Jew-hatred at United Nations could have been avoided
The beginnings of the Jew-hatred endemic in the United Nations today can be traced to President Obama and Vice President Biden failing to veto Security Council Resolution 2334 (Resolution 2334) – adopted on 23 December 2016 – as both were in the very act of preparing to vacate the White House to make way for Donald Trump.
In an article I wrote on 7 January 2017 – I maintained:
- Resolution 2334 violated article 80 of the United Nations Charter and accordingly was illegal in international law.
- Any attempt by the Security Council to enforce Resolution 2334 or to pass any new Resolutions based on Resolution 2334 would also be illegal.
- Article 80 preserved the legal rights vested in the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home within 22% of the territory comprised in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine(“Mandate”). That territory included what was known today as Area “C” located in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem (“disputed areas”).
- Resolution 2334 sought to erase and annul – not preserve – those vested Jewish legal rights in the disputed areas – by:
- Claiming that Jews then presently living – or seeking in the future to live – in the disputed areas constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”– when, in fact, their right to live there was sanctioned by Article 6 of the Mandate and Article 80.
- Alleging the right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the disputed areas required the consent of any other party.
- Calling on all States to discriminate between Jews living in the disputed areas and Jews living in Israel.
- Discouraging Jews from living in the disputed areas when article 6 of the Mandate specifically encouraged close Jewish settlement there.
I suggested that the questionable legality of Resolution 2334 needed to be urgently resolved by the Security Council seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) under article 96(a) of the United Nations Charter.
The General Assembly so acted when it sought an advisory opinion in 2003 from the ICJ on the legality of the security barrier erected by Israel.
That decision was fundamentally flawed because contrary to Article 65 (2) of the ICJ Statute – two vital documents – the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 – were not included in the dossier of documents submitted to the ICJ for consideration by then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan – an omission never explained until today.
Indeed the Egyptian Judge sitting on that case – Justice El Araby – cautioned in his judgement:
“The international legal status of the Palestinian Territory (paras. 70-71 of the Advisory Opinion), in my view, merits more comprehensive treatment. A historical survey is relevant to the question posed by the General Assembly, for it serves as the background to understanding the legal status of the Palestinian Territory on the one hand and underlines the special and continuing responsibility of the General Assembly on the other. This may appear as academic, without relevance to the present events. The present is however determined by the accumulation of past events and no reasonable and fair concern for the future can possibly disregard a firm grasp of past events. In particular, when on more than one occasion, the rule of law was consistently side-stepped. The point of departure, or one can say in legal jargon, the critical date, is the League of Nations Mandate which was entrusted to Great Britain.”
I urged in 2017 that justice for the Jewish people – and the standing, integrity and reputation of the United Nations – demanded an Advisory Opinion be obtained.
Failing to do so has seen the Jew-hatred embodied in Resolution 2334 wreaking havoc worldwide in 2024.
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Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively by the author — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades
David Singer is a Sydney lawyer and a foundation member of the International Analysts Network
