The following piece by ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim is featured in the latest edition of the Aus­trali­an Jewish Quarterly.

Australia’s changing votes on annual Israel-related resolutions at the UN General Assembly

Peter Wertheim
Australian Jewish Quarterly

The UN – not demo­crat­ic and not a world par­lia­ment
Two pervasive beliefs about the United Nations (UN) are that it is a demo­crat­ic body, and that it is the world’s par­lia­ment of States. Both beliefs are false.
There is nothing demo­crat­ic about a body in which Liecht­en­stein, for example, with a pop­u­la­tion of fewer than 40,000 people has an equal vote with India, whose pop­u­la­tion exceeds 1.3 billion.
Worse, a majority of 55% of the world’s 195 states (including the UN’s 193 member States) are them­selves ranked as dic­tat­or­ships (not free) or semi-dic­tat­or­ships (partially free) by Freedom House,¹ an NGO co-founded in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt which conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights.
On the UN Security Council, which has respons­ib­il­ity for the main­ten­ance of inter­na­tion­al peace and security, the five permanent member States – the US, China, Russia, the UK and France – each has the power to veto any res­ol­u­tion, even if it is supported by all other Security Council members. There is nothing demo­crat­ic about a veto.
Nor is the UN a par­lia­ment. It does not enact legis­la­tion. The vast majority of the res­ol­u­tions it passes – even in the Security Council – are not of them­selves legally binding. There are excep­tions, such as when the Security Council decides to impose sanctions or authorise the use of force, but these are rare.
Given the numerical weakness of demo­crat­ic states at the UN, the fact that the UN does not have the powers of a legis­lature is actually something to be thankful for. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of human rights.

The UN’s skewed record on human rights and Israel
In 2017, for example, not a single General Assembly res­ol­u­tion was passed on the human rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam or Algeria. The ongoing appalling human rights viol­a­tions per­pet­rated by Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia and Myanmar merited only one res­ol­u­tion each. In contrast, 21 res­ol­u­tions were directed against Israel, as part of a bizarre ritual in which a body dominated by dic­tat­or­ships and semi-dic­tat­or­ships passes adverse judgement every year upon the only func­tion­ing democracy in the Middle East.
Little wonder that the last three UN Sec­ret­ar­ies-General have excor­i­ated organs of the UN for their “dis­pro­por­tion­ate focus” on Israel while neg­lect­ing “graver” crises in other parts of the world,² and for their “decision to single out only one specific regional item [the Israel-Palestini­an conflict] given the range and scope of alleg­a­tions of human rights viol­a­tions through­out the world”.³ On 23 April 2017, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted that “a modern form of antisemitism is the denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist … [and that] Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules.”⁴
Alto­geth­er there have been 23 annually-recurring res­ol­u­tions relating to Israel and its conflicts with its neigh­bours. Further res­ol­u­tions in 2007 and 2011 related to UN events marking key anniversary dates of the World Con­fer­ence Against Racism in Durban in 2001. The wording of certain res­ol­u­tions has changed slightly in some years, but not the substance of the res­ol­u­tions.
Some of these annual res­ol­u­tions, con­sidered in isolation, appear innocuous. The provision of aid to the Palestini­ans and calls for the peaceful set­tle­ment of the Israel-Palestini­an conflict are not inher­ently anti-Israel.
Other res­ol­u­tions, however, are overtly polemical and tenden­tious. One res­ol­u­tion, for example, deems the Fourth Geneva con­ven­tion con­cern­ing the treatment of civilians in time of war to apply to the West Bank. It thus treats ‘Palestine’ as if it were both a State and a high con­tract­ing party to the Geneva Con­ven­tions, without adding a con­com­it­ant acknow­ledge­ment that, if it is to be treated as a State, ‘Palestine’ is inter­na­tion­ally respons­ible for armed attacks against Israel that emanate from Palestini­an territory, and Israel has an inherent right of self-defence against such attacks.
Another res­ol­u­tion singles out the set­tle­ments as an obstacle to peace, without men­tion­ing con­tinu­ing Palestini­an rejec­tion­ism towards Israel, or Palestini­an incite­ment and acts of terror, or Hamas’ rocket attacks targeted at Israel’s civilian pop­u­la­tion.
A further res­ol­u­tion asserts the “permanent sov­er­eignty of the Palestini­an people in the Occupied Palestini­an Territory, including East Jerusalem”, thereby pre-empting an outcome on an issue that the parties them­selves have long agreed must be resolved through nego­ti­ations.
What is also objec­tion­able is the one-sided and non-recip­roc­al nature of the res­ol­u­tions as a whole. By making demands only of Israel, and demanding nothing of the Palestini­ans, these res­ol­u­tions reward and encourage the Palestini­ans’ non-com­pli­ance with previous agree­ments and their refusal to return to nego­ti­ations.
These res­ol­u­tions also encourage elements within the UN which are openly hostile to Israel to continue their one-sided, out-of-context cri­ti­cisms of the Israeli gov­ern­ment – the very practices which the last three UN Sec­ret­ar­ies-General have disavowed. By focusing repet­it­ively and dis­pro­por­tion­ately on Israel, the res­ol­u­tions effect­ively give a leave pass to the intransigence and extremism of the other actors in the region which remain hostile to Israel’s very existence.
Such an approach has demon­strated its futility many times. The annual ritual of passing these res­ol­u­tions hardens public opinion among both Israelis and Palestini­ans against making the painful con­ces­sions that peace will ulti­mately require from both sides, and achieving a just and lasting res­ol­u­tion of the conflict based on the principle of two States for two peoples – Israel as the State of the Jewish people living in peace side by side with a Palestini­an State.

