Israel-UN relations sink to new depths

Israel's long-contentious relationship with the United Nations has since Oct. 7 spiralled to new depths, amid insults and accusations and even a questioning of the country's continued U.N. membership.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the world body of treating his country unfairly.

"Until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the U.N. will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce," he thundered.

The past year has seen repeated accusations from within the U.N. system that Israel is committing "genocide" in its war in Gaza, while Israeli officials have made charges of bias and have even accused the U.N. chief of being "an accomplice to terror".

The heat has been turned way up in a war of words that has raged between Israel and various U.N. bodies for decades.

And temperatures have risen further in recent days amid Israel's escalating strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"There has been a great deterioration" in the relationship, said Cyrus Schayegh, an international history and politics professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

"It has gone from fairly bad to really bad."

  U.N. 'betrayal' 

Since Hamas's deadly attack inside Israel nearly a year ago, U.N.-linked courts, councils, agencies and staff have unleashed a barrage of condemnation and criticism of Israel's devastating retaliatory operation in Gaza.

Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Of the 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli...