B’nai B’rith International condemns the upcoming votes on anti-Israel resolutions by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), expected to take place March 24-25. The subjects of these one-sided resolutions include the attempt by a Turkish flotilla to break through an Israeli blockade designed to prevent access to Hamas-controlled Gaza; the Goldstone report—the biased accounting of the events during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s defensive operation in the Gaza Strip; the “Syrian” Golan Heights; and supposed Israeli human rights violations.
The draft resolutions demonstrate the misuse of the council to promote historical revisionism and Arab political leverage by referring to the Tomb of Rachel, a historically recognized Jewish holy site, as Bilal bin Rabah Mosque. “Tomb of Rachel” appears only in quotation marks and parentheses within the resolution, thus mocking Israel’s connection to a biblical matriarch and to the Holy Land. The resolution does not even bother to identify the “Al-Haram Al-Ibrahimi in Hebron” as the revered Tomb of the Patriarchs.
“The sheer number of resolutions against Israel relative to other countries continues to undermine any hope of legitimacy for the United Nations Human Rights Council,” B’nai B’rith International President Dennis W. Glick said. “The deck is decidedly stacked against Israel. Violations by other member nations are ignored and Israel is demonized at every session of the council.”
On March 21, B’nai B’rith delivered a formal statement to the council detailing its objections to the council’s preoccupation with vilifying Israel, and condemning remarks made by Richard Falk, the notorious U.N. special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.
Falk, in remarks made to the UNHRC on March 21, used the terms “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” to describe Israeli policies he disdains. Previously, the U.N. secretary-general and American diplomats had deplored Falk for reiterated conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
“Falk has positioned himself closer to the terrorists than to those struggling against terror,” B’nai B’rith International Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin said. “Falk’s delusional view of the Middle East makes him unfit to promote human rights. It is time for the Human Rights Council, and any special rapporteur on the Middle East conflict, to begin upholding Israelis’ fundamental human rights—beginning with the right to live.”
If anyone, it is Palestinian terrorists who promote “ethnic cleansing” through acts such as the March 11 murder of an Israeli family as they slept, the bombing of a bus in downtown Jerusalem on March 23 and rocket attacks on Beersheba and Ashdod that have indiscriminately victimized Israeli citizens.
B’nai B’rith’s statement to the council emphasized “the need to eliminate item 7 [the only country-specific permanent item] from the Council’s selective agenda as part of the forthcoming Review” of the body’s work, and “the dismissal of the Special Rapporteur, whose irresponsible statements caused so much damage to the prestige and credibility of this Council.”