Ms. Navanethem Pillay
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland

cc: Rupert Colville, OHCHR Spokesperson

April 28, 2010  

Dear High Commissioner Pillay,

We wrote you on March 24, 2010, requesting that the UN Human Rights Council website cease hosting an anti-Semitic text (A/HRC/13/NGO/23) that, in a modern adaptation of the medieval blood libel, falsely accuses Israeli doctors of a racist conspiracy to steal Palestinian organs.

We are grateful to have recently received a reply, sent from Chief of Human Rights Council Branch Eric Tistounet. This response, however, rejects UN Watch’s request while ignoring our argument. We urge you to overturn this decision, for the reasons explained below, and to immediately remove all such hateful material from the UN website. We also call on you to speak out against the moral inversion that, in its mere four years of existence, has already become the hallmark of the UN Human Rights Council.

First, we address your office’s reply. It justifies doing nothing about the text submitted by the “International Organization for Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” (EAFORD) — a group created in Libya and closely tied to Col. Kaddafi’s regime — on grounds that the UN purportedly plays no screening role, simply publishing all submissions as received.

That premise is demonstrably untrue.

Mr. Tistounet quotes from the footnote of the UN cover sheet affixed to NGO written statements, which indicates that the latter are “unedited.” This quote, however, is selective, incomplete and misleading.

The same cover sheet indicates at the top that such statements are circulated “in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.” As your officers well know, Article 31 of that resolution requires them to engage in a process of “appropriate consultation” with the submitting organization, with the latter required to give “due consideration” to any “comments” that your officers may make “before transmitting the statement in final form.”

In other words, contrary to the premise that forms the basis of Mr. Tistounet’s decision, the rules say explicitly that your office does play a screening role.

Not only is this the official procedure, it is also standard practice. As already stated in our complaint, your office carefully screens all NGO submissions before deciding whether or not to publish them. Following are three examples.

UN Watch recently submitted a written statement — indeed to the very same March 2010 UNHRC session in which the organ-stealing blood libel was readily circulated — and your office refused to publish it as received. We were told to remove the word “regimes” where we had referred to the regimes ruling Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Second, we were then informed that our reference to “Burma” was not allowed — only the military junta’s adopted name of “Myanmar.”

The third example concerns a 2005 submission, in which UN Watch submitted a written statement to the now-defunct Sub-Commission on Human Rights. It featured excerpts from an article I had published in The New Republic. Our statement questioned the propriety of such serial human rights violators as Cuba, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia sitting on the UN Commission on Human Rights, and noted that “Havana, Harare, and the House of Saud” controlled the committee that ruled on victim petitions.

It further pointed out that Ms. Halima Warzazi, then head of the Sub-Commission — and today chair of the UNHRC Advisory Committee — was personally responsible for shielding Saddam Hussein from UN censure after Iraq’s 1988 genocidal gassing of Kurds in Halabja.

All of this was unacceptable to your office, which duly informed UN Watch that “when referring to certain States, Heads of States, or even certain members of the Sub-Commission, the language used was not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards.” NGO submissions, we were told, had to be “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect.” Until we made the required changes, your office informed us, processing of our statement was “suspended.”

Therefore, it is clear that not only does your office screen and, when so inclined, suspend NGO submissions, but its editorial policy appears, from a moral perspective, to be upside down: Pro-democracy statements that expose the serial human rights violators who sit in judgment on others at the UNHRC are rejected as being “not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards” and not “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect”; whereas hateful statements, which demonize Israelis as Nazi-like perpetrators of “ethnic cleansing” and “pogroms against Palestinians,” and accuse “Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli Army” of a conspiracy to steal organs of “dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians,” are approved, and, by necessary implication, deemed to be entirely in accordance with “accepted United Nations standards.”

Madame High Commissioner, how can this be the policy of the foremost intergovernmental agency charged with promoting human rights?

Worse, as I am sure you will agree, this is not the first anti-Semitic statement by EAFORD to be published, distributed and web-hosted under the imprimatur of the UN Human Rights Council, which has been on notice for some time about the hate emanating from this group. 

In September 2008, your office reviewed, approved and circulated an EAFORD written statement (A/HRC/9/NGO/1) calling Israel an “illegal state” — an even harsher term than “regime.” Far worse, however, this text, in the guise of a rhetorical question, went on to accuse “Jews everywhere” of having “forgotten the terrors of the Holocaust to such an extent as to allow Israel to pursue and inflict one on the Palestinian people.”

