Lapid calls UN's treatment of Israel a 'diplomatic equivalent of a psychotic episode'

Lapid discussed the need to create a new organization of "democratic nations", while he pointed out the bias that exists towards Israel currently in the UN.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid called the United Nations treatment of Israel “the diplomatic equivalent of a psychotic episode,” in an op-ed written for Fox News on Wednesday.

“The idea for the United Nations was born out of a desire by democratic nations to promote liberal values and human rights," Lapid explained, but criticized the body for “A mix of post-colonial guilt and ideological laziness led the UN to admit more and more non-democratic states.”

"Today, in every vote, on every budget, in every resolution, non-democracies hold an automatic majority. And they use it without the slightest qualm.”

The Yesh Atid chairman said, “The fact that the UN meets and votes against Israel is like rain in London: that’s just what it does. They gather, deliver the same speech as last year, vote the same way as last year, and then head to dinner at Wolfgang’s on Park Avenue.”

According to him, this made the UN resolutions something irrelevant for the Israeli cabinet. “Nobody cared. No one burst into my office waving a piece of paper in panic. We didn’t huddle in front of the television, holding sweaty hands and waiting for the vote. Israel’s UN ambassador didn’t call me, choking back tears, to confess he felt like a failure,” he expressed.

Lapid also noted, “In 2023, the year Hamas launched the October 7 attack on Israel, the General Assembly passed 15 resolutions against Israel, and only eight against all other countries combined. This was no anomaly.”

Lapid: ‘It's time for democracies to exit the UN’

“Iran sat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2022, as Mahsa Amini was murdered. Syria chaired the Conference on Disarmament in 2018 while gassing its own citizens. North Korea presided over that very same disarmament conference in 2022 while openly brandishing nuclear weapons and firing ballistic missiles at Japan,” Lapid explained in the op-ed.

In his eyes, this represents the failure of the UN’s main objective: to spread democracy worldwide. “It [The UN’s Charter] only lacks five words: Or you won’t be admitted,” he added.

Wth this in mind, Lapid proposed, “We need a UN of democracies. I suggest calling it DAWN (the Democratic Alliance for World Nations), though perhaps something less poetic would do. We don’t need to reinvent its goals.”

The opposition leader concluded, "We just need to clarify the terms of membership: a commitment to democracy; a willingness to confront authoritarian leaders who make a mockery of everything we hold sacred; and a focus on fighting the great threats of our age.”