The United Nations’ hatred of Israel helped spark the new wave of antisemitism surrounding the Gaza war including on American college campuses, Israel Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said in a blistering speech he delivered Wednesday to the UN General Assembly.
“You are the dream come true for every Palestinian terrorist that seeks to destroy Israel through diplomatic terror!” he said. He spoke on what he said was the ninth UN General Assembly debate on Israel since Hamas’s invasion of Israel’s southern border on October 7, in which over 1,200 people were killed and over 253 were seized as hostages.
None of those debates focused on Hamas, despite its rape and dismemberment of many of its victims, he said.
“The UN cares nothing for Israeli blood. It is a collaborator with the Nazis of our day. Working to ensure Hamas’s survival and even reward them for murder and rape. I have no words,” Erdan stated.
“This body reeks of antisemitism. It’s everywhere,” he said, as he blamed it in part for the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activity on college campuses in which Jewish students have been attacked and barred from classes.
“The chants of the pro-Palestinian rioters on campuses are calls for Israel’s destruction. We always knew that Hamas hides in schools. We just didn’t realize that it’s not only schools in Gaza. It’s also Harvard, Columbia, and many elite universities,” Erdan said.
Erdan makes comparison to rise of Nazis
He compared the emergence of this new antisemitism in America’s elite universities with the rise of Nazis in Germany, which until then had been the world capital of science and culture.
“Just as Germany was the world capital of science and culture, yet it was there that Nazism was born and spread, history is now repeating itself. “Elite universities – supposed bastions of liberalism and academia – have now become the breeding grounds for the most heinous racism and bigotry,” he stated.
“By falsely condemning Israel, and marking the Jewish State as the foundation of all evil, you are emboldening antisemites and terrorists alike. It is because of you that these mobs think that attacking Jews is acceptable. That calling for the deaths of Israelis is tolerable,” he said.
“The UN! The General Assembly! The anti-Israel vitriol spread by this organization is what sparked what we are seeing today,” Erdan stressed
The UN has overtly focused on Israel, Erdan said, while wars are raging in Sudan and Myanmar, the Houthis have dragged the country to disaster, Pakistan is in the process of forcefully displacing 1.3 million and Afghans back under the Taliban’s radical control and Iran is forcibly repressing women.
“But you aren’t interested in criticizing rogue states. You are interested only in smearing the Jewish State,” he said.
Unless the UN undergoes serious change, “the world will wake up and see the disaster that the UN has become,” Erdan continued.
“In the future, students will study the fall of the UN. They will learn of this organization’s moral bankruptcy and blindness. They will be taught that your indifference and hypocrisy is what brought the UN crashing down.”
Erdan spoke as UN considered Palestinian membership
Erdan spoke at a special debate to protest the United States’ decision to use its veto power at the UN Security Council to block the Palestinian Authority’s bid to become the 194th member of the UN.
It occurred as the international community has expressed concern about the high fatality rate in Gaza, where according to Hamas, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war. Israel has said that over 13,000 of the fatalities are combatants.
Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly that the United Nations must grant membership to the state of Palestine and pressure Israel to end the Gaza war.
“As we meet here today, Israel is still trying to push Palestinian people out of geography and out of history, its occupation descending to deeper levels. of depravity,” Mansour said.
“An immediate ceasefire long called for by this assembly and demanded by this Security Council is indispensable and can not be delayed any further,” he said, as he accused Israel of massacring and torturing Palestinians.
“The admission of the State of Palestine to the UN is an unequivocal signal that Palestinian self-determination and statehood are not subject to the whims and will of the extremists in Israel. Our admission to the UN is long overdue. It has been 75 years in the making,” he said.
“We will never accept that the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, to statehood and admission to the UN in any way, would be in any way subject to an Israeli veto,” he said.
“We will not be deterred in our pursuit for freedom,” he said, as he explained that such a step was the only way to preserve a future of peace.
“There are only two paths ahead. One that leads to a shared life and one that leads to common death. The more we wait, the harder it is to embark on the path that leads to just and lasting peace and shared security,” he said.
Mansour said that the PA plans to turn the UNGA on May 10, and through a resolution, call on the UNSC to reconsider its application for admission.
“This is the time for action for accountability.. the time to end complicity is now,” he said.
“If you wonder if you are on the right side of history, ask yourself one question: is what I am doing advocating freedom and peace or enabling continued oppression and conflict?” Mansour asked.
A US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said he was concerned that the UNGA was now holding its second debate on the veto issue, and as such the meeting should not have been held.
He stressed, however, that the Biden administration supported Palestinian statehood, but believed it was best done, through direct talks with Israel for a two-state resolution to the conflict.
It was also unclear if the Palestinians met the technical requirements set out by the UN for statehood, Wood said, noting that Hamas, “a terror organization,” is still exerting influence in Gaza.
“The US continues to strongly support a two-state resolution,” Wood said.
The US veto of Palestinian statehood at the UNSC “does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood, but instead is an acknowledgment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the parties,” Wood said.
Before October 7, the US had worked to promote Palestinian statehood through a normalization deal between Israel and its Arab neighbors, he said.
“This was based on the US judgment that normalization is the most viable pathway to make progress on the ground,” Wood said.
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