Ironically, Albanese accuses democracies like France, Germany, Canada, and the U.S. of threatening and inciting violence against her simply for quoting her own antisemitic statements.

Anti-American Statements

• Albanese called the United States “a nation founded upon genocide.” (April 25, 2025). She spoke during Italy’s anti-fascist rally on Liberation Day, which commemorates the end of the country’s Nazi occupation.

• Albanese spread a conspiracy theory blaming the CIA and the Mossad for the 2015 Paris terrorist attack by ISIS that massacred Charlie Hebdo journalists. Immediately following the murders, Albanese posted an article from Iranian state-owned media PressTV with the title “CIA and Mossad carried out the Paris attack” (January 11, 2015).

• Albanese fundraised for her former employer UNRWA by posting that America is “subjugated by the Jewish lobby” (July 31, 2014).

• After the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Addameer for having been “long supported and is affiliated with the PFLP,” a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, Albanese affirmed her “full solidarity to @Addameer” (June 11, 2025).

• After President Trump signed an executive order authorising sanctions on the International Criminal Court, Albanese co-authored a letter condemning the move, calling it an “attack on global rule of law” (February 10, 2025). A month earlier, Albanese co-authored a letter opposing a passed U.S. House bill which imposed sanctions and cut funding to the ICC. The letter called it “shocking to see a country that considers itself a champion of the rule of law trying to stymie the actions of an independent and impartial tribunal set up by the international community, to thwart accountability” (January 10, 2025).

• In an written interview with the Irish Times, Albanese said that the second Trump administration is “wildly and fastly contributing to the dismantlement of the world order that was established after World War II, in the sense it is acting manifestly above and against the law.” She then called on “all the other members of the United Nations stand united against this. It’s really the united people of the world against the government of the United States of America” (May 17, 2025).

• Albanese retweets that “Trump like Churchill is the new white supremacist” (March 30, 2025).

• After the United States struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, Albanese wrote that “it is still not too late for the 191 other UN Member States to act” and “stand FIRM against rapacious lawlessness” (June 22, 2025).

• In a press conference, Albanese called “the U.S. politics under the current administration is terrible in many ways” although “when it comes to Palestine, the worsening is in the margins, if there is worsening at all, because the U.S. has always been that lawlessness driven.” Albanese then went on to accuse U.S. foreign policy as being controlled by Israel, stating that people “tend to refer to Trump’s plan to forcibly displace the Palestinians. No! This is the Israeli plan to displace the Palestinians, and President Trump, as its persona, is just saying that out loud” (December 11, 2024).

• Albanese invoked the Sandy Hook massacre, comparing it to Israel’s military operation in Gaza: “To U.S. audiences: in 5 months Israel has killed as many children as 675 Sandy Hook massacres combined. That is more than 4 Sandy Hook a day for Palestinian children. For 150 days. With US-manifactured [sic] weapons” (March 14, 2024).

• After being sanctioned by the U.S., Albanese says: “I mean, being accused from the U.S., look at what they’re doing to their own citizens—transgender. Look what they’re doing to their residents, to students. By the way, a country which was birthed from a genocide.”

• After President Trump’s vision to turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” Albanese condemned Trump’s “aggression” and called for “the 191 members of the UN who still have an interest in protecting themselves from this madness” to “recover from their paralysis and stand united against this imperialist lawlessness” (February 5, 2025).

• Shortly after President Trump’s second term began, Albanese co-authored a letter pleading that “the new US administration must recommit to human rights at home and abroad.” The letter continued that they “are alarmed by the United States’ escalating attacks on the international architecture of human rights, the rule of law, multilateralism, the principles of sovereign equality and self-determination, and vital international agreements on peace and security, climate change, global justice, and international cooperation” (February 27, 2025).

• Albanese told Spain’s Público that “many are used to being close to or within the U.S. sphere—for fear or for convenience. But no one is safe with a state that respects no agreements, that respects none of international law. The United States, together with Israel, is taking us back to a time before the last 60 years, when we had a system of rules—of international law—that limited the exercise of public power. But these states still act as empires. There are no rules, no limits. No one is safe in this system” (June 23, 2025, see 5:00 minute mark).

• Albanese called the U.S.-Israel humanitarian aid distribution venture a “concentration camp” representing the “worst humanity is capable of from the bastions of Power” (May 28, 2025).

