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Published: april 29, 2010; Arutz Sheva.

by Hillel Fendel,

Alex Van Meeuwen (right), Permanent Representative of Belgium to the United Nations Office at Geneva and President of the United Nations Human Rights Council, speaks at the Council's Special Session, "The human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and East Jerusalem". UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay sits beside him. At the meeting Ms. Pillay remarked that the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories "remains of grave concern". 15 October 2009 Geneva, Switzerland

The UN Watch organization has sent a detailed letter to the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights demanding an end to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic discrimination.

The letter charges the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) with ignoring former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s pledge that “the human rights machinery of the United Nations has been mobilized in the battle against anti-Semitism.”

It was sent on April 28 to Commissioner Navi Pillay by UN Watch Executive Director Hillel C. Neuer.

The immediate reason for the letter was the UNHRC’s refusal to remove from its website an anti-Semitic text (A/HRC/13/NGO/23) that falsely accuses Israeli doctors of a racist conspiracy to steal organs from Palestinian Authority Arabs. The text was submitted by the International Organization for Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a group created in Libya and closely tied to Muammar Kaddafi’s regime.

You Screened Us, Why Not Them?
Neuer charges that although the UNHRC justifies retaining the text on the grounds that the UN plays no screening role in publishing submissions it receives, “that premise is demonstrably untrue.” He provides several examples of texts submitted by his own organization which were strongly screened, and “until we made the required changes, your office informed us, processing of our statement was ‘suspended.’”

Neuer also noted another anti-Semitic statement by the same group that was published, distributed and web-hosted under the imprimatur of the UN Human Rights Council. Published in September 2008, the statement (A/HRC/9/NGO/1) called Israel an “illegal state,” and accused “Jews everywhere” of having “forgotten the terrors of the Holocaust to such an extent as to allow Israel to pursue and inflict one on the Palestinian people.” The statement remains on the UNHRC site even now.

Anti-Israel Record
Neuer then summed up the UNHRC’s record on Israel in its four years of existence: 40 condemnations of countries, including 33 against Israel… Of its nine emergency sessions criticizing countries, six have been against Israel. Recent and well-publicized killings of innocents in Iran, China, Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya and Zimbabwe have gone completely ignored… The council’s agenda that governs every session features a permanent item targeting Israel; no other country in the world is singled out in this fashion.

UN Watch wrote to the UNHRC:
“Secretary-General Annan specifically called on your office – whose resources include 982 employees and a budget in this biennium increasing from $312.7 million to $407.4 million – to ‘actively explore ways of combating anti-Semitism more effectively in the future.’ He called on all parts of the Secretariat to be vigilant. Madame High Commissioner, where is this vigilance?

“Secretary-General Annan concluded his call to action by proclaiming that ‘Jews everywhere must feel that the United Nations is their home, too.’ Yet Madame High Commissioner, how can this be possible so long as your website continues to host a statement that, to a worldwide audience, declares ‘Jews everywhere’ to be evil?”

UN Watch is a non-governmental organization based in Geneva whose mandate is to “monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter.” Its mission statement notes that the “disproportionate attention and unfair treatment applied by the UN toward Israel over the years offers an object lesson (though not the only one) in how due process, equal treatment, and other fundamental principles of the UN Charter are often ignored or selectively upheld.”

The Un Watch april 28, 2010, letter to the Human Rights Council.

Letter to UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay

April 28, 2010

Dear High Commissioner Pillay,

We wrote you on March 24, 2010, requesting that the UN Human Rights Council website cease hosting an anti-Semitic text (A/HRC/13/NGO/23) that, in a modern adaptation of the medieval blood libel, falsely accuses Israeli doctors of a racist conspiracy to steal Palestinian organs.

We are grateful to have recently received a reply, sent from Chief of Human Rights Council Branch Eric Tistounet. This response, however, rejects UN Watch’s request while ignoring our argument. We urge you to overturn this decision, for the reasons explained below, and to immediately remove all such hateful material from the UN website. We also call on you to speak out against the moral inversion that, in its mere four years of existence, has already become the hallmark of the UN Human Rights Council.

First, we address your office’s reply. It justifies doing nothing about the text submitted by the “International Organization for Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” (EAFORD)—a group created in Libya and closely tied to Col. Kaddafi’s regime—on grounds that the UN purportedly plays no screening role, simply publishing all submissions as received.

That premise is demonstrably untrue.

Mr. Tistounet quotes from the footnote of the UN cover sheet affixed to NGO written statements, which indicates that the latter are “unedited.” This quote, however, is selective, incomplete and misleading.

