An English-Spanish interpreter at the UN General Assembly became an unlikely hero of Zionism after a “hot mic” caught her wondering at the UN’s obsession with condemning Israel.
The interpreter can be heard doing her job before commenting to a colleague, presumably with her mic turned off, about the lop-sided focus on Israel’s perceived wrong-doings.
“I mean, I think when you have five statements, not five, like a total of ten resolutions on Israel and Palestine, there’s gotta be something, c’est un peu trop, non? [It’s a bit much, no?],” she asked. “I mean I know… There’s other really bad [stuff] happening, but no one says anything, about the other stuff.”
Members of the assembly, including the chair and the secretary, can be seen chuckling over the incident, as the interpreter herself repeatedly apologizes for the mishap with her mic.
In fact, the numbers are even worse than the interpreter imagined. During the current session of the General Assembly, Israel has already been condemned no fewer than 22 times. By comparison, only four similar condemnations have been issued against all the other countries of the world combined.
At Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he “hopes nothing happens to the translator as a result, but I can assure her of a job here in the State of Israel, should it come to that.”
Netanyahu noted that the kind of bias this woman encountered is nothing new, but “sometimes, someone can rip away the veil of hypocrisy that exists in the ever-present attacks against us, and this translator had the courage to do just that.”
D.E. Cantor 