September 13, 2006 – New York – In a campaign to end the isolation of Israel at the United Nations, the American Jewish Committee is running a television ad on CNN in New York, and in other major cities.

“World leaders gathering in New York for the UN General Assembly need to be reminded of the gross injustice they endorse by the world body continually singling out Israel for relentless, obsessive, microscopic scrutiny,” said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris.

AJC, a longtime non-governmental organizational supporter of the world body, will meet separately with more than 60 presidents, prime ministers or foreign ministers over the next two weeks, the seventeenth consecutive year AJC will engage in intense and substantive rounds of meetings during the opening of the UN General Assembly.

“We are dismayed that the UN has been obsessed with Israel while too often failing to live up to the founding principles enshrined in its Charter,” said Harris. “All member states, regardless of size, will be treated equally, states the Charter, but in practice Israel is not. Israel deserves the same treatment as every other member nation, no better, no worse.”

The AJC ad opens with the UN building in New York covered in flags of most UN member states, and then suddenly the flag of Israel peels away.

“The inspiring promise that every member state, regardless of size, will be treated equally is the idea that gave the UN moral force,” states the AJC ad. “But what happens when one member state is not treated equally?”

AJC helped ensure the inclusion of the human rights provisions for the UN Charter in 1945, and played an active role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the creation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

While AJC remains committed to the founding principles of the UN, “there can be no real reform unless it rectifies the pervasive and corrosive institutional bias against the State of Israel,” says AJC.

Notably, the General Assembly adopts each year some 20 blatantly anti-Israel resolutions that hinder rather than advance the cause of peace. The Geneva-based
Commission on Human Rights dedicates disproportionate time and attention to Israel, while ignoring massive violations of human rights in other parts of the world. Indeed, a separate agenda item at the Commission is devoted to Israel, while the other 190 member states are all considered under one agenda item.

Other UN entities, including the Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians, and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People, daily expend precious resources to promote the Palestinian cause to the detriment of Israel’s fair treatment and any possible progress toward a negotiated two-state solution.