The same cover sheet indicates at the top that such statements are circulated “in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.” As your officers well know, Article 31 of that resolution requires them to engage in a process of “appropriate consultation” with the submitting organization, with the latter required to give “due consideration” to any “comments” that your officers may make “before transmitting the statement in final form.”

In other words, contrary to the premise that forms the basis of Mr. Tistounet’s decision, the rules say explicitly that your office does play a screening role.

Not only is this the official procedure, it is also standard practice. As already stated in our complaint, your office carefully screens all NGO submissions before deciding whether or not to publish them. Following are three examples.

UN Watch recently submitted a written statement—indeed to the very same March 2010 UNHRC session in which the organ-stealing blood libel was readily circulated—and your office refused to publish it as received. We were told to remove the word “regimes” where we had referred to the regimes ruling Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Second, we were then informed that our reference to “Burma” was not allowed—only the military junta’s adopted name of “Myanmar.”

The third example concerns a 2005 submission, in which UN Watch submitted a written statement to the now-defunct Sub-Commission on Human Rights. It featured excerpts from an article I had published in The New Republic. Our statement questioned the propriety of such serial human rights violators as Cuba, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia sitting on the UN Commission on Human Rights, and noted that “Havana, Harare, and the House of Saud” controlled the committee that ruled on victim petitions.

It further pointed out that Ms. Halima Warzazi, then head of the Sub-Commission—and today chair of the UNHRC Advisory Committee—was personally responsible for shielding Saddam Hussein from UN censure after Iraq’s 1988 genocidal gassing of Kurds in Halabja.

All of this was unacceptable to your office, which duly informed UN Watch that “when referring to certain States, Heads of States, or even certain members of the Sub-Commission, the language used was not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards.” NGO submissions, we were told, had to be “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect.” Until we made the required changes, your office informed us, processing of our statement was “suspended.”

Therefore, it is clear that not only does your office screen and, when so inclined, suspend NGO submissions, but its editorial policy appears, from a moral perspective, to be upside down: Pro-democracy statements that expose the serial human rights violators who sit in judgment on others at the UNHRC are rejected as being “not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards” and not “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect”; whereas hateful statements, which demonize Israelis as Nazi-like perpetrators of “ethnic cleansing” and “pogroms against Palestinians,” and accuse “Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli Army” of a conspiracy to steal organs of “dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians,” are approved, and, by necessary implication, deemed to be entirely in accordance with “accepted United Nations standards.”

Madame High Commissioner, how can this be the policy of the foremost intergovernmental agency charged with promoting human rights?

Worse, as I am sure you will agree, this is not the first anti-Semitic statement by EAFORD to be published, distributed and web-hosted under the imprimatur of the UN Human Rights Council, which has been on notice for some time about the hate emanating from this group.

In September 2008, your office reviewed, approved and circulated an EAFORD written statement (A/HRC/9/NGO/1) calling Israel an “illegal state”—an even harsher term than “regime.” Far worse, however, this text, in the guise of a rhetorical question, went on to accuse “Jews everywhere” of having “forgotten the terrors of the Holocaust to such an extent as to allow Israel to pursue and inflict one on the Palestinian people.”

After it was published, UN Watch immediately requested and obtained a private audience with then UNHRC President Martin Uhomoibhi. We explained that accusing “Jews everywhere” of complicity in a Nazi-like genocide amounts to the depiction of an entire people as absolute evil, which is anti-Semitism by any definition.

Indeed, as the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism recently testified before a committee of the U.S. Congress, “Criticism of Israel crosses the line to anti-Semitism when, for example, that criticism applies double standards, comparing a current policy of Israel to that of the Nazis, or holds all Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel, or denies that Israel has a right to exist… At the UN, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment often overlap.”

Sadly, however, this text accusing “Jews everywhere” of absolute evil remains published on your office website to this day (see second statement listed here), in contravention of the UN’s own anti-racism principles, as found in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Beyond these particular hateful statements, however, let us acknowledge the context in which this betrayal of founding UN values is allowed to occur, a broader culture of moral inversion that extends deeper, into the very essence of the UNHRC’s work:

* Since it was created in 2006, the council has issued 40 condemnations of countries—with 33 of them targeting democratic Israel. As a result, the world’s true abusers of human rights, including the most serious perpetrators, continue to go ignored.
* Out of the council’s nine emergency sessions that criticized countries, six have been against Israel. Recent and well-publicized killings of innocents—in Iran, China, Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Zimbabwe—have gone completely ignored.
* The council’s agenda, which governs every session, features a permanent item targeting Israel. No other country in the world is singled out in this fashion. The council’s anti-Israel resolutions, the one-sided Goldstone Report, the hateful statements by EAFORD—all of these appear under the rubric of this biased agenda item, which has come to symbolize the council’s systematic discrimination against Israel.