After it was published, UN Watch immediately requested and obtained a private audience with then UNHRC President Martin Uhomoibhi. We explained that accusing “Jews everywhere” of complicity in a Nazi-like genocide amounts to the depiction of an entire people as absolute evil, which is anti-Semitism by any definition.

Indeed, as the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism recently testified before a committee of the U.S. Congress, “Criticism of Israel crosses the line to anti-Semitism when, for example, that criticism applies double standards, comparing a current policy of Israel to that of the Nazis, or holds all Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel, or denies that Israel has a right to exist… At the UN, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment often overlap.”

Sadly, however, this text accusing “Jews everywhere” of absolute evil remains published on your office website to this day (see second statement listed here), in contravention of the UN’s own anti-racism principles, as found in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Beyond these particular hateful statements, however, let us acknowledge the context in which this betrayal of founding UN values is allowed to occur, a broader culture of moral inversion that extends deeper, into the very essence of the UNHRC’s work:

• Since it was created in 2006, the council has issued 40 condemnations of countries — with 33 of them targeting democratic Israel. As a result, the world’s true abusers of human rights, including the most serious perpetrators, continue to go ignored.

• Out of the council’s nine emergency sessions that criticized countries, six have been against Israel. Recent and well-publicized killings of innocents — in Iran, China, Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Zimbabwe — have gone completely ignored.

• The council’s agenda, which governs every session, features a permanent item targeting Israel. No other country in the world is singled out in this fashion. The council’s anti-Israel resolutions, the one-sided Goldstone Report, the hateful statements by EAFORD — all of these appear under the rubric of this biased agenda item, which has come to symbolize the council’s systematic discrimination against Israel.

Madame High Commissioner, if the equality provisions of the UN Charter are to have any meaning, this bias — casting a shadow upon the reputation of the UN as a whole — must end.

In his historic 2004 speech, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged that “the United Nations’ record on anti-Semitism has at times fallen short of our ideals,” and in this context specifically cited the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with Racism as “an especially unfortunate decision.”

Secretary-General Annan pledged that “the human rights machinery of the United Nations has been mobilized in the battle against anti-Semitism.”

Madame High Commissioner, as the head of this human rights machinery, can you please tell us: Where is this mobilization, and where is this battle?

Secretary-General Annan specifically called on your office — whose resources include 982 employees and a budget in this biennium increasing from $312.7 million to $407.4 million — to “actively explore ways of combating anti-Semitism more effectively in the future.” He called on all parts of the Secretariat to be vigilant.

Madame High Commissioner, where is this vigilance?

Secretary-General Annan concluded his call to action by proclaiming that “Jews everywhere must feel that the United Nations is their home, too.”

Yet Madame High Commissioner, how can this be possible so long as your website continues to host a statement that, to a worldwide audience, declares “Jews everywhere” to be evil?

In conclusion, therefore, we urge you to overturn the rejection of our request, and to immediately remove these anti-Semitic texts from your website.

More broadly, we urge you to use your global podium to speak out — regularly and forcefully — against all manifestations at the UNHRC of demonization, disproportionality and double standards, which violate the noble principles upon which the United Nations was founded.

UN Watch is situated directly across from the UNHRC headquarters, and I stand ready to meet with you at any time to explore ways of achieving corrective action on these urgent matters.

Sincerely,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director

The post Appeal to UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay on myth of Palestinian organ stealing appeared first on UN Watch.

Though it claims in its official UN filings to be a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting universal human rights, EAFORD appears instead to be a front group for one of the world’s worst human rights violators: the Libyan regime of Moammar Kaddafi. Its raison d’etre is demonizing Israel as a racist state. The GONGO also foments hatred against America and the West, in the past by publishing the works of various fringe figures.

EAFORD was established in Libya in 1976:

“EAFORD” is the abbreviated name of the International Organization for the Elimination of Ali Forms of Racial Discrimination, established by an International Symposium held in Tripoli (Libya) during 24-28, 1976. It was attended by close to 500 participants from eighty countries representing ali continents. Papers, by invitation, were presented. A selection of those papers was published in book form, entitled Zionism and Racism…See https://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/44/684/8706.pdf

The group’s additional ties to the murderous Libyan regime of Col. Moammar Kaddafi abound:

