Danon Leads 40 UN Diplomats to Poland and Israel
The delegation, from 20 countries, will tour Auschwitz-Birkenau and Krakow’s Jewish Quarter before heading to Israel for security briefings along its southern and northern borders
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, is leading a delegation of about 40 diplomats on a visit to Poland and Israel.
The diplomats come from 20 UN member states: Germany, Greece, Costa Rica, the Commonwealth of Dominica, the Czech Republic, Liberia, Armenia, the Dominican Republic, Malta, Botswana, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Samoa, Tanzania, Paraguay, Albania, Tuvalu and Georgia. Trinidad and Tobago is expected to join the UN Security Council soon.
The first stop is Poland. There the delegation will tour the historic Jewish Quarter in Krakow and the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where Nazi Germany murdered more than a million people, most of them Jews.
Later this week the diplomats will travel to Israel. According to Israel’s Mission to the UN, they will attend security briefings, tour areas along Israel’s southern and northern borders and meet senior Israeli officials.
Danon described the trip as part of a wider campaign against antisemitism, which he has made a central theme of his time at the UN.
“Tomorrow, I will lead dozens of ambassadors on a journey that begins on Polish soil and ends in Israel,” Danon said in a statement before departure. “As antisemitism continues to rise, I established an international task force at the United Nations to combat hatred both within the organization and beyond. This mission is a concrete step in that effort.”
“The international community must see firsthand where the world’s silence in the face of incitement against the Jewish people can lead,” he added. “We cannot fight today’s antisemitism without understanding its historical consequences. This delegation is a central part of our fight to defend the truth about the State of Israel.”
Danon has organized similar delegations before. Earlier this year, in February, he toured Holocaust sites in Poland with counterparts from 23 countries, then led that group on a tour of Israel.