A separate Irish resolution broadly condemning religious intolerance is, however, poised to pass muster in the same body.
Ireland has been the prime sponsor of an annual UN resolution condemning worldwide religious intolerance for the last 20 years.
The resolution is general in its wording and does not mention any specific religion.
But prompted by a recent upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, the Irish government came under pressure to specifically include a reference to anti-Semitism in the 2003 version of its annual resolution decrying religious intolerance.
Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom asked his Irish counterpart Brian Cowen at a recent meeting to include a reference to anti-Semitism in the resolution.
The Irish balked at including a specific religious reference in its resolution and offered instead to introduce a standalone resolution condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly.
Support for this resolution was forthcoming from the rest of the EU, the “accession states” about to join the EU and several other nations including Canada.
The proposed standalone resolution condemned “all manifestations of anti-Semitism wherever they occur”, attacks on synagogues and other religious places, sites and shrines and all “intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief.”
But a number of UN member states, including many Arab and Muslim ones, insisted that the standalone resolution also include condemnation of intolerance against other named religious and ethnic groups.
Inclusion of other groups defeated the very purpose of the standalone resolution while the fact that time was running out in the current General Assembly session – it rises on Dec. 16 – prompted the Irish government to withdraw the anti-Semitism resolution, a spokesman at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin said.
The withdrawal of the resolution prompted strong criticism from the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.
A spokesman told the Irish Times that the standalone resolution was a “cover-up” for refusing to introduce the words “anti-Semitism” into Ireland’s annual resolution condemning religious intolerance.
“Unfortunately we do not know why Ireland has taken a denial position on anti-Semitism,” The center’s director of international liaison, Dr. Shimon Samuels, said:
The Irish government spokesman rejected the view that Ireland had taken such a position.