• Albanese wrote that “it is about time that Israel and the U.S.—and those who enabled and armed the genocidal assault against the Palestinians—make plans to offer REPARATIONS to the Palestinian people to rebuild Gaza.” She added that the “Riviera plan does not count as reparation; rather as a rapacious attempt to continue to commit crimes in Palestine” (February 16, 2025).

• After Mahmoud Khalil was arrested for his anti-American and anti-Israel activism, Albanese co-authored a letter which called for his immediate release, while adding that “the arrest, detention, and pending deportation of Mr. Mahmoud Khalil marks a dangerous escalation in the U.S. Government’s crackdown on student activism and censorship of pro-Palestinian voices” (March 20, 2025). On Twitter, Albanese further called Khalil’s arrest a form of “apartheid” (March 11, 2025).

• After a poster referred to the U.S. plan to deliver humanitarian aid in Gaza via a floating pier as “truly the humanitarianism of idiots,” Albanese added that it is the “U.S. at its best” (May 26, 2024).

Anti-Western Statements

• Albanese said that “the idea of a pure race didn’t die with Hitler. It mutated. It still exists—it still lingers in this system, in the DNA of the Western system” (Spain’s Público, June 23, 2025, see 23:00 minute mark).

• Albanese writes that “500yrs of colonialism have left an imprint in the DNA of the West” (December 25, 2023).

• Albanese stated that “The absolute incapacity of Western leaders to enforce intl law when it comes to Israel is EPIC. Ministers, Prime Ministers, Presidents of Republic: Doing NOTHING, diverting attention, sanctioning individual ministers IS NOT enforcing the intl law that was developed after the Holocaust and WWII to prevent another Holocaust and WWII” (July 29, 2025).

• After European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that “Iran must never acquire the bomb,” Albanese responds that “the harm caused by the policies she has championed—whether for ideology or otherwise—demands scrutiny: they may have contributed to make Europe complicit in int’l crimes” (June 23, 2025).

• When then Vice-President of the European Commission Josep Borrell stated that “Europe is in danger and must learn to speak the language of power,” Albanese responded that “Europe must learn to speak the language of Respect and Integrity, which manifests, for example, by complying with international law without discrimination and double standards. Power, without Respect and Integrity, represents a threat, including for European citizens” (November 30, 2025).

• After Iran’s missile barrages targeting Israeli civilians, Albanese retweets that “the level of Orwellian confusion in Europe over Israel’s attack on Iran is staggering. It’s so sad to see the total inability of European leaders to think with their own heads (rather than act as derivatives of the US) in the Middle East” (June 15, 2025).

• After The Times U.K. publishes an article by Former Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, Albanese sarcastically tweets that this is “The West, at its best” (June 21, 2025).

• With regards to the EU-Israel Association Agreement—the legal framework for the EU’s trade relations with Israel—Albanese says that “what prevents the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement is just the moral bankruptcy of far too many European leaders.”

• In reference to an interview on Norwegian television in which Albanese was asked if she was an antisemite, Albanese states that “in fairness, this is how some crooks in our world (spoiler: there’s a high concentration in ‘the West’), think” (February 13, 2025).

• Albanese shares the quote that the “mainstream liberal West is still enamored with its own illusions and deceptions about what it is and what it represents to the rest of the world” (December 20, 2024).

• After Kenneth Roth claims that “Germany’s suppression of Palestinian activism is a ‘misunderstanding of the proper lessons of the Holocaust,’” Albanese adds that “It is part of the racism that Germany and other European countries seem to be unable to uproot” (March 5, 2025).

The post Francesca Albanes Hates America, Says West Has “Racism in its DNA” appeared first on UN Watch.

Ironic to appoint a person to a panel on Internally Displaced Persons when she did zero to stop Iran from aiding and abetting Assad to produce the biggest internally displaced population in the world: 6.2 million people, including 2.5 million children, displaced within Syria.

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 5, 2019

The High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement is tasked with finding “concrete long-term solutions” to resolve internal displacement and raise global awareness of the issue. Mogherini will serve with seven other members who are to convene four times before submitting final recommendations in early 2020.
UN Watch has previously called out the former EU foreign policy chief for her silence on critical human rights issues.
Mogherini failed to condemn the recent election of dictatorships to the U.N.’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which regulates human rights groups, oversees the U.N. women’s rights commission, and adopts resolutions on a vast array of global issues ranging from internet freedom to the treatment of prisoners.
Mogherini also remained silent in the lead-up to Venezuela’s election to the U.N. Human Rights Council, despite calls for her to speak out against the brutal Maduro’s regime bid for a spot on the world’s top human rights body.

