Under law for the U.N.

Israel withdraws UN resolution
By MELISSA RADLER
 
At the United Nations, the lives of Israeli children are worth less
than the lives of Palestinian children, Israel's ambassador to the UN
Dan Gillerman said Wednesday after he was forced to withdraw a
resolution calling for the protection of Israeli children from
terrorism.

"The voice of the immoral majority was once again heard loud and
clear," Gillerman told the UN General Assembly's Third (Humanitarian,
Social and Cultural) Committee after failing to garner enough support
from the organization's 191 members to proceed with a vote.

On Nov. 6, the same committee adopted a similar resolution calling for
the protection of Palestinian children from Israeli aggression by a
vote of 88 to 4 with 58 abstentions.

The Israeli draft, the Jewish state's first at the UN since 1976, was
introduced earlier this month in response to numerous terrorist
attacks that have targeted Israeli children, including a bombing at
the Maxim restaurant in Haifa on Oct. 4 that killed 21 people, among
them four children.

Gillerman withdrew the draft after a group of states from the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), led by Egypt, demanded the inclusion of
amendments that, if adopted, would have turned the draft into an
anti-Israel resolution.

The list of amendments, cosponsored by Bahrain, Malaysia, Saudi
Arabia, South Africa, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen,
included deleting of the phrase "Israeli children" from the text and
replacing it with "Middle East children," and inserting references to
Israeli "military assaults," "occupation" and ""excessive use of
force" ahead of all mention of terrorism. Even the title of the draft
was changed from "The situation of and assistance to Israeli children"
to "The situation of and assistance to children in the Middle East
region."

"It's shameful that Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel,
sabotaged this resolution," said Gillerman. Had Israel not withdrawn
the resolution, inclusion of the amendments was virtually assured due
to the NAM's majority status at the UN.

The international community's failure to come out in favor of the
resolution "makes it very clear that the UN General Assembly is an
unreliable and biased body with no international integrity. The
message sent today by the UN Third Committee to Israeli children is
that your lives are worth less than Palestinian children," said
Gillerman.