The U.N. and antisemitism: 10-year report card

By YAIR LAPID

JULY 12, 2018 22:23

Updated: JULY 13, 2018 09:03

SEATS NORMALLY occupied by the United States delegation are empty one day after the US announced its withdrawal from the UN’s Human Rights Council, at the United Nations in Geneva on June 20, 2018 (photo credit: REUTERS) — SEATS NORMALLY occupied by the United States delegation are empty one day after the US announced its withdrawal from the UN’s Human Rights Council, at the United Nations in Geneva on June 20, 2018

(photo credit: REUTERS)

It’s the biased approach, the disgraceful discrimination of UN bodies when it comes to Jews.

Between 2006 and 2016 the United Nations Human Rights Council passed 67 resolutions condemning human rights violations around the world: against the massacre of half a million people in Syria, the genocide in Darfur, the execution of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Iran. A long, bloody and tragic list of horrors.

In that same decade the same Human Rights Council passed 68 resolutions condemning Israel. The council condemned Israel, a law-abiding democracy fighting for its life against murderous terror organizations, more times than the rest of the world combined.

And it’s not just the Human Rights Council.

It’s the biased approach, the disgraceful discrimination of UN bodies when it comes to Jews.

Navi Pillay, who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (a different body from the Human Rights Council), condemned the anti-Muslim caricatures published in the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Caricatures looked to her like a violation of human rights. The same high commissioner remained silent when a terrorist murdered a teacher and three children in a Jewish school in Toulouse. That didn’t strike her as a human rights violation.

The situation hasn’t improved since then. The current high commissioner, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, consistently ignores every attack and terror attack against Jews and Israel. The other UN bodies are no better.

In 2015, for example, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (another UN body) published a report about racism in France. It was a detailed report that looked at Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment. The committee simply forgot to address the terror attack at the Hyper-Cacher kosher supermarket where four people were murdered.

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All the examples listed of antisemitic discrimination in the UN, and many others, are in a new report by UN Watch, an organization that isn’t attached to any political party. It is a research body, and its research led to a very tough report. While the findings and recommendations are worth reading (especially for all those who work at the UN), the overall conclusion is clear and simple: It can’t just be a mistake, it can’t be a coincidence. When it comes to Jews and Israelis, the UN has become a hostile and biased body. The organization which is meant to fight antisemitism, which is sworn to fight antisemitism, is guilty of antisemitism itself.

The Arab countries grant an automatic majority to every anti-Israel organization.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions organizations, with support of extreme left-wing Israeli organizations, push an anti-Israel and anti-Jewish narrative. It’s not criticism of the State of Israel. It is old antisemitism dressed up in a new outfit.

Unlike many, I don’t believe the United Nations is irrelevant. The UN has a role to play. The Security Council is certainly important. And there are changes happening.

Our enemies know that and they want to push the UN step by step until Israel is the target of sanctions and there will be international legitimacy to isolate Israel and undermine our security.

We need to manage this fight. We’re not doing it at the moment, or at least not doing it well enough. But those who are to blame are not here in Jerusalem. They are in New York. We call upon UN Secretary- General Antonio Guterres to change direction. It’s time for the UN to stand with the victims of antisemitism, not with the antisemites. It’s time to free the UN from the obnoxious grip of the enemies of Israel and the enemies of human rights.

The writer is the head of the Yesh Atid Party.