The post Why is EU's Mogherini chairing UN panel on IDPs? appeared first on UN Watch.

GENEVA, March 18, 2019 – Member of European Parliament Péter Niedermüller today addressed the Rally for Equal Rights at the United Nations— see quotes below.
For links to other speakers’ quotes, videos, photos, livestream and more, click here.
Quotes on the UNHRC inquiry:

• The one-sided views of the UNHRC are deeply disappointing – Israel is being systematically singled out.
• There are more resolutions against Israel than some of the worst human rights abusers all together.

Quotes on Hamas:

• Hamas is unable and unwilling to work towards peace in Gaza, compared to Israel, a dynamic democracy.

Quotes on standing against anti-Semitism:

• We have to stand against anti-Semitism on both the left and right, as we have to stand with the State of Israel.

Quotes on standing up for Israel:

• It is a moral imperative for us to not allow Israel to become a partisan issue.
• We must reaffirm commitment to protection of Jewish State and find a solution with lasting peace.
• Israel has the right to defend its borders, as do all states. To fail to understand this and the complexity of the situation on the ground is ethically compromised and dishonest.

Full prepared remarks:
I’m proud to stay here today as a Hungarian Member of the European Parliament—the EU’s highest democratic body. I am here today as a member of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Israel. And I’m here as the vice president of the center-left oppositional party in Hungary, the Democratic Coalition. I’m here to express my support, my friendship, and my love to Israel.
I came this afternoon alone, but I am not alone, there are many friends of Israel, from across the political spectrum in the European Parliament: people who understand that support for Israel is not only a political issue – it is not a left or right issue – it is our moral responsibility.
Some of my colleagues on the left side of the Parliament do not share this understanding, however. They are blinded by old-fashioned leftist taboos and stereotypes. They have rather one-sided views born of prejudice, of insufficient knowledge and objectivity, and these are only fueled by uninformed passions, and distortions of the media.
We see the same, and in fact worse, here, at the United Nations Human Rights Council. And this is deeply, deeply disappointing. Israel is systematically singled out for criticism. Israel is the only country with its own agenda item, and more resolutions against it than the resolutions against some of the world’s worst human rights abusers all together. This is not just and not fair.
Today especially, we see the biased report of the Commission of Inquiry into Israel’s intervention at the Gaza border against Hamas-backed protesters earlier this year. I say to you today, what I said in the European Parliament, when the debate on the situation in the Gaza Strip came up for discussion:
Hamas – which the European Union rightly deems a terrorist organization – encouraged protesters to break through the border fence and to carry weapons, including homemade explosive devices; Hamas sent women and children near the border fence and didn’t allow Israeli aid transport in Gaza on 11 May and on 16 May. This is white feather. Hamas didn’t do anything to keep the demonstrations peaceful, but rather agitated for violence. Hamas is a political organization of hate. And we all know what consequences political hatred can have. So, to place responsibility on Israel’s shoulders alone is more than an error, it is a serious distortion of reality: As all states, Israel has the right to defend its borders. The responsibility of Hamas for the death of Palestinian civilians is therefore undeniable.
To fail to understand this, to fail to understand the complexity of the situation on the ground, is politically dishonest and ethically compromising.
Hamas has proven that it is unable and unwilling to work towards peaceful life in Gaza. Hamas is not interested in peace, accords or governing, they are interested only in hate-mongering. This is hugely in contrast with Israel, a real, lively and dynamic democracy.
As a center-left politician, it worries me that many right-wing populists across the world today lay claim to the protection of the Jewish State. I’ve seen this up close in my own country of Hungary – where good relations with Israel are used to shield how the government utilizes anti-Semitism for its political purposes, the systematic rewriting the history of Holocaust in Hungary, and the hate speech of state propaganda. Antisemitism is the shame of modern civilization, and it does not matter if it’s left- or right-wing antisemitism, we have to take a stand against it. Just as we have to stand with the state of Israel and only level criticism towards it where we would find fault with any other state.
That is why it is a moral imperative for us all to not allow for Israel to be a partisan issue, to reaffirm our commitment to the protection of the one Jewish State and to fight for constructive solutions for lasting peace. That is why I stand together with you to say Enough is Enough, end the anti-Israel bias. And that’s why I say once more, Enough is Enough!

