PRESS RELEASE
GENEVA, October 27, 2018 — UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, along with other UN agencies, officials and experts tasked with combating racism, should join the EU, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley and many others, and condemn today’s massacre of Jews praying in a Pittsburgh synagogue, said UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental human rights monitoring group.
As of 11:40 pm tonight in Geneva, the twitter accounts of both the UN human rights office and its chief Michelle Bachelet were silent on the Pittsburgh attack.
“At a time when Jews continue to be targeted worldwide, it’s vital that the UN’s top human rights official speaks out,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
“Sadly, as found by our recent report on UN actions over the past decade, the world body’s highest officials tasked with combating racism have failed to act against hatred, incitement and violence against Jews.”
“Our report’s findings were disturbing and clear: key UN agencies, officials and experts are, with limited exceptions, turning a blind eye to escalating antisemitism worldwide.”
For example, an examination of the 2014-2018 tenure of former UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al Hussein, which included a search of all of his statements, press releases and reports on the UN rights office website, found not a single stand-alone statement condemning anti-Jewish attacks or incitement.
Similarly, Navi Pillay, who served the longest as UN rights chief, from 2008 to 2014, also failed to speak out in the face of murderous physical attacks against Jews, including the 2012 massacre at a Toulouse Jewish school.
“Too often,” said Neuer, “it seems UN human rights bodies see racism everywhere, and antisemitism nowhere.”
The findings of UN Watch’s study were corroborated by the UN itself. Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion, acknowledged the “scandalous lack of attention” paid by the UN human rights system to antisemitism.
“In wake of today’s massacre in Pittsburgh, I urge Ms. Bachelet to speak out immediately,” said Neuer.
I urge the UN human rights office & chief Michelle Bachelet to condemn today's murderous attack on Jews praying in a synagogue. Too often, as documented in our recent report, it seems UN human rights bodies see racism everywhere, and antisemitism nowhere. https://t.co/lh6UyrlvUM pic.twitter.com/y7oPuaIDao
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 27, 2018
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Key Findings of UN Watch’s Report on the United Nations and Antisemitism, 2008 – 2017:
- With deadly attacks against Jews escalating worldwide over the past decade—from Kansas to Copenhagen, Mumbai to Toulouse—the United Nations has a unique role to play in combating antisemitism. Anti-racism is the defining ideology of the United Nations and its human rights mechanisms. Yet all too often, as documented in this report’s comprehensive examination of the actions of key UN officials, agencies and experts over the past decade, it seems that the UN sees racism everywhere, and antisemitism nowhere.
- There are notable exceptions. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, like his predecessors Ban Ki-moon and Kofi Annan, has made a series of positive statements about combating antisemitism. The General Assembly hosted an informal meeting on antisemitism in 2015. The UN’s Holocaust Outreach Program commemorates and teaches about the Holocaust, reaching broad audiences worldwide.
- UNESCO recently released a publication with the OSCE aimed at assisting policymakers in addressing antisemitism through education. Notwithstanding its repeated adoption of one-sided resolutions condemning Israel and downplaying the ancient Jewish heritage of Jerusalem and Hebron, UNESCO also hosted, after an initial postponement, an exhibit on the 3,000-year-old connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.
- Regrettably, however, the exceptions prove the rule. Over a decade when Jews were targeted for slaughter in India, France, Belgium, Denmark and elsewhere—whether in a Jewish school, museum, synagogue or supermarket—the UN’s primary agencies and officials for addressing discrimination have, for the most part, turned a blind eye to antisemitism. UN plenaries like the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, which enact hundreds of resolutions a year, including on subjects related to racial and religious discrimination, failed to address the threat of antisemitism, other than in a few passing words included in general statements. Until 2010, both the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council adopted annual resolutions focused on the “defamation of Islam and Muslims,” mandating special reports, yet there was never one resolution to address anti-Jewish hatred and violence.
- During the course of his tenure from 2006 to 2016, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued more than 100 condemnations of terror attacks worldwide. When the attack targeted religious worshippers, mosques or Christian clergy, his condemnations included strong language against the targeting of people for their religious beliefs. By contrast, he refrained from employing similarly strong language regarding terrorist attacks against Jewish targets, many of which he did not condemn at all. In a decade marked by shocking antisemitic violence, Mr. Ban was often silent. While he proved quick to condemn an anti-Muslim film or statement by private parties, he failed to address pervasive, state-sanctioned incitement to antisemitism in the Middle East, including Iran’s Holocaust denial, Jewish conspiracy theories, and calls to commit genocide.
- High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who served from 2008 to 2014, was likewise quick to condemn a film perceived as anti-Muslim, as well as “malicious” cartoons by Charlie Hebdo. Yet in the face of murderous physical attacks against Jews, such as the shooting at a Toulouse Jewish school, Pillay was typically silent. Worse, Pillay and her office repeatedly smeared Jewish organizations as “single-issue lobbyists” for seeking to prevent antisemitism from infecting the UN’s 2009 “Durban II” conference on racism.
- Current High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has not only turned a blind eye to antisemitic incitement and violent attacks—even though he has addressed incitement against Muslims in Myanmar—but he has repeatedly engaged, as have other UN officials, in what Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt has called softcore Holocaust denial, through a series of statements that seek to de-Judaize the Holocaust.
- The UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteurs on racism and freedom of religion ought to be the first UN experts to speak out against anti-Jewish discrimination and violence. However, as a rule, successive mandate-holders over the past decade have failed to comment on rising antisemitism, including the murderous incitement against Jews in the Arab and Muslim world, or deadly attacks in Europe and elsewhere. By contrast, they did speak out on behalf of other targeted groups.
- Expert bodies like the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which review country compliance with international treaties, should be affirmatively monitoring state parties for any antisemitic incitement or violence which puts Jews at risk, or infringes their rights to freely practice the Jewish religion. Yet an examination of the Human Rights Committee’s concluding observations for numerous state parties—including Arab and Muslim states where antisemitic incitement is rampant, as well as other states that have witnessed high levels of antisemitic incidents in the last ten years—reveals that antisemitism is of limited concern.
- Similarly, our study of the CERD’s concluding observations for numerous countries—including Argentina, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, the UAE, Ukraine and Venezuela—shows that the 18-member body rarely mentioned violent attacks on Jews or other forms of antisemitism, though it did devote attention to Islamophobia or discrimination against Roma. Moreover, though antisemitic incitement from the Arab and Muslim world has inspired horrific antisemitic attacks worldwide, the CERD addressed hate speech in these countries only when the speech was directed at other groups—but never when the target was Jews.
