Topic: “Germany’s voting behaviour at the United Nations”
Germany’s voting behaviour at the UN with regard to Israel: at the end of May we welcomed Hillel Neuer, the director of UN Watch, as our guest at our Fach-WI-ssen. The day began with an input before members of the Bundestag and actors from civil society.
Hillel Neuer presented the work of UN Watch and its criticism of the United Nations. It is important to note: UN Watch refers positively to the United Nations and its principles, but repeatedly reminds it of its own aspirations. The UN resolutions against Israel in particular show unfair treatment of the State of Israel.
The conversations took place against the background that the then Foreign Minister Heiko Maaß had already complained about the one-sided treatment and marginalisation of Israel at the United Nations.[1] The coalition agreement of the current traffic-light coalition also contains a passage stating that the German government will take a firm stand against „attempts at antisemitically motivated condemnations of Israel, including at the United Nations“.In a statement in January 2021 the Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) spoke out against unfair and one-sided treatment of Israel: „Germany has repeatedly expressed its criticism of the disproportionately high number of resolutions critical of Israel and has worked against it.“[2]
Following the large discussion round early in the morning, there were several individual conversations with representatives of the German Bundestag and the Auswärtiges Amt. Frank Müller-Rosentritt (FDP) supported Hillel Neuer’s criticism in their conversation. A one-sided condemnation of Israel at the United Nations, he said, contradicts German Staatsräson. After the FDP parliamentary group had introduced a motion in 2019, as an opposition party, for stronger support of Israel in UN votes, the task now is to tackle this issue within the coalition as soon as possible.
At the Auswärtiges Amt, Hillel Neuer discussed German voting behaviour with the staff member responsible for the United Nations. The latter explained the German position of contributing to fairer treatment of Israel through substantive involvement in the resolutions. We, by contrast, stressed that, with all appreciation for this approach, in our view the negative signalling effect of the constant condemnation of Israel outweighs the supposedly softened texts of the resolutions.
In the conversation with Andreas Larem (SPD), Larem emphasised the significance of the Zeitenwende for the German government. Larem, too, spoke out in favour of fair treatment of Israel.
In her conversation with Hillel Neuer, Marlene Schönberger (Bündnis90/Die Grünen) highlighted the passage from the current coalition agreement stating that the German government will take a firm stand against attempts at antisemitically motivated condemnations of Israel, including at the United Nations.
We are pleased about the exciting conversations and thank all our interlocutors and, quite particularly, Hillel Neuer for coming to Berlin.
As WerteInitiative we will „stay on“ this topic. After all, the answers of well over 90% of the Jews taking part in our foreign-policy survey showed that the topic is at least important to them.[3] We had already called on the future government, together with a number of other organisations, to change Germany’s voting behaviour in our 17 recommendations for action for the Bundestag election.[4]
[1] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/heiko-maas-vereinte-nationen-behandeln-israel-unfair-a-1266969.html
[2] https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/aussenpolitik/internationale-organisationen/uno/nahost-resolutionen-vereinten-nationen/2277244
[3] https://werteinitiative.de/en/reader-foreign-policy-jewish-german-perspectives/
[4] https://werteinitiative.de/en/werteinitiative-recommendations-jewish-future-in-germany/
