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Latest Updates: UN investigator condemned for antisemitism by UK, France, Germany, Canada, US, Austria, Czech, Netherlands, Italy, Australia, EU & UN officials

Latest Updates:
• Miloon Kothari makes a second, failed attempt to put out the fire, in an August 4th letter to the UNHRC president, claiming his remarks were not antisemitic but only “perceived and experienced” to be such. “I have always condemned discrimination in all its forms.”

• Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, the United States, the European Union, Netherlands, Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Israel, Hungary, Brazil, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark have now condemned Miloon Kothari, member of the UNHRC Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Israel, after he railed against the “Jewish lobby” and questioned Israel’s right to membership in the United Nations. See below.

 

• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a statement: “The Secretary-General has no authority over the Commission of Inquiry, whose members are appointed by the Human Rights Council. However, he has always been extremely clear in saying that there is no room for anti-Semitism in the work of the UN. Second, Israel is unquestionably a Member State of the United Nations, with the same rights and responsibilities as the other 192 countries that make up this organization.”

 

• COI Chair Navi Pillay fully defended Kothari, saying that his comments “seem to have deliberately been taken out of context” and “deliberately misquoted.” (Pillay herself is the object of a recusal request arising from her long record of prior public actions and statements that disqualify her from serving impartially, including her lobbying governments to “Sanction Apartheid Israel!”)

• UNHRC President Federico Villegas, the ambassador of Argentina, rejected Pillay’s defense of Kothari, saying that his remarks “could reasonably be interpreted as stigmatization of the Jewish people. . . which is at the heart of any expression of antisemitism.” He called for Kothari to consider “publicly clarifying his unfortunate comments and his intentions behind them.”
• UN Freedom of Religion Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed called out Kothari in a powerful tweet: “Last year in May, a foreign minister claimed that Israel controls the global media. Now this trope has come to the UN! The UN must take up my call to use IHRA Working Definition for awareness-raising across the UN system, in line with international human rights standards.”
• The U.S. and Canadian special envoys on antisemitism have denounced the UN commissioner.
• Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called for commissioners Miloon Kothari, Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti to be removed, and the commission disbanded, in a July 31st letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
• The European Journal of International Law published an article on its website calling for all three commissioners to resign.
• Background: The inquiry and its commissioners were tainted by extreme bias from the start. See Key Facts on the UN’s Pillay Commission of Inquiry; Hillel Neuer interviewed on i24News TV.
Condemnations of Kothari:

https://twitter.com/govitamaraty/status/1554991160858492929?s=20&t=MT-hYqvr38CZtFBVP3EiMQ

 

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