ZOA Praises U.S. & Others For Opposing Report
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned the outrageous vote of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to endorse the disreputable Report on the Gaza hostilities earlier this year produced the U.N. Human Rights Council-appointed Fact-Finding Mission chaired by Judge Richard Goldstone. The Goldstone Report ignores eight preceding years of assaults upon Israel with thousands of missiles, terrorist incursions and kidnappings from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The Report is a naked attempt to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state of Israel.
UNGA voted by 114 to 18 with 44 abstentions to endorse the Goldstone Report, paving the way for the matter to be sent to the Security Council. Israel and the US voted against the decision, as did Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, the Netherlands, Palau, Panama, Poland, Slovakia, TFYR of Macedonia and Ukraine. Most European Union states abstained.
The nonbinding resolution on the Goldstone Report, which alleges war crimes by Israel and Hamas during the Israel’s military operations in Gaza during December 2008-January 2009, is aimed at opening the door to prosecution in international courts. The adopted resolution includes several clauses: The endorsement of the report by the UN Human Rights Council; a call on the UN secretary-general to transfer it to the Security Council; a call on Israel to launch a reliable independent investigation, in accordance with international standards, into serious violations of the international humanitarian law and human rights laws; and a similar demand from the Palestinians.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer, called the resolution “an important night in the history of the General Assembly and the history of fighting against impunity and seeking accountability.” Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N., Gabriela Shalev said, “Rather than confronting terrorism, the General Assembly chose again to detach itself from reality … Today’s debate is anything but genuine and candid. Rather than discuss how to better stop terrorist groups who deliberately target civilians, this body launches yet another campaign against the victims of terrorism, the people of Israel” (E.B. Solomont, ‘UNGA endorses the Goldstone Report,’ Jerusalem Post, November 5, 2009).
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “ZOA condemns this appalling, wretched but all-too-predictable vote from UNGA, with its built-in massive automatic majority of dictatorships and autocracies, including all of Israel’s enemies, which makes such lop-sided votes favoring terrorists inevitable.
“For decades, UNGA has been captive of this immoral majority. It is therefore not only important to condemn the vote and to oppose it, as a number of principled democracies have done, but to always highlight the lack of moral and legal legitimacy of UNGA votes that target democracies like Israel.
“At the time of the publication of the Goldstone Report, we condemned it as an atrocious, new installment in the international effort to delegitimize Israel, using perverted and spurious norms of international law in order to invalidate Israel’s elementary, fundamental right and obligation to defend its territory and its citizens. The UNGA vote shows, regrettably, that our description was entirely accurate: the UNGA resolution contains language intended to see the Report serve as the basis of a judicial mugging of Israel in an effort to malign her honorable self-defensive fight against terrorists and to render her incapable of fulfilling her elementary duty to protect her citizens. Seen in this light, this UNGA vote amounts to an assault on Zionism and the very idea of a Jewish state designed to protect the Jewish people which was defenseless for millennia.
“ZOA praises the Obama Administration and the governments of other democracies that stood up and opposed this vote. We hope the United States, when its issues its forthcoming statement, will reject and condemn this vote and the Report in incisive terms.”