Meretz Downplays UN Israel Fixation: ‘99% Of Knesset Votes Also About Israel’

No one has ever accused the Knesset of anti-Israel bias.

Tel Aviv, February 15 – The leader of Israel’s hard-left Meretz Party defended the United Nations Security and Human Rights Councils today amid observations that those bodies disproportionately target Israel for condemnation, and said that the country has no right to complain about the UN’s alleged fixation when Israel’s own legislature also focuses almost all of its lawmaking activities on the actions of the Jewish State.

Zehava Gal-On addressed reporters in the aftermath of a speech by US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, in which the latter called out the organization for what she called its anti-Israel bias. Gal-On dismissed the accusation as hypocritical, as no one has ever accused the Knesset of any such bias, yet more than ninety-nine percent of the bills debated and voted on in the parliament deal exclusively with Israel – more than even the Human Rights Council’s ratio of dozens of anti-Israel resolutions to a handful of condemnations of other countries.

“It’s a bit rich for anyone in Israel to accuse the UN of an unhealthy obsession with Israel,” said the Meretz chief. “Have any of my colleagues taken a look at the Knesset docket recently? I don’t see any legislative proposals dealing with the genocide in Burundi, Saudi gender apartheid, Chinese repression in Tibet, Daesh throwing homosexuals off rooftops, or suppression of dissent in Guatemala. Really, who are these people to complain about the UN’s supposed fixation when they themselves are doing the same thing, only more so?”

In fact, said Gal-On, the handful of non-Israel-related votes in the Knesset in recent years were of no real practical import. “Every now and then there are resolutions, or declarations, which are basically PR, but have no effect in terms of policy,” she explained. “Expressions of solidarity with such-and-such, or declaring a certain person or group worthy of either praise or scorn – those are the agenda items that don’t address things going in Israel. The rest, 99.9 percent of them, lo and behold, are about Israel. The hypocrisy would be funny if it weren’t so sickening.”

“Israel should welcome the warm concern of the international community,” insisted Gal-On. “They obviously know better than we do about everything, and feel moved to share that knowledge. Personally, I feel flattered that the UN, especially the Human Rights Council, lavishes so much attention on us. Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Russia, North Korea, and Sudan get only a fraction of the spotlight, while we’re always front and center. I feel like we’ve arrived, you know?”