Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon spoke to Arutz Sheva a few hours before Pesach about the enemies of Israel who are also massacring their own nation.
Danon said that the US attack in Syria was "expected", adding that "I saw a few months ago already that there was a new wind blowing from the US which was affecting the UN. The US said that if the Security Council wouldn't act, it might act on its own. Many people said that nothing would happend and I maintained that at the moment that the US makes a statement this is not a light matter. Indeed within a few hours there was an attack."
Was Israel was in a political dilemma, since on the one hand our ally the US attacked in Syria and on the other hand Russia is protecting the Syrians?
We work a lot with countries which have opposing interests. One has to relate to the essence of the matter. In this case chemical weapons were used against innocent people. Sometimes one must go with the moral approach even if it does not always concur with other interests.
The approach expressed by the prime minister and by myself was that we need to support the American decision. This message reverberated in Teheran, North Korea and the Security Council, that if nothing is done, the US will act alone.
The US is leading a change recently in the Security Council. How does this express itself?
"There is a positive change. In almost every discussion I ask the SC representatives why Israel is the main focus of discussion if the meeting is supposed to be dealing with the entire Middle East. Why don't they talk about the Palestinian problem? What about what is happening in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Lebanon. These questions are rarely addressed. This time Ambassador Nikki Haley who is chairing the discussion after Pesach has stressed that the hearing will deal with all the issues in the Middle East - and primarily the terror being directed by Iran. We can see that countries are trying to adopt a similar stance to the US.
A week ago you made a model Seder in the UN. How does one explain to ambassadors from around the world what the essence of the festival is for us?
I have to say that there was a tremendous response from over 40 ambassadors who came, listened, read the Haggadah and enjoyed the Seder. Some of them did not know the story and learned of our deep attachment to the land of Israel. The more we expose the ambassadors to our traditions the more we make our daily work easier."