Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon, spoke to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News during his visit to Israel about his hopes for the incoming US administration.
“We are waiting for the new President to come in. There are a lot of issues to discuss with President Trump, such as the Iranian threat, the threat from Yemen, what’s happening in Lebanon and Syria. The most important issue for us is the hostages, so we are preparing all those. We will discuss them with the President and with his team. I want to say that the President nominated excellent people, the Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is a dear friend of mine; he came to visit us after October 7th. The Ambassador to the UN, Elise Stefanik, is a strong leader, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also a supporter of Israel. So we expect that it will be easier for us to work with those friends,” says Danon.
Many hoped that after the horrendous massacre of October 7, 2023, the world would be different, the United Nations would be different, but Danon says that “the UN decided to forget about the hostages, but we will never forget them. We will continue to remind them why we are fighting in Gaza, why our soldiers are still there; because we have 100 hostages who are being tortured and starved in the tunnels of Hamas. My duty is to remind the ambassadors and the UN officials why we are in Gaza. We were forced into this war and we will win this war.”
On the different UN agencies that Israel is dealing with, Danon says: “Some of the UN organizations are not effective, such as UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon). There are 13,000 soldiers placed on the border between Israel and Lebanon. It’s a big military force, but look what happened; Hezbollah ignored them and built bases on our border. That is why today we decided to take responsibility for our security, and also in the future, we will make sure that Hezbollah will not be able to do what they did in the past.
“UNWRA failed, they failed professionally and they failed morally. We proved that they supported Hamas. We proved that many of the terrorists who came into Israel on October 7th were getting paid by the UN, through UNWRA. We told our colleagues in the UN that we are willing to work with other UN agencies, but we will not work with an organization that supports terrorism,” emphasizes Danon.
On Danon’s expectations from President Trump, he says, “We saw President Trump in action already and he was a dear, strong friend of Israel. He moved the Embassy to Jerusalem. He recognized the Golan Heights and he decided to take the right course regarding Iran, so we believe he will continue in the same direction, supporting the strongest ally of the US in the region, which is Israel. So we are very optimistic about that.
“I think that President Trump is aware of the condition that the hostages are being held and he wants to see them back home. We appreciate what he’s saying. He wants to put pressure and I think we have the responsibility to bring them back home,” concludes Ambassador Danon.
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