The post Member of European Parliament Péter Niedermüller Speaks at UN Watch Rally Against Anti-Israeli Bias appeared first on UN Watch.

Even after we shamed U.N. Iran rights monitor Asma Jahangir to finally speak out after six days of silence, her tweet of “condolences” for Iranians arrested, beaten, tortured & killed is far weaker in its criticism or opposition to the Tehran regime’s brutality than, for example, her recent expression of outrage on the U.S. embassy move, which she called “extremely provocative,” saying it “will destroy” the peace process, and should be “vehemently opposed.”
Notably, Jahangir has failed to issue an official U.N. statement or press release on the Iran protests. Releases are sent out to world media and posted on the U.N. website, and can have potentially significant impact.

Iranian citizens have a right to unprovoked peaceful protest My condolences for the martyrs and urge end of violence

— AGHS Legal Aid Cell, Asma Jahangir's Law Firm (@Asma_Jahangir) January 2, 2018

Shifting embassies to Jerusalem is extremely provocative It will destroy all chances of a two State option It should be vehemently opposed

— AGHS Legal Aid Cell, Asma Jahangir's Law Firm (@Asma_Jahangir) December 5, 2017

“The European Union,” said Mogherini in a so-called Declaration that declared nothing, “is closely following the ongoing demonstrations in Iran, the increase of violence and the unacceptable loss of human lives…. The European Union will continue to monitor the situation.”
https://twitter.com/CatherineEUspox/status/947945834779463680
https://twitter.com/CatherineEUspox/status/947946035518824448
British foreign minister Boris Johnson said that the UK “is watching events in Iran closely.”
“We are following the protests in Iran very closely: both the actions of the demonstrators and the words of president Rohani,” Italian foreign minister Angelino Alfano stated late on Monday.

Pubblicato il: 02/01/2018 14:03 Italy is following Iran's escalating anti-government protests "very closely,"… https://t.co/vTRL1BjEXA

— Italianaradio (@italianaradio1) January 2, 2018

“The French authorities are closely following the situation in Iran,” according to a statement by a foreign ministry spokesman on Tuesday. “The right to protest freely is a fundamental right. The same is true of the free flow of information. France expresses its concern at the large number of victims and arrests,” he added.
Sweden’s FM is also “following” the demonstrations:

Following demonstrations in Iran. Important that further violence is avoided. Freedom of assembly is a basic human right.

— Margot Wallström (@margotwallstrom) December 31, 2017

The post EU & UN are all "closely monitoring" Iran protests appeared first on UN Watch.

November 30, 2017 – UN Watch commended the United Kingdom for “breaking with the EU common position for the first time and  opposing the UN General Assembly’s annual Syrian-backed resolution that condemned Israel for not giving the Assad regime control over the Golan and its 20,000 Druze residents,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based monitoring group.

The resolution is part of the annual 20 Arab-sponsored resolutions criticizing Israel directly or by implication. By contrast, the UNGA this year passed only one resolution each on Iran, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, Crimea and the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
The British delegate voted No, he told the assembly, because “resolutions which undermine the credibility of UN bodies risk hardening positions on both sides, and do little to advance peace or mutual understanding.”

“This is why we have voted against the resolution proposed by the Syrian regime regarding the occupation of Syria’s Golan.”

In addition to one Palestinian-backed resolution on the Golan, “this second resolution on the Golan Heights, proposed by the Syrian regime, repeats much of the same language , and adds nothing new. It is unnecessary, and disproportionate.”

“The Syrian regime’s intent is to use this additional resolution to deflect attention from its own criminal actions and indiscriminate slaughter of its own citizens. “

“The duty of the General Assembly is to draw attention to international humanitarian law violations, wherever they occur. This resolution risks discrediting that vital responsibility.”

1st time: UK breaks with EU, opposes Syrian-backed resolution that condemns Israel for not giving Assad regime control over Golan's 20,000 Druze. 'Resolutions which undermine the credibility of UN bodies do little to advance peace or mutual understanding.' https://t.co/nBE16U0dcx pic.twitter.com/IgIV4V6dNK

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 1, 2017

The post First time: UK breaks with EU, opposed Syrian-backed condemnation of Israel over Golan appeared first on UN Watch.

