Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 2017, pp.

32-33

United Nations Report

Emulating the Settlers He

Supports,
Israeli Ambassador
Danon Seizes U.N.
Territory
By Ian Williams
Danny Danon, Israels ambassador to the U.N., speaks to journalists, May 11, 2017. (U.N.
PHOTO/MARK GARTEN)
FOR A LONG TIME, Israeli right wingers have scorned and reviled the United Nations and
all its worksapart, of course, from General Assembly Resolution 181 partitioning
Mandatory Palestine.
As an Israeli right-wing settler supporter himself, Ambassador Danny Danon, the states
permanent representative to the U.N., surprised many Israelis when he took the position,
which Netanyahu had offered him as a way to get rid of a domestic rival. The ambassador,
however, has exploited his position well. In the U.N., occupied territories, seizing ground
wherever and whenever he can and then expanding from there.
Even though his grandstanding in the General Assembly is aimed less at winning over other
U.N. members and more at amassing potential future contributors for his political ambitions
back home from affluent American supporters, it does indeed have the effect of softening up
the institution, whose staff have seen what happens to people who utter inconvenient truths.
In the halls of the U.N. itself, the Americans had to bully the West European and Other
Group some years ago to accept Israel as an associate member of their regional bloc. It is
now a full member, and a majority of the group successfully placed Danon as chair of the
U.N.s Legal Committeethe U.N. equivalent of putting Goldman Sachs in charge of
banking regulation. If the poacher keeps on poaching, any arguments about promoting him to
gamekeeper lose some validity, but its a measure of the success of Israels PR push that the
West Europeans could vote for a state that has a record-breaking run of scofflaw behavior
standing in defiance of innumerable U.N. resolutions.
One cannot help but suspect that the de facto axis that has developed between Saudi Arabia
and Israel against Iran has also contributed to the successful normalization of Israel in the
international system. As we saw, the Saudis explicitly claimed quasi-Israeli privileges when
they successfully censored a report on the effect of their horrifying bombardment of Yemen,
and they continue to evade successfully examination of the effect of their sanctions on
Yemeni civilians.
It has to be said that while the defection of reactionary Arab regimes might enhance the
Palestinians moral high ground, the Israelis and their friends almost have a point about the
U.N.s special treatment of Israel. In reaction to their military and economic impotence,
Palestine and its remaining friends have generated innumerable resolutions against Israeli
behavior, each of them separately well merited. But the overwhelming number has tended to
devalue those issues that matter, and of course the nature of the complainants leaves much to
be desired.
At one time the resolutionary road to liberation was an attempt by Palestinians to fight on the
only battlefield that they had a chance of winning, but now it is almost counterproductive
although the reactions of Israel must be gratifying.
The UNESCO board, for example, pointed out the legal truth that West Jerusalem is not
under legal Israeli sovereignty, even if it has parked the Knesset there. Trumps promises
notwithstanding, that is why there are no diplomatic missions there. And innumerable
resolutions condemn the continuing Israeli presence in the occupied territories, including
East Jerusalem, which of course galls them almost as much.
The Israeli response has been to enlist the U.S. externally, and lobbies internally in many
countries, to soften their positions so countries will now abstain on resolutions that they used
to support, and in some casesnotably the Anglo-Saxon axis of Canada, Australia and the
UKto move closer to the U.S. on Middle East questions. Once again, the Saudi dimension
is important. Margaret Thatcher, for example, did not care in the slightest for Palestinian
rightsbut she cared deeply about arms sales to the Gulf states and looking after their
petrodollars banking for them. The new British Prime Minister Theresa May is equally
concerned about arms salesbut it is now clear the possibility that British diplomatic
positions could veer toward Israel now weigh much less heavily in Riyadh than in the past.
So it is against this U.N. backdrop against which Ambassador Danon is now screening
his hasbara (propaganda) events, most recently using a U.N. committee room for a forum to
pillory the Palestine Authority for payments to the families of alleged terrorists. In particular,
Danon has used his office to book the U.N. General Assembly Hall to sponsor Ambassadors
Against BDS mass rallies where the usual suspects among pro-Israeli organizations bused in
their supporters to fill the hall. Although the Assembly has been available for private hire in
the pastwhen, for example, the Church of Scientology rented itU.N. officials carefully
covered U.N. insignia so the organizations integrity would not be compromised.
On this occasion, the podium with the U.N. badge formed the backdrop for Danons photo-
ops, with thousands of supporters waving Israeli flags. Interestingly, apart from Danon there
were few ambassadors actually present, but billing U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley as his guest
speaker doubtless helped intimidate any U.N. officials who remembered U.N. decisions on
the Middle East.
Haley is of Indian origins and is close to the current Indian government. But one would never
guess the role played by boycotts in the India independence movement, which targeted
government salt and British manufactures in an effort to get rid of the colonial yoke. Indeed,
one would never guess the iconic role played by U.S. agitators in boycotting tea imports in
times past in Boston.
One cannot help but wonder why other states, like South Africa, do not join hands with the
Palestine Mission for a conference on the essential role played by civil society organizations
in BDS movements against apartheid and other repressive regimes. In case the flood of Israeli
indignation clouds the view, one should perhaps remember that the BDS movement is an
attempt by civil society to enforce international law and U.N. decisions on the government
that has been defying them for 50 years!

