Why Israeli claims of UN bias have ramped up since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks

For some Israeli politicians, the United Nations has a troubling fixation on their country.

A bias, some claim, has re‐ vealed itself particularly prominently in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel. Those attacks claimed the lives of around 1,200 people, according to Is‐ raeli officials, and prompted Israel to launch a ground and air offensive inside Gaza that has killed more than 29,400 Palestinians, Gaza health au‐ thorities estimate.

It was just last month that Israel's UN ambassador, Gi‐ lad Erdan, accused the inter‐ national body of being a place of "bias and hypocrisy" with "no morals" for calling for a ceasefire while dozens of hostages still remain in Gaza.

And it was at a General Assembly meeting back in November that Israeli diplo‐ mat Reut Shapir Ben-Naftaly said that the organization's "twisted anti-Israel bias has been on clear display" since the Oct. 7 attack.

Hillel Neurer, executive di‐ rector of the Geneva-based UN Watch, monitors the in‐ ternational body as part of the group's work combating antisemitism and what it sees as anti-Israel bias.

"A large part of its time is spent condemning Israel," Neurer said of the UN.

Evidence of such bias, says Neuer, can be found in the tally of resolutions passed against individual states. In 2023, according to Neuer's website, which tracks them, the UN adopted one resolution each against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, Crimea, Russia and the U.S. for alleged human rights vio‐ lations.

But Israel faced 15 such resolutions, according to UN Watch. Those resolutions range from condemnation of the destruction caused by the Israeli Air Force during an operation that created an oil slick in Lebanon to criticism of Israel's activities in the oc‐ cupied territories and its treatment of Palestinian refugees.

"It's 15 to 1. There is no resolution on Pakistan. There's no resolution on Venezuela in the General As‐ sembly," Neurer said. "There's no resolution on China in the UN. There's no resolutions on most of the world's worst abusers. There's 15 on Israel. That's

what's going on with the General Assembly."

Despite the fact that these resolutions were adopted in the UN General Assembly, Is‐ rael had repeatedly ignored them.

UN pivotal in creation of Israel

Accusations of UN bias have ramped up following the Oct. 7 attacks, and some now suggest Israel's relation‐ ship with the body is signifi‐ cantly fractured.

Neuer and others say an‐ tisemitism is the root cause of what they consider the dis‐ proportionate attention the UN has paid to Israel.

But some observers argue that other reasons factor into it, including the historical re‐ lationship between Israel and the UN, the sympathy some states have for the Palestin‐ ian cause, and Israel's ability to avoid having to take any serious action in response to the resolutions because of U.S. protection.

It was the United Nations, back in 1947, that adopted the resolution to partition what was then Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. That resolution was the basis on which Israel de‐ clared independence the fol‐ lowing year.

Richard Gowan, the UN di‐ rector of the International Crisis Group, an organization that works to prevent deadly conflict around the world, says the UN's role in the es‐ tablishment of Israel is at least one of the reasons why there is so much focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"For many, many mem‐ bers of the UN, there is a strange sense that the orga‐ nization has a special respon‐ sibility for the Israeli-Palestin‐ ian conflict that is qualita‐ tively different to the UN's engagement with other wars and other crises," he said.

"And I think that that is rooted in the fact that, the UN was present at the cre‐ ation of Israel."

Since 1947, the member‐ ship of the UN has changed from only 57 countries to 193 sovereign nations today.

UN support for the Israeli state in 1947 came from a body dominated by Western Europe and Latin American states, at a time when coloni‐ al powers were in charge of much of Asia and Africa.

"If you fast forward to the late 60s and early 70s," said Neuer, "the same General As‐ sembly that voted for a Jew‐ ish state ... in the [1947] reso‐ lution, in 1975 said the idea of a Jewish state is racist."

Neuer is referring to a 1975 resolution that declared that "Zionism is a form or racism and racial discrimina‐ tion."

Perhaps the most signifi‐ cant UN resolution after the partition plan was Security Council Resolution 242, passed in 1967 following the Six-Day War. It was a resolu‐ tion that called for a "peace‐ ful and accepted settlement" of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a resolution that Israel it‐ self supported. But it has been a source of fierce de‐ bate since, interpreted differ‐ ently by various parties, and has not secured the peace it promised.

