Erdan Walks Out on Raisi’s Speech
Israel’s patience with Iran is wearing thin. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made comments on Sunday saying the Holocaust needs to be investigated to determine if it really happened. As Raisi prepared to speak at the United Nations General Assembly opening ceremony on Wednesday morning, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan walked out, displaying a photo of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, on Israel’s table as a form of protest.
“This is a new moral low for the UN,” Erdan said. “A mass murderer who denies the Holocaust gets the UN platform to spread his despicable hatred. Any ambassador who stays in the hall to listen to him should be ashamed.”
He continued, “While the Ayatollah regime in Iran oppresses its citizens, murders women who do not cover their heads, and finances terrorist attacks around the world, here at the United Nations, which was established to prevent such atrocities, the president of Iran, the murderer and Holocaust denier Raisi, is given a platform to spread his hatred.”
Erdan’s comments ring especially true this week, as a woman died in police custody last week after being detained for allegedly wearing her Islamic headscarf too loosely. Protests quickly followed throughout Iran, and three more people were killed in clashes with Iran’s police force on Wednesday. Protests have become increasingly commonplace in Iran, most often due to the nation’s economic crisis directly linked to the sanctions it faces in response to its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
This condemnation for Iran in the United Nations General Assembly has been a long time coming. Erdan shrewdly took the opportunity to direct international attention to Iran’s scandals and injustice with his protest and statement. His protest is valid—among other issues, it is unbecoming of the head of a nation to question one of the worst atrocities in history, one that happened so recently and is so well documented that some who survived it are still alive today. And in the big picture, the nation that oppresses its own citizens, unashamedly contributes to terrorism, and plots the elimination of the Jewish state with nuclear weapons should be held accountable. Hopefully, as these facts are brought to light on the world’s biggest political stage, the United Nations will make a legitimate effort to curb the schemes of a nation bent on terrorizing not only the Jewish people but all who disagree with its leaders.
