Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said at a U.N. Security Council briefing on the Middle East on Tuesday that it is “deeply regrettable” that the council decided to hold the high-level “briefing on Gaza on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, knowing full well that that decision excludes Israel.”
“Frankly, colleagues, it’s a testament to how this council has prioritized a lot of performance over serious efforts to actually advance peace,” Waltz told the council.
He said that U.S. President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the latter’s team, “and partners like Egypt and Qatar” are engaged in those efforts “right now as we speak, to end this horrific war.”
The main outcome of the more than 80 meetings that the Security Council has held on the subject since Oct. 7 “unfortunately has been to embolden Hamas, to undermine and disrupt negotiations that are aimed at freeing all of the hostages and ending the war and ending the suffering that we all want to end,” Waltz said.
JNS has reported that the United Nations tends to mark holidays that are not Jewish and to wish followers happy holidays on social media, yet it seems to ignore Jewish holidays.
Both the main United Nations social-media handle (with 16.4 million followers) and that of António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general (with 2.4 million followers), failed to note the holiday on social media this year.
Last year, JNS asked Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for Guterres, why the global body ignores Jewish holidays in its various social-media messages.
“Well, if—I would actually like to, to do that, uh, today in advance, and I’d like to wish all of, uh, all of the—the Jewish communities around the world to have a happy, uh, and peaceful Yom Kippur,” Haq told JNS last year. “This has been, without a doubt, uh, a difficult year, and—and we’re hoping that, uh, that the promise of the future can be bright for everyone.”
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, stated on Monday before the holiday that “Israel will not participate in tomorrow’s Security Council session.”
“Despite our prior notice that the session falls on Rosh Hashanah, the council chose to hold the debate precisely on this day,” he wrote to the council president. “A one-sided discussion held on a Jewish holiday is yet more proof of the U.N.'s hypocrisy.”
