The appointment by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of one of his most hawkish and outspoken rivals as Israel\u2019s new ambassador to the United Nations has prompted widespread consternation. As one analyst noted, Danny Danon\u2019s appointment is a \u201ccruel joke\u201d on the international community. The new envoy \u201clacks even the slightest level of finesse and subtlety required of a senior diplomat\u201d, the analyst said.<\/p>\n
Last year, Mr Netanyahu sacked Mr Danon as deputy defence minister, describing him as too \u201cirresponsible\u201d even by the standards of Israel\u2019s usually anarchic politics. Mr Danon had denounced the prime minister for \u201cleftist feebleness\u201d in his handling of Israel\u2019s attack on Gaza last summer.<\/p>\n
Mr Danon is a UN official\u2019s worst nightmare. He is a vocal opponent of a two-state solution and has repeatedly called for the annexation of the West Bank.<\/p>\n
The appointment comes as the Palestinians are expected to step up efforts at the UN to entrench recognition of their statehood, and as Israel tries to fend off war crimes investigations at the International Criminal Court.<\/p>\n
The accepted explanation is that Mr Netanyahu\u2019s move is driven by domestic, not diplomatic calculations. The two faced off for Likud party leadership in November. Mr Danon lost but Mr Netanyahu doubtless fears, as his party and the Israeli public shift to the right, that his rival\u2019s time is coming.<\/p>\n
The posting removes Mr Danon as head of the Likud\u2019s powerful central committee, dispatches him to a distant land, and should provide him with opportunities aplenty to self-harm.<\/p>\n
Mr Danon\u2019s appointment also reveals something more significant about Israel\u2019s deteriorating relations even with its international supporters.<\/p>\n
In the decade following 1948, Abba Eban, Israel\u2019s foremost diplomat, sought to carve out international recognition and respectability for his country at the UN, even as it launched wars in 1956 at Suez and again against Egypt in 1967.<\/p>\n
Reality caught up with Israel when the UN adopted a resolution in 1975 equating Israel\u2019s official ideology, Zionism, with racism. The resolution was only revoked 16 years later after Washington arm-twisted the General Assembly with promises that Israel would engage in a peace process with the Palestinians, culminating a short time later in the Oslo Accords.<\/p>\n
But as Oslo slowly unravelled, Israel was forced on to the back foot again. Today, the consensus in Israel is not only that the UN is a bastion of anti-Israel prejudice but that it is an incubator of global anti-semitism.<\/p>\n
This year, after stepping down as Israel\u2019s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren argued that the plague of anti-semitism had infected even America\u2019s leading Jewish journalists. Their critical coverage of Israel was proof of self-hatred, he claimed. The need for such desperate diplomacy has grown as Israel\u2019s moral image has tarnished. But the hectoring has produced diminishing returns.<\/p>\n
Mr Danon\u2019s posting is part of a pattern of appointments by Mr Netanyahu that reflect a growing refusal to engage in diplomacy. It started with the decision in 2009 to let the thuggish Avigdor Lieberman lead the foreign ministry and diplomatic corps.<\/p>\n
Most notably, Mr Netanyahu picked Ron Dermer to replace Mr Oren in 2013. Mr Dermer is credited with engineering Mr Netanyahu\u2019s provocative address this year to the US Congress \u2013 an undisguised effort to undermine president Barack Obama\u2019s talks with Iran.<\/p>\n
Mr Danon\u2019s appointment indicates the extent to which the Israeli right has abandoned any hope of persuading the international community of the rightness of its cause \u2013 or even of working within the rules of statecraft. Mr Danon can be expected to barrack, abuse and alienate fellow ambassadors at the UN.<\/p>\n
An Israel that has no place for negotiations or compromise wants only to tell the world that it is wrong and that Israelis don\u2019t care what others think. Mr Danon is the right man for that job.<\/p>\n
Source: The National<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The appointment by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of one of his most hawkish and outspoken rivals as Israel\u2019s new ambassador to the United Nations has prompted widespread consternation. As one analyst noted, Danny Danon\u2019s appointment is a \u201ccruel joke\u201d on the international community. The new envoy \u201clacks even the slightest level of finesse and … Continue reading “Israel appoints ‘irresponsible’ UN envoy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12295,178,8549,12294,9029,1415],"class_list":["post-20150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-danny-danon","tag-israel","tag-oslo","tag-peace-accord","tag-settlements","tag-un"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/danon.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20152,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20150\/revisions\/20152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}