Australia Shifts to Pro-Israel Stand at U.N.
Australia’s new government has shifted its voting pattern at the United Nations, refusing to support one-sided anti-Israel resolutions.
Australia’s delegate at the U.N. abstained from two votes earlier this month at the General Assembly: one condemning the expansion of Jewish settlements and another calling for the Geneva Convention to apply in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Under the previous Labor government Australia voted in favor of similar resolutions, but Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott swept to power in September pledging to return to the era of former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, whose government was a staunch supporter of Israel at the U.N..
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said the changes “reflected the government’s concern that Middle East resolutions should be balanced.”
“The government will not support resolutions which are one-sided and which pre-judge the outcome of final status negotiations between the two sides,” her spokeswoman said Monday.
Australia is now aligned with a tiny minority of countries abstaining on these resolutions.
Bob Carr, the foreign minister under Labor, lashed out at the shift as “a shame – in the deepest sense – that we stopped doing the right thing.”
“This new Australian stance is not the action of a true friend of Israel,” he wrote in Fairfax Media last week.
“Our new position of condoning ‘the settlement mission’ of expansionist Israelis (opposed by other Israelis) undermines the prospect of a Palestinian state,” he wrote.
Izzat Abdulhadi, the head of the General Delegation of Palestine to Australia, condemned the government for not consulting before the policy shift.
By contrast, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which had clashed with the previous Labor government on the issue, welcomed the move.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
