New Zionist : News and Discussion on the Future of Zionism, Israel, and the Jewish People

Israel and the United Nations, two phoenixes from the ashes of WWII, have had a contentious relationship. The Arab block nations, have since the beginning hounded Israel, infamously equating Zionism and racism, &c, &c (though some of the 65 resolutions can be attributed to the geopolitics of the age as the cold war powers waged their battles through the channels of the UN, and their proxies in the middle east).

The most fundamental problem of Israel’s relationship is that Israel is not a full member of the United Nations.

Though Israel is an admitted nation (since 1948), and votes in the General Assembly, Israel has never been able to sit or vote in the Economic and Social Council, the 55 member Council that runs much of the business of the UN (their 20 commissions / councils). Membership to this body is contingent on being a member of one of the five geographic groupings that organize the 188 member countries, and Israel has never been admitted to its natural geographic grouping, the Asia Group (which includes the middle east). Though it doggedly applies for membership every year, the 19 Arab states block its entry each and every time. This lasted for 40 years. For the last four years, Israel has be a provisional member of WEOG, the “cool kids” group of nations that’s not strictly geographic, encompassing the United States, Canada, Austraila, New Zealand, and the countries of western Europe. The group extended Israel’s “provisional” membership in the summer of last year.

But provisional membership was, and is, a raw deal. The WEOG countries applied conditions on Israel’s “provisional” membership. The WEOG countries applied onerous conditions on Israel’s membership, the most insidious of which is the condition that Israel is prevented from sitting on the most important committees, like the UN Security Council or the powerful EOSOC. Israel is further prevented by its provisional membership to present candidates to vacancies on the minor UN councils unless there is no other candidate running from the WEOG members (which is never). This is exactly the right that Israel sought to gain by its provisional membership, of course. The problem is worsened, not lessened, by Israel’s provisional membership, since it hurts our chances at full membership later on, either into the Asia group, or into WEOG.

Here’s what the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN has to say:

While Israel’s admission into WEOG signified an important development, it remains excluded from the regional group system outside New York. Though Israel can be elected to a UN body that has seats allocated through WEOG in New York, it is prevented from participating in Western group meetings outside of New York, and from nominating candidates to positions in UN bodies where elections for those bodies are not organized by the New York regional group system.

This discriminatory exclusion violates the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in the UN Charter, and denies Israel the ability to play its role as a full and equal member throughout the UN system. For this discriminatory anomaly to be fully rectified, Israel hopes that in the future it will be included fully in the regional grouping system on an equal basis with all other states.

[From the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations website. Web site home.]

Israel is not a nation like all other nations, and won’t be until it is finally admitted as a full member of of some geographic group. I can understand that Israel will always be out-voted by the Arab block, and that there will continue to be resolutions that punish and impugn Israel. But it’s imperative that Israel be a nation on the same footing as the other 187 member states. It is one thing to lose the game, but another for the game to be on un-equal ground from the first kickoff. If Israel’s aspirations and her voice are blocked by votes, I’d begrudingly accept that fact. If Israel is prevented from even having a voice, of airing her aspirations, and of serving on UN Councils, this is in a word, discrimination.

I think that we must mobilize Israeli and Diaspora Jews to lobby to fix this anomaly (despite the 418 yeas in the US House of Representatives in July 2004, this story does not get much airtime). This is something that all of us, as Zionists, could do to mitigate one of the last glaring examples of Israel being less than equal in the world’s political body. I propose that, at the time the country of Palestine is admitted to the United Nations (hopefully soon!), and is admitted to the Asian grouping of nations, the state of Israel is also admitted as a permanent and full member of WEOG. The parity of these two actions, Palestine and Israel being admitted to full membership in United Nations cannot be ignored. We should use the coming independence of Palestine to lobby stridently for our cause of normalization. We have long strived for Israel, “a nation like all other nations.” It is now time to finish that work in this small way.