B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:

B’nai B’rith International opposes the Palestinian Authority’s campaign to have its flag flown outside of United Nations headquarters with the flags of U.N. member states. The Palestinians secured status as a U.N. non-member observer “state” in 2012, but are not actual members of the world body.

This push comes as the Palestinian mission to the U.N. reportedly plans to submit a resolution calling for the flying of all “observer state” flags. An early draft of the resolution named both the Palestinians and the Vatican as non-member observer states that should have their flags flown. The draft resolution was apparently circulated without the Vatican’s authorization and the Holy See has asked the Palestinians to remove any mention of the Vatican from the draft.

The flags outside the United Nations represent U.N. member states and the Palestinian territories do not as of yet comprise a state, owing to the Palestinians’ consistent refusal to reach a meaningful, negotiated two-state solution that includes recognition of the Jewish state.

It would furthermore be inappropriate to fly the Palestinian flag as part of the Palestinian territories are illicitly ruled by the terrorist group Hamas, which is openly committed to the destruction of an existing U.N. member state, Israel.

The Palestinians cannot be the only one of the world’s countless communities with nationalist aspirations to be unilaterally and superficially afforded the trappings of sovereignty. The United Nations has long joined in insisting that the Palestinian conflict with Israel be settled exclusively through direct talks and agreement with Israel. Unrequited political concessions to the Palestinians only further remove any incentive for Palestinian leaders to finally enable their constituents to live alongside Israelis in peace.

After careful study, B’nai B’rith International has concluded that the Iran nuclear agreement is unlikely to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. We therefore call on Congress to reject the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

As we noted when the deal was announced on July 14, it is impossible to look at Iran’s track record and trust the regime to adhere to the terms of this pact.

The JCPOA requires an unprecedented suspension of disbelief that Iran has only peaceful intentions for its nuclear program. Given its decades of dissembling, it is infeasible to conclude that Tehran will honor its obligations under this agreement.

To be sure, the P5+1 (the United States plus China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany) worked hard during the long negotiating period to secure a deal. The goal of preventing an Iran with nuclear weapons is one shared by much of the world. But this deal is unlikely to fulfill that ambition.

B’nai B’rith appreciates the opportunities given us to meet with administration officials, to hear their explanation of the plan's details and to understand the reasoning behind some of the provisions of the agreement.

How to respond to Iran's nuclear weapons program is one of the most significant national security questions to face the United States in the past decade. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the issue has aroused such passion among so many. We respect that both Democrats and Republicans have approached this issue with great seriousness and have reached varying conclusions that sometimes cut across party lines. We further acknowledge that those who share the goal of blocking Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons may differ about the policy most likely to achieve that outcome.

Still, our reading of the agreement and our understanding of the political and historical context in which the JCPOA would be implemented have heavily influenced our decision to oppose it. 

“We listened, we read, we analyzed and we have concluded that we cannot support this deal with Iran,” B’nai B’rith International President Allan J. Jacobs said. “We have doubts about elevating the international status of Iran, which has done nothing to prove it will keep its word.”

Even in the days leading up to the agreement, on “al-Quds Day,” government supported crowds shouted, “death to America” and "death to Israel," as U.S. and Israeli flags were burned across the country. These are not the actions of a nation ready to find common ground with the world’s democracies.

Our concerns about the lifting of sanctions also have not been adequately resolved. Iran is the largest state-sponsor of global terror with its proxies such as Hezbollah the world over. Tehran is likely to use the cash that will flow from the absence of sanctions to fund the regime's ongoing terrorist ambitions. The specter of "snapback sanctions" provides little comfort, as measures that took the international community years to coalesce around are unlikely to be rejuvenated once they have been dismantled.

Nor are our questions about the verification process satisfied by the JCPOA. Verification remained a sticking point throughout the labored negotiating process and, in the final document, is still not addressed to our comfort. In light of the deal's significant verification loopholes and Iran’s history of concealing its nuclear program and turning away inspectors, it is logical to conclude that inspectors will never obtain the unmanaged, unfettered or spontaneous access necessary to monitor Iran’s nuclear sites.

“There is no middle ground here. Iran’s credibility is illusory. The stakes are far too high to ignore Tehran’s history of deception by accepting this deal,” B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin said.

At no point during the nearly two years of negotiations has Iran lessened its support for terrorist organizations, its goals of hegemony in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East or its continued abuse of human rights.

