations as a whole.”
The Israeli envoy announced that she would skip the rest of the session.
“I can no longer sit in the room of this so-called Human Rights Council that can not even bring itself to mention Hamas or its brutal terrorist attacks on Oct. 7,” she said. “It cannot even condemn the brutal murder of over 1,200 of my people; the kidnapping of over 240 individuals, including infants; the rape, mutilations and sexual abuse of Israeli women, girls and men.”
“‘Me too unless you’re a Jew’ is the overwhelming message from the council today,” she said.
“This council has long abandoned reason. It has long abandoned the human rights of Israelis and Jews,” she added. “Today’s vote was one of the darkest days in the history of this council, and the history of the U.N.”
In response to a question from a reporter, the ambassador noted that Israel appears 59 times in the resolution, while Hamas does not come up once.
The World Jewish Congress denounced “the four one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions” that “are rampant with inflammatory language and one-sided narratives,” which the Human Rights Council adopted.
“The failure to acknowledge Hamas as the perpetrator of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks is a moral stain on the council and undermines Israel’s right to self-defense,” stated Leon Saltiel, the congress’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva.
“The World Jewish Congress wishes to thank Argentina, Bulgaria, Germany, Malawi, Paraguay and the United States for opposing this subversion of truth by voting ‘No’ on the resolution filed under item 2,” Saltiel added. “The other three texts are adopted under the council’s discredited agenda item 7, the only item against a particular country, Israel.”
Source: JNS