Australia’s voting record
Over the decades, Australia’s voting record on these annual General Assembly res­ol­u­tions has undergone some sig­ni­fic­ant changes, which have attracted little public comment.
Under the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke gov­ern­ments, and the first seven years of John Howard’s gov­ern­ment, Australia joined most other countries in giving per­func­tory support to a raft of Israel-related annual General Assembly res­ol­u­tions, or at best abstain­ing. Indulging in a bit of empty symbolism seemed to be a small price to pay to avoid ant­ag­on­ising the oil-rich Arab states and, later, the 56 states of the Organ­isa­tion of Islamic Co-operation.
By 2003, however, Howard’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, had had enough of the hypocrisy. At his direction, between 2003 and 2007 Australia changed its vote from ‘Yes’ to ‘No’ or from ‘Yes’ to ‘Abstain’ or from ‘Abstain’ to ‘No’ on twelve of the more egregious of the twenty-plus annual UN res­ol­u­tions on the Israel-Palestini­an conflict.
However, between 2008 and 2012, when Labor was in power in Canberra, Australia gradually reverted to the old position that was critical of Israel on six of these twelve res­ol­u­tions. (It did not change the more sym­path­et­ic stance towards Israel that had been intro­duced by Downer on the further six res­ol­u­tions). Accord­ingly, under the last ALP Federal gov­ern­ment, Australia’s overall voting record on these annual UN res­ol­u­tions was somewhat more sym­path­et­ic to Israel than it had been under Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke, but less sym­path­et­ic than it had been during the last four years under Howard and Downer.
From 2013 onwards, when the Coalition was in power and Julie Bishop was Foreign Minister, Australia again went to a more pro-Israel position on three of the six res­ol­u­tions on which Labor had changed back Australia’s vote. The nett result is that under a Coalition gov­ern­ment since 2013, Australia’s votes have been more sym­path­et­ic to Israel on nine of the annual UN res­ol­u­tions than had been the case prior to 2003.

Table of Aus­trali­an votes at UN General Assembly on annual Israel-related res­ol­u­tions

The Table above details changes to Australia’s votes on the annual Israel-related res­ol­u­tions since 1996. The Table relates only to res­ol­u­tions con­cern­ing Israel that are put forward annually in the UN General Assembly and its standing com­mit­tees. It does not include one-off votes, such as:

• Australia’s vote in the UN General Assembly in 2003 against the referral of the security barrier issue to the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory opinion;
• Australia’s vote in the General Assembly against the adoption of the advisory opinion itself in 2004;
• Australia’s absten­tion vote on the status of ‘Palestine’ being elevated to that of an observer non-member ‘state’ in 2012; or
• the absten­tion vote on Jerusalem in the UN General Assembly emergency session on 21 December 2017.

It is clear from the Table that Alexander Downer, Australia’ s longest serving Foreign Minister, played a seminal role in moving Australia away from automatic support for the annual ganging up on Israel at the General Assembly. As noted, nine of the twelve voting changes in favour of Israel which he intro­duced on these res­ol­u­tions have remained in place. What motivated these changes?