London adopts UN Watch statistics, announces it will oppose all resolutions on Israel if bias does not stop 

In an unprecedented move, Prime Minister Theresa May’s government changed the UK’s vote on Friday at the U.N. Human Rights Council on what it rightly called a “perverse” resolution condemning Israel for allegedly maltreating the Druze residents of the Golan Heights — and London warned that it would oppose all UNHRC resolutions on Israel if the UNHRC’s bias does not stop.
In past votes on the same text — introduced annually by Syria’s Assad regime, and more recently by the Islamic group acting as a surrogate — the UK had abstained, together with EU states.
This time, however, the UK joined the U.S. in voting No, in what experts say is a move by London to closely align itself with Washington. Brexit is about to begin and the UK increasingly needs to rely on close ties with America.
More significantly, the UK also declared on Friday that if the UNHRC doesn’t change its anti-Israel bias, they will begin to vote No on all five of the annual resolutions concerning Israel.
“Today we are putting the Human Rights Council on notice. If things do not change, in the future we will adopt a policy of voting against all resolutions concerning Israel’s conduct…”
To explain their new principled approach, the UK adopted UN Watch’s statistics showing the council’s bias, instead of numbers put out by the council’s champions which, in order to  downplay the UNHRC’s bigotry, dilute the figures by wrongly conflating consequential resolutions that condemn countries with toothless texts that praise countries.
Read more on UK vote change, watch video

 

Video goes viral: 2.2 million worldwide view UN Watch director’s
challenge to Arab regimes: “Where are your Jews?”
             

The speech by UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer asking Arab regimes “Where are your Jews?” has gone viral worldwide, with more than 2.2 million views since it was posted on Facebook  last week, and an additional 300,000 on YouTube, making it the most-viewed non-governmental speech in the history of the United Nations.  Click here for video.
The speech has also been translated into French, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and other languages.
French philosopher Raphaël Enthoven shared the video on Facebook and Twitter; Australian political columnist Andrew Bolt of Sky News dedicated a radio segment to praising it. Numerous blogs featured the speech.

The post Issue 630: UK breaks with EU, votes No on UNHRC's "perverse" anti-Israel resolution on Golan Heights appeared first on UN Watch.

New Report: China, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Malaysia deemed
“Not Qualified”; Guatemala, South Africa and Tunisia are “Questionable”

UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer, with Prof. Irwin Cotler, MPs, activists, families of political prisoners,
presents NGO report urging democracies to oppose dictators. Canadian Parliament, Oct. 5, 2016.

GENEVA, October 27, 2016 – As the UN is set to elect 14 nations tomorrow to its highest human rights body, UN Watch urged U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power and her UK, French, German and other EU allies to end their “deafening silence” on the candidacies of non-democracies, despite repeated pleas over the past month for them to speak out.
A 21-page joint NGO report was published by UN Watch, Human Rights Foundation and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, and circulated to UN diplomats. The report finds that China, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Malaysia and Rwanda, are “Not Qualified” under the U.N.’s own membership criteria.
The qualifications of Guatemala, South Africa and Tunisia were deemed “questionable” based on problematic human right records or in their UN voting records.
Sadly, all signs are that the UN will disregard its own rules and principles by tomorrow electing China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia — even though these regimes systematically violate the human rights of their own citizens and consistently frustrate UN initiatives to protect the human rights of others.
“For the UN to elect Saudi Arabia as a world judge on human rights would be like a town making a pyromaniac into chief of the fire department,” said Neuer.
UN Watch is proposing two major reforms to the election system:

1. If our own democracies continue to disregard the election criteria by voting for abusers then we should just scrap elections altogether, and make every country a member, as is the case in the General Assembly’s human rights committee, and as many proposed in 2005-2006 when the council was being shaped. At least that way Saudi ambassadors around the world could no longer hold up their UNHRC election as a shield of international legitimacy to cover up the abuses of their regime.
2. Second, vote trades flourish only in the darkness of the UN’s archaic secret ballot system for elections. We need to make all UN votes public; sunshine is always the best disinfectant. The UK and France may privately be voting for Saudi Arabia, but they would never dare do so publicly.

