{"id":101330,"date":"2023-01-21T17:05:45","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T15:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=101330"},"modified":"2023-01-15T14:27:29","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T12:27:29","slug":"21-05-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=101330","title":{"rendered":"At the United Nations, Israel is \u2018the Jew Among the Nations\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>At the United Nations, Israel is \u2018the Jew Among the Nations\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

David May<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room of the Palace of Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. The room is the meeting place of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Photo: Ludovic Court\u00e8s via Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

China presented itself as a champion of Muslim rights last Tuesday, when it\u00a0asked<\/a>\u00a0the United Nations Security Council to hold a special session to address an Israeli minister\u2019s visit to the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims. (Never mind that China has\u00a0detained<\/a>\u00a0over one million Muslim Uyghurs.) This is just the most recent case of the UN allowing human rights abusers to shape its human rights agenda.<\/span><\/p>\n

In what one UN watchdog\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cmaking an arsonist into the town fire chief,\u201d the UN elected Iran to its top women\u2019s body in 2021. Less than half a year after Iran\u2019s term\u00a0began<\/a>\u00a0in March 2022, the Islamic Republic\u2019s \u201cmorality police\u201d\u00a0accosted<\/a>\u00a0and reportedly murdered 22-year-old Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating female hair-covering laws. Mercifully, in a US-led vote of 29-8, with 16 abstentions, the UN\u2019s Economic and Social Council\u00a0removed<\/a>\u00a0Iran from the women\u2019s commission last December. Among the \u201cno\u201d votes were China and Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Until April 7 of last year, Russia sat on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The UN General Assembly\u00a0suspended<\/a>\u00a0Russia from the UNHRC following its invasion of Ukraine, but China remains on the council. In this capacity, Beijing has stifled criticism of its many human rights violations, including what the United States has termed a\u00a0genocide<\/a>\u00a0against its Uyghur minority.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a whistleblower, the UNHRC has secretly\u00a0provided<\/a>\u00a0Beijing with the names of Uyghur dissident activists. And in October, the UNHRC\u00a0rejected<\/a>\u00a0merely debating Chinese human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Thirty of the council\u2019s