From Democracies should leave UN and form alternative body, Lapid argues in Fox News op-ed
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleAriela Karmel is a political correspondent at The Times of Israel. She previously reported for Calcalist and Haaretz. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern and African History from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid writes that the United Nations is a failed institution dominated by authoritarian states, in an op-ed in the right-wing Fox News, during his visit to the US.
He argues that the UN has been hijacked by authoritarian regimes. Out of 193 member states, only 25 are considered “full democracies,” according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. This imbalance, he says, allows dictatorships to dominate budgets, votes and resolutions.
As a remedy, the Yesh Atid party leader calls for democracies to leave the UN and form a new bloc, which he dubs “DAWN — the Democratic Alliance for World Nations.”
This is linked to what Lapid calls the UN’s “obsessive bias” against the Jewish state.
“The UN’s treatment of Israel is the diplomatic equivalent of a psychotic episode,” he says.
He points to numbers that underscore his case: Israel, representing just 0.1% of the world’s population, has been the target of more than 60% of the UN’s condemnatory resolutions over the past decade. By comparison, conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia and Myanmar — which have claimed far higher death tolls than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — have generated only a fraction of the criticism.
Lapid stresses that his critique is not rooted in blind defense of Israel’s government. “I am the last person to claim Israel is perfect or mistake-free,” he writes, adding that he disagrees with much of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition does, particularly in Gaza.
The Times of Israel Community.