• The late Mansour al-Kikhya, Libya’s former Foreign Minister and ambassador to the UN, was a member of EAFORD’s Executive Council (see preface at https://www.eaford.org/publications/1/9-11.pdf). The EAFORD website still lists him as a member.
• EAFORD’s President is Abdullah Sharfelddin, former President of the state-controlled Libyan Bar (see preface at https://www.eaford.org/publications/1/9-11.pdf). In 2003, he defended the regimes of Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• The executive director of EAFORD is Hanan Sharfelddin, presumably the daughter of Abdullah Sharfelddin. In 2001, she delivered a UN speech for EAFORD objecting to sanctions against the Libyan regime.
• Libya’s former Oil Minister Fuad Kabazi is another member of EAFORD’s Executive Council.
• EAFORD’s Secretary-General, Anis Al Qasem, is also honorary counsel to the Libyan British Business Council.
• Certain EAFORD documents in the past listed the head office as Tripoli, Libya. See p. 24 here. However, current filings with the UN list a Geneva address.
• Another long-time EAFORD Executive Council member is Yvon Charbonneau, who as a Quebec militant in the 1970s was accused of close ties with the Libyan regime. In 1983, while Charbonneau headed a major Quebec union, a demonstration was held in Montreal to protest his Libyan ties. In a Montreal Gazette article, Charbonneau denied that a group he founded, the Mouvement Quebecois pour Combattre le Racisme, had ties to EAFORD.

For a list of EAFORD statements equating Israel with ultimate evil, see their website here, or see the list compiled by NGO Monitor here.

Libya’s primary front group at the UN, however, remains “North-South 21,” which manages the “Moammar Kaddafi Human Rights Prize,” co-founded by Jean Ziegler, Vice-Chair of the UN Human Rights  Council’s  Advisory Committee. For more on this GONGO, click here.

The post Sponsor of UN-hosted blood libel tied to Libyan regime appeared first on UN Watch.

Not true — the UN does play a vetting role. Note the UN disclaimer on the front page of the EAFORD statement: “The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.”

This resolution contemplates a back-and-forth “appropriate consultation” with the Secretary-General (i.e., the Secretariat, which in the case of the Human Rights Council is the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights), and contemplates the SG providing the NGO with “comments,” before circulation:

RESOLUTION 1996/31

[…] Written statements

30. Written statements relevant to the work of the Council may be submitted by organizations in general consultative status and special consultative status on subjects in which these organizations have a special competence. Such statements shall be circulated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the members of the Council, except those statements that have become obsolete, for example, those dealing with matters already disposed of and those that had already been circulated in some other form.

31. The following conditions shall be observed regarding the submission and circulation of such statements:

(a) The written statement shall be submitted in one of the official languages;

(b) It shall be submitted in sufficient time for appropriate consultation to take place between the Secretary-General and the organization before circulation;(c) The organization shall give due consideration to any comments that the Secretary-General may make in the course of such consultation before transmitting the statement in final form;

Q – Okay, so legally the UN plays some kind of a vetting role. But how is this applied in practice? Does the UN ever intervene to screen or edit NGO submissions?

Yes, this vetting is applied in practice. In the same March 2010 session, for example, UN Watch was instructed by the UN to change a written statement that we had submittted. It appears the problem was that our submission had used the word “regimes” to refer to the regimes ruling Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Sudan and Zimbabwe. We had it to change it to the less offensive “governments.” We also couldn’t say Burma — only the regime’s (oops, that is, the government‘s) preferred name of Myanmar.

Q – But was that an exceptional example of UN consultation and comments on a NGO written statement?

No, it has happened before to UN Watch, as to other NGOs who dare to say what the UN may consider unacceptable, according to non-transparent and unpublished standards.

In 2005, in response to a UN Watch written submission to the Human Rights Commission’s subcommission, the OHCHR wanted UN Watch to remove langage critical of “certain States” (apparently Cuba, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia), of “Heads of States” (Castro and Saddam), and “even” of “certain members of the Sub-Commission.” Our statement was nothing more than a segment taken from of our director’s essay in the New Republic. Hardly shocking stuff.

Yet when the apologist for Saddam’s genocidal gassing of Kurds was being criticized, the UN responded as follows:

From: OHCHR
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 5:11 PM
To: Hillel Neuer
Subject: Re: UN Watch SubCom Statement, Item 1 and Item 2

Dear Mr. Neuer,

With reference to the written statement submitted by UN Watch below for the 57th session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the Secretariat has noted that, when referring to certain States, Heads of States, or even certain members of the Sub-Commission, the language used was not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards.  

While we do not wish to exercise any form of censorship, we hold the view that all contributions from all participants, be it a Government, a non-governmental organization, or any one else are imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect.  We hope that the below statement may be reviewed in that regard.

Regards,
Secretariat of the Sub-Commission

By implication, therefore, it would seem that the same UN vetting process considers EAFORD’s blood libel to be language “entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards,” and “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect.”

EAFORD got away with it because the member state in question here was Israel.

