Meloni: Israel overstepped its limits, 'caused a massacre among civilians'. On migrants 'politicised judiciary'.

A harsh attack on Russia for inflicting "a deep wound to international law" and a severe criticism of Israel for having "exceeded the limit of the principle of proportionality" in its reaction to Hamas, ending up by "breaking humanitarian norms and causing a massacre among civilians". These are some of the salient passages of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's speech (in Italian) at the UN General Assembly, which lasted 16 minutes and was applauded by a half-empty hall due to the late evening hours.

A speech in which he denounced the inadequacy of the UN architecture and called for the fight against both religious persecution ("predominantly of Christians") and human trafficking, also by reviewing the "anachronistic" international conventions on migration and asylum that, "when interpreted in an ideological and unidirectional manner by politicised judiciaries, end up trampling on the law instead of affirming it". Also in the crosshairs are the "'green plans' that in Europe - and in the entire West - are leading to deindustrialisation long before decarbonisation". Recalling that the UN was born in 1945 with the main purpose of avoiding new conflicts after World War II, Meloni said that 'the question we have to ask ourselves, eighty years later, and looking around, is: did we succeed? You all know the answer, because it is in the news, and it is merciless. Peace, dialogue, diplomacy seem no longer able to convince and win. The use of force prevails on too many occasions. And the scenario we are faced with is what Pope Francis described with rare effectiveness: a 'third world war' fought 'in pieces'".

She immediately pointed the finger at Russia, 'a permanent member of the Security Council, which has deliberately trampled on Article 2 of the UN Statute, violating the integrity and political independence of another sovereign state, with the will to annex its territory. And even today, it is still unwilling to seriously accept any invitation to sit at the peace table'. 'This deep wound inflicted on international law,' he emphasised, 'has unleashed destabilising effects far beyond the borders in which that war took place. The conflict in Ukraine has reignited, and detonated, several other hotbeds of crisis. While the United Nations has further disunited'.

After condemning the Hamas attacks of 7 October, Meloni accused Israel of having exceeded "the limit of the principle of proportionality" with its reaction. A 'choice that Italy has repeatedly defined as unacceptable, and which will lead to our vote in favour of some of the sanctions proposed by the European Commission against Israel'. The prime minister then called on Israel to "get out of the trap of this war: it must do so for the history of the Jewish people, for its democracy, for the innocent, for the universal values of the free world of which it is part". "And to end a war, concrete solutions are needed, because peace is not built only with appeals, or with ideological proclamations accepted by those who do not want peace," she continued, describing as "very interesting the proposals that the president of the United States has discussed with the Arab countries in these hours", saying she was ready "obviously to lend a hand". She said she believed that "Israel has no right to prevent the birth of a Palestinian state tomorrow, nor to build new settlements in the West Bank in order to prevent it. This is why we signed the New York Declaration on the two-state solution," she explained, reiterating however that "the recognition of Palestine must have two inalienable preconditions": the release of all hostages and the exclusion of Hamas from government roles.

Meloni then attacked the 'unsustainable environmentalism' that 'has almost destroyed the automotive sector in Europe, created problems in the US, caused job losses, burdened the ability to compete and impoverished knowledge. It took centuries to build our systems, but it only takes a few decades to find ourselves in an industrial desert. Only, as I have said many times, there is nothing green in the desert'. In conclusion, he quoted St Francis, "the most Italian of saints, who gave his name to the city where this organisation was born (San Francisco, ed): 'difficult fights are reserved only for those with exemplary courage'. I believe the time has come to demonstrate that courage'.