UN Watch has been leading the campaign this year with a coalition of NGOs to oppose the re-election of Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and Cuba, as well as the new election bids of Egypt, Iraq, Malaysia and Rwanda, by lobbying governments, and through online petitions, high profile parliamentary events, UN press conferences, university lectures, YouTube videos, and op-eds in the Washington Post and other major newspapers.
Regrettably neither the U.S. nor the EU has said a word about hypocritical candidacies that only undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the UN human rights system.
By turning a blind eye as human rights violators easily join and subvert the council, leading democracies will be complicit in the world body’s moral decline.
It will be an insult to their political prisoners and many other victims — and a defeat for the global cause of human rights — if the UN helps gross abusers act as champions and global judges of human rights.
When the U.N.’s highest human rights body becomes a case of the foxes guarding the henhouse, the world’s victims suffer.
*********
KEY RESOURCES
Following are key campaign resources for activists and journalists:
Report on Candidates
Click here for the report, by UN Watch, Human Rights Foundation and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, analyzing which candidates should be rejected.
Absurd Pledges by Dictatorships
Dictatorships have published and submitted to the UN absurd claims about their human rights record, which have been analyzed and exposed by UN Watch:

• Saudi Arabia’s absurd UNHRC campaign election platform
• China’s absurd UNHRC campaign election platform
• Cuba’s absurd UNHRC campaign election platform
• Russia’s absurd UNHRC campaign election platform
• Egypt’s absurd UNHRC campaign election platform
• Iraq’s absurd UNHRC campaign election platform

Quotes by Dissidents & Activists
Click here for quotable comments on the election by leading human rights dissidents and activists.
Petitions Online

• Expel Saudi Arabia from the UN Human Rights Council
• No to Vladimir Putin on the UN Human Rights Council

Advocacy Videos

• #StopSaudi: Vote NO to Saudi Arabia on the UN Human Rights Council
• #StopRussia: Right vs. Wrong at the UN

Victim Testimonies & Press Conferences
Click here for YouTube videos featuring victim testimonies, and NGO press conferences, opposing the election of abusers to the UNHRC for 2017-2019.
Op-Eds
Click here for the Washington Post op-ed by Yang Jianli, Chinese dissident and UN Watch board member, opposing the re-election of China.
Latest Blog Posts

• UK’s glossy Arabic brochure for UNHRC campaign suggests ‘squalid vote deals’

Click here to see more of UN Watch’s latest blog posts on all aspects of the 2016 UNHRC elections.

The post Issue 610: US, EU Must End Deafening Silence on Abusers' Election to UNHRC appeared first on UN Watch.

Masih Alinejad, Iranian journalist & women’s rights activist, at EU Parliament, Sept. 6, 2016

I ask Catherine Ashton, Federica Mogherini—all of you female politicians around the world—to stand for your own dignity.
Because if our government comes to visit Europe, and you ask the female politician, “Remove your hijab,” they will protest. They are not going to say that, “This is the law, we have to respect the law,” or, “This is the culture and we have to respect the culture.”

So that is why I say that European female politicians are hypocrites.
Because they stand up with the French Muslim women, and condemn the burkini ban—because they think compulsion is bad—but when it happens to Iran, they just care about money.
And they go to my country, and they ignore millions of those women who send their photos to me and put themselves in danger to be heard.
And [the European politicians] keep their smile, and wearing hijab, and saying this is a “cultural issue”—which is wrong.
This is the most visible symbol of oppression, and we have to stand all together and bring this wall down.
(Masih Alinejad won the Women’s Rights Award at UN Watch‘s 2015 Geneva Summit for Human Rights & Democracy.)

The post Masih Alinejad: Female politicians must challenge compulsory hijab appeared first on UN Watch.

Swedish delegate joins UK, France, Germany and other EU states today in voting “Yes” to single out Israel at the 2016 WHO world assembly, May 25, 2016.

