The Israeli Ambassador to Ghana, Roey Gilad, has explained why his country voted against Ghana’s resolution at the United Nations that led to the declaration of the slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity.
Speaking in an interview on JoyNews, aired on April 13, 2026, Roey Gilad said that his country voted against the resolution, which was championed by President John Dramani Mahama, because of the description of slavery as “the gravest crime against humanity”.
“Of course, the Atlantic slave trade, the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian genocide by the Ottomans, the Tutsi genocide by the Hutus in Rwanda. Are we to judge which is the gravest and which is less grave?” he questioned.
Ambassador Gilad said that his government and that of many other countries reached out to the government of Ghana to drop the “gravest crime” phrase, to no avail.
This, he indicated, left them no choice but to vote against the resolution.
“It is only this hierarchy that we could not agree to. There's no doubt that had the resolution called the Atlantic slave trade one of the gravest, we had no problem, and we came very clearly to the Ghanaian delegation at the UN, not only us, also the United States, the UK, the EU, Armenia and many others, and said, just drop the gravest.
“The gravest for us is a problem. We cannot sit in a hierarchy. We cannot say if the Atlantic slave trade was graver than the Holocaust, or the Armenian genocide or the Tutsi genocide or not. How can you judge what is graver than the other?” he reiterated.
https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Infantile-arguments-Mahama-jabs-Manasseh-others-over-slavery-reparations-criticisms-2028142
Meanwhile, President Mahama, at a recent public engagement, described some of the things that transpired during the slave trade, insisting that it was the “gravest crime against humanity”.
“If you know what happened to the slaves, nothing compares to it in everything that has happened in this world, to the 15 million people who were sent away, those who died. I'll give you one example: a ship captain threw 134 slaves overboard to go and claim insurance, because your ancestors were cargo, and so if the ship lost cargo, there was insurance that compensated for the loss of cargo. And 134 slaves, he threw them overboard and went and filed an insurance claim for loss of cargo,” he said.
The president touted the recognition of slavery as the gravest crime, saying that, if for nothing at all, “the souls of our ancestors would be at rest.”
He laughed at the suggestion that because Africans were involved in the slave trade, no person should be held responsible for it, likening the trade to the genocide against Jews.
“In the record of the Holocaust, there were Jews who were prison guards, the Jews who pointed out where other Jews were hiding. And yet the Holocaust is recognised as genocide and a crime against humanity. So why not the slave trade? Because some Africans were involved. It doesn't absolve those who built the system and financed it, and so we'll call them out. I don't care what anybody says, we'll call them out,” he stressed.
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