GOVERNMENT

Gilad Erdan

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations

2022 has been a busy year for Gilad Erdan, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, with both pressing international issues, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and regional concerns, particularly around Iran’s destabilization efforts in the Middle East. Like other Israeli envoys before him, Erdan has also had to push back against attempts to delegitimize Israel within the UN, most recently an international commission of enquiry dismissed by the Jewish state as a “kangaroo court” that defames Israel as an “apartheid” state. In a riposte to a group of Harvard University lawyers who applied the designation to Israel, Erdan said the authors “don’t care about the oppression of women, minorities, and members of the LGBTQ community in the areas run by the Palestinian Authority. They decided to delegitimize the Jewish state because of their antisemitic views.” (Photo: Wikimedia / Creative Commons License)