The Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room of the Palace of Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. The room is the meeting place of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Photo: Ludovic Courtès via Wikimedia Commons.

Legislators and parliamentarians from Europe and North America are calling upon EU member countries and global democracies to help end the “systematic” discrimination against Israel at the United Nations.

“Within the context of rising global antisemitism, the relentless, disproportionate, and ritualistic condemnation of the world’s only Jewish state at the UN is particularly dangerous and must finally end. Israel deserves attention and scrutiny, as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment,” says a statement signed by a total of 313 cross-party lawmakers from Europe, North America, and Israel.

“As strong supporters of a rules-based international order, we fear that these double standards against Israel also damage the UN itself … [and] is undermining its credibility,” the statement said.

The letter was sent to to the governments of all EU member states, the UK, Norway, and Switzerland to the EU leadership, as well as the UN Secretary General and the heads of major UN agencies. The initiative, spearheaded by the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Friends of Israel (TFI), comes ahead of Tuesday’s opening of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly.

“The UN has shown a long-standing bias against Israel, which is often targeted more frequently than all other countries combined,” said Austrian-Dutch politician Lukas Mandl, who is a member of the European Parliament (MEP) and a co-organizer of the initiative. “The time is long overdue to end this shameful practice. Democratic governments have a responsibility to bring about this much-needed change.”

In 2020, the UN General Assembly adopted 17 resolutions against Israel and only six resolutions against six of the other 192 member states for human rights violations. In the signed letter, it was stated that about 21% of the Human Rights Council’s resolutions focus solely on Israel. Additionally, Israel last September was the only country accused of alleged violations of women’s rights by the UN Economic and Social Council.

Lithuanian MEP Petras Auštrevičius commented: “When Israel, the Middle East’s only true democracy and a leader in gender equality, is singled out for allegedly violating women’s rights, but regimes such as Iran are elected to the UN Women’s Rights Commission, then you know something is seriously flawed. We must finally fix this UN bias.”

In the statement, the parliamentarians urged EU member states and fellow democracies to vote against the “excessive” number of anti-Israel resolutions in the General Assembly and other UN organs; dissolve discriminatory UN committees and programs that specifically target Israel; and try to cancel the UN Human Rights Council’s agenda Item 7, which is “designed to censure and stigmatize Israel.”

The statement was signed by many EU legislators; including government ministers, party leaders, parliamentary vice-presidents, and chairs of key committees; as well as Labour MPs in the UK.

German MEP Dietmar Köster said: “As a strong-supporter of the rule-based international order, it is discouraging to see that the organization so vital for international security and peace constantly fails to uphold its own principles to treat all member states equally. The one-sided condemnations of Israel at the UN cannot continue.”