Q – The UN published the EAFORD statement under the Human Rights Council’s notorious Agenda Item 7, which targets Israel. How did the session treat other statements made under this Item?

A – Whatever the UN may say about an alleged policy of free speech, the truth is that there is a double standard.

EAFORD submitted their obscene blood libel as a written statement, under Agenda Item 7 (“Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories”).  The statement was approved, stamped with the UN seal, and published.

Yet that same week, UN Watch, delivering an oral statement under the very same agenda item, criticized a UN report on Gaza for adopting the narrative of Hamas. This statement was rejected as “unacceptable” by the UN council president.  See it all here.

Q – Has the UN Human Rights Council ever before applied double standards in responding to oral statements?

Yes, it happens far too often. Watch this video from the UNHRC’s inaugural 2006-2007 session to see how the most inflammatory remarks against basic human rights principles were welcomed, while a defense of those principles was condemned. The New York Sun summed it up well in this editorial.

The post Q & A: UN Watch’s Protest Against UNHRC Webhosting of EAFORD Blood Libel appeared first on UN Watch.

Not true — the UN does play a vetting role. Note the UN disclaimer on the front page of the EAFORD statement: “The Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.”

This resolution contemplates a back-and-forth “appropriate consultation” with the Secretary-General (i.e., the Secretariat, which in the case of the Human Rights Council is the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights), and contemplates the SG providing the NGO with “comments,” before circulation:

RESOLUTION 1996/31

[…] Written statements

30. Written statements relevant to the work of the Council may be submitted by organizations in general consultative status and special consultative status on subjects in which these organizations have a special competence. Such statements shall be circulated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the members of the Council, except those statements that have become obsolete, for example, those dealing with matters already disposed of and those that had already been circulated in some other form.

31. The following conditions shall be observed regarding the submission and circulation of such statements:

(a) The written statement shall be submitted in one of the official languages;

(b) It shall be submitted in sufficient time for appropriate consultation to take place between the Secretary-General and the organization before circulation;(c) The organization shall give due consideration to any comments that the Secretary-General may make in the course of such consultation before transmitting the statement in final form;

Q – Okay, so legally the UN plays some kind of a vetting role. But how is this applied in practice? Does the UN ever intervene to screen or edit NGO submissions?

Yes, this vetting is applied in practice. In the same March 2010 session, for example, UN Watch was instructed by the UN to change a written statement that we had submittted. It appears the problem was that our submission had used the word “regimes” to refer to the regimes ruling Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Sudan and Zimbabwe. We had it to change it to the less offensive “governments.” We also couldn’t say Burma — only the regime’s (oops, that is, the government‘s) preferred name of Myanmar.

Q – But was that an exceptional example of UN consultation and comments on a NGO written statement?

No, it has happened before to UN Watch, as to other NGOs who dare to say what the UN may consider unacceptable, according to non-transparent and unpublished standards.

In 2005, in response to a UN Watch written submission to the Human Rights Commission’s subcommission, the OHCHR wanted UN Watch to remove langage critical of “certain States” (apparently Cuba, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia), of “Heads of States” (Castro and Saddam), and “even” of “certain members of the Sub-Commission.” Our statement was nothing more than a segment taken from of our director’s essay in the New Republic. Hardly shocking stuff.

Yet when the apologist for Saddam’s genocidal gassing of Kurds was being criticized, the UN responded as follows:

From: OHCHR
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 5:11 PM
To: Hillel Neuer
Subject: Re: UN Watch SubCom Statement, Item 1 and Item 2

Dear Mr. Neuer,

With reference to the written statement submitted by UN Watch below for the 57th session of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the Secretariat has noted that, when referring to certain States, Heads of States, or even certain members of the Sub-Commission, the language used was not entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards.  

While we do not wish to exercise any form of censorship, we hold the view that all contributions from all participants, be it a Government, a non-governmental organization, or any one else are imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect.  We hope that the below statement may be reviewed in that regard.

Regards,
Secretariat of the Sub-Commission

By implication, therefore, it would seem that the same UN vetting process considers EAFORD’s blood libel to be language “entirely in accordance with accepted United Nations standards,” and “imbued with the appropriate level of dignity and respect.”

EAFORD got away with it because the member state in question here was Israel.

Q – The UN published the EAFORD statement under the Human Rights Council’s notorious Agenda Item 7, which targets Israel. How did the session treat other statements made under this Item?

A – Whatever the UN may say about an alleged policy of free speech, the truth is that there is a double standard.

EAFORD submitted their obscene blood libel as a written statement, under Agenda Item 7 (“Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories”).  The statement was approved, stamped with the UN seal, and published.