Madame High Commissioner, if the equality provisions of the UN Charter are to have any meaning, this bias—casting a shadow upon the reputation of the UN as a whole—must end.

In his historic 2004 speech, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged that “the United Nations’ record on anti-Semitism has at times fallen short of our ideals,” and in this context specifically cited the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with Racism as “an especially unfortunate decision.”

Secretary-General Annan pledged that “the human rights machinery of the United Nations has been mobilized in the battle against anti-Semitism.”

Madame High Commissioner, as the head of this human rights machinery, can you please tell us: Where is this mobilization, and where is this battle?

Secretary-General Annan specifically called on your office—whose resources include 982 employees and a budget in this biennium increasing from $312.7 million to $407.4 million—to “actively explore ways of combating anti-Semitism more effectively in the future.” He called on all parts of the Secretariat to be vigilant.

Madame High Commissioner, where is this vigilance?

Secretary-General Annan concluded his call to action by proclaiming that “Jews everywhere must feel that the United Nations is their home, too.”

Yet Madame High Commissioner, how can this be possible so long as your website continues to host a statement that, to a worldwide audience, declares “Jews everywhere” to be evil?

In conclusion, therefore, we urge you to overturn the rejection of our request, and to immediately remove these anti-Semitic texts from your website.

More broadly, we urge you to use your global podium to speak out—regularly and forcefully—against all manifestations at the UNHRC of demonization, disproportionality and double standards, which violate the noble principles upon which the United Nations was founded.

UN Watch is situated directly across from the UNHRC headquarters, and I stand ready to meet with you at any time to explore ways of achieving corrective action on these urgent matters.

Sincerely,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director

The Un Watch march 24, 2010 letter to the Human Rights Council.

NGO Urges UN to Stop Circulating ‘Israeli Organ Blood Libel’

Amb. Alex Van Meeuwen, President of the Human Rights Council
Ms. Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations European Headquarters
Geneva, Switzerland

March 24, 2010

Dear Mr. President,
Dear Madam High Commissioner,

As a human rights NGO dedicated to combating racism, UN Watch is alarmed to discover that the UN Human Rights Council, together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has, however unwittingly, helped to propagate an anti-Semitic blood libel by publishing it as an official United Nations document (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), which is now being distributed to country delegates — under the same Agenda Item in which they will soon vote on the Goldstone Report.

We call upon you to immediately cease circulating this racist, hateful and inflammatory text to the ambassadors and other delegates of the Human Rights Council; to gather up and destroy all existing copies; and to remove it from the Human Rights Council website.

The document in question is A/HRC/13/NGO/23, entitled “Israeli Illegal Trafficking in Organs of Dead and Kidnapped Palestinian Victims.” It was submitted by the “International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination,” also known as EAFORD. As shown on its website (http://www.eaford.org/), the raison d’etre of this UN-accredited organization is to accuse Israel of being a racist state. (The website also links to a video on U.S. action in Iraq, which it describes as a “Holocaust.”)

The statement begins by accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing and massacres,” creating the “largest open-air prison in the world,” perpetrating “economic genocide,” and having “let loose hordes of marauding gangs of Israeli illegal settlers” in order to “launch pogroms against Palestinians.”

It then proceeds to the principal charge: “Now it is the turn of the dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians. Their human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market. Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved, according to reports published in the Swedish press and criminal investigations in the United States.”

It goes on: “After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the digging of the graves and burial.”

Finally, the statement concludes by calling on “physicians, medical centers and associations everywhere to condemn and boycott Israeli physicians and medical centers.”

Your Excellencies, the accusation that the Jewish state and its doctors are engaged in a racist campaign to steal Palestinian organs has no basis in fact or reality, and is nothing less than the repackaging of the medieval blood libel that was used over centuries to incite anti-Semitic hatred, violence and pogroms against Jews.

The United Nations cannot allow itself to aid or abet such blatant incitement to racism. Given that the Office of the High Commissioner carefully screens all submissions before deciding to publish them-indeed, our own submissions to this session were edited to remove certain words referring to regimes such as Iran and Libya-we are deeply disappointed that this hateful text was accepted for publication as an official UN document, and that it is now being distributed as such within the Human Rights Council chamber.

We urge you to take immediate action in accordance with the principles of human rights, equality and anti-racism upon which the United Nations was founded.

Respectfully,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch
Geneva, Switzerland

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