Israel and the US are working together to alter the UN’s anti-Israel stance and to curb the anti-Israel operations conducted by multiple UN bodies.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Danny Danon met for the first time late last week with his American counterpart to discuss strategies to combat the world body’s bias toward Israel as well as the Iranian threat.
In their meeting, Danon thanked US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for her “unequivocal” support for Israel and proposed ways to mitigate the damage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria.
Additionally, Danon and Haley discussed reforms that Israel is interested in implementing to root out anti-bias among bodies within the UN, as well as to end the disproportionate forces on Israel at the world body.
“Ambassador Haley is a true friend of Israel and I am sure that the cooperation between our two missions will only deepen and grow under her leadership,” Danon said.
“We are looking forward to leading toward a new era in which we will implement significant change at the UN, put an end to the obsessive focus on Israel and instead work on portraying the true face of Israel to the international community,” Danon concluded.
During her confirmation hearing at the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee last month, Haley expressed outstanding support for Israel.
Haley assailed the Obama administration for failing to block the UNSC resolution, and pledged to reject future measures that she said unfairly targeted the Jewish state.
She also slammed the UN’s “outrageous bias against our close ally Israel.”
She backed up her charge with numbers: In the recently concluded General Assembly session, “the UN adopted 20 resolutions against Israel and only six targeting the rest of the world’s countries combined.”
Over the past 10 years, she added, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) “has passed 62 resolutions condemning the reasonable actions Israel takes to defend its security. Meanwhile, the world’s worst human rights abusers in Syria, Iran, and North Korea received far fewer condemnations. This cannot continue.”
The US contributes 22 percent of the UN’s budget, and Haley questioned whether such a sizable investment was worthwhile.
“We are a generous nation,” Haley said. “But we must ask ourselves what good is being accomplished by this disproportionate contribution. Are we getting what we pay for?”
Haley said she would focus on “fixing” the UN and agreed that money should not continue to be funneled into programs that don’t work.
By: JNS.org and United with Israel Staff