WATCH | Is a two-state so‐ lution still possible?:

'One of the lowest points that I've ever seen'

For years, Israel and some members of the Jewish com‐ munity outside the country have "held the UN in contem‐ pt," believing that Israel is discriminated against, sin‐ gled out and subject to dou‐ ble standards, said Dov Wax‐ man, director of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at the University of California Los Angeles.

Indeed, polls conducted by Pew Research have found the majority of Israelis hold unfavourable views of the in‐ stitution.

"But I think in the wake of Oct. 7, that sense of being unfairly treated by the UN has really been exacerbated," said Waxman.

There have been criticis‐ ms from Israel that various UN agencies were slow to de‐ nounce the attacks on Oct. 7, particularly the allegations of sexual violence. Israel has al‐ so taken aim at UN Secretary Antonio Guterres himself, calling for his resignation af‐ ter he said the Hamas at‐ tacks against Israel "did not happen in a vacuum."

As well, Israel is accused of "engaging in genocidal ac‐ ts against the Palestinian people in Gaza" at the UN's International Court of Justice. Israel has rejected the claims and defended itself at a hear‐ ing in the Hague in January.

This past week, the court opened another set of his‐ toric hearings into the legal‐ ity of Israel's 57-year occupa‐ tion of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

WATCH | What to make of the Israel-Gaza ICJ ruling:

Meanwhile, Israel has al‐ leged that staff members from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. UNRWA has fired several of the accused workers and is investigating the allegations.

Neuer said while histori‐ cally, there have been many low points for Israel at the UN, currently, "it's one of the lowest points that I've ever seen."

Gowan of the Crisis Group agreed that the relationship between Israel and the UN is "certainly, extremely bad."

"If you look back over the history of the UN, Israel has often faced enormous criti‐ cism and pressure in the UN General Assembly and the

Human Rights Council," he said.

But the intensity of the re‐ cent criticism is "very strik‐ ing," he said.

Waxman agreed that Is‐ rael receives a disproportion‐ ate amount of criticism at the UN General Assembly and noted that some have per‐ ceived that criticism as anti‐ semitic.

Last January, for example, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Erdan, Israel's UN am‐ bassador, told the General Assembly that the dispropor‐ tionate number of resolu‐ tions "singling out the one and only Jewish state - yes, it is antisemitism."

Waxman said while such perceptions might be valid, there are likely other reasons behind the criticism Israel faces at the UN.

In the case of some coun‐ tries with Muslim majorities, voting against Israel may just reflect the fact that "much of the Muslim world is sympa‐ thetic to the Palestinians, and the Palestinian cause res‐ onates across the Muslim world," Waxman said.

Also, he said, a large ma‐ jority of countries in the UN have their own histories of colonialism and "continue to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of colonialism."

WATCH | Gaza's largest hospital no longer function‐ ing:

Protected by the U.S. Daniel Levy, president of the policy institute U.S. / Mid‐ dle East Project, says claims of bias are exaggerated, and that at the UN, Israel enjoys a "regime of impunity" despite its well-documented viola‐ tions of international law and human rights.

He said Israel avoids any binding sanctions from the UN Security Council because it's protected by the U.S., a permanent member of the council and an unwavering ally of Israel, unlike other countries, such as Iran, Libya and North Korea, which do face sanctions.

"What's unique here is not that Israel is singled out for this excessively harsh treat‐ ment [but] that Israel is sin‐ gled out for the impunity with which it is treated," Levy said.

"Because the UN can never actually do anything on Israel because of the Ameri‐ cans' veto, you create all these workarounds to try and at least get some trac‐ tion."

WATCH | UN ceasefire resolution vetoed by U.S.:

The UN, says Gowan, has been used very effectively by the Palestinians as a diplo‐ matic battleground where they can challenge Israel.

He agreed that Israel does have one fundamental ad‐ vantage in that the U.S. will use its veto power to protect Israeli interests on the UN Se‐ curity Council. On Tuesday, for example, the U.S. vetoed an Arab state-backed and widely supported UN resolu‐ tion demanding an immedi‐ ate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Gowan said that since Oc‐ tober, it's been very clear that the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has had a strategy of ignoring any criticism coming from any part of the UN and delib‐ erately aiming to delegitimize the institution.

Waxman said while Israel may outwardly dismiss reso‐ lutions such as those calling for a ceasefire, it does care about its legitimacy on the world stage.

"While these votes don't impose any kind of concrete measures on Israel, they do affect Israel's standing in the world ... [which] can affect Is‐ rael's diplomatic relation‐ ships."