At the moment, the most likely successor to the execrable António Guterres as the next Secretary-General of the UN is Costa Rican economist Rebeca Grynspan. She is Jewish. However, over a long span of years, she has remained circumspect in her comments on the Middle East. During the last three years, she has made remarks critical of Israel’s conduct of the war, though in the context of the UN, those comments have been mild, of the deploring-“the tragic-loss-of-life”-both in Israel and Gaza sort. She no doubt realizes that, working at the UN, she has to be careful about appearing to be pro-Israel. And perhaps she really doesn’t have any deep sympathies for the embattled Jewish state. There are, after all, great numbers of Jews who are choosing to distance themselves from Israel, the kind of people who fit the description Robert Frost once gave of a liberal, “as someone who always takes the other fellow’s side in a quarrel.”
More on Rebeca Grynspan can be found here: “Who is Rebeca Grynspan, the Jewish frontrunner to lead the UN – and what is her Israel stance?,” by Mathilda Heller, Jerusalem Post, October 18, 2026:
Jewish former vice president of Costa Rica Rebeca Grynspan is leading the straw poll for the next UN secretary-general. If she successfully replaces Antonio Guterres when he finishes his term on December 31, she will become the first Jewish UN secretary-general in the body’s history.
It will be a distinct pleasure to wave goodbye to António Guterres. He will go down in history for having claimed that “the scale of killing in Gaza is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my years as Secretary-General.” Under Guterres’s watch since 2017, there was this “scale of killing”: Myanmar: 107,000 killed; Syria: 120,000+ killed; Sudan: 150,000+ killed; Ethiopia: 162,000+ killed; Yemen: 200,000+ killed. But on the other hand, at least Guterres wasn’t a Nazi war criminal, unlike one of his predecessors, Kurt Waldheim.
Grynspan, 70, was born to Jewish parents Manuel Grynspan Burstin and Sara Mayufis Schapiro in San José. Her parents fled Poland in 1936, while her maternal grandparents stayed behind and were killed during the Holocaust.
Grynspan’s husband – Saul Weisleder – is also Jewish, and they have two children. Her sister, Frida, lives in Israel, and Grynspan has a niece and nephew who served in the IDF. In a 2014 interview with the Tico Times, Frida referred to herself as a “lifelong Zionist.”
After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Costa Rica and a master’s degree in economics from the University of Sussex in England, Grynspan became a professor and researcher at the Economic Science Research Institute of the University of Costa Rica.
She served as vice finance minister from 1986 to 1988, and as the second vice president of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998. She then became the first woman to serve as the secretary-general of the Ibero-American General Secretariat from 2014 to 2021 and then the first woman to become the secretary-general of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2021. She currently holds this position.
In a video explaining why she chose to run for secretary-general, Grynspan said: “Conflicts are going up, trust in international law in the organization is going down, and time is running out.”
Could it be that one of the reasons trust in the UN is decreasing is its malignant obsession with Israel, and its inability even to hint at recognizing the war — the jihad — that militant Muslims are waging all over the globe? Could it be that the behavior of the ICJ and the ICC, as they ignore what goes on in Iran and Russia and North Korea and China, while going after Israel and the United States, has contributed to that growing distrust of those organizations?
“I am a daughter of peace; my parents were refugees of the Second World War. I know what wars take away and what peace makes possible; that’s why I’m running.”…
She must know that wars do not just “take away.” War is sometimes essential. It was war that brought down the Nazis who murdered her grandparents and six million other Jews.
On 21 November 2023, at a UN Trade and Development Board executive session meeting in Geneva, Grynspan “echoed the call of the UN’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, condemning the horrific loss of civilian lives on both sides, the attack perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 and the continued bombardment of the IDF hitting civilians, hospitals, shelters, schools, and UN facilities in Gaza.”…
Grynspan failed to recognize that Hamas was keeping both its men and weapons in those UNRWA schools, hospitals, mosques, and apartment buildings, which then became legitimate military targets. She gave no indication that she was aware of the tremendous effort that the IDF made, involving dropped leaflets, text messages, and robocalls, to warn civilians away from sites soon to be targeted.