Just days after the deal was announced, Iran again invoked its practice of deception. News reports indicate that Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the secretive, terror-orchestrating Iranian Quds Force, met with senior Russian leaders in Moscow, even though he was barred from leaving Iran by a U.N. Security Council resolution. The Quds Force reports directly to Iran’s supreme leader and has exported terror throughout the Middle East and beyond.

These are not the actions of a regime capable of demonstrating the transparency and cooperation required of it by the terms of this deal. 

We firmly reject the notion that the only alternative to this agreement is war. We have long advocated that the best means of ensuring Iran's compliance with international demands is pressure—in the form of ever-tightening sanctions, combined with diplomatic isolation and the credible threat of military force. The international community should respond to Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons by increasing, rather than relieving, pressure on the regime until it has produced meaningful results.

 B’nai B’rith International urges Congress to vote next month to disapprove of the agreement. 

NYC Snowstorm Forces Postponement of U.S. Event

Every year on January 27 the world recognizes United Nations Holocaust Remembrance Day, a date selected marking the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland. 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation and B’nai B’rith International was active throughout Latin America, commemorating this important day.

In Uruguay an exhibit on Anne Frank was created and inaugurated in Montevideo’s city hall, the capital and the country’s largest city. Uruguayan President José Mujica attended the event, addressing the audience and the entire nation in a speech broadcast on radio and television. Mujica’s remarks focused on the evils of the Shoah and the atrocities of genocide. Meanwhile, the General Assembly of Uruguay held a solemn session in which representatives of all parties addressed the legislature in commemoration of the Holocaust. B’nai B’rith, the overall Jewish community and the Ministry of Education also hosted an academic event titled “70 Years After Auschwitz was Closed” at Montevideo city hall.

With all the tensions swirling within Argentina following the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman—the man responsible for investigating the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building that killed 85 and wounded 300—Holocaust Remembrance Day in Buenos Aires was extremely emotional. Typically the commemoration ceremony is organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice and the Undersecretary of Human Rights, but amid the questions surrounding Nisman’s death all Jewish organizations declined to attend. B’nai B’rith has formally declined an invitation for the past two years following Argentina’s signing of the “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran, an agreement which purports to investigate the terror attack.

Instead, a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony was held at the AMIA building. The commemoration was a crowded, emotional scene as Holocaust survivors were present and the AMIA president spoke on behalf of the Jewish organizations present. B’nai B’rith Argentina President Mario Wilhelm lit the fourth candle on the menorah on behalf of partisans and Jewish fighters who died while resisting the Nazis.

B’nai B’rith sponsored a Holocaust Remembrance Day program in Santiago, Chile as well, where it was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with ministers, ambassadors, civilian, religious and military authorities, survivors and their families in attendance.  

Minister of Foreign Affairs Heraldo Muñoz addressed the audience, highlighting the government’s commitment to protecting minorities in Chile and the urgent need to reject all types of discrimination pervasive in society.

Executive Vice President of the National Institute of Human Rights and winner of the Light and Memory Award Lorena Fries also spoke, as did B’nai B’rith Chile President Emma Finkelstein.

In her remarks, Finkelstein discussed the main threats to Israel, Jews around the world and to Chile. She acknowledged the success of the Anti-Discrimination Act that was enacted last year, but regretted the fact that anti-Semitism was not explicitly included as a means of discrimination. Finkelstein also called for a bill seeking to establish hate speech as a crime and for the Holocaust to be included in the official curriculum of the Ministry of Education. 

“On behalf of the Jewish community and as president of B’nai B’rith Chile,” Finkelstein said, “we know it is our obligation to raise our voice and condemn these actions that we hope will not be accepted by the international community. We owe it to the dead but, above all, we owe it to the living, to our children as well as to your children.”

In Brazil two ceremonies were held, including an interreligious ceremony with Christians and Muslims at the Congregação Israelita Paulista in São Paulo. The second ceremony was hosted by the Ministry of External Affairs at the Itamaraty Palace with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in attendance. 

Unfortunately, a snow storm in New York City forced the postponement of B’nai B’rith International’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day program at the United Nations. This year’s program was to focus on Arturo Toscanini, one of the most renowned orchestral maestros of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Tuscanini was a staunch anti-fascist who publicly took a hard-line stance against the oppression and racism of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler and supported the establishment of the orchestra now known as the Israel Philharmonic in 1936 in solidarity with young Jewish musicians escaping Nazi persecution. The B’nai B’rith program was to be held in partnership with the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations. The event will be rescheduled.

