My time is short, too short to try to emulate the diplomatic sophistry that passes for respect in the meeting rooms of the United Nations. So I will get right to the point.
 Anne Bayefsky speaking at the United Nations, New York, on September 8, 2014. |
The UN is not having a conference on the threat that global antisemitism poses to international peace and security. This is lunch-time. The courageous organizer, assisted by the principled representatives of the small state of Palau, is independent of the UN. The facilities are not free.
But why couldn't the UN, founded on the ashes of the Jewish people, and presently witnessing a widespread resurgence in antisemitism, sponsor a conference on combating global antisemitism?
The answer is clear. Because the United Nations itself is the leading global purveyor of antisemitism.
Photo-ops of the UN Secretary-General and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the gates of Auschwitz are not an alibi.
One does not honor the memory of Jews murdered by intolerance six decades ago by inciting murderous intolerance towards the remnant of the Jewish people in the here and now.
Incitement to hate, like declaring Israel to be racist – as does the UN Durban Declaration – is the flagship of the UN's racist anti-racism program of action. In theory, the UN Charter demands equality both of individual men and women and of nations large and small. In reality, the UN mass-produces inequality for Jews and the Jewish nation.
- 35% of all resolutions and decisions ever adopted by the UN's top human rights body – the Human Rights Council – that are critical of the rights records of specific states condemn one state: Israel. That is antisemitism.
- 50% of the emergency special sessions of the General Assembly over six decades were convened to denounce Israel; no emergency special session has been called on any other state in over thirty years. That is antisemitism.
- The Human Rights Council has a fixed agenda with one item to condemn Israel at every session, and one item to consider the other 192 UN member states if "required." That is antisemitism.
- 70% of all the 2013 General Assembly resolutions criticizing specific countries for human rights abuses were about Israel. That is antisemitism.
- The UN Division for Palestinian Rights denies entry to public meetings at UN Headquarters for individuals and NGOs that it discovers are Jewish and Zionist, as it did to me and Birthright alumnae last November. That is antisemitism.
- This past May, the UN screened a film portraying Israel as a green monster that rises off the Gaza coast to attack Palestinian children. A UN-authorized film about the 2009 Gaza war, mirroring the vile Nazi imagery of the Jew as a serpent, is antisemitism.
Modern antisemitism targets Israel's exercise of the right of self-defense because self-defense is the essence of sovereignty. Demonize and delegitimize self-defense, the plan is, and the viability of the Jewish state will be degraded.
In 2009, Israel responded to 8,000 Hamas rockets and mortars launched over almost a decade. In 2014, Israel responded to 4,382 rockets and an underground labyrinth of 32 terror tunnels, 14 of which opened into Israel.
The current UN chant of 2,000 dead, by its own admission, includes hundreds and hundreds of genocidal Palestinian combatants (in addition to the civilians forced to become human shields).
In 2004, when Israel targeted Hamas terrorist leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, and there were no civilian casualties, the UN still called it a violation of international law.
So the truth is that at the UN, for Israel alone, none is too many. That is antisemitism.
Today, UN antisemitism has taken yet one more treacherous turn. The UN has launched a legal pogrom against the Jewish state.
Hired guns, posing as independent arbiters, such as William Schabas are appointed to discover what they've already found. Guilty!
Phony legal rules misinterpret proportionality to favor a "more even number" of dead Israelis. The Iron Dome worked too well!
And the International Criminal Court is poised to pounce.
Serious about never again? Then never forget that the perversion of the legal system is how genocide begins. A legal pogrom serves as a license to kill.
The UN is not having a conference about combating antisemitism. But we are.
So let us start by combating the legal henchmen and human rights impostors at the United Nations.
Anne Bayefsky is a lawyer specializing in International Law and Human Rights Law. She is President and Editor of HumanRightsVoices.org and Director, Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. This speech was delivered at a United Nations conference in New York, on September 8, 2014. The conference was convened by Ugoji Adanma Eze of the Eng. Aja Eze Foundation and the Government of Palau.
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