It has been a dispiriting time, these past few days, watching a succession of world leaders parrot to the UN General Assembly misinformation, half-truths, and downright lies emanating from the propaganda machines of Iran and its proxies, and see them receive rapturous applause from the delegates.
The speeches by Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, powerful though each was, fell largely on deaf ears, drowned out by consistent and continuous anti-Israel rhetoric from a succession of Muslim leaders and their allies.
The UN General Assembly has 193 member states, and a significant number of them are part of the Global South, including Arab, Muslim-majority, and developing nations that have traditionally supported the Palestinian cause or taken positions critical of Israel. Many of them, especially those with histories of colonization, see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of anti-colonialism.
The millennia-long association of the Jewish people with the Holy Land, proof positive that Jews are not colonialists in their own historic homeland, has been deliberately written out of the accepted anti-Israel narrative.
South Africa demonizing Israel
It is far from the only willful misrepresentation. When South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, addressed the GA, he linked his country’s application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza to apartheid in his own country.
“The violence the Palestinian people are being subjected to is a grim continuation of more than half a century of apartheid that has been perpetrated against Palestinians by Israel,” he said. “We South Africans know what apartheid looks like... We will not remain silent and watch as apartheid is perpetrated against others.”
He ignores the views of eminent fellow countrymen and women who utterly reject his assertion – like Reverend Kenneth Meshoe, leader of the African Christian Democratic Party, who says that using the term in respect of Israel trivializes the suffering experienced under apartheid in South Africa. He accuses those who use apartheid in respect to Israel of distorting the truth for political purposes.
Or Mamphela Ramphele, former leader of the Agang SA political party. She argues that equating Israel’s situation with apartheid South Africa is a false equivalence. Mosioua “Terror” Lekota, the leader of the Congress of the People (COPE) party, also dismisses claims that Israel is an apartheid state (“Terror” refers to his prowess on the football field). Acknowledging the difficulties faced by some Palestinians, he asserts that these do not equate to apartheid as experienced in South Africa.
Erdogan hypocrisy
THE ADDRESS by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a lesson in hype and hypocrisy. He took the already suspect Hamas-inspired figures of those killed during the Gaza war and magnified them. At one point, he said, “Hundreds of thousands of children are dead and are still dying” – a ridiculous exaggeration. He also claimed that “more than 17,000 children” had been “targeted” by Israel in Gaza, implying that the IDF had gone out in search of youngsters to kill.
What pro-Palestinian lobbyists never mention, and rarely cited by those supporting Israel, is that the Hamas Health Ministry’s definition of “child” is anyone under 18 years old. Fully-fledged soldiers aged 16 and 17 are counted as children and go toward boosting the emotive total.
Erdogan condemned Israel’s recent 45-day suspension of Al Jazeera’s activities as an unjustifiable attack on the media. In presenting himself as the champion of journalists, Erdogan achieved the height of hypocrisy. He conveniently forgot that in 2016 Turkey achieved the dubious record of imprisoning more journalists in one year than any other nation, ever. Today, there are scores of Turkish and Kurdish journalists indicted on charges of terrorism and awaiting trial in Turkey, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
By mentioning the name “Hamas” once in his speech, Erdogan did go one better than Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. Erdogan claimed that Hamas had accepted a ceasefire deal. In fact, after its “acceptance” it proposed so many changes that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Hamas a month later that it was “time for the haggling to stop.”
Abbas vague on Hamas atrocities
As for Abbas, the word “Hamas” never passed his lips. He concentrated on the regrettable, but predictable, results of the barbarous attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which he described as an explosion that “happened.” Confident of his in-built majority in the General Assembly, he asked delegates to vote in favor of the July ruling of the ICJ that “Israel’s... continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal” and that Israel should evacuate all its settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem within 12 months. The General Assembly, with its anti-Israel bloc, is likely to do just that.
Abbas ended by outlining a 12-point plan for “the day after,” which included him and the PA in charge of Gaza, and a UN-sponsored peace conference with Israel. A little earlier in his speech, he had described Israel as “this transient state.” Now, in support of the proposal, he declared: “We recognize the State of Israel.”
In his first address to the UN General Assembly, the new president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, condemned Israel’s campaign in Gaza, quoting the usual undifferentiated 41,000 figure of those killed, “mostly women and children.” Israel’s renewed initiative against Hezbollah he described as “desperate barbarism.”
Then, perhaps speaking for himself, but certainly not for his Supreme Leader or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, he declared: “We want peace for all and seek no war or quarrel with anyone.”
The words must have come as something of a shock to the hardline minders sent to accompany him into the hell of the “Great Satan.” Their emollient president had been selected for the post only a few months before by the nation’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who may already be regretting his choice.
For on his arrival in the US on September 16, Pezeshkian held a press conference, telling American reporters that Iran was ready to defuse tensions with Israel and lay down arms if Israel did the same. Supporters of the regime in Tehran were aghast. A prime purpose of Iran’s 1979 revolution is to overthrow Israel, the US, and the West, and impose Shi’ite law on them and the whole world. There was a media storm; the president was accused of speaking out of turn.
Either at that point, or during his less-than-aggressive words at the General Assembly, a decision was taken. While he was still standing on the podium, the Iranian mission to the UN announced that the president’s press conference, scheduled for the next day, had been canceled. He had apparently said more than enough.
His words to the US reporters were already in the papers, and his speech attracted only short-lived applause from the assembled delegates. The UN General Assembly, it seems, was not prepared to countenance anyone suggesting peace with Israel, not even the representative of its supreme enemy. The UN’s in-built anti-Israel majority was as predictable as ever.
The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.