B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:

Well before last week’s attack on a kosher market in Paris that left four Jews dead, 37 countries sent a letter to the president of the United Nations General Assembly expressing concern over “the global outbreak of anti-Semitism” and calling for a session on combating violence and hatred directed toward Jews.

The attack that occurred last week only solidifies the need to have an urgent conversation about anti-Semitism in the world today.

The appeal from countries including the United States, Israel, Canada, Australia and all members of the European Union prompted the U.N. General Assembly to schedule a first-time meeting on anti-Semitism on Jan. 22.

B’nai B’rith International commends this effort by participating countries to take a focused approach to tackling the scourge of global anti-Semitism. 

Bringing this issue to the U.N. General Assembly is one notable step in fighting this pernicious form of hatred and B’nai B’rith will look for it to be built upon with concrete, consistent action by governments, international agencies and civil society. 

B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:

B'nai B'rith International strongly condemns Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas's reported unilateral application to some 20 international bodies, including the membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

Abbas, who has engaged in a governing partnership with Hamas—the radical Islamist terrorist movement that rejects Israel's existence and has repeatedly prompted regional bloodshed—has threatened to escalate a campaign to malign and harm Israel internationally by joining the court and targeting Israelis with war crimes charges there. 

The step follows the United Nations Security Council's decision Tuesday to reject a Palestinian ultimatum for forcing the unconditional fulfillment by Israel of Palestinians' political demands.

Abbas’ path of confrontation and unilateralism gravely violates his responsibility to end the conflict through meaningful direct negotiations and compromise with Israel.  His path also denies Israel basic guarantees of its security and recognition as a Jewish state.

The PA’s machinations—including the submission of a polarizing, unacceptable security council motion that had been poised to fail—have made patently clear its unpreparedness to make the hard decisions necessary to finally achieve peace and coexistence. 

In order to preserve the essential principle of conflict resolution through negotiation, and the fundamental right and duty of responsible states to combat terrorism, Palestinian exporting of political grievances to The Hague must be firmly rejected internationally. 

Otherwise, Middle Eastern tensions will only worsen, and Palestinians' own atrocities, in stark contrast with the singular restraint of the region's only pluralistic democracy, will surely come into sharper focus.

It is time for the PA to stop hijacking key international bodies and to begin contributing, as Israel long has, to a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:

B’nai B’rith International commends the United States and Australia for voting today against a Palestinian resolution submitted to the United Nations Security Council on Monday that would have imposed an arbitrary deadline and terms for settling the Palestinian-Israeli issue. By bringing its list of demands to the United Nations and attempting to force Israel to acquiesce through a third party, the Palestinian Authority (PA) sought to exploit the world body to advance its political agenda.

B’nai B’rith has vocally objected to any PA attempt to deliver an ultimatum for Israeli compliance with its objectives. This latest circumvention of negotiations with Israel is no different. In typical PA fashion, the resolution blatantly failed to ensure Israel’s security and identity as a Jewish state.

We applaud the United States and Australia for their commitment to push back against these efforts in defense of a genuine and constructive path to peace. The two votes against, combined with five abstentions from Lithuania, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Korea and the United Kingdom denied the Palestinians the minimum of nine votes needed to adopt the resolution. 

The countries that voted in favor of the one-sided resolution—in contravention of longtime international insistence upon direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations—were Argentina, Chad, Chile, China, France, Jordan, Luxembourg and Russia.

Peace can only be achieved through meaningful, bilateral negotiations. The PA’s continued internationalization of the conflict with Israel has only exacerbated the situation. Those countries that genuinely seek a peaceful resolution of this conflict must impress upon the Palestinians to cease exporting and enflaming the conflict by joining new multinational bodies, beginning with the International Criminal Court, in an effort to deploy them as political weapons against Israel. 

On Dec. 22, B’nai B’rith International sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to request a clear, public pledge of American opposition to Palestinian and other efforts to impose political demands on Israel through the United Nations. The Palestinian Authority has launched a new effort to deliver an ultimatum for Israeli compliance with its political objectives, this time at the U.N. Security Council. As B’nai B’rith International President Allan J. Jacobs and Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin write to Kerry in the letter, this latest circumvention of negotiations with Israel is unacceptable and the United States must consistently push back against these efforts, employing its veto power in the Security Council when necessary, if peace is to be achieved.

