Call on the UN General Assembly to suspend genocidal Israel

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Call on the UN General Assembly to suspend genocidal Israel

UN General Assembly President H.E. Dr Khalilur Rahman

Dear supporter,

World leaders are gathering at the 81st Session of the UNGA this week. On 18 September 2024, the UN overwhelmingly endorsed the ICJ ruling that Israel’s occupation is illegal and constitutes apartheid, voting for sanctions to end complicity in both.

It set a deadline for Israel to end its illegal occupation - September 2025. This is one year overdue. No consequences for Israel. Israel is blatantly defying international law and the UN as a whole.

Its livestreamed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza has continued for three years, funded, armed and shielded by the colonial West. In the illegally occupied West Bank, apartheid Israel’s military occupation forces and Israeli settler militias systematically terrorize and ethnically cleanse Palestinian communities – murdering and maiming thousands.

We need you to channel your rage and grief into effective, strategic BDS accountability action now.

Israel’s “total impunity” as even the complicit UN Secretary-General has termed it, has emboldened it to escalate its wars of aggression against the peoples of the entire region.The scale of its deadly attacks on the UN itself are unprecedented in the organization’s history. Israel’s membership of the UN must be suspended at the very least, and it must face serious lawful sanctions to force it to comply with international law.

Your Voice Matters

Sign this petition addressed to UNGA President H.E. Dr Khalilur Rahman and demand apartheid Israel be suspended from the UN, just as apartheid South Africa was once suspended. There is no justification for allowing a member state to obliterate the very principles upon which this body was founded.

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BDS National Committee

To: UN General Assembly President H.E. Dr Khalilur Rahman
From: [Your Name]

Dear President Rahman,

As you begin your presidency of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), I urge you to take immediate action to suspend apartheid Israel from the United Nations (UN), just as apartheid South Africa was once suspended.

Israel’s “total impunity”, as the UN Secretary-General has termed it, for its constant and grave violations of international law, including its ongoing genocide against Indigenous Palestinians and its regime of occupation and apartheid, condemned by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 as illegal, has emboldened it to escalate its wars of aggression against the peoples of the entire region. Israel’s plans for a “Greater Israel” that would annex parts of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq, are now being normalized in the Israeli government and Parliament.

The scale and severity of Israel’s attacks on the UN itself are unprecedented in the organization’s history. Israel is responsible for, among others: killing and injuring the highest number of UN personnel, including peacekeepers, in history; destroying, severely damaging and/or confiscating UN facilities and property; declaring the UN Secretary General persona non grata and banning him from entry; defaming the UN as a terror-supporting entity; shredding the UN charter from the UNGA podium and making public calls to “defund” and “get rid of the UN;” defying UN resolutions, including those adopted by the UN Security Council and the ICJ; violating its obligations to cooperate with UN officials, UN Commissions of Inquiry, fact-finding missions, and human rights experts.
In short, Israel poses a threat not only to the Palestinian people, but to the UN itself, as a body which emerged to protect human rights and international law, to safeguard peace and justice globally, and whose General Assembly you are currently presiding over.

Apartheid Israel fails the basic conditions of UN membership – it is anything but a peace-loving state and neither accepts nor carries out its obligations under the UN Charter and international law. It is a menace to global peace security, indeed to humanity. Beyond its livestreamed genocide in Gaza and its attacks on the UN, Israel is perpetrating genocidal violence in Lebanon and escalating aggression against other states in the region. Moreover, a commitment to the right of return of Palestinian refugees was a necessary condition for Israel’s admission to the United Nations. Since then until today, Israel has instead continued to categorically reject that inalienable right and to escalate its policy of ethnic cleansing, creating even more Palestinian refugees and displaced persons.

Israel’s membership of the UN must be suspended, at the very least, and it must face serious lawful sanctions in all fields to force it to comply with international law.

President Rahman, I respectfully ask that you 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.