B’nai B’rith President Robert Spitzer and CEO Daniel S. Mariaschin have issued the following statement:

As Israel intensifies its efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weaponry—and as Israeli civilians are being devastated with an unprecedented barrage of Iranian missiles—B’nai B’rith International has spoken at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to deplore outrageous claims of Israeli “crimes against humanity” while the body has been silent on an explicit Tehran-led goal of destroying the Jewish state.

In response, the council president suggested without explanation that the B’nai B’rith comments were disrespectful or off-topic.

In an interactive dialogue between the UNHRC and its latest anti-Israel “commission of inquiry” (COI), B’nai B’rith Director of U.N. and Intercommunal Affairs David Michaels highlighted the “unsurpassable polemic” of the commission’s newest report. That report, he noted, outrageously “accuses Israel—and Israel alone—of undermining another people’s identity, survival and ties to a land. It accuses Israel—and Israel alone—of the crime of ‘extermination.’ And it accuses Israel—and Israel alone—of possible ‘genocidal intent.’”

Addressing the UNHRC, with COI chairperson Navi Pillay present, Michaels said: “I urge those reading the COI’s output to compare the expressly genocidal, exterminationist rhetoric of Iran’s leadership with the foundational documents of the State of Israel. I urge them to weigh Israel’s military capacity alongside the diverse democracy it, uniquely, has built. I urge them to contrast Israel’s establishing of peace with every willing Arab neighbor—and its sweeping peace overtures to the Palestinians from 1947 through 2008—with the ideology and actions of Iran, a regime that has sponsored terrorism globally, impoverished its people while mass producing missiles and spent decades on an illicit nuclear program mere weeks away from a potential bomb.”

“If this COI were interested in the root causes of conflict,” he concluded, “it would show some interest in the open intentions of those who chant, ‘Death to America, death to Israel.’”

In response, the council president paused to say, “I would like to request all participants to deal with the issues we are dealing with in this council with the necessary dignity and respect, and I call upon all participants to ask questions or make comments in relation to the scope of the current dialogue.”

The president—who simply said “thank you” to other speakers baselessly accusing Israelis of extermination, genocide and even systematic “sexual and reproductive violence”—did not elaborate on how B’nai B’rith may have been disrespectful, nor on how Iran’s persistent policy of preventing Israeli-Palestinian peace was beyond the legitimate “scope” of the discussion.

The speaker after Michaels, from Human Rights Watch, herself singled out Israel for accusation of alleged “atrocities” and “extermination.” Citing the international Genocide Convention, she singled out Israel—not Palestinians, Iran or other enablers of terrorists such as those of Hamas—for a call for countries to impose an arms embargo on it, sanction its officials, review (“with a view to suspending”) bilateral agreements with it, and more, including “recognizing Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

The UNHRC’s president again simply responded: “Thank you.”

Michaels’s intervention may be watched here.

B’nai B’rith, active and officially accredited at the United Nations since the time of its founding, will continue to hold the world body to its founding values in the aftermath of the Holocaust—and stand up for Jews’ right to life, safety and equality today.