The General Assembly met in a plenary session today for the annual meeting to mark the historic UN vote on November 29, 1947. The discussion featured speeches by Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon, Palestinian Representative Riyad Mansour, and ambassadors from around the world.
In his speech, Ambassador Danon attacked some UN members and criticized their one-sided approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "For the international community: you must recognize that over the past 72 years, you have gone from holding a pragmatic approach, to fully embracing the Palestinian method and perspective. This new approach – call it the “Palestinian way” – stands in the way of ending the conflict as it encourages the Palestinians to refuse direct negotiations and instead hold pointless events such as today."
"The international community should be able to criticize the Palestinians when they do something wrong, in the same way that it doesn’t hesitate to do so when it believes Israel has acted in error," the ambassador said.
According to Danon, the international community continues to adopt a one-sided agenda: "There were an estimated 850,000 Jews who were forced out of Arab countries and Iran and became refugees in the 20th century. These Jews were subject to brutal attacks and harassment and were forced to flee leaving everything behind: in Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Iran, and many other countries. And still, we don’t hear the international community speak of them when they discuss the refugees of the conflict, perhaps because it doesn’t serve the Palestinian narrative."
Danon announced that Israel would submit a resolution to formally recognize the Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran, bring it for a vote in the General Assembly. "Israel took in these refugees and integrated them into our society. The international community on the other hand ignored them and built corrupt institutions that only serve so-called Palestinian refugees. In order to right the historical injustice that was done to the Jewish refugees of this conflict, I will propose a resolution to the Assembly that will acknowledge the wrong done to the "forgotten" Jewish refugees and will make right the injustice that they suffered."