The election of Ali Abdussalam Treki of Libya to serve as the United Nations General Assembly president starting in September continues that key U.N. body’s travels on a troubling trajectory. Treki will preside over the 64th session of the General Assembly.

The General Assembly presidency is a position of visibility and influence at the United Nations. It has been used as a platform to repeatedly single out Israel for condemnation. Treki is well-positioned to follow in the anti-Israel footsteps of the current General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua.

“Libya’s history of hostility toward Israel should preclude its officials from leadership in the General Assembly that is home to all nations,” B’nai B’rith International President Moishe Smith said. “His position will require fairness that Treki is unlikely to demonstrate.”

Since joining the Security Council in January 2008, Libya managed to block a council statement condemning the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva terror attack in Jerusalem and caused a walkout by diplomats at the council for comparing the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps. Libya also chaired the Durban Review Conference Preparatory Committee, whose proceedings featured incessant attacks on Israel in the run-up to Durban II. Treki himself, before the Security Council in 2003, condemned all forms of terrorism – except terrorism against Israelis, which he sought to legitimize as, “resistance to occupation.”

“The election of Ali Abdussalam Treki is not only disconcerting, it sends an entirely wrong message for an organization whose governance has frequently been open to question,” said B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin. “The United Nations plays an important role in world events. Libya has demonstrated time and again an unacceptable hostility toward Israel, which puts the democratic Jewish state at an extreme disadvantage as world issues are discussed and actions are decided.”

B’nai B’rith International, which has a full-time office dedicated to U.N. affairs and has been active at the United Nations since the world body’s inception, will carefully monitor Treki’s performance as he assumes his new role.