APARTHEID REPORT WITHDRAWN

Perhaps most symbolic of the march of Israel through the institutions is the withdrawal of the
report from the Economic Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA) on Israeli Apartheid,
which brings together all these strands. The impassioned torrents of outrage from Israeli
supporters about BDS and comparisons with apartheid have intimidated commentators across
Europe and America, despite their essential validity. The white regime in South Africa was,
after all, a close collaborator with Israel in sanctions busting, arms trading and, it would
appear, even nuclear weapons development, so quite why the comparison should have
become odious to the point of anti-Semitism is a mystery. After all, few, if any, of the
people now so outraged objected to Israels aid and support for the apartheid regime.
There was a dilemma for ESCWA. Prof. Richard Falk has an outstanding record in
international law and human rights, but like anyone else who submits critical reports on Israel
he has been demonized and vilified. But not to use his expertise would be to bow down to
politically motivated slander, so he was commissioned, along with Virginia Tilley, anyway.
The ad hominem slurs were wheeled out immediatelythink poor Judge Richard
Goldstoneand cries came for the report to be withdrawn. New Secretary-General Antnio
Guterres had just taken office and the biggest item on his agenda was relations between the
U.N. and the new U.S. president, Donald Trump, who had adopted a strong anti-U.N. and
pro-Israel stance, so when the U.S. asked for the report to be removed, he folded. Despite the
U.N.s withdrawal of the report, it is still available online, at
<www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26223/un-report-establishes-israeli-apartheid;-fallout-b>,
and it is still valid. It is reassuring that Rima Khalaf, ESCWAs director, resigned in protest
at being forced to take down the report.
The report meticulously demonstrates the apartheid-like conditions Israel imposesand one
should remember that there is a binding International Convention on the Suppression and
Punishment of the Crime of Apartheidwhich, like the earlier Genocide Convention,
commits states to action about it.
Indeed, that is one of the reasons Israeli leaders get so upset about the comparison, since
although the blow to their reputation can hurt in PR or political terms, such charges carry
international legal weight, not least with the International Criminal Court hovering around.
Similarly, they might have physical possession of the occupied territories (and East
Jerusalem, of course!), but without legal title that only the U.N. can give them, their behavior
is subject to potential jurisdiction of the ICC and other tribunals adjudging the Geneva
Conventions.
However, as a resounding footnote, the report also answers the question Israeli supporters
keep asking: why is Israel singled out so often at the U.N.? The report explains: the situation
in Israel-Palestine constitutes an unmet obligation of the organized international community
to resolve a conflict partially generated by its own actions. That obligation dates formally to
1922, when the League of Nations established the British Mandate for Palestine as a territory
eminently ready for independence as an inclusive secular State, yet incorporated into the
Mandate the core pledge of the Balfour Declaration to support the Jewish people in their
efforts to establish in Palestine a Jewish national home. Later United Nations Security
Council and General Assembly resolutions attempted to resolve the conflict generated by that
arrangement, yet could not prevent related proposals, such as partition, from being overtaken
by events on the ground. If this attention to the case of Israel by the United Nations appears
exceptional, therefore, it is only because no comparable linkage exists between United
Nations actions and any other prolonged denial to a people of their right of self-
determination.
And that, dear reader, is why the international community keeps going on about Israelit is
the worlds own guilty conscience.