Kirkpatrick Warns That Efforts to Expel Israel from the UN May Take Place Again This Year

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, warned today that efforts to expel Israel from the United Nations may take place again this year. “This is an issue that we should continue to be alert of and take interest in,” she said at a meeting with leaders of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith at the ADL’s headquarters.

The envoy said that the efforts to expel Israel from the UN during the last two years were “turned back” to a large degree by extensive U.S. lobbying among member-states and public as well as private warnings that the U.S. will withdraw from the world organization should the efforts to expel Israel succeed.

Kirkpatrick said the United States last year made it clear in capitals all over the world and to representatives of UN members in New York what the U.S. policy is on the issue of Israel’s expulsion. She noted, nonetheless, that the vote in the General Assembly for the exclusion of Israel went from nine in favor two years ago to 42 last year, during the Assembly session last Fall.

Claiming that “we are all victims of the will to disbelieve in the horror of our age,” Kirkpatrick said that this “will to disbelieve” affected first of all the Jewish people in Hitler’s Germany. She warned that the “will to disbelieve” is presently taking place at the UN regarding the attacks against the State of Israel. She said that there is a tendency at the UN “to shrug off” the attacks on Israel existence or its legitimacy. The envoy said that she believes that “some of Israel’s neighbors mean it when they say that they conceive the Mideast without Israel.”

Kirkpatrick declared that “the systematic efforts (at the UN) to delegitimize Israel should be met with explicit criticism, and there is not enough of it.” She called for a “realistic” and “sober” assessment of reality to overcome the “will to disbelieve,” and thereby avoid “a disaster” in the future.