Israel backs Rwanda despite US objections in debate over 1994 genocide
Israel allies with RwandaIsrael splits with US in debate over 1994 genocide

Israel backs Rwanda despite US objections in debate over 1994 genocide

The U.N. resolution, opposed by the United States and the European Union, changes the name of the international remembrance day for the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

(World brief file photo)
(World brief file photo)

Israel supported a U.N. resolution, opposed by the United States and the European Union, that changes the name of the international remembrance day for the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

The April 7 remembrance day, previously known as the Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda, will focus solely on the murder of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis by members of the Hutu-majority government. The amendment was approved last week in the General Assembly by consensus. It will be known now as the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Rwanda’s ambassador to the United Nations, Valentine Rugwabiza, told the General Assembly that the new name clarifies that the genocide was carried out “against the Tutsi.” But the United States and the EU objected that, in the words of Kelley Currie, the U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, the new name “does not fully capture the magnitude of the genocide and of the violence committed against other groups.”

In addition to the Tutsis slaughtered, another 50,000 or more Hutu who tried to help the Tutsi also were killed during the massacres that year in a 100-day period from April to July.

Israel’s support of the resolution, which downplays the number of Hutu deaths in the Rwandan massacre, comes as Israel has raised objections to legislation in Poland making it illegal to refer to “Polish death camps.”

Israeli government officials, while agreeing that the death camps in Poland were created and run by the Nazis, have warned that the law could lead to “whitewashing” the history of the Holocaust and the complicity of some Poles in the genocide against Jews. PJC

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