Israeli diplomat David Roet described what happened at the UN yesterday in a series of tweets:
On any given day at the UN- 85 yes, 57 against and 33 abstentions means the resolution was accepted. It seems that when it comes to condemning terror group Hamas you “tilt the floor” by using a rarely used rule of procedure to change the rules and ask for a 2/3rd majority, Rule 83.
The vote to bend the rules exclusively in order to mute a large majority against Hamas passed by 1 vote (73-72 with. 26 abstentions). Not 1 person on UNGA floor was not aware that voting for the 2/3 rule or abstaining might mean that a terror organization wouldn’t be condemned.
In my 4 years at UN I witnessed numerous cases of extreme politicization and hypocrisy but rarely a similar case where rules of procedures are so clearly bent in order to prevent condemnation of a terror group.
Here is results on the procedural vote to require a 2/3 majority to condemn Hamas (green means require a 2/3 majority) and then the results on the actual vote to condemn Hamas (green means condemn Hamas.)
Any state that voted “yes” on both resolutions is hypocritical – signaling to the US that it pretends to care about terror, while signaling to the Palestinians that it really wants to ensure that their new best buddies Hamas doesn’t get condemned.
Those hypocritical states?
If my eyeballing these two charts is correct, they are: Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Guatemala, and Japan.
On the positive side, here is a list of countries that are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) who abstained instead of voting against the Hamas resolution (I’m not counting countries that were absent:)
Afghanistan, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Gambon, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Uganda.
Most of them are African nations, indicating that Israeli outreach to Africa is starting to pay diplomatic dividends – these African nations, although they abstained, value their relationship with Israel enough to not automatically follow the herd.
Albania is the only member of the OIC that both voted against the 2/3 majority rule and voted to condemn Hamas.
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