Yet that same week, UN Watch, delivering an oral statement under the very same agenda item, criticized a UN report on Gaza for adopting the narrative of Hamas. This statement was rejected as “unacceptable” by the UN council president.  See it all here.

Q – Has the UN Human Rights Council ever before applied double standards in responding to oral statements?

Yes, it happens far too often. Watch this video from the UNHRC’s inaugural 2006-2007 session to see how the most inflammatory remarks against basic human rights principles were welcomed, while a defense of those principles was condemned. The New York Sun summed it up well in this editorial.

The post Q & A: UN Watch’s Protest Against UNHRC Webhosting of EAFORD Blood Libel appeared first on UN Watch.

“Propagating hate: Despicable UN rights council breathes life into blood libel”
 

EDITORIALS

Monday, March 29th 2010

The grotesquely misnamed United Nations Human Rights Council has topped its own high standard of absurd lies about Israel – this time resurrecting the medieval blood libel against Jews with a medical twist.

The council has posted on its Web site a venomous letter from an anti-Israel organization called EAFORD, the International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which is just as grotesquely misnamed as the council itself.

EAFORD, a nonprofit founded in Libya and granted UN accreditation in 1981, has one consuming obsession: to brand Israel a criminal state.

EAFORD’s statement, with the council’s imprimatur, accuses Israel of plucking organs of “dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians” in a conspiracy involving “Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli Army.”

Such is the nature of the Human Rights Council. It legitimizes outrageous, inflammatory lies about Israel while ordering Hillel Neuer of UN Watch to refrain from using the word “regime” when talking about Iran. It ceaseslessly attacks the only democracy in the Middle East while turning a blind eye to genocide, female genital mutilation and human trafficking elsewhere.

Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, begins at sundown tonight. This would be the perfect time for the Obama administration, which has suffered from the delusion that the council can be reformed, to call it out for the hatemongering farce that it is.

Source https://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/03/29/2010-03-29_propagating_hate.html   – – –

The UN Watch letter that exposed the blood libel follows below.

_________________________________

Amb. Alex Van Meeuwen, President of the Human Rights Council
Ms. Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations European Headquarters
Geneva, Switzerland

March 24, 2010

Dear Mr. President,
Dear Madam High Commissioner,

As a human rights NGO dedicated to combating racism, UN Watch is alarmed to discover that the UN Human Rights Council, together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has, however unwittingly, helped to propagate an anti-Semitic blood libel by publishing it as an official United Nations document (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), which is now being distributed to country delegates-under the same Agenda Item in which they will soon vote on the Goldstone Report.

We call upon you to immediately cease circulating this racist, hateful and inflammatory text to the ambassadors and other delegates of the Human Rights Council; to gather up and destroy all existing copies; and to remove it from the Human Rights Council website.

The document in question is A/HRC/13/NGO/23, entitled “Israeli Illegal Trafficking in Organs of Dead and Kidnapped Palestinian Victims.” It was submitted by the “International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination,” also known as EAFORD. As shown on its website (https://www.eaford.org/), the raison d’etre of this UN-accredited organization is to accuse Israel of being a racist state. (The website also links to a video on U.S. action in Iraq, which it describes as a “Holocaust.”)

The statement begins by accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing and massacres,” creating the “largest open-air prison in the world,” perpetrating “economic genocide,” and having “let loose hordes of marauding gangs of Israeli illegal settlers” in order to “launch pogroms against Palestinians.”

It then proceeds to the principal charge: “Now it is the turn of the dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians. Their human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market. Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved, according to reports published in the Swedish press and criminal investigations in the United States.”

It goes on: “After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the digging of the graves and burial.”

Finally, the statement concludes by calling on “physicians, medical centers and associations everywhere to condemn and boycott Israeli physicians and medical centers.”

Your Excellencies, the accusation that the Jewish state and its doctors are engaged in a racist campaign to steal Palestinian organs has no basis in fact or reality, and is nothing less than the repackaging of the medieval blood libel that was used over centuries to incite anti-Semitic hatred, violence and pogroms against Jews.

The United Nations cannot allow itself to aid or abet such blatant incitement to racism. Given that the Office of the High Commissioner carefully screens all submissions before deciding to publish them-indeed, our own submissions to this session were edited to remove certain words referring to regimes such as Iran and Libya-we are deeply disappointed that this hateful text was accepted for publication as an official UN document, and that it is now being distributed as such within the Human Rights Council chamber.

We urge you to take immediate action in accordance with the principles of human rights, equality and anti-racism upon which the United Nations was founded.

