Remarks to the UNHRC by B’nai B’rith International Representative – September 23, 2019
B’nai B’rith International’s representative to the UNHRC Sonia Elkrief delivered the below remarks to the international body on September 23, 2019.
Madam President,
Last month, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination examined Palestinians’ human rights record for the first time. The committee questioned the Palestinians on issues that we have raised before this Council for years: incitement to violence in Palestinian textbooks and vicious antisemitism in Palestinian media outlets. The Palestinian response to the critical examination was that all this is acceptable because, in their bigoted and hypocritical view, “Zionism is racism.”
Our response to that despicable canard is the same as it was when the General Assembly passed the infamous resolution in 1975: Jewish rights are human rights. Zionism, Jewish national self-determination, is simply the return of the Jewish people—who have long been a persecuted minority around the world—to their ancestral homeland, Israel. It is the fulfillment of the hopes and dreams of Jews going back to the expulsion and dispersion of Jews by the Romans and the Babylonians before them.
The General Assembly eventually revoked Resolution 3379, but clearly the spirit in which this resolution was passed lives on. Why else would it be possible for this Council to look the other way towards the antisemitism that is perpetuated by Palestinian leaders, let alone the terrorism against Israeli civilians? Why else would a body and member states that are always ready to advocate Palestinian statehood stay silent when the Palestinians—Israel’s supposed partner in the two-state vision—claim that the very right of Jews to have a state of their own is a racist and illegitimate endeavor?
Last month, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination examined Palestinians’ human rights record for the first time. The committee questioned the Palestinians on issues that we have raised before this Council for years: incitement to violence in Palestinian textbooks and vicious antisemitism in Palestinian media outlets. The Palestinian response to the critical examination was that all this is acceptable because, in their bigoted and hypocritical view, “Zionism is racism.”
Our response to that despicable canard is the same as it was when the General Assembly passed the infamous resolution in 1975: Jewish rights are human rights. Zionism, Jewish national self-determination, is simply the return of the Jewish people—who have long been a persecuted minority around the world—to their ancestral homeland, Israel. It is the fulfillment of the hopes and dreams of Jews going back to the expulsion and dispersion of Jews by the Romans and the Babylonians before them.
The General Assembly eventually revoked Resolution 3379, but clearly the spirit in which this resolution was passed lives on. Why else would it be possible for this Council to look the other way towards the antisemitism that is perpetuated by Palestinian leaders, let alone the terrorism against Israeli civilians? Why else would a body and member states that are always ready to advocate Palestinian statehood stay silent when the Palestinians—Israel’s supposed partner in the two-state vision—claim that the very right of Jews to have a state of their own is a racist and illegitimate endeavor?