GENEVA, May 25 — The UK, France, Germany and other EU states voted today for a UN resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab group of states and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel at the annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) as the only violator of “mental, physical and environmental health,” and commissioned a WHO delegation to investigate and report on “the health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory” and in “the occupied Syrian Golan,” and to place it on the agenda again at next year’s meeting.
By contrast, the UN assembly did not address Syrian hospitals being bombed by Syrian and Russian warplanes, or millions of Yemenis denied access to food and water by the Saudi-led bombings and blockade, nor did it pass a resolution on any other country in the world. Out of 24 items on the meeting’s agenda, only one, Item No. 19 against Israel, focused on a specific country. The resolution was worse than last year’s text, adding several new accusations, many of them beyond the WHO’s remit.
UN Reaches New Heights of Absurdity 
“The UN reached new heights of absurdity today,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, “by enacting a resolution which accuses Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan, even as in reality Israeli hospitals continue their life-saving treatment for Syrians fleeing to the Golan from the Assad regime’s barbaric attacks.”
“Shame on Britain, France and Germany for encouraging this hijacking of the annual world health assembly, and diverting precious time, money, and resources from global health priorities, in order to demonize Israelis, especially when, in reality, anyone who has ever walked into an Israeli hospital or clinic knows that they are providing world-class health care to thousands of Palestinian Arabs, as well as to Syrians fleeing Assad,” Neuer added.
“At the same time,” said Neuer, “UN Watch commends the principled stand taken by the U.S., Canada, Australia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Micronesia and Papua New Guinea in joining Israel to oppose perpetuating a politicized agenda item.” The U.S. and Canada both took the floor today to strongly object to the anti-Israel exercise.
The vote was 107 to 8 for the resolution, with 8 abstentions and 58 absent. The resolution calls for reports on a series of alleged Israeli violations, including on “the impact of prolonged occupation and human rights violations on mental,
physical and environmental health” in “the occupied Palestinian territory.”

The text also adopted three reports mandated by last year’s Arab-sponsored resolution: a “field assessment” on “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory”, a similar report by the WHO director-general, and a related report by the WHO secretariat.
UN’s 2016 World Health Assembly voting on today’s anti-Israel resolution, May 25, 2016

Palestinian and Syrian Submissions
By backing the measure, EU states joined in the delegitimization of Israel—in the form of a special debate, three lopsided reports, the resolution, and the publication of country submissions, including an inflammatory 59-page Palestinian submission which complains of a “racist separation barrier” while blaming increased Palestinian traffic accidents on the fear of “being pursued by settlers”; and a Syrian submission laced with anti-Semitic conspiracy tropes, yet circulated as an official UN document on the conference agenda, which alleges that “the Israeli occupation authorities” continue “to experiment on Syrian and Arab prisoners with medicines and drugs and to inject them with pathogenic viruses.”
Unable to deny Israel’s medical treatment of thousands of wounded Syrians, the regime accuses Israel of a plot: healing “armed terrorists from Jabhah al-Nusrah” so that they can “resume their subversive terrorist activities directed against the country’s peaceful citizens and its infrastructure.”
Iran and Syria Take the Floor
Several countries took the floor ahead of the vote. Iran said Gaza was under “an inhuman blockade.” Syria said “the occupying Israeli forces continue their immoral practice, which punish our people in the Golan.”
Egypt accused Israel of “disregard for basic human rights.” Pakistan spoke of Israel’s “devastation of the health system in the occupied territories” and of a “wave of terror against the Palestinian civilian population.”

UNRWA, which received more than $400 million from the U.S. last year, said the root causes of Palestinian medical problems include “interference with basic human rights as a result of numerous policies of the Israeli authorities.”
The whole was met with delight in the overflow room for media and NGO representatives, who snickered and scoffed when the Israeli delegate took the floor to denounce the politicized resolution.
EU Joined the Jackals
Had the EU wanted, they could have set the record straight, and taken a stand against such base demonization of the Jewish state. Disgracefully, however, Britain, France, Germany and all other EU states joined the jackals by voting for today’s resolution.
The EU states could have introduced their own resolution about how Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of its own people, destroying the health rights of the Syrian people.
Yet the EU was silent. Instead, it justified its vote by claiming in its speech that today’s resolution was “technical.” This is the old Brussels-Ramallah wink-and-nod game: the PLO submits a more inflammatory text at the beginning, knowing it will be revised later to allow the Europeans to pretend they achieved a “balanced” text. Israel is then expected to celebrate that it has been lynched with a lighter rope.
Last month, France and Spain voted for an Arab-sponsored UNESCO resolution that contained the wild conspiracy claim that Israel was “planting fake Jewish graves” in Jerusalem.
With today’s vote, which robs the world health organization of limited time and resources in order to portray Israel as the world’s only violator of health rights—when in fact Israel is the beacon of the entire region on promoting and respecting the health rights of all people—the entire EU now descends into irrationalism.
By scapegoating the Jewish state for all the world’s health problems, just as medieval Europe once accused the Jews of poisoning the wells, the EU aids and abets the UN and its World Health Organization to betray the cause of humanity and the very principles upon which they were founded.
Internet link to this release

