Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Gillerman, was chosen yesterday as Vice President of the General Assembly - the first time in 53 years that an Israeli has held this position. Abba Eban was the last Israeli to be so honored.
Dr. Dore Gold (pictured), Israel's Ambassador to the UN several years ago, explained to Arutz-7 why it took so long for an Israeli to receive this honor: "We have two basic problems in the UN. One is organizational, in that in order to be elected to certain UN posts, you have to be nominated by your regional group - but Israel did not belong to any regional group. Now, however, after several Israeli ambassadors worked hard to get Israel into the WEO (Western Europe and Others) group, Danny Gillerman was able to be nominated and elected as one of the Vice Presidents of the General Assembly."
"The second issue," Gold said, "is that the UN has always been totally discriminatory against Israel. Every year, for instance, it passes some 20 anti-Israel resolutions in the General Assembly - and this is why Israeli governments have refrained from allowing the UN an active role in the diplomatic process... A third or a quarter of the decisions of the UN's human rights committee are anti-Israel and deal with Israel's civil rights violations, while there is not a single resolution regarding the violations of Iran, Saudi Arabia, China and the like."
Asked if the UN has given us this "gift" because of Israel's disengagement plans, Gold said that this was not the case: "The main thing is not the disengagement and not what Israel does, but rather the difficult problems of the UN. The UN today is in a difficult situation, and there is more awareness around the world that the UN is not fulfilling its missions. The Iraq war, scandals in Congo, the oil-for-food failure, the scandal with Kofi Anan's son, and the like - they all have eroded the UN's image around the world..."
"There is more and more talk in the U.S. Congress of cutting payments to the UN," Gold continued, "and more and more talk of throwing out Kofi Anan, and therefore this is a good time for the UN to make gestures to Israel. But I emphasize that though this is a nice gesture, and a nice achievement for Ambassador Gillerman, we must see more drastic changes in the anti-Israeli resolutions that the UN passes every year."