Respectfully,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch
Geneva, Switzerland

The post NY Daily News Editorial on UN Watch Campaign: ‘Despicable UN rights council breathes life into blood libel’ appeared first on UN Watch.

“Propagating hate: Despicable UN rights council breathes life into blood libel”
 

EDITORIALS

Monday, March 29th 2010

The grotesquely misnamed United Nations Human Rights Council has topped its own high standard of absurd lies about Israel – this time resurrecting the medieval blood libel against Jews with a medical twist.

The council has posted on its Web site a venomous letter from an anti-Israel organization called EAFORD, the International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which is just as grotesquely misnamed as the council itself.

EAFORD, a nonprofit founded in Libya and granted UN accreditation in 1981, has one consuming obsession: to brand Israel a criminal state.

EAFORD’s statement, with the council’s imprimatur, accuses Israel of plucking organs of “dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians” in a conspiracy involving “Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli Army.”

Such is the nature of the Human Rights Council. It legitimizes outrageous, inflammatory lies about Israel while ordering Hillel Neuer of UN Watch to refrain from using the word “regime” when talking about Iran. It ceaseslessly attacks the only democracy in the Middle East while turning a blind eye to genocide, female genital mutilation and human trafficking elsewhere.

Passover, the Jewish festival of freedom, begins at sundown tonight. This would be the perfect time for the Obama administration, which has suffered from the delusion that the council can be reformed, to call it out for the hatemongering farce that it is.

Source https://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/03/29/2010-03-29_propagating_hate.html   – – –

The UN Watch letter that exposed the blood libel follows below.

_________________________________

Amb. Alex Van Meeuwen, President of the Human Rights Council
Ms. Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations European Headquarters
Geneva, Switzerland

March 24, 2010

Dear Mr. President,
Dear Madam High Commissioner,

As a human rights NGO dedicated to combating racism, UN Watch is alarmed to discover that the UN Human Rights Council, together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has, however unwittingly, helped to propagate an anti-Semitic blood libel by publishing it as an official United Nations document (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), which is now being distributed to country delegates-under the same Agenda Item in which they will soon vote on the Goldstone Report.

We call upon you to immediately cease circulating this racist, hateful and inflammatory text to the ambassadors and other delegates of the Human Rights Council; to gather up and destroy all existing copies; and to remove it from the Human Rights Council website.

The document in question is A/HRC/13/NGO/23, entitled “Israeli Illegal Trafficking in Organs of Dead and Kidnapped Palestinian Victims.” It was submitted by the “International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination,” also known as EAFORD. As shown on its website (https://www.eaford.org/), the raison d’etre of this UN-accredited organization is to accuse Israel of being a racist state. (The website also links to a video on U.S. action in Iraq, which it describes as a “Holocaust.”)

The statement begins by accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing and massacres,” creating the “largest open-air prison in the world,” perpetrating “economic genocide,” and having “let loose hordes of marauding gangs of Israeli illegal settlers” in order to “launch pogroms against Palestinians.”

It then proceeds to the principal charge: “Now it is the turn of the dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians. Their human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market. Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved, according to reports published in the Swedish press and criminal investigations in the United States.”

It goes on: “After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the digging of the graves and burial.”

Finally, the statement concludes by calling on “physicians, medical centers and associations everywhere to condemn and boycott Israeli physicians and medical centers.”

Your Excellencies, the accusation that the Jewish state and its doctors are engaged in a racist campaign to steal Palestinian organs has no basis in fact or reality, and is nothing less than the repackaging of the medieval blood libel that was used over centuries to incite anti-Semitic hatred, violence and pogroms against Jews.

The United Nations cannot allow itself to aid or abet such blatant incitement to racism. Given that the Office of the High Commissioner carefully screens all submissions before deciding to publish them-indeed, our own submissions to this session were edited to remove certain words referring to regimes such as Iran and Libya-we are deeply disappointed that this hateful text was accepted for publication as an official UN document, and that it is now being distributed as such within the Human Rights Council chamber.

We urge you to take immediate action in accordance with the principles of human rights, equality and anti-racism upon which the United Nations was founded.

Respectfully,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch
Geneva, Switzerland

The post NY Daily News Editorial on UN Watch Campaign: ‘Despicable UN rights council breathes life into blood libel’ appeared first on UN Watch.

Geneva, March 24, 2010 – UN Watch, the Geneva-based watchdog organization, today called on the president of the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to stop circulating an “anti-Semitic” text that accuses Israeli doctors of scheming to steal Palestinian organs. The statement by the Libyan-linked group EAFORD was posted by the UNHRC on its Agenda for debate on the Goldstone Report. The UN Watch protest letter follows below.

