To: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: President Yang, Suspend Israel from the UN Now!
President Philémon Yang,
I am writing to you to respectfully demand the immediate suspension of apartheid Israel from the United Nations, just as apartheid South Africa was once suspended.
Israel is waging a war not just against the Palestinian people but also against the UN, which emerged to protect human rights and international law, and whose General Assembly you are currently presiding over.
Israel’s conduct towards the UN in the last year has been contemptuous in an unprecedented way. As part of its ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, Israel has killed at least 228 UN staff members in Gaza. Israel is in the process of designating UNRWA as a “terrorist” organization. It has attacked UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon a dozen times, using white phosphorus in some attacks, as revealed recently. Israel’s outgoing ambassador has even shredded a copy of the UN Charter from the UNGA podium, calling for the UN headquarters to be “wiped off the face of the Earth.”
Apartheid Israel fails the basic conditions of UN membership - it is anything but a peace-loving state and does neither accept nor carry out its obligations under the UN Charter and international law. It’s a major menace to global peace and security. Beyond its livestreamed genocide in Gaza and its outrageous attacks on the UN, Israel is perpetrating rolling massacres in Lebanon and escalating aggression against other states in the region. Moreover, commitment to the right of return of the Palestine refugees was a necessary condition for Israel’s admission to the United Nations in the first place. Since then until today, Israel has instead continued to escalate its policy of ethnic cleansing.
A month ago, the UN General Assembly adopted with an overwhelming majority a resolution enacting the July 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s unlawful occupation and apartheid against Palestinians. For the first time in 42 years, the UNGA called for imposing sanctions on Israel. This evokes the historic precedent from exactly 50 years ago, when the UNGA suspended apartheid South Africa.
For all this and much more, Israel’s membership of the UN must be suspended, at the very least, and it must face serious sanctions to force it to comply with international law.
President Yang, take the first step in this direction by initiating the process of Israel’s suspension from the UNGA. There is no justification for allowing a member state to obliterate the very principles upon which this body was founded.
Yours sincerely,
[Your Name]