Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan has informed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he intends to submit a draft resolution requiring the international body to hold an annual commemoration for the hundreds of thousands of Jews exiled from Arab countries due to the creation of the State of Israel.
While Israel officially commemorates the expulsion of Jews from Muslim states on November 30 each year, Erdan says the UN does not mark the event at all but invests vast amount of resources in displaced Palestinians.
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Ambassador Gilad Erdan at the United Nations headquarters in New York
(Photo: UN Web TV)
"The establishment of the Jewish state was one of the most important decisions made by the UN. The Arab leaders chose to reject this decision and instead launched a widespread attack against the State of Israel and the thriving Jewish communities that lived within [the Arab world]," Erden wrote to Guterres.
"While the UN deals extensively with 'Palestinian refugees,' it completely ignores Jewish refugees from Arab countries. It is infuriating to see the UN mark a special day and devote a lot of resources for the issue of 'Palestinian refugees', while abandoning and ignoring hundreds of thousands of Jewish families deported from Arab countries and Iran," Erdan said in his letter.
Erdan also asked the UN to launch a global research project on the deportation of Jews from the Arab world and to back the study of the subject in various UN forums.
"I urge you to re-examine the UN's approach to the issue and begin by sharing the story of 850,000 Jewish refugees deported from Arab countries and Iran in all of the organization's forums," Erdan wrote.
"In addition, the organization must promote in-depth research on the tragedy of Jewish refugees. Only after the correction of this historical injustice will the UN be able to really begin to achieve its goals.”