Dianne Lob, Chair, and William Daroff, CEO, of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, issued the following statement:
The Conference of Presidents condemns the United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s latest disgraceful resolution and abuse of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which follows a pattern of distorted attacks by the body that unfairly singles out the world’s only Jewish state solely for fulfilling its obligation of protecting its civilian populations through defensive military action, in accordance with international law.
We are grateful that eleven countries changed their stance from a preliminary vote in November and now oppose the resolution so that it no longer enjoys the support of an absolute majority of member states. The Conference of Presidents, in tandem with our organizational partners, spearheaded a successful effort focusing on those nations.
We salute those eight countries that changed their votes from either supporting the resolution or abstaining to opposing it: Albania, Costa Rice, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Togo, and Great Britain. We also commend the following countries for switching their votes and refusing to support this heinous resolution: Afghanistan, Antigua, Brazil, Cape Verde, Chad, Comoros, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Gabon, Grenada, Kiribati, Malawi, Niger, North Macedonia, Panama, Samoa, Tanzania, East Timor, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Vanuatu.
We are also thankful for the rapid response by our UN committee that accelerated these efforts and the support of our member coalition, particularly American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish Federations of North America, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Stand With Us, and World Jewish Congress North America.
Israel’s civilian population continues to face an unprecedented threat in the form of regular rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups. No other member state in the history of the UN has faced this level of incendiary scrutiny for exercising the right to defend itself from existential threats. These biased inquiries have been further amplified – and revealed for the farce that they are – by virulent antisemitic outbursts of UN members in key leadership positions. We unequivocally condemn this attack and others like it and urge the ICJ to reject this overstep by the UN body.
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