26 Jul 2006 The United Nations Legacy of Anti-Semitism

If the intemperate United Nations response to Israel’s defense of its citizens, or U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s off-the-cuff, before-any-investigation charge that Israel deliberately targeted U.N. peacekeepers surprises you, check out a small sample of facts National Center policy analyst Ryan Balis collected about the United Nations’ shameful legacy vis-a-vis Jews and Israel:

Anti-Israel Activities of Note

* ‘Zionism is racism’: In November of 1975, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 3379, which determined, “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The resolution stood for 16 years, until the General Assembly repealed it in 1991 by a vote of 111-25 (the vote included 13 abstentions and 17 absent or non-voting delegations).

* UNESCO World Heritage: Israel has twice witnessed its management of the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls thwarted by UNESCO, the U.N. educational, scientific and cultural body that manages a list of significant sites of ‘World Heritage,’ In the early 1980s, UNESCO permitted Jordan to nominate Jerusalem as World Heritage, although Israel governed the city and was not a party to the World Heritage Convention. Within a year, Jerusalem became listed as one of the 31 sites ‘in danger,’ a designation it retains today.

* Human Rights Discrimination: The newly ‘reformed’ U.N. human rights body voted 29-12 in June of 2006 to adopt a resolution requiring UN investigators to report at each Council meeting “on the Israeli human rights violations in occupied Palestine.” The previous U.N. Commission on Human Rights (defunct since March 2006) referred to Israel in 30 percent of its resolutions condemning human rights violations.

According to Anne Bayefsky of the Hudson Institute, the U.N. has never issued a specific resolution on anti-Semitism or issued a single report on discrimination against Jews. In 2003, the first resolution on anti-Semitism was offered before the General Assembly but withdrawn because of Arab and Muslim opposition. The first mention of the word “anti-Semitism” in a U.N. resolution occurred in November of 1998 on a document to eliminate racism and racial discrimination.

* Singled Out: According to the Permanent Mission of Israel to the U.N., the “General Assembly devotes seven out of 179 items of its agenda to issues concerning Israel” and annually adopts 19 anti-Israeli resolutions.10 Of the 10 emergency sessions of the U.N. General Assembly, six of them have concerned Israel. The Tenth Special Session on the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is convened without end.

* Second-State Status: Israel is the only U.N. member country not to have permanent membership in one of the five U.N. regional groupings, which are organized by geography. In May of 2000, Israel accepted temporary membership (extended in 2004) in the Western European and Other States Group (WEOG). Therefore, Israel may participate in WEOG meetings in New York, but this designation prevents Israel from seeking membership on many U.N. agencies that are not organized by the WEOG.

Anti-Semitic Remarks of Note

* “Is it not the Jews who are exploiting the American people and trying to debase them?” – Dr. Ali Treiki, Libyan Representative to the U.N. before the U.N. General Assembly

* “The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity.” – Marouf al-Dawalibi, Saudi Arabian delegate before the 1984 U.N. Commission on Human Rights conference on religious tolerance

* In 1991 Farouk al-Chareh, the Syrian Representative to the U.N., accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in their religious rituals.

* In 1997 Nabil Ramiani, Palestinian Representative to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, accused “Israeli authorities” of injecting “300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus during the years of the intifada.”

Ryan says there are many more.