U.N. Committee Passes Resolution
In what Israel and its supporters called a breakthrough, the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution on Monday calling for the elimination of all forms of religious intolerance, including antisemitism.
The resolution, which is expected to be voted on by the whole General Assembly soon, recognized “with deep concern the overall rise in instances of intolerance and violence directed against members of many religious communities in various parts of the world, including cases motivated by Islamophobia, antisemitism and Christianophobia.” Last year, the resolution did not specify antisemitism, prompting Israel to abstain from voting for it in the General Assembly.
While several Jewish officials are working for a stand-alone resolution condemning antisemitism, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Dan Gillerman, expressed satisfaction with the current resolution, noting that European countries did not kowtow to efforts by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to remove or amend the language.
“This proves that when the Europeans want to pass a resolution on Jewish issues, they can,” said Amy Goldstein, Hadassah’s director of international affairs.
Still, Natan Sharansky, Israel’s minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs, said in a statement that this “victory for Jewish organizations and the State of Israel” was “trivial when compared to the wave of antisemitism washing over the states of the West.”
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