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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 United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) for holding a two-day anti-Israel conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The event, predictably, turned into a marathon smear campaign against Israel, which featured anti-Semitic questions from the audience and calls by panelists for boycotts of Israel.

Saeb Erekat, a featured speaker on the event’s first day, said that “Hamas and the PFLP are not terrorist organizations.” Both organizations have long been involved in attacks that have sought to murder scores of Israeli civilians. The Palestinian Authority, which Erekat represented at the forum, continues to pay stipends to imprisoned terrorists and to family members of suicide bombers.

Erekat also made blatantly offensive comparisons between Israel and ISIS while saying—without any basis in logic—that the only way to defeat ISIS was to “end the occupation.” He further tried to smear Israel as an apartheid state, “deeper than the [apartheid] in South Africa.”

Responding to criticism that organizations tapped to speak at the conference had ties to the terrorist groups Hamas and PFLP, the chair of CEIRPP absurdly claimed that precautions had been taken to make sure that no organization or individual on the U.N.’s list of terrorists organizations were invited. That list, however, contains only ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliated groups and individuals.

This conference has plainly shown why the United Nations must end the mandate of CEIRPP when it comes up for a vote again this fall. U.N. member states must stop the millions of dollars that are being poured into bureaucratic organs within the U.N. system whose sole purpose is to propagate the Palestinian narrative and attack Israel.