Downer, Israel and the UN
In 2005, Australia provided the plenary session of the General Assembly with a brief formal explan­a­tion for changing its vote on some of the 12 res­ol­u­tions on which it had moved to a more pro-Israel position. Australia expressed its concern that these res­ol­u­tions were “unbal­anced in their criticism of Israel”, and dis­ap­proved of “the high level of United Nations Sec­ret­ari­at resources allocated to anti-Israeli activity”, adding: “The singling out of one side only for blame in the current situation is deeply unhelpful”. It concluded: “Those res­ol­u­tions serve only to distract the parties from more pressing issues and do nothing to help the peace process”.⁵
Several of Alexander Downer’s public state­ments as Foreign Minister provide a more fulsome explan­a­tion. Fun­da­ment­ally, he con­sidered that Australia’s voting record in the UN should be based squarely on principle, and not merely on being in ‘good company’.
In a speech to the United Israel Appeal of NSW in 2005, after most of the changes to Australia’s votes on the Israel-related res­ol­u­tions had been put into effect, he said:

“Since my first days as Foreign Minister, I have been presented with UN res­ol­u­tion after res­ol­u­tion.

And I soon dis­covered that too many of these res­ol­u­tions are aimed at con­demning Israel.
You would think by looking at these res­ol­u­tions that this small country – with a pop­u­la­tion roughly equi­val­ent to that of New South Wales and a land mass one fortieth its size – is respons­ible for the worst human rights viol­a­tions and much of the world’s ills.

And this is in an era when many of the most egregious human rights violators are elevated to positions of respons­ib­il­ity in the UN.

A truly farcical situation!

And yet these UN General Assembly res­ol­u­tions single Israel out for blame in the most inflam­mat­ory and biased of language.

Now the practice at the time when I first began as Foreign Minister was for the Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment to vote in “good company” – and by good company I use dip­lo­mat­ic speak for voting with people like the North Americans, the European Union and other developed countries.

But it soon dawned on me that Australia – an inde­pend­ent and morally upright nation – should not vote for things in the UN that we don’t believe in, just because there is so-called good company.

So I set about changing our practice, and now where we see an unbal­anced res­ol­u­tion con­demning Israel, we vote against it – irre­spect­ive of who stands beside us.

And by doing so and through our active lobbying efforts, we hope to gradually make others stand up for what they believe in.

We still have a long way to go.

When Australia voted last year in support of Israel’s right to defend itself, we were joined by only five other countries – out of a total UN mem­ber­ship of 191 countries.

We voted against the idea of the General Assembly seeking an advisory opinion from the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Justice on the legal con­sequences of Israel’s security barrier because we thought it was neither appro­pri­ate nor helpful to the peace process.

The Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment was concerned that the use of the ICJ advisory opinion mechanism would distract Israel and Palestine from the urgent need to resume nego­ti­ations to achiev­able a viable and sus­tain­able two-State solution.

In taking this stance, the Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment emphas­ised that it did not want to see the barrier become a de facto border, and urged the Israeli Gov­ern­ment to consider moving the barrier closer to the 1967 line.

This stance reflects the Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment’s strong belief that Israel, and all countries, have the right to defend them­selves from terrorism.

How can anyone expect the Israeli people to stand by as they see their friends, their spouses, their children blown apart in cafes and on buses?”⁶

Address­ing concerns expressed by officials of the Depart­ment of Foreign Affairs and Trade and others about the danger of Australia becoming “isolated” by refusing to join in ganging up against Israel, and about the need for Australia to be “in the middle” on this issue and to vote in “good company”, Downer retorted:

“This issue isn’t about some nonsense about “good company” and being in the “middle”. It’s about a fine judgment of how best to achieve peace in the Middle East. Peace to me is a lot more important than being in “the middle”.⁷

He wryly observed that in 2004 when Australia had voted against the ICJ Advisory Opinion con­cern­ing Israel’s security barrier:

“Only nine countries voted no and they were “isolated”. Well, among the nine were the US and Canada. They are pretty good company.”⁸

Pre­fig­ur­ing the comments made by Antonio Guterres, Downer attrib­uted the UN’s animus against Israel, at least in part, to antisemitism. In a media statement con­demning antisemitism he observed that Australia under the Coalition “firmly opposed the pro­lif­er­a­tion of one-sided anti-Israel res­ol­u­tions in the United Nations, just as we have con­sist­ently supported res­ol­u­tions calling for the elim­in­a­tion of all forms of intol­er­ance”.⁹
Downer was scathing in his criticism of his successor as Foreign Minister, Bob Carr after Carr forced his own leader, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, to consent to an Aus­trali­an absten­tion on the question of recog­nising a non-existent Palestini­an state in 2012, instead of voting ‘No’ on principle, as she had wished:

Foreign Minister Bob Carr argued the res­ol­u­tion didn’t confer statehood on the Palestini­an ter­rit­or­ies. Well, it did. It elevated Palestine to the status of non-member observer state. Then he argued on the ABC that: “To have voted no would have sent a message that Australia does not believe in … statehood for Palestini­ans”.
But hang on! He’d already claimed the vote didn’t confer statehood.
In any case, Australia has been a supporter of the two-state solution since 1948.”¹⁰

However, even Alexander Downer was not blindly uncrit­ic­al of Israel, as is revealed by his comments sug­gest­ing Israel should move the security barrier closer to the pre-1967 lines. His dis­ap­prov­al of the General Assembly’s annual ritual of passing res­ol­u­tions directed against Israel should be seen as part of a wider concern he had about the need for reform at the UN:

“The General Assembly is in dire need of reform and revital­isa­tion. It should be the thriving centre of the mul­ti­lat­er­al system. Instead it has become an outdated forum of marginal relevance to member states, overgrown with pointless res­ol­u­tions.”¹¹

He was also firmly of the view that isolating Israel in the UN is both morally unjus­ti­fied and inimical to achieving peace:

“Israel is becoming increas­ingly isolated. While the Arabs have vast land areas and 300 million people and Iran 70 million, Israel is only about four times the size of Kangaroo Island. It is sur­roun­ded by hostile powers. It has no strategic depth.

Now the world is becoming more hostile to Israel just as it faces the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.

The more nervous Israel is about its security and espe­cially its neigh­bours, the less likely it is to do deals with them.

Never under­es­tim­ate the dangers of isolating people. It’s hardly a formula for peace.”¹²
Finally whilst, as Alexander Downer noted, the US and Canada are indeed “good company” for Australia, Australia has not always voted with them on these issues. Even in the last four years of Downer’s stew­ard­ship as Foreign Minister, and also during Julie Bishop’s tenure, Australia abstained on two key annual res­ol­u­tions – those con­cern­ing Jerusalem and “the Syrian Golan” – whereas the US and Canada voted “No”.

“Doc” Evatt
Labor, too, has had one Foreign Minister who could fairly be described as a fearless champion of Israel – Herbert Vere Evatt in the late 1940s, when Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine were con­duct­ing an insur­gency to win their political inde­pend­ence and end British rule. At that time, the Aus­trali­an Liberal party and much of the Aus­trali­an media was arguably even more pro-British than pro-Aus­trali­an, and was quite hostile to the Jewish cause and the estab­lish­ment of Israel.
Evatt cham­pioned the cause of the Jewish state at every turn, helping to pass the UN General Assembly’s res­ol­u­tion on 29 November 1947 to partition the British Mandate territory into a Jewish State and an Arab State, and – even more crucially – in having Israel admitted to the UN as a member State on 11 May 1949, when Evatt presided over the General Assembly.
Evatt would have concurred with Downer’s view that the UN General Assembly “should be the thriving centre of the mul­ti­lat­er­al system” if it acts dili­gently, impar­tially and in con­form­ity with just prin­ciples and just pro­ced­ures, and proposes solutions based solely on con­sid­er­a­tions of justice and fair dealing, and not expedi­ency or power politics.¹³ He believed that once the General Assembly had thor­oughly and impar­tially invest­ig­ated, debated and voted on any inter­na­tion­al matter, as it had on the partition of Mandatory Palestine, the outcome was morally binding on all nations. For this reason he stated: “I regard the estab­lish­ment of Israel as a great victory for the United Nations”, and accorded to the General Assembly “the primary credit for the estab­lish­ment of Israel”.¹⁴
Yet Evatt, like Downer decades later, was not uniformly sup­port­ive of Israel on every issue. When the question of Jerusalem came up in the General Assembly later in 1949, Australia continued to support the inter­na­tion­al­isa­tion of the city, a position rejected by Jews and Arabs alike, albeit for dia­met­ric­ally opposite reasons. The Foreign Minister of the then newly-estab­lished State of Israel, Abba Eban, recalled:

