Daniel Meron had his pick of assignments. The veteran of the Israeli foreign affairs ministry is nearing retirement age, and the former ambassador to the Czech Republic was looking for a way to cap off a career that has taken him to the United States, Norway, Cyprus and Venezuela.
His pick isn’t exactly a plum one. Serving as ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Meron, 64, spends much of his time confronting the long-standing and worsening anti-Israel bias in the global body and many of its affiliated international organizations.
The Geneva office includes the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council. Israel announced last week that it would stop engaging with the latter, after years of relentless anti-Israel focus and just days after the United States announced its withdrawal from the council.
“The Human Rights Council has been a biased body since its beginning, where dictatorships lecture democracies on human rights,” Meron told reporters upon the announcement on Feb. 6.
“The U.N., on one hand, produces a lot of bile, a lot of hatred towards Israel, and adopts resolutions and steps that are harmful for Israel,” Meron told JNS. “On the other hand, it is also a place of opportunities for Israel to brag about its capabilities and its technology in so many different fields, where we can and are willing to share our knowledge with the international arena.”
‘Antisemitism of the worst kind’
Entering his post in July 2024 in the thick of the Israel-Hamas war, Meron summed up his time thus far in Geneva as “a big challenge—somewhat frustrating, but not much different than I expected.”
A good deal of his time has been spent combating disinformation related to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and its aftermath, and bringing to attention the plight of the hostages who have been held in the Gaza Strip since that day.
“But now, we are trying to go back to our role of representing Israel on all issues. It’s important for me and my staff to be present at as many the venues of the U.N. as we can and to speak up—even if they don’t want to hear us—about the truth about what happened on the seventh of October—what Israel did, how Israel was attacked and defended itself.”
He insists that if Israel is not active in all of the venues where the United Nations is deliberating, then “nobody else will deliver that speech.”
Meron said Israel simply wants to be treated normally, like any other country, without favor or undue criticism. Instead, the U.N. bodies in Geneva treat Israel as a sui generis, a Latin term meaning of its own kind, or a special case, he noted.
That includes well-known examples, such as the Human Rights Council’s standing Agenda Item 7, which critics say is an annual bashing of Israel. Item 7 is specifically designated to target Israel while no other country in the world, including the likes of Iran, North Korea or Russia, has such an agenda dedicated toward them.
All other international human-rights issues outside of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are coupled together in a separate agenda item.
The sheer number of anti-Israel statements and press releases coming from the U.N. Human Rights Office, Human Rights Council and various so-called independent experts and special rapporteurs since the Hamas massacre of 1,200 people is astounding, Meron said, pointing to approximately 140 such criticisms of Israel.
Compare that, he said, to the 17 regarding Sudan or 12 of Myanmar and Russia.
“The world continues as if this is just acceptable. This is totally unacceptable,” Meron told JNS. “And I will say it ad nauseam: This is antisemitism of the worst kind.”
‘He’s not a colleague’
Other examples remain more obscure to the public, Meron notes. Among them are the Geneva-based World Health Organization and its governing World Health Assembly’s annual gathering.
“In May last year, one whole day out of the nine days of the assembly was devoted to Israel bashing and a resolution that passed against Israel and criticism, etc.,” Meron said of an assembly that is chiefly meant to deal with global health issues, including pandemics.
“Which means that instead of talking about how medicine or vaccinations can reach the sick, they were speaking about how Israel is wrong and how the Palestinians need assistance,” he said. “They were not speaking a whole day about Sudan—where there’s a huge crisis—or about Yemen or many other places in the world.”
Meron’s sui generis examples extend to another item he says was given very little attention: The upgrading by the U.N. General Assembly last May of the Palestinians’ U.N. permanent observer status, giving it privileges no other non-member state enjoys.
Meron told JNS that the resolution affecting the change, which passed 143-9, was “despicable” and gave the impression that the Palestinians are a full member state.
“Not long ago, somebody at the U.N. said to me, ‘Oh, he is your Palestinian colleague,’ Meron told JNS, referring to the Palestinian Authority’s envoy to the United Nations in Geneva. “I said to him, ‘I’m sorry. He’s not a colleague. He’s not an ambassador. He’s not representing a state. I am the ambassador of the State of Israel.’”
He called the attempt to portray the Palestinians as a state “bogus,” “fictitious” and “misleading,” saying it “does not reflect what’s happening on the ground.”
Asked about the reaction he gets when he expresses that point of view, Meron told JNS that his counterparts look at him with “a bit of surprise,” adding “people are not used to hearing that.”
Pointing to the practical effects of the resolution, Meron said that the Palestinians, following the resolution’s passage, wanted to upgrade their status at the U.N.’s International Labor Organization (ILO), which sets global labor standards.
Meron said his mission pointed out that the Palestinians originally registered their ILO status under the banner of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and not under the so-called “State of Palestine.”
“We went to the general manager, and we said you cannot do this legally. How could the PLO be a state?” Meron inquired.
“We objected strongly. So what did they do? They suspended the rules of the organization to allow this process to go ahead,” Meron said. “Where is that heard of in any corporation or any agency that if something doesn’t work, you just suspend the rules? This is what happens when it’s Israel because it’s sui generis, a special case. This is what I’m coming out against. And on every stage I have, I speak out about this double attitude towards the State of Israel.”
While this effort consumes much of Meron’s time, it’s not all bad news. Speaking with JNS, he said he had just returned from a high-tech seminar, recalling that last year, an Israeli expert spoke about the country’s developments in artificial intelligence.
“We are very proud of Israeli know-how in many fields. We are bringing experts here on water, on environment,” Meron said. But even that can turn into a battle.
“We had an Israeli last year that came here to speak something positive about Israeli technology, and the United Nations received a letter from the Palestinians saying, ‘How dare you! Why are you inviting an Israeli expert to come and talk about this issue?’” Meron told JNS, noting that he didn’t want to disclose the particular organization. “It’s accepted among the Palestinians and their milieu that Israel is a second-rate state.”
But that doesn’t include everyone. Meron pointed to “the Hungarians, the Argentinians, the Czechs, the Germans—many countries who are ready to speak out in favor of what’s right and what’s wrong for Israel.”
At the International National Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Geneva on Jan. 27, Meron said nearly 100 ambassadors attended, including some that don’t have relations with Israel “who came to respect the victims that were murdered in the Shoah.”He encouraged those attending to help promote Holocaust education and remembrance within the United Nations, to fight against antisemitism and that they “strongly and consistently combat and discourage—whenever and wherever it occurs, including within the U.N. ecosystem—antisemitism, even though they don’t like me talking about it.”