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• UN Watch letter to EU
• UN Watch letter to Ban Ki-moon

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
UNITED NATIONS, April 13, 2015 – Out of possible deference to the nuclear talks with Iran, the EU and the US failed to stop the fundamentalist regime from winning a top post on UN Women, the world agency for women’s equality and empowerment, in sharp contrast to the West’s easy defeat of Iran’s 2010 bid by backing an alternative candidate, said UN Watch, the Geneva-based rights group, in a statement today.
“Electing the Iranian regime to the UN women’s rights board is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer. “The UN’s decision is an insult to all Iranian women and to all women’s rights advocates around the world,” he added.
In letters sent today (see PDFs above), UN Watch urged UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and EU High Representative Federica Mogherini to at least condemn the decision, “which sends absolutely the worst message to Iran’s women’s rights defenders, and to the world, concerning Iran’s dismal record on child marriages, forced head-coverings, domestic violence, and gender inequality,” said Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch.
“By elevating Iran to a global leadership post on women’s equality, the UN is legitimizing a regime that systematically treats women as second-class citizens.”
“The UN’s election of Iran by an overwhelming two-thirds majority is a moral outrage that threatens to undermine the UN Secretary-General’s own report on Iran’s pervasive discrimination against women,” said Neuer. Iran won 36 out of a possible 54 votes from the UN Economic and Social Council.
“Iran is considered one of the worst countries in the world on women’s rights, ranking 137th out of 142 countries in the latest Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum,” said Neuer.
Free Pass for Iran? EU & US failed to back alternative candidate
UN Watch pointed out that in 2010, the US and the EU strongly backed an alternative candidate, the otherwise weak East Timor, causing Iran to lose its bid that year for a seat the Executive Board of UN Women.
“This time, possibly in deference to the Iran nuclear talks, the West failed to back any alternative candidates. Although the U.S. admirably called a vote in protest, this came at the last minute and with no other candidates on the ballot, meaning Iran’s victory was guaranteed,” said Neuer.
“Did the U.S. and EU deliberately give Iran a free pass? This is something that that US and EU lawmakers should demand to know,” said Neuer.
“What makes Iran such an offensive choice is not only its abysmal record on women’s rights but also the fact that it’s aggressively going after women’s rights defenders who courageously speak out against misogynistic laws in the country,” he added.
“Time and again, Iran shows contempt to the founding purpose of UN Women, and should never have been elected to its board.”
Election of Iran Undermines UN Chief’s Own Report
In February, Mr. Ban reported to the UN Human Rights Council on Iran’s abysmal record on child marriages, forced head-covering enforced by morality police, acid attacks, domestic violence, spousal rape, state-enforced control of women by their husbands, and gross inequality in the workplace, education and public sphere.
Although UN officials sometimes claim their inability to criticize elections by member states, UN Watch’s letter to Ban recalled that UNESCO chief Irina Bokova rightly criticized the 2011 election of Syria to two human rights committees.
“Accordingly, we urge you to speak out forcefully against this cynical attempt by Iran to undermine the global struggle for women’s equality and empowerment,” wrote Neuer in the UN Watch letter to Secretary-General Ban.
Iranian Journalist Masih Alinejad Condemns Election of Regime

Writing to 700,000 followers of her Facebook page for Iranian women’s rights, journalist Masih Alinejad, winner of the 2015 Geneva Summit Women’s Rights Award, called the election “an insult to many Iranian women who are suffering from the lack of equal rights.”
“The existing laws in my country do not allow me as a woman to walk in public without wearing the veil; I, as a woman, do not even have the freedom to choose my own dress. The laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran do not allow me to travel or get an education without the permission of my husband. I cannot even get married without the permission of my father.”
“The laws in my country do not allow women to sing solo as our voice allegedly runs the risk of provoking men. Under laws of the Islamic Republic, my share of inheritance is half of that of my male relatives. Under the laws of the Islamic Republic, just last year more than 18,000 women ended up in court for being ‘badly veiled.’ UN Women was created by the United Nations as a body for gender equality and for the empowerment of women. If so, isn’t it an insult to women to give the leadership role to those governments that oppress their own women?”

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