Our national interest requires a rethink on the Middle East.Woolcott is saying that the UN decides on UNSC membership based in no small part on their anti-Israel attitude!
The importance of Australia's candidature for election next October as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term (2013-14) should be better understood and supported by our politicians and the Australian public.
Unfortunately, our prospects have been undermined by our recent vote against Palestine's admission to the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
...Putting it bluntly, I consider that if we again vote against Palestinian ''statehood'' when it comes to the General Assembly, we are most unlikely to be elected to the council. At worst we should abstain.
...We can and should win a seat on the Security Council. But I fear we will be defeated again, as we were in 1996, if we continue to vote against upgrading Palestinian representation, especially when it comes before the General Assembly. This will be a matter for regret and it will not be in our national interest.
This year, Lebanon is the head of the UNSC. A state that is effectively ruled by a terror group whose very raison d'etre is the destruction of another UN member state has no problem obtaining a leadership position at the Security Council. But Western states who support a liberal democracy in the Middle East and who are reticent about unilaterally strengthening a corrupt entity that has no defined borders or population (part of the very definition of a state to begin with) must toe the anti-Israel line in order to get ahead at the UN.
We must thank Woolcott, a UN insider, for exposing how deeply corrupt and systemically anti-Israel the UN is.
(Mark Leibler answers Woolcott here.)
(h/t Ian)