UN Rapporteurs Call for Arms Embargo on Israel

Latest Developments

Several United Nations (UN)-appointed special rapporteurs issued a statement on June 20 calling on weapons manufacturers to immediately halt arms transfers to Israel. The group — including Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for Palestinian human rights who is known for her inflammatory statements against Israel — also called on financial institutions like Bank of America and BlackRock to curtail their relationships with weapons manufacturers that do business with Israel. “Arms initiate, sustain, exacerbate, and prolong armed conflicts, as well as other forms of oppression,” the group said. “The imperative for an arms embargo on Israel and for investors to take decisive action is more urgent than ever.”

The UN group cited allegations from the International Criminal Court (ICC) of supposed Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity. “By sending weapons, parts, components, and ammunition to Israeli forces,” companies “risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws,” the UN group asserted. Many of the ICC’s accusations against Israel, which include false claims of enforced famine and deliberate targeting of civilians, were rebutted in a May 10 State Department report submitted to the U.S. Congress.

Expert Analysis

“Investors and C-suites should be reminded that the UN Human Rights Council and its expert community have peddled in antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel for years while giving a pass to the world’s worst human rights abusers like China and Cuba. What’s outrageous is that the U.S. government legitimizes this pro-Hamas group by remaining a member of the council. American participation in this farce needs to end.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

“The UN ‘human rights’ community continually erases Israeli security concerns to falsely portray Israel as an evil, malicious entity. Now, it is seeking to eliminate Israel’s ability to defend itself through an arms embargo. The UN has become an accomplice in Hamas’s genocidal ambitions and the Iranian ‘ring of fire’ aimed at annihilating the Jewish state.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst

UN Bias Against Israel

The UN General Assembly failed to unequivocally condemn Hamas after the Iran-backed terrorist group killed more than 1,200 Israelis and abducted over 200 more on October 7. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also failed to acknowledge reports of Hamas’s sexual crimes until November 29, seven weeks after Hamas’s massacre. UN Women, an agency tasked with promoting women’s rights, waited until December 1 to call out Hamas’s “gender-based atrocities and sexual violence.”

On December 29, South Africa initiated proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s top court, claiming that Israel has committed genocide in its response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre. South Africa submitted another request on May 10 over Israel’s “assault on Rafah.” The secretary-general’s annual report on children in armed conflict, which was published on June 13, blacklisted Israel as an offender for the first time. The report falsely equates Hamas’s deliberate crimes with the unintentional harm caused by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in its campaign against Hamas.

U.S. Officials, Experts Discredit Claims of Israeli War Crimes

President Joe Biden called the ICC prosecutor’s decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “outrageous,” while Secretary of State Antony Blinken questioned the ICC investigation’s “legitimacy and credibility.” On May 31, a bipartisan group of 24 legislators sent a letter to Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen describing the ICC charges against Netanyahu and Gallant as “baseless,” reflecting “the ICC’s well-documented historical bias against Israel.” The U.S. House of Representatives on June 4 voted 247-155 to impose sanctions on the ICC.

Separately, on June 8, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) — a body consisting of five prominent scholars of food security and nutrition — rejected as not “plausible” the conclusion that northern Gaza has entered a state of famine. The FRC concluded that flows of aid and the availability of food increased significantly in March and April and “that nearly 100 percent of daily kilocalorie requirements were available for the estimated population of 300,000 people in April, even using conservative calculations.”

Related Analysis

“Expert Panel Rejects Claims of Famine in Northern Gaza,” FDD Flash Brief

“Israel and U.S. Outraged by ICC Warrant Applications for Israeli Leaders,” FDD Flash Brief

“The unmaking of the United Nations,” by Clifford D. May