Israel vastly isolated at UN General Assembly as amendment on genocide commemoration defeated

​​​​​​​By Merve Aydogan

HAMILTON, Canada (AA) - Israel was left overwhelmingly isolated Friday at the UN General Assembly as an amendment it introduced on a genocide commemoration measure was decisively rejected.

The amendment sought to replace the reference to "observer states" with "observers of the General Assembly," a move widely seen as an attempt to diminish the standing of Palestine at the UN.

Israel, the US, Tonga the Marshall Islands voted in favor, while 127 countries voted against the amendment and seven abstained.

Loureen Sayej, diplomat and legal advisor at the Mission of the State of Palestine to the UN, said: "The irony is glaring. It should come as no surprise to anyone in this assembly or to anyone outside this hall that Israel asks for a vote and wants to exclude a standard reference to an observer state in a resolution commemorating the dignity of the victims of the crime of genocide. A crime that Israel is committing."

"Israel is blatantly carrying out an organized, sadistic, methodical colonial disposition," she said, adding that Israel's "criminality surpasses every precedent, exceeds every record of brutality, beyond what human imagination can conceive, let alone endure."