_________________________________

Amb. Alex Van Meeuwen, President of the Human Rights Council
Ms. Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations European Headquarters
Geneva, Switzerland

March 24, 2010

Dear Mr. President,
Dear Madam High Commissioner,

As a human rights NGO dedicated to combating racism, UN Watch is alarmed to discover that the UN Human Rights Council, together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has, however unwittingly, helped to propagate an anti-Semitic blood libel by publishing it as an official United Nations document (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), which is now being distributed to country delegates — under the same Agenda Item in which they will soon vote on the Goldstone Report.

We call upon you to immediately cease circulating this racist, hateful and inflammatory text to the ambassadors and other delegates of the Human Rights Council; to gather up and destroy all existing copies; and to remove it from the Human Rights Council website.

The document in question is A/HRC/13/NGO/23, entitled “Israeli Illegal Trafficking in Organs of Dead and Kidnapped Palestinian Victims.” It was submitted by the “International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination,” also known as EAFORD. As shown on its website (https://www.eaford.org/), the raison d’etre of this UN-accredited organization is to accuse Israel of being a racist state. (The website also links to a video on U.S. action in Iraq, which it describes as a “Holocaust.”)

The statement begins by accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing and massacres,” creating the “largest open-air prison in the world,” perpetrating “economic genocide,” and having “let loose hordes of marauding gangs of Israeli illegal settlers” in order to “launch pogroms against Palestinians.”

It then proceeds to the principal charge: “Now it is the turn of the dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians. Their human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market. Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved, according to reports published in the Swedish press and criminal investigations in the United States.”

It goes on: “After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the digging of the graves and burial.”

Finally, the statement concludes by calling on “physicians, medical centers and associations everywhere to condemn and boycott Israeli physicians and medical centers.”

Your Excellencies, the accusation that the Jewish state and its doctors are engaged in a racist campaign to steal Palestinian organs has no basis in fact or reality, and is nothing less than the repackaging of the medieval blood libel that was used over centuries to incite anti-Semitic hatred, violence and pogroms against Jews.

The United Nations cannot allow itself to aid or abet such blatant incitement to racism. Given that the Office of the High Commissioner carefully screens all submissions before deciding to publish them-indeed, our own submissions to this session were edited to remove certain words referring to regimes such as Iran and Libya-we are deeply disappointed that this hateful text was accepted for publication as an official UN document, and that it is now being distributed as such within the Human Rights Council chamber.

We urge you to take immediate action in accordance with the principles of human rights, equality and anti-racism upon which the United Nations was founded.

Respectfully,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch
Geneva, Switzerland

The post NGO Urges UN to Stop Circulating ‘Israeli Organ Blood Libel’ appeared first on UN Watch.

Geneva, March 24, 2010 – UN Watch, the Geneva-based watchdog organization, today called on the president of the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to stop circulating an “anti-Semitic” text that accuses Israeli doctors of scheming to steal Palestinian organs. The statement by the Libyan-linked group EAFORD was posted by the UNHRC on its Agenda for debate on the Goldstone Report. The UN Watch protest letter follows below.

_________________________________

Amb. Alex Van Meeuwen, President of the Human Rights Council
Ms. Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations European Headquarters
Geneva, Switzerland

March 24, 2010

Dear Mr. President,
Dear Madam High Commissioner,

As a human rights NGO dedicated to combating racism, UN Watch is alarmed to discover that the UN Human Rights Council, together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has, however unwittingly, helped to propagate an anti-Semitic blood libel by publishing it as an official United Nations document (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), which is now being distributed to country delegates — under the same Agenda Item in which they will soon vote on the Goldstone Report.

We call upon you to immediately cease circulating this racist, hateful and inflammatory text to the ambassadors and other delegates of the Human Rights Council; to gather up and destroy all existing copies; and to remove it from the Human Rights Council website.

The document in question is A/HRC/13/NGO/23, entitled “Israeli Illegal Trafficking in Organs of Dead and Kidnapped Palestinian Victims.” It was submitted by the “International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination,” also known as EAFORD. As shown on its website (https://www.eaford.org/), the raison d’etre of this UN-accredited organization is to accuse Israel of being a racist state. (The website also links to a video on U.S. action in Iraq, which it describes as a “Holocaust.”)

The statement begins by accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing and massacres,” creating the “largest open-air prison in the world,” perpetrating “economic genocide,” and having “let loose hordes of marauding gangs of Israeli illegal settlers” in order to “launch pogroms against Palestinians.”

