I recently received a form letter from the American Jewish Committee, and in one of the inserts that came with the form letter was a list of nations, on one side a list of nations under the heading “Countries eligible to sit on the United Nations Security Council” (which seemed to list most of the world’s nations), and on the other side was a list of nations under the heading “Countries not eligible to sit on the United Nations Security Council”, which listed, (in big red letters) only one nation, and that nation was Israel.
Is this actually true? Is Israel the only country actually not eligible to sit on the U.N. Security Council?
Interesting, the smart aleck answer to the title was “Of course not, Israel doesn’t get along well enough with its neighbors” and the real truth appears to be not terribly far off from that.
The Security Council is limited to members voted in by the General Assembly. You don’t just get to walk in and sit down at the table no matter who you are.
According the Wikipedia’s page on the Regional Groups, Kiribati is also not a member of any group, and would thus also be ineligible to be a Security Council member. (The US isn’t in any groups either, but, as a permanent member, that doesn’t matter.)
And, yeah, I’d imagine that if Israel tried to claim a seat that it wasn’t elected to, Libya wouldn’t even hesitate to demand their removal, while the others, at best, might point out politely that “that’s just not how it works” and “rules are rules”, etc.
The “joke”, such that it is, is that Israel would then be acting exactly as some lacking in historical nuance claim Zionists behaved in forming the state of Israel itself - simply marching in and seizing a seat, as Zionists marched in and seized the land of Israel.