New York, November 5, 2009 … Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations strongly criticized the adoption today by the United Nations General Assembly of the resolution on the Goldstone Report. “The adoption by the UN General Assembly of the resolution on the Goldstone Report reflects an about-face of the UN’s commitment to maintain true peace and security around the world. Ignoring the one-sided nature of the resolution and holding Israel accountable for war crimes while paying no attention to the eight years of unyielding attacks by Hamas on Israeli citizens and Israel’s right to self-defense and obligation to protect nearly one million of its citizens undermines the UN’s credibility and moral standing. Most spurious, however, is the resolution’s recommendation to reconvene the Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to ‘enforce the Convention’ in the territories and east Jerusalem. Since World War II, no country other than Israel has been the subject of this Conference, regardless of the severity of their human rights violations. This is an unwarranted and unwelcome effort to deligitimize the state of Israel,” said Conference of Presidents Chairman Alan Solow and Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein.

In addition to endorsing the Goldstone report, the resolution also requests Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to transmit the report to the Security Council, and calls upon Israel to conduct “independent and credible” investigations into the “serious violations of international humanitarian and international human rights law” within three months or face the possibility of further action by the Security Council.

“We thank Ambassador Rice and the members of the U.S. mission for their strong stand against this resolution and acknowledge those countries who stood with Israel and voted against it, including Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, the Netherlands, Palau, Panama, Poland, Slovakia, TFYR of Macedonia, and Ukraine,” said Solow and Hoenlein.