​B’nai B’rith International President Gary P. Saltzman and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin have issued the following statement:
 
B’nai B’rith International strongly condemns the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) report that came out June 14 stating that Israel has used excessive force against Palestinians. This report was prepared by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), which issued an infamous report, in March 2017, accusing Israel of apartheid.
 
The U.N.’s report includes a slanderous accusation that Israeli security forces have been involved in “unlawful killings…which may have amounted to extrajudicial executions” in confrontations with terrorists carrying out (or attempting to carry out) attacks. Executions of Palestinians carried out by Hamas were not discussed in the report.

The ECOSOC report chides Israel for holding deceased terrorists’ bodies as a “collective penalty,” while Hamas has held Israeli citizens—both hostages and the corpses of slain service-members—in Gaza and is not condemned for it. This report also continues the U.N. assault on Jewish culture and history by absurdly claiming that Israeli archeological excavations are effectively illegitimate, a method Israel employs to “entrench its presence in the West Bank.”
 
These relentless anti-Israel accusations from the United Nations must end. Such defamation only mimics the Palestinian narrative and does nothing to advance peace in the Middle East.