Photo from “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” at the U.N. headquarters in NYC, on November 29th, 2017. Smaller U.N. events were held in Geneva, Addis Ababa, and elsewhere.
GENEVA, December 14, 2017 – The U.N. office in Addis Ababa put up posters for Palestinian solidarity event that call Israel an “apartheid” state and promote violence against Israelis.
An email was sent to all U.N. country team employees in Ethiopia to “urge [them] to make the extra effort to attend the event as a show of support for the cause of the Palestinian people.” The email confirmed that this was an official U.N. event.
Image 1:
One collage of images on display was labeled “Walls of Shame: Dividing One People”. This label conflicts with the U.N.’s commitment to the two-state solution, which calls for the land to be separated into a Jewish state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine. The controversy over Israel’s security barrier, from a U.N. perspective, surrounds the unilateral nature of its location. The U.N. recognizes that two people should be divided, so to state that the barrier divides “one people” would be to deny the right of Israel to exist on the other side.
The collage also features one image that says “End Apartheid.”A March U.N. report using the “apartheid” slur was withdrawn by secretary-general Guterres, and resulted in the resignation of UN ECSWA chief Rima Khalaf.
At least two other images include Palestinian rioters throwing stones, which is a promotion of violence.
Image 2:
A banner displayed at the U.N. event features a photo of Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro. The banner includes a quote, attributed to Castro: “Israelis are fools because they occupied a country where people indefatigable [sic]”.
Although Castro has said many negative things about Israel, there is no record online of this quote existing.
Image 3:
A third poster once again refers to Israel as an “apartheid.”
