There is more to Gilad Erdan’s hatred of the U.N. than the mere frustration of a disappointed diplomat, writes Ramzy Baroud.
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s then U.N. ambassador, shredding a page of the U.N. Charter on May 10 as he addresses a General Assembly session on “Illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” (UN Photo/Manuel Elías)
Former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, clearly had an unpleasant experience at the world’s largest international institution [which he left last month].
In an interview published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Aug. 20, the disgruntled envoy said that “the U.N. building should be closed and wiped off from the face of the earth.”
Whether Erdan has made this realization or not, his aggressive statement indicates that his four-year career as Israel’s top U.N. diplomat was a failure.
In the interview, Erdan expressed his wish to become the head of Likud, the right-wing party of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Erdan’s violent language could be his way of appealing to the right and far-right constituencies that feed on such violence.
However, there is more to Erdan’s hatred for the U.N. than the mere frustration of a disappointed diplomat.
Israel has had a long and troubled history with the United Nations and other U.N.-linked institutions. According to Israel’s political discourse, the U.N. is an “anti-Semitic” organization, a label Israelis often invoke when their country is subjected to the slightest criticism.
Israel’s relationship with the U.N. is particularly odd because Israel was created by a U.N. decision, itself a direct outcome of U.N. political intrigues and Western pressure.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the U.N. passed resolution 181, calling for the division of historic Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It assigned most of the land, 56 percent, to the Jewish population, then a minority, and the rest to the Palestinian Arab natives.
Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question approving the resolution on the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish States during the second session of the General Assembly in Flushing Meadows, New York, November 1947. (UN Photo/Albert Fox)
Shortly after, Jewish Zionist leadership began a military campaign that conquered most of Palestine and ethnically cleansed most of its original population.
Israel was admitted as a full U.N. member on May 11, 1949, while native Palestinians remain stateless.
Though Israel’s admission to the international body was conditioned on the acceptance of Resolutions 181 and 194 – on the status of Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees – Israel was spared punishment for these and other resolutions, thanks to strong backing from Washington and other Western powers.
In June 1967, the rest of historic Palestine was conquered. Again, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and, ever since, the remaining Palestinians have lived under a draconian system of military occupation, apartheid, siege and a constant state of war.
An Israeli gunboat passes through the Straits of Tiran near Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, during the Six Day War in 1967. (Israel government, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is the culmination of all the injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people throughout the decades. The war did not start on Oct. 7, 2023, nor will it end when a ceasefire is finally declared.
Aside from the Balfour Declaration, where Britain pledged to construct a Jewish state in historic Palestine in November 1917, U.N. Resolution 181, which allowed the establishment of Israel, could arguably be considered the genesis of all Palestinian suffering.
Throughout this bloody, unjust history, the U.N. neither penalized Israel nor granted Palestinians their long overdue justice. It even failed to implement or enforce any of its subsequent resolutions recognizing the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
[Related: Suspending Israel From the UN]
Yet, Palestinians continue to resort to the U.N., since it is their only international platform that could constantly remind Israel, and the world, that Tel Aviv is an occupying power and that international and humanitarian laws must apply to Palestinians as an occupied nation.
[For instance, the General Assembly in 2012 voted to make Palestine an Observer State of the U.N., allowing it to join the International Criminal Court and various U.N. agencies.]
These reminders were made frequently in the past, at the U.N. General Assembly and even at the Security Council, always to the displeasure of Israel and its Western benefactors, mainly the United States.
The last solid legal position was articulated through an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19. After the testimonies and interventions made by at least 52 countries and countless experts, the ICJ resolved that “Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources.”
Members of the International Court of Justice on July 19, the day they delivered they opinion on the illegality of Israeli policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. (ICJ)
Although the U.N. [largely because of the U.S. veto] has not made any difference in forcing Israel to end its occupation, dismantle illegal settlements or respect the basic human rights of Palestinians, the international institution remains a source of frustration for Israel.
Since its establishment on the ruins of Palestinian homes, Israel has worked to change the status of Palestine and Palestinian refugees, and constantly challenged the very term “occupation.” It has done its utmost to rewrite history, illegally annexed Palestinian and Arab land, and built illegal settlements as if permanent “facts on the ground.”
In 2017, it looked as if Israel was succeeding in its quest to cancel the Palestinian cause altogether when Washington recognized Israel’s fraudulent claims to Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Yet, the world did not follow suit, as demonstrated in the ICJ’s recent legal ruling.
As far as the United Nations is concerned, Israel remains an occupying power, bound to international laws and norms.
Though for Palestinians, such facts remain devoid of practical meaning, for Israel, the U.N. position is a major obstacle in the face of its blatant settler colonial project. And this is why Erdan wants the U.N. “wiped off from the face of the earth.”
Even if the angry Israeli diplomat gets his wish, nothing will alter this historic truth: Israel will remain a colonial regime, and Palestine will continue to resist, till justice is finally restored.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a widely published and translated author, an internationally syndicated columnist and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015), and was a non-resident scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB. Visit his website.
This article is from Common Dreams
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
“…..Palestine will continue to resist, till justice is finally restored.”
Indigenous peoples around the world are still waiting, often for hundreds of years, for ‘justice to be restored.’!
I once had faith in the UN…how naive. Resolution 181 shows that the UN was bent from the beginning. What they were given by unelected officials, who had no right to give, was not enough for the Zionists, of course. There’s a growing sense that the UN and the International courts are at best toothless and Israel, the US and other enemies of mankind can just do what they want.
All true, but it does show the hypocrisy of Israel and the US; certainly the hate the UN, despite its flaws, and that is something.
Don’t put it past them, and don’t think the US wouldn’t facilitate this. Take the trade towers as an example,,,
Thank you for writing this! We need to say it again and again. Israel is land, in the heart of Arabia , stolen by the colonial West.
I believe the title would be more appropriate if it were:
THE FAILED WISH OF A BRUTAL ISRAELI DIPLOMAT.
I take exception to Dr. Ramzy Baroud’s statement about the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917.
He says the Balfour Declaration was one where “Britain pledged to construct a Jewish state in historic Palestine”
Not so. Here’s what the Declaration says:
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
A “national home for the Jewish people” is not the same as “a Jewish state.”
Thank you for the correction, although it was never respected, and the Israelis suffered no consequences for its deliberate and repeated violations, thanks to the U.S. always playing interference.
In effect it was and is.
Wrongful citation of the November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration has been one of the facilitators of this development. That is why I take exception to misleading references to it.
You are merely splitting hairs. It is a distinction without a difference.
The British believed that they would maintain control over the new Jewish country and use it for their own Middle East interests but they lost control after WWII, which had wrecked the British empire economically. The Zionists never made any statement to parallel the Balfour Declaration in its weak-tea nod toward the rights of non-Jews, and always acted in the direction of establishing a fully Jewish country. There’s not much indication that the British in 1917 really gave a toot about the lives of the existing Palestinians, who would have been on the side of the Ottomans if they were fighting at all.