“Toward the end of the 1949 session, however, the assault on Israel’s status in Jerusalem was launched in full fury. We expected to be chal­lenged by the Arab states and by many in Latin America who were under the influence of the Catholic Church, but we were never able to diagnose the cause for Herbert Evatt’s strange obduracy in this matter…I found it embar­rass­ing to be in conflict with a del­eg­a­tion that had given us such strong support, espe­cially when its foreign minister had presided over the General Assembly in the debate on our admission”.¹⁵

Lessons Learned
“Doc” Evatt and Alexander Downer are regarded by their respect­ive parties, and by many others, as giants of Aus­trali­an foreign policy. Their approach was marked by taking a long view of what would best serve Australia’s national interests, giving priority to the values which Aus­trali­ans hold most dear over the kind of political horse-trading between nations that is an all-too-familiar part of what tran­spires at the United Nations.
They each saw Israel as a thriving kindred democracy. For them, sup­port­ing Israel’s cause entailed an affirm­a­tion of indi­vidu­al freedom, the rule of law and human rights, and an emphatic rejection of dic­tat­or­ship. In Israeli society they saw a tolerance and com­pas­sion which cel­eb­rates rather than sup­presses dif­fer­ence, and embraces a rugged egal­it­ari­an­ism that has little time for airs and graces.
Such values are, or should be, the bench­marks by which Aus­trali­an foreign policy is conducted. The suc­cessors of Evatt and Downer can be judged by the extent to which they have adhered to them.
Peter Wertheim AM is a former lawyer and is currently the Executive Director of the Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry.

Note: Each of the online links listed in these Endnotes was as accessed on 26 February 2018.

¹ Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2017 – Key Findings: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017

² Secretary-General [Kofi Annan], In Message To Human Rights Council, Cautions Against Focusing On Middle East At Expense Of Darfur, Other Grave Crises, 29 November 2006: https://www.un.org/press/en/2006/sgsm10769.doc.htm

³ Secretary-General [Ban-Ki Moon] Urges Human Rights Council To Take Responsibilities Seriously, Stresses Importance Of Considering All Violations Equally, 20 June 2007: https://www.un.org/press/en/2007/sgsm11053.doc.htm

⁴ UN Secretary General Guterres: Israel needs to be treated like any other member state, 23 April 2017: http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/un-secretary-general-guterres-israel-needs-to-be-treated-like-any-other-member-state‑4 – 1‑2017

⁵ UN General Assembly, 60^th session, 1 December 2005, A/60/PV.60: https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/eed216406b50bf6485256ce10072f637/b4f02ec17f787ba0852570ec0070f313?OpenDocument

⁶ Speech to the Annual General Meeting of the United Israel Appeal of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 November 2005: https://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/2005/051130_united_israel_appeal.html

⁷ Alexander Downer, ‘Australia’s vote in the UN sends the wrong message’, The Advertiser, 9 December 2012: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/archive/news/downer-australias-vote-in-the-united-nations-sends-the-wrong-message/news-story/d8d76d44453bfa16e37d0d2be3f1e104

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Antisemitism Condemned, 17 February 2004: https://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/2004/fa025_04.html

¹⁰ Alexander Downer, ‘Australia’s vote in the UN sends the wrong message’, The Advertiser, 9 December 2012: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/archive/news/downer-australias-vote-in-the-united-nations-sends-the-wrong-message/news-story/d8d76d44453bfa16e37d0d2be3f1e104

¹¹ Alexander Downer, ‘The Challenge of Conflict, International Law Responds’, Speech to the International Law Conference, Adelaide, 27 February 2004: https://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/2004/040227_international_law.html

¹² Alexander Downer, ‘Australia’s vote in the UN sends the wrong message’, The Advertiser, 9 December 2012: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/archive/news/downer-australias-vote-in-the-united-nations-sends-the-wrong-message/news-story/d8d76d44453bfa16e37d0d2be3f1e104

¹³ For a fine example of Evatt’s view of the way the General Assembly can work at its best, with particular reference to the establishment of Israel, see his answer in parliament in 1948 to a question from the then deputy leader of the Country Party, John McEwen: CPD, House of Representatives, 28 April 1948, pp. 1129 – 30:
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/hansard80/hansardr80/1948 – 04-28/toc_pdf/19480428_reps_18_196.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%221940s%20Palestine%22

¹⁴ Herbert V. Evatt, The Task of Nations, (New York: Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1949), pp. 173, 174.

¹⁵ Abba Eban, Personal Witness, (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1992), pp. 201 – 202.