Jacobs and Mariaschin write: “As you know, the Palestinian Authority has openly spoken of its strategy to ‘internationalize’ the conflict with Israel, and this further politicization of global institutions in the context of an already difficult regional reality is the last thing needed in the pursuit of calm, reconciliation and peace in the Middle East. Sadly, [last] week, a draft Security Council resolution was circulated that would unacceptably dictate demands of Israel outside the framework of direct negotiations and mutual compromise with the Palestinians. In the event that its inherent ultimatum is not met, the Palestinian Authority has even threatened to import tensions with Israel to the International Criminal Court, dangerously risking impediment to essential counterterrorism efforts. Reportedly, other actors in the international community have also considered advancing their own related proposals at the Security Council.

The UN – along, of course, with the U.S., the European Union and Russia – is a member of the Quartet on Middle East peace, which long ago established that Palestinian-Israeli disputes can be resolved only through serious, meaningful bilateral talks. As a critical element of foreign policy, and a reflection of broad-based bipartisan commitment, the U.S. has consistently stood against the exploitation of the UN as a political tool against our key ally, Israel. It is vitally in the American national interest, and in the interest of a genuine and lasting peace, that the U.S. make known publicly and unambiguously that it will oppose a Palestinian posture of unilateralism and confrontation in global bodies, let alone motions that fail to uphold Israel’s security needs and identity as a Jewish state.”

To read the full letter, click here.

B’nai B’rith International has been a leader in advocating for the United Nations to place Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish year, on the list of Christian, Muslim and other holidays officially recognized by the world body. In recent months B’nai B’rith has challenged members of the United Nations to quickly embrace a new initiative to add Yom Kippur, pushing the issue in a New York Times op-ed and bringing the conversation to the international forefront.

With the United Nations set to make a decision on Yom Kippur, B’nai B’rith International President Allan J. Jacobs, Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin and Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs David J. Michaels wrote to U.N. missions urging them to support the Yom Kippur initiative.

In the letter, Jacobs, Mariaschin and Michaels write:

“The Jewish people have observed Yom Kippur, the most sacred day of the Jewish calendar, for thousands of years. It is a day when millions of Jews seek forgiveness and self-improvement in the hope of creating a better life and, ultimately, a better world. ‎

We believe that the time has come for the United Nations to add Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to its calendar. ‎‎The initiative to add Yom Kippur to the UN calendar would represent a modest but meaningful step in helping the UN to better live up to its Charter's embrace of diversity and respect for peoples large and smal‎l.‎

The UN is headquartered in New York City, the city with the largest Jewish population in the Diaspora. There is an active Jewish presence at UN Headquarters, among secretariat staff, diplomats, and NGO representatives alike. These contributors to the work of the UN, hailing from some of the roughly 120 UN member states where organized Jewish communities can be found, should not be forced to choose between violating their religious beliefs and neglecting professional demands.

We strongly urge you to support adding Yom Kippur to the UN calendar, alongside other religious and civil holidays.”

Click here to read the full letter.

B’nai B’rith International has issued the following statement:

B’nai B’rith International condemns U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for attributing the 50-day summer hostilities between Israel and Hamas to “a restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century” while speaking at the Cairo conference on reconstruction in Gaza on Oct. 12.

Ban said “we must not lose sight of the root causes of the recent hostilities: a restrictive occupation that has lasted almost half a century, the continued denial of Palestinian rights and the lack of tangible progress in peace negotiations.”‎

The secretary-general should refrain from making biased, inflammatory remarks perpetuating a false image of Israel as an occupying aggressor. Ban, in his comments, did make mention of Hamas rocket attacks that were “fired indiscriminately causing fear, panic and suffering.” However, he does not account for anti-Israel terrorists’ role in igniting and sustaining conflict—a stunning and inexplicable omission.

Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, just as it did in Sinai after reaching a peace treaty with Egypt. In return for leaving Gaza, Israel received intensified attacks and threats against its citizenry. Israel has also repeatedly offered Palestinian statehood and the provision of all of Palestinians’ needs in sweeping peace offers—but these have been declined without fail by the Palestinian Authority leadership. Hamas, for its part, is doctrinally committed to the total destruction of the Jewish state.

Combating other Islamist groups, like ISIS, while ignoring or handing propaganda victories to ones like Hamas is unconscionable and no service to advancing Palestinian-Israeli peace. The open fanaticism, terrorism and armament of Arab extremists is the patent “root cause” of recurring conflict with Israel.