It then proceeds to the principal charge: “Now it is the turn of the dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians. Their human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market. Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved, according to reports published in the Swedish press and criminal investigations in the United States.”

It goes on: “After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the digging of the graves and burial.”

Finally, the statement concludes by calling on “physicians, medical centers and associations everywhere to condemn and boycott Israeli physicians and medical centers.”

Your Excellencies, the accusation that the Jewish state and its doctors are engaged in a racist campaign to steal Palestinian organs has no basis in fact or reality, and is nothing less than the repackaging of the medieval blood libel that was used over centuries to incite anti-Semitic hatred, violence and pogroms against Jews.

The United Nations cannot allow itself to aid or abet such blatant incitement to racism. Given that the Office of the High Commissioner carefully screens all submissions before deciding to publish them-indeed, our own submissions to this session were edited to remove certain words referring to regimes such as Iran and Libya-we are deeply disappointed that this hateful text was accepted for publication as an official UN document, and that it is now being distributed as such within the Human Rights Council chamber.

We urge you to take immediate action in accordance with the principles of human rights, equality and anti-racism upon which the United Nations was founded.

Respectfully,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch
Geneva, Switzerland

The post NGO Urges UN to Stop Circulating ‘Israeli Organ Blood Libel’ appeared first on UN Watch.

UN Watch Calls on UN Rights Chief to Stop Distributing ‘Racist’ Statement by Pro-Palestinian Group Before Vote on Goldstone Report

Geneva, March 24, 2010 — UN Watch, the Geneva-based watchdog organization, today called on the president of the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to stop circulating an “anti-Semitic” text that accuses Israeli doctors of scheming to steal Palestinian organs. The letter follows below.

_________________________________

Amb. Alex Van Meeuwen, President of the Human Rights Council
Ms. Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations European Headquarters
Geneva, Switzerland

March 24, 2010

Dear Mr. President,
Dear Madam High Commissioner,

As a human rights NGO dedicated to combating racism, UN Watch is alarmed to discover that the UN Human Rights Council, together with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, has, however unwittingly, helped to propagate an anti-Semitic blood libel by publishing it as an official United Nations document (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), which is now being distributed to country delegates—under the same Agenda Item in which they will soon vote on the Goldstone Report.

We call upon you to immediately cease circulating this racist, hateful and inflammatory text to the ambassadors and other delegates of the Human Rights Council; to gather up and destroy all existing copies; and to remove it from the Human Rights Council website.

The document in question is A/HRC/13/NGO/23, entitled “Israeli Illegal Trafficking in Organs of Dead and Kidnapped Palestinian Victims.” It was submitted by the “International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination,” also known as EAFORD. As shown on its website (www.eaford.org), the raison d’etre of this UN-accredited organization is to accuse Israel of being a racist state. (The website also links to a video on U.S. action in Iraq, which it describes as a “Holocaust.”)

The statement begins by accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing and massacres,” creating the “largest open-air prison in the world,” perpetrating “economic genocide,” and having “let loose hordes of marauding gangs of Israeli illegal settlers” in order to “launch pogroms against Palestinians.”

It then proceeds to the principal charge: “Now it is the turn of the dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians. Their human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market. Israeli physicians, medical centers, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved, according to reports published in the Swedish press and criminal investigations in the United States.”

It goes on: “After Israeli physicians remove organs they think marketable, the
soldiers bury the bodies in graves that carry only numbers and no names, or place them in
sealed caskets and deliver them under curfew conditions to the families and supervise the
digging of the graves and burial.”

Finally, the statement concludes by calling on “physicians, medical centers and associations everywhere to condemn and boycott Israeli physicians and medical centers.”

Your Excellencies, the accusation that the Jewish state and its doctors are engaged in a racist campaign to steal Palestinian organs has no basis in fact or reality, and is nothing less than the repackaging of the medieval blood libel that was used over centuries to incite anti-Semitic hatred, violence and pogroms against Jews.

The United Nations cannot allow itself to aid or abet such blatant incitement to racism. Given that the Office of the High Commissioner carefully screens all submissions before deciding to publish them—indeed, our own submissions to this session were edited to remove certain words referring to regimes such as Iran and Libya—we are deeply disappointed that this hateful text was accepted for publication as an official UN document, and that it is now being distributed as such within the Human Rights Council chamber.

We urge you to take immediate action in accordance with the principles of human rights, equality and anti-racism upon which the United Nations was founded.

Respectfully,

Hillel C. Neuer
Executive Director
UN Watch
Geneva, Switzerland

The post NGO Calls on UN to Stop Circulating ‘Israeli Organ Blood Libel’ appeared first on UN Watch.