Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan. Photo: Gali Tibbon / Pool via Reuters.

Israel’s envoy to the United Nations has warmly welcomed the global organization’s adoption by consensus of a resolution that, for the first time, explicitly linked antisemitism with terrorism.

The  formal linkage was made as the UN General Assembly on Tuesday adopted the UN’s biennial Global Counterterrorism Strategy (GCTS).

Addressing the General Assembly, Israel’s UN Ambassador, Gilad Erdan, praised the acknowledgement in the GCTS “of the upswing in hate speech and terrorist attacks targeting religious and ethnic communities, which included an explicit condemnation of antisemitism, in line with the findings of the Secretary General’s report on global terrorism.”

Erdan continued: “We have all witnessed antisemitic attacks against Jewish communities around the world, including here in the streets of New York, in recent weeks. It is critical that the international community take a clear stance against these attacks and develop additional tools to combat such appalling assaults against Jewish and other groups.”

In the same speech, Erdan observed that for Israel, “the adoption of the GCTS is, unfortunately, not a theoretical or academic exercise. During the weeks we sat here debating this resolution, Israeli civilians from our capital in Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and Ashkelon, sat in bomb shelters because of Hamas’s relentless terror attacks.”

Erdan noted that the GCTS “included a number of important items that are significant achievements for Israel.”

He remarked that at Israel’s request, just one month after the conflict with Hamas, the UN condemned the use of human shields by terrorist organizations, a practice common to both Hamas and the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon.