Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird today issued the following statement on March 23:
“There is no shortage of real and pressing human rights matters that the UN Human Rights Council should be addressing. Instead, yet again, it has chosen to single out Israel for condemnation in a one-sided resolution. This is incredibly disappointing.
“Canada has stated on numerous occasions that final status issues need to be negotiated between the two parties, not by the United Nations.
“This resolution is biased against Israel and doesn’t address the complexity of issues in this region. This undermines the honest efforts to bring about a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
“We continue to call for direct negotiations between the two parties without preconditions.”
Or, as Abba Eban, the early Israeli ambassador to the UN, once put it: "If Algeria proposed a resolution that the Earth was flat and that Israel has flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 120 to 3, with 27 abstentions."
