Israel’s top envoy to the United Nations in Geneva completed her post in Switzerland but is adamant that the Jewish state must not withdraw from the United Nations, however much it discriminates against Israel.
“It’s a place where we must be present,” Meirav Eilon Shahar told JNS earlier this month, as she rounded out her nearly four-year tenure as Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Geneva branch and to international organizations. “We must be active in promoting and defending Israel’s interests, hand in hand.”
Eilon Shahar believes that Israel must remain engaged in the United Nations despite her diplomatic counterpart, Gilad Erdan, saying as he completes his post at the United Nations in New York that Israel should assess whether it is worth participating in the global body.
In Geneva, where Eilon Shahar’s purview included everything from the U.N. Human Rights Council to the World Health Assembly and the International Telecommunication Union to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the veteran Israeli diplomat thinks that she has made substantial progress, though she leaves with “mixed feelings.”
Eilon Shahar and her team pushed through a 2023 resolution—countering cyberbullying against the disabled—at the Human Rights Council, where anti-Israel activity is a feature. The resolution was the first sponsored by Israel to pass the body.
The World Health Assembly—the forum for the 194 World Health Organization member states and the highest international health policy-setting body—also adopted an Israeli-led resolution on rehabilitation in health systems in 2023.
“We negotiated by Zoom, and all resolutions were adopted by consensus. There was no opposition to it, and we created a coalition,” Eilon Shahar told JNS. “At the end of the day, if you want to have policies—if you want to install standards and principles through resolutions—you need to cooperate very well with partners to do so.”
The Israeli delegation worked with the U.N. secretariat, partners, member states from all regions and civil society, she noted.
‘Very hopeful’
Eilon Shahar, who assumed her post in August 2020, amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, anticipated that her tenure would be divided into periods during and after the pandemic.
Despite Israel’s unique and difficult position in the multilateral world, she was “very hopeful” that things are moving in a different, better direction. But after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel, and amid the Jewish state’s effort to root the terror organization out of Gaza, Eilon Shahar has seen the last 10 months as a distinct period.
“I’m leaving with a heavy heart, knowing how completely the multilateral world has failed the people of Israel,” she told JNS.
“One would have expected the more professional bodies to do better and deliver better and certainly recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization, recognize the atrocities committed by them, recognize the unabated rise in antisemitism, which is everywhere, even in democratic countries,” she said.
She and her team managed to push through a surprising amendment to a World Health Assembly resolution in May.
The Israeli-drafted amendment called for the release of the hostages, whom Hamas and other terrorists continue to hold in Gaza, and denounced the militarization of hospitals by armed Gazan groups.
During the assembly’s annual session in Geneva, Israel offered the amendment to a resolution, which has passed every year since 1968 and which criticizes Israel for the state of health in Palestinian-controlled territories.
The amendment passed 50-44, with 83 abstentions or absences. That margin forced the Arab Group of countries at the United Nations to accept the amended resolution, attempt to vote it down or abstain.
“In the multilateral world, things are not only imposed on you. You have to initiate. You have to be very active in initiating things,” Eilon Shahar said. “Since Oct. 7, when you had something that you knew was going to be a very biased debate, me and my team were always in the room.”
“If we don’t speak, nobody speaks for us,” she said.
That instance was an example of Israel refusing to concede the diplomatic battlefield, Eilon Shahar thinks.
“Some of the organizations did speak about the hostages but at some point, it became a footnote,” she said. “It was very easy for people and organizations to move away as the war continued. So this is a real stain on the international community.”
After the war, there will need to be a reckoning for Israel’s relationship with the United Nations and the multilateral world, she believes. Quitting the global body would leave a “void,” she said, but there is a need for Israel to conduct a “re-evaluation of its relations,” according to Eilon Shahar.
“It’s not one shade, and there needs to be a nuance with regard to everyone” while still recognizing the reality that “these are the multilateral bodies that exist today,” she said. “We need to see how we shape our relations in a different way.”
The United States remains Israel’s most reliable partner in the United Nations.
The Biden administration rejoined the U.N. Human Rights Council, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew, in large part due to the global body’s consistent, inherent anti-Israel bias. The latter includes its Agenda Item 7, a permanent feature of the yearly calendar that focuses solely on criticism of Israel and the council’s only regular agenda item that centers on a particular country.
The Biden administration has come under criticism for rejoining the council, which is notorious for providing membership to some of the world’s worst human-rights abusers, while failing to leverage changes in the body’s behavior.
‘We need to seek opportunities actively’
Eilon Shahar told JNS that Washington’s presence is important on the council, even though it “couldn’t” change Item 7. She cited a joint statement last year of 27 countries, led by the United States, which criticized the establishment and ongoing work of an open-ended Commission of Inquiry on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which the council formed and which was staffed by anti-Israel commissioners.
“When the U.S. is engaged, it can lead such statements,” she said, adding it “touched directly on the credibility” of the commission’s formation.
Eilon Shahar was hesitant to offer advice to her successor, Daniel Meron, who served most recently as deputy director-general for European affairs at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
“You have to be present in the full sense of the word,” she told JNS. “I always believe that we need to seek opportunities actively as well.”
Eilon Shahar, now Israeli deputy director-general for proliferation and arms control, noted that Meron inherits a first-rate staff.
“It’s not a one-woman show. I’ve had the best team of diplomats, staff and local staff,” she said. “They have done the State of Israel proud.”