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CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is praising Australia for being "courageously willing to puncture U.N. hypocrisy" on anti-Israel resolutions.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull marked the first visit to Australia by a serving Israeli leader by writing an opinion piece in Wednesday's The Australian newspaper that backed Netanyahu's 2015 criticism that the United Nations General Assembly had adopted 20 resolutions critical of Israel in the preceding year and only one in response to the Syrian war.
Turnbull writes: "My government will not support one-sided resolutions criticizing Israel of the kind recently adopted by the U.N. Security Council."
That was a reference to a resolution passed in December condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a "flagrant violation" of international law. The United States abstained from the vote and Australia, while not a member of the security council, was one of the few countries to publicly support Israel's position.
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