The UN continues to single out Israel and charge it with false accusations, while failing to fulfill its mission to make the world a better place.
Israel’s envoy to the United Nations sent a letter to Secretary-General Bank Ki-moon on Monday protesting a report disseminated by his office on International Women’s Day which accuses Israel of abusing women’s rights, and demanding he revise it.
The report criticizes Israel for the dismal situation of Palestinian women. “This report is a distortion of the truth and it should be amended immediately,” Ambassador Danny Danon wrote in his letter.
The report focuses solely on Israel, as many of the UN’s reports often do, while neglecting to address truly pressing issues in numerous countries around the globe.
“This will create an absurd situation in which Israel is the only UN member-state which will be singled out for its treatment of women,” Israel’s delegation to the UN stated.
One example of the distorted reality in the report is the assertion that Israel is responsible for domestic violence against Palestinian women living in the so-called refugee camps.
Another example is a section of the report which describes a Palestinian terrorist attack in a Jerusalem synagogue in November 2014 as an “incident” in which five Israelis and two Palestinians were killed. During the attack, two Palestinian terrorists brutally murdered the five Israelis with axes, knives and guns. The report equated between the terrorists and their victims.
“This horrific episode was not an ‘incident.’ It was a carefully planned terror attack on a synagogue during morning prayers,” Danon wrote. “By equating the ‘two Palestinian men’ who carried out the massacre and the ‘five Israeli men’ whom they slaughtered, those with axes in their hands are treated in the same way as those holding prayer books,” he continued.
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meets annually to discuss the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.
The report on Palestinian women is expected to receive significant attention during the conference, as the UN has an expressed biased and negative stance against issue, which Danon addresses on an almost weekly basis.
In the dark Middle East, Israel is a pioneering force and a sole beacon when it comes to woman’s rights and an egalitarian society.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence states that Israel will “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”
In 1949, the Israeli Knesset declared, “full and complete equality will be granted to women – equality of rights and obligations in political, social, and economic life and in the entire system of law.”
Israel is one of the first countries in the world to have a female prime minister – Golda Meir.
Women in any other country in the Middle East can only dream of enjoying even a fraction of the liberties enjoyed by Israel’s Jewish and Arab women.
By: Max Gelber, United with Israel