Axis of Iran and Amnesty International Accuse Israel of “Apartheid”
UN Human Rights Council
49th Session, March 2022
Share: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
UN Palestine Rapporteur Michael Lynk: “Excellencies, this is apartheid. Israel has imposed on Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world. This system of alien rule has been established with the intent to maintain the domination of one racial-ethnic-national group over another.”
Ireland: “Ireland thanks the Special Rapporteur for his clear and direct report.”
Palestine: “Israel, with its practices, has gone beyond the classic concept of apartheid. It has concocted a colonial system merged completely with apartheid.”
Qatar: “Racist practices…”
Iraq: “A policy of racial discrimination…”
Syria: “The Syrian Arab Republic condemns these grave violations and war crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces and settler gangs. An apartheid regime…”
Cuba: “All of this is a flagrant violation of the UN Charter.”
Venezuela: “There is a policy of ethnic cleansing.”
Malaysia: “Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality…”
Lebanon: “This unique mix of occupation-apartheid…”
Mauritania: “Israel’s imposition of the apartheid regime against the defenseless Palestinian people.”
Islamic Republic of Iran: “The apartheid regime’s enablers and arbiters, including those providing military, material, and political support — such as the US, UK, Canada, Netherlands, Sweden, and others — that are also equating innocent victims with perpetrators, who are rationalizing Israeli brutalities as self-defense, must be held to account.”
Amnesty: “Amnesty International has, like others, concluded, after years of research and analysis, that apartheid describes the system of oppression and domination that exists in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.”
Hillel Neuer, UN Watch: Mr. President: Today’s report, which speaks of Jewish “domination and racism,” and of Israel as a “covetous alien power,” purports to be new. It is not.
These tropes are carbon copies of ideas developed in Moscow during the Cold War, weaponized with particular intensity in wake of the Six Day War.
A disinformation campaign by the Soviet Propaganda Department and KGB produced thousands of books and articles demonizing Israel and Zionism. This message was diffused worldwide in 80 languages.
In 1975, the campaign culminated in the infamous UN resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism. Years later, when Kofi Annan acknowledged that the UN’s record on antisemitism has “at times fallen short of our ideals,” he pointed to this odious act.
Thankfully, the text was repealed in December 1991—not accidentally, as the Soviet Union collapsed.
But the damage was done. An entire ideological camp that looked to Moscow was poisoned with antisemitic tropes dressed in the guise of virtue, of anti-racism.
We saw it when former London mayor Ken Livingstone, an ally of Jeremy Corbyn, declared that “Hitler was a Zionist.” We saw it when his wife, Kate Allen, used her position as head of Amnesty International UK, to echo this narrative, as they did in their latest campaign.
Many Amnesty members do vital work. But why does its leadership have no qualms about siding here with the world’s most oppressive regimes?
Why are the most vehement practitioners today of the KGB-inspired Zionism is Racism smear, now called Israel is Apartheid, the Islamic Republic of Iran, together with supposed anti-racist groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch?
As Israel hosted Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates for the Negev Summit, here in Geneva the Iranian regime and Amnesty International celebrated a UN monitor's report (which copied Amnesty's report) declaring Israel an ‘apartheid’ state. Then I took the floor: pic.twitter.com/9ulmj16VQ0
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 31, 2022