If chosen to be Secretary-General, Grynspan will have to bend over backwards, I’m afraid, to convince people she is not pro-Israel. But I allow myself to believe that eventually, having established her bonafides among the doubters, she will quietly do what’s right. She might start by firing the Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the viscerally anti-Israel Francesca Albanese. And then she should discharge Tom Fletcher, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, who famously predicted that “14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours” from malnutrition because of Israeli actions; none did. And then she could urge the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), that now features Israel on its agenda under Item 7 (“Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories”), a stand-alone item discussed three times a year, to drop it.
The UN under António Guterres has reached the lowest point in its history. It needs enormous reforms, including an end to its obsession with Israel. And Rebeca Grynspan, though hardly perfect, is as good a candidate to lead that effort as can reasonably be hoped for.
Taffy says
“ The UN under António Guterres has reached the lowest point in its history. It needs enormous reforms, including an end to its obsession with Israel.”
We all have a tendency to live near the present and to toggle near-present events as either the best of times or the worst of times! The nadir of the UN, in my opinion, was back in 1975 when the UN General Assembly determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Incidentally, Kurt Waldheim was Secretary-General of the UN at that time. Although never convicted of a war crime, there is ample evidence that he was a war criminal and complicit in war crimes. For example, he served as a Wehrmacht intelligence officer under General Alexander Löhr, who was executed for war crimes. The U.S. banned him from entry for the longest time because of his Nazi past.
So, is Antonio Guterres a bad guy, and did the UN under his leadership reach the lowest point in its history? Yes, and probably not. In addition to Kurt Waldheim’s UN, there are other examples of a UN rotten to the core that fall beneath Guterres’s UN.
Taffy says
I forgot to say that the UN does not need enormous reforms. It needs to be dissolved or defunded by the U.S. and kicked out of NYC and the United States, because it is a non-functioning body adversely to world peace.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I agree w/ you. As I noted below, the issue is not who the UN Secretary General is. THe issue is that there is a solid 50-member islamic bloc in the UN, and no equivalent bloc opposing it. Add to that however many Leftist countries they are, and that’s pretty solid. As a result, Israel has too much going against it
As many have said, US out of the UN, UN out of the US
Taffy says
The U.S. finances a lot more than its representation 8n the UN. In addition we have to put up with a-hole diplomats that use their diplomatic immunity to illegally park, right in front of their favorite high-end restaurants and shops. If not for the U.S. veto power, Israel would be in real trouble, despite Israel’s eloquent, factual and logical addresses before the UN. So I say, save 5he US taxpayer some mone6 and get rid of our UN membership, and send them packing. May I suggest The Sudan or Yemen. They may become an ordnance magnet where their presence may divert shots fired.
Rabbi Menashe Bovit says
I wouldn’t hold my breath hoping that this Grnspan will go against the Israel hating status quo of the mendacious U.N. It’s far more likely that she will be elevated to this position as part of the effort to create separation between Galut Jews and the State of Israel, the effort to paint the term Zionist as akin to “Nazi”, something a decent Jew would shun.
crown says
Totally agree.
No doubt her “supporters” are already scrambling to ensure that her Kapo bona fides are in order, to prepare her for the UN Nazis who make the decisions for that vile organization.
Magooey says
This is worrisome.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
While I do hope that Ms Grynspan is better than any of her predecessors on the issue of Israel, I don’t expect her to make a difference. The problem is structural: 190+ countries all w/ an equal vote, so that the US vote is equal to that of Yemen or Somalia or Eswatini or Laos or Guyana. No matter what their populations, sizes of their economies or other metrics that matter
End result is that 50 islamic countries vote as a bloc against Israel, and there is no compelling reason for any other group of countries to do the same in support of Jerusalem. Well, maybe Israel can, in lieu of its support on the Falklands, get Argentina to rally most Latin American countries on Israel’s side, so that the UN will be more evenly divided b/w the islamic bloc and those outside it. Problem is a lot of European countries have switched to recognizing the fictitious state of Balestine, so it looks bad for Israel either way
Taffy says
Remember that the “P5” (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have veto powers.
But it sickens me when totalitarian countries are promoted to ironic roles. Example: Iran heading the Human rights Council.