Report: U.N.'s Mideast Agency Obsessed with 'Israeli Apartheid'

This week U.N. chief Antonio Guterres swore in Iraqi ambassador Mohammed al-Hakim as director of ESCWA in Beirut.

Report on U.N. Social Media Posts Accusing Israel of ‘Apartheid’
Study of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia – ESCWA

Executive Summary
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres just swore in a new head of ESCWA, the UN regional agency for the Middle East that is composed of 18 Arab states, and based in Beirut. Israel has been excluded from the time the agency was founded four decades ago.
In March, Mr. Guterres rightly took action to remove ESCWA’s unauthorized publication of a politicized report—co-authored by Richard Falk, a discredited former UN official who was condemned by Ban Ki-moon for promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories—that demonized Israel as an “Apartheid” state.
As stated by Mr. Guterres, the Executive Secretary of ESCWA is “a representative of the Secretary-General.” As such, Mr. Guterres is obliged to uphold UN discipline regarding posts that single out a member states in contravention of the UN Charter.
ESCWA Speeches and Posts Demonizing Israel
Despite Mr. Guterres’ clear and unequivocal stand in March, numerous ESCWA webpages, Facebook posts, and tweets continue to display this same “Israel Apartheid” slur.
For example, on 6 March, Mr. Guterres’ then-representative Rima Khalaf abused the occasion of International Women’s Day at UN House in Beirut—with Mr. Guterres’ photo on display, and right after his message was read—to attack “the Israeli apartheid regime.” A room full of UN officials heard it, yet failed to object. Ms. Khalaf is gone, yet her obscene remarks are still online on the UN site.Likewise, ESCWA’s Facebook page includes the following posts, dating from 2014 to 2017:

• “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state”;
• Israeli practices “amount to apartheid”;
• the Palestinian people are being “subjected to an apartheid system.”
• In one post still online, Mr. Guterres’ then-representative even called for the “overthrow” of “the Israeli apartheid regime.

In this new UN Watch report, we document below at least 20 different UN publications or posts that demonize Israel as an “apartheid” state.
Former secretary-general Kofi Annan rightly described the General Assembly’s 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution as the low point of the UN’s experience with antisemitism. ESCWA’s “Israel apartheid” slurs are but the latest reincarnation of the same libel—and we urge Mr. Guterres to order them removed immediately.
ESCWA Facebook post, Sept. 18, 2014, still online:

Post 118/181: “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”
– Hendrik Verwoerd, “Architect” of South Africa’s apartheid, 1961
#IYSSP #Palestine #181Days

 
ESCWA Facebook post, September 28, 2014, still online
Post 125/181: In 2013, Israeli authorities and settlers burned and uprooted 10,142 trees next to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. For more information: http://tinyurl.com/unctad1
#IYSSP #Palestine #181Days #Apartheid

 
ESCWA Facebook post, Oct. 1, 2014, still online
Post 128/181
UN-ESCWA Resolution 316 (XXVIII) of 18 September 2014:
“… practices and policies of the Israeli occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which amount to apartheid, cause a continuous deterioration of their economic and social conditions…”
http://www.escwa.un.org/about/gov/sessions/editor/Download.asp?table_name=sess26_menu&field_name=ID&FileID=193
#IYSSP #Palestine #181Days #Apartheid

 
 
ESCWA Facebook post, March 15, 2017, still online
Richard Falk: It’s vitally important that the people of the world understand that the Palestinian people as a whole have and are being subjected to an apartheid system

 
[Translation] “Khalaf: The report calls upon nations, governments and institutions to support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions initiatives (#BDS), and other initiatives which aim to overthrow [Iskat] the Israeli apartheid regime.”
[Note: Word Iskat in this context can mean violent overthrow,  wiping out, or taking down of an entity.]

ESCWA posts same Rima Khalaf “Israeli apartheid” quote on Twitter:

#خلف: وفي التقرير دعوة للدول والحكومات والمؤسسات إلى دعم مبادرات المقاطعة وسحب الاستثمارات وفرض العقوبات (BDS#)،… https://t.co/JXnmXW76a4

— ESCWA (@UNESCWA) March 15, 2017

#Israel ‘s political &geographical fragmentation of the #Palestinian people is a tool of oppression and domination #Apartheid

 
In one hour, #ESCWA launches report on“#Israeli Practices towards the #Palestinian People and the Question of #Apartheid”

Arabic:

#Tilley: the key finding is that Israel has designed its apartheid regime around a strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people geographically & legally

 
#Tilley: reference for a finding of #apartheid in #IsraelPalestine is not #South Africa but international law

 
#Tilley: there are many references to #apartheid in polemics on the #Israel#Palestine conflict

 
#Tilley: it has become entirely clear that we’re longer talking about risk of Apartheid but practice of #Apartheid

 
The report “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid” is available on: http://bit.ly/2mZVYe3

[presents report on “Israeli Apartheid”]

Arabic: https://www.facebook.com/unescwa/posts/1303066909781969
 
ESCWA tweets on “Israeli Apartheid”:

#خلف: ويبين التقرير أن لا حل في حل الدولتين أو في أي مقاربة إقليمية أو دولية ما لم يتم تفكيك نظام الأبارتايد الذي… https://t.co/NtdgwaEaOw

— ESCWA (@UNESCWA) March 15, 2017

https://twitter.com/ESCWACIU/status/842017095319732225
https://twitter.com/ESCWACIU/status/842016107942821888
https://twitter.com/ESCWACIU/status/842008054916878336
https://twitter.com/ESCWACIU/status/841999967904493568
 
March 15, 2017
ESCWA Website: United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) Rima Khalaf noted that Israel… has succeeded over the past decades in imposing and maintaining an apartheid regime. Khalaf concluded that the report recognizes that only a ruling by an international tribunal would lend its conclusion that Israel is an apartheid State greater authority… It also calls on States, Governments and institutions to support boycott, divestment and sanctions initiatives and other activities aimed at ending the Israeli regime of apartheid.
https://www.unescwa.org/news/escwa-launches-report-israeli-practices-towards-palestinian-people-and-question-apartheid
 
Nov. 29, 2016 [UN Palestine Day]
Rima Khalaf: “Wherever they may be, Palestinians have suffered from the discriminatory policies pursued by successive Israeli Governments. Attempts by one ethnic or religious group to dominate another are inherently no different from the apartheid regime that the world thought had been eradicated in South Africa in the 1990s.”  Khalaf addressed a crowd of diplomats, governmental and civil society representatives who had gathered at the UN House to commemorate the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which ESCWA has hosted for years.
https://www.unescwa.org/news/palestine-day-beirut
 
Translation: Trying ethnic group/religious control over another group is essentially identical to the policy of apartheid (apartheid)

#خلف: إن محاولة مجموعة عرقية/دينية السيطرة على مجموعة أخرى، هي في جوهرها مطابقة لسياسة الفصل العنصري (الأبارتايد)

— ESCWA (@UNESCWA) November 29, 2016

 
March 6, 2017, UN Women’s Day
After remarks of UN chief Antonio Guterres were read out, in the presence of the Australian and other ambassadors, Rima Khalaf addressed UN Beirut’s 2017 International Women’s Day: “Those [Palestinians] who have survived all this are suffering under a system of racial segregation that punishes them because of their racial origin.. A regional solution which is promoted by pressing regional parties to compromise on the rights of the Palestinians and the Arabs… will not give legitimacy to the Israeli Apartheid regime, but would delegitimize those complicit with regional parties.”  Click here for speech, photos, summary.