Triggering a vehement protest from Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, the U.N. General Assembly on Friday approved a resolution to give new "rights and privileges" to "Palestine."
The resolution also called on the Security Council to give "favorable consideration" to a request for the nonexistent Palestinian state to become a full member of the United Nations.
The vote was 143-9 with 25 abstentions, according to The Associated Press. The United States was joined by Israel, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Papua New Guinea in opposing the resolution.
In an emotional rejection of the vote, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan fed a copy of the U.N. Charter into a shredder, saying the General Assembly had shown a total disregard for it by pushing Palestinian membership in the U.N. one step closer to reality.
"When it comes to the lives of Israelis and Jews, the U.N. Charter means nothing to you," Erdan said. "Nada. Kaput."
"This day will go down in infamy, and I want the entire world to remember this moment -- to remember this immoral act," he said.
"So today I will hold up a mirror for you so that you can see exactly what you are inflicting upon the U.N. Charter with this destructive vote," Erdan said.
"You are shredding the U.N. Charter with your own hands," he said as he fed a copy of the document into a small paper shredder.
"Shame on you," the Israeli ambassador said.
Today, I demonstrated to the General Assembly what they are doing to the UN Charter by ignoring it and shredded it on the stage. I told the ambassadors that today will go down in infamy and I want the world to remember when they shredded the UN Charter to advance a Nazi regime… pic.twitter.com/NulOtHsAdK
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) May 10, 2024
He told the assembly, "In the years to come, you will have to explain how, in opposition to all morality and the U.N. Charter, you did everything to give a state to a group of mass murderers -- to the Hitlers of our times."
“When Hamas rises to power, the Palestinian representative who just spoke here, you know what will happen to him? He will be recalled,” Erdan said.
“And if he returns, he will likely be thrown off a rooftop by Hamas, just as the Palestinian Authority representatives were when Hamas took over Gaza back in 2006-7,” the ambassador said.
“And in his place, this body will welcome a Hamas representative to its ranks. A terrorist diplomat whose stated goal is Jewish genocide, just like his Iranian counterpart here," he said.
Erdan said that representatives of the Islamic State or other terrorist groups might soon sit at the United Nations.
“This will be fitting for the new moral standard being set here today -- giving the rights of a state to an entity that is already partially controlled by terrorists and will be replaced by a force of child-murdering Hamas rapists," he said.
"Unbelievable! Truly unbelievable."
By embracing Hamas and the Palestinian cause, delegates were turning their backs on the Jewish people, the ambassador said.
“As long as so many of you are ‘Jew-hating,’ you don’t really care that the Palestinians are not ‘peace-loving,'" he said.
Erdan's full speech is below:
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called the vote Friday a “prize for Hamas," according to the Times of Israel.
“The absurd decision taken today at the U.N. General Assembly highlights the structural bias of the U.N. and the reasons why, under the leadership of U.N. Secretary-General [Antonio] Guterres, it has turned itself into an irrelevant institution,” Katz said.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood explained the American vote against the resolution by saying the United States supports Palestinian statehood but only after a guarantee of Israel’s safety is secured, according to the AP.
