There has been much commentary on the voting patterns of UNESCO member countries on several outrageous resolutions on Jerusalem which explicitly or implicitly deny the Jewish connection to Israel and its capital. It has been noted that the votes reflect the inherent bias of U.N. bodies against Israel. In the General Assembly, for example, there is an automatic majority against Israel regarding any issue surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has also been noted that the second vote of the executive committee was an improvement over the first in that a number of countries, most notably France, shifted their original no votes to abstentions. These shifts seem to signify that those countries recognize, as Secretary-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova has said, that a resolution that ignores the Jewish connection to Jerusalem is inappropriate and harmful.