(JNS) A group of ambassadors to the United Nations in Switzerland visited Israel this week on a tour of listening diplomacy intended to shore up support for Jerusalem among envoys to the world body.
Israel has long regarded the United Nations bodies based in Geneva as heavily and systematically biased against it.
The six-member delegation organized by the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem included three African ambassadors, from Ethiopia, the Gambia and Zambia, highlighting Israel’s diplomatic outreach on the continent, and envoys from Fiji, Mongolia and Panama.
“Seeing is believing,” Israeli Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Daniel Meron, who is hosting the delegation, told JNS on Wednesday. “Our goal is to get them to be more understanding and attentive to Israel.”
The visiting ambassadors said that the five-day trip, which took them to the sites of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel as well as to tech centers, was an eye-opener.
“We have an opportunity to listen to the Israeli side that we are often not privy to,” said Professor Muhammadou M. O. Kah, the Gambian ambassador. “We gained more insight into the complexity of what is going on.”
Kah, who previously visited the Jewish state while serving as the president of the University of The Gambia in the West African Muslim country, said that he was struck on his current visit by the interaction of Jews, Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem after praying at the Al-Aqsa mosque, an image he said which was typically not projected out to the world.
“I return more convinced than ever that dialogue matters and that security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians are inseparable goals,” he said.
A similar group of European ambassadors to the UN in Geneva visited Israel last year.
Tsegab Kebebew Daka, the Ethiopian ambassador on the current trip, is vice president of the Human Rights Council, which Israel has frequently denounced for double standards and an obsession with targeting the Jewish state.
The visit to the sites of the Oct. 7 massacre, in which 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed, along with a meeting with a survivor, personalized the attack that triggered the two-year war in Gaza.
“There was an act of terror by coming across the border, and then they have successfully played the victim when there was a response,” said Laitia Tamata, Fiji’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva. “A lot more sympathy has gone to the people of Gaza. It’s almost accepting terrorism.”
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