Comment on Today's UNGA Anti-Semitism Session

Comment on Today's UNGA Anti-Semitism Session

UNGA must examine own record; this year has condemned Israel 20 times compared to only 3 on rest of world

GENEVA, Jan. 22, 2015 – The Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch lauded the United Nations General Assembly for holding a rare special meeting today on the rise of anti-Semitism, yet urged the world body to examine its own actions that, said Executive Director Hillel Neuer, "aid and abet a global culture of demonizing the Jewish state, pouring fuel on the fires of hatred."

Click here for chart of resolutions of UNGA 69th Session.

At the last special UN session on anti-Semitism, held in 2004, Kofi Annan criticized the UNGA's negative role in "equating Zionism with racism," acknowledging that "the United Nations’ record on anti-Semitism has at times fallen short of our ideals."

Yet according to new data released today exclusively by UN Watch, the UN General Assembly this year has continued to demonize Israel, subjecting it to 20 condemnatory resolutions, compared to only three on the rest of the world combined, being one each on Iran, Syria and North Korea.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last week, in a special address to the National Assembly in Paris, that a new anti-Semitism has arisen in the world which, based in part on the "loathing of the State of Israel," advocates hatred of Jews.

"If the UN is truly serious about combating anti-Semitism, then it must internalize the French Prime Minister's warning about how the demonization of the Jewish state leads to hatred and violence against Jews," said Neuer.

UN Resolutions Are One-Sided and Politicized

"The escalated politicization of influential UN bodies does nothing to help Palestinians or Israelis on the ground, while inflicting yet further damage to the world body's effectiveness and credibility," said Neuer.

The latest annual resolutions endorse the UN's infrastructure of anti-Israel demonization which is comprised of a special UN staff division and committee of member states ostensibly for Palestine, yet which are dedicated to promoting an anti-Israel narrative through events held around the world.

The resolutions on Israel are "ritualistically adopted by an automatic majority each year and completely disconnected from reality," said Neuer.

"Of the GA's five resolutions with the word 'Syria' in the title, four are actually against Israel -- not Syria. Two of these call on Israel to 'withdraw from all the occupied Syrian Golan to the line of 4 June 1967' even though this would mean handing people over to the rule of either the mass-murdering Assad regime, Al Nusra terrorists, or ISIS barbarians. When the UN ignores reality, it makes itself irrelevant," said Neuer.

“The UN’s drumbeat of excessive, disproportionate and one-sided condemnations of Israel causes polarization, threatens to push the parties further apart, and is counterproductive to the already fragile peace process,” said Neuer.

“The UN's lopsided adoption of 20 resolutions on Israel, and only three on the rest of the world combined, eclipses the plight of millions of human rights victims in places like China, Russia, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia, whose critical issues are being treated with indifference, and—given the UN's recent election of those countries to its Human Rights Council—with contempt.”

“It's far from clear why the UN's only resolution in the world for self-determination is devoted to the Palestinians, when Israel has already acknowledged that right, and after the UN already recognized a 'State of Palestine',” Neuer said.

“Yet the UN has failed to adopt any resolution supporting self-determination for oppressed peoples such as the Kurds, or the Tibetans, whose basic rights as a minority, let alone as a nation, are brutally and systematically trampled by China," said Neuer.

ENDS

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