"Israel acts above the law and does not respect UN resolutions and also we know this aggressive state of Israel is... nuclear armed and a centre of colonial regime that is based on apartheid against the Palestinian people," he went on.
"[There is] brutal occupation, crimes and genocide. [Israel is] dragging the region into repeated conflicts... Israel is a pariah state and should be stopped.
"Israel is causing misery [and] genocide. [It has an] expansionist [and] colonial mentality."
Shtayyeh continued his argument by adding that "every time Israel creates a buffer zone in a neighbouring country it is to push the army of that country away”.
"We all should say that Israel is the biggest cause of destabilisation in the region," he concluded.
Arguing against the motion, Neuer contended that the very idea that Israel could pose a greater threat than Iran was not only wrong "but the inversion of reality".
International lawyer and director of watchdog UN Watch, Hillel Neuer (Image: UN Watch)[Missing Credit]
He said: "Regional stability is measured by who starts wars, not by who stops them. Israel does not arm terror proxies in five Arab countries - the Islamic regime in Iran does that.
"The entire Middle East knows this, and that is why Arab states quietly depend on Israel for their own survival.
"One of the most powerful illustrations," he continued, "was when the Islamic regime in Iran launched an unprecedented attack on the people of Israel with 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles.
"The fact that Sunni Arab states provided a combination of air force interceptions... is a real-world vote on tonight's motion. The Arab states know that Israel is a partner in survival and the Islamic regime in Iran is an existential threat.
"You don't intercept missiles heading towards a threat to regional stability; you intercept missiles from one."
Neuer went on to list examples of the damage that, he claimed, Iran has done to the Middle East, saying that it "exports terrorism and war wherever it goes".
These included "the Iran-backed Hezbollah", which has tuned Lebanon into a "failed state"; the importing of militia into Syria where they "directed a campaign of mass atrocities"; the backing of the Houthis in Yemen which has "crippled" the country's infrastructure - and of course - Hamas.
Iran has "transformed Hamas into a mini army," Neuer said. "Instead of building a future for Palestinians, Hamas, with Iranian training, built an underground fortress beneath homes, hospitals and schools.
"The result was October 7 - the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust."
The JC has contacted the Oxford Union for confirmation of the result.
