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Many readers are surely familiar with the anti-Israeli bias that exists at the United Nations. But not many know about the resolutions of this organization that cause the greatest damage, not only to Israel, but to the possibilities of peace in the region.

Every year, the General Assembly (which is the deliberative body of the U.N.) approves an obscene number of anti-Israeli resolutions. But most of these resolutions are merely “declarative,” which means that they do not have major practical consequences.

But there are three resolutions that do have important consequences. These are the resolutions that, each year, reauthorize the financing of the following entities:

1-The Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People
2-The Division of Palestinian Rights
3-The Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People

These three entities, which operate within the U.N. Secretariat in New York, and which require millions of dollars a year to operate, are unparalleled within the United Nations system. There is no other people that has their own Division within the Secretariat, and there are no similar committees against other countries in the world. It is really an anti-Israeli propaganda apparatus that should not take place at the United Nations.

But the most serious thing is that these entities promote the so-called “right of return” of the more than 5 million people of Palestinian descent that the U.N. erroneously considers “refugees” to what is today the State of Israel.

I say “wrongly” because the U.N. considers refugees not only the Arabs who fled or were expelled as a result of the war of independence of Israel in 1948, but their descendants, without any time limit. The Palestinians are the only people in the world whose quality of “refugee” passes from generation to generation, by the paternal line, indefinitely over time. This is how the number of more than 5 million people is reached, something that is unprecedented in international law.

The implementation of the right of return would involve the mass migration of more than 5 million people of Palestinian descent to Israel, which in practice would end the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.

By advocating the right of return, what these entities (and the countries that approve their financing) are doing is promoting the destruction of Israel by migratory means, and the creation of one more Arab state (“from the river to the sea” as Palestinian leaders usually say). And since this is something that no Israeli government would ever accept, the insistence on the right of return is the biggest obstacle to reaching a peace agreement.

This is why it is necessary for States to become aware of the consequences of their votes. To vote for these entities is to vote in favor of the destruction of Israel and against a real and lasting peace. It is also voting against a two-state solution, for two peoples.

From the American Jewish Institute of International Relations (AJIRI-BBI), an organization affiliated with B’nai B’rith International, we work precisely to get UN member states to stop supporting extreme and counterproductive positions for peace.

As long as the Palestinian leaders continue to think that the U.N. is going to help them destroy Israel by migratory route, they will have no incentive to sit down and negotiate. And peace will be increasingly difficult to achieve.

Read this analysis by B’nai B’rith Special Advisor on Latin American and U.N. Affairs Adriana Camisar in Iton Gadol (in Spanish).


Adriana Camisar is B’nai B’rith International’s Special Advisor on Latin American and U.N. Affairs and Deputy Director of AJIRI-BBI (the American Jewish International Relations Institute, an affiliate of B’nai B’rith). A native of Argentina, Camisar is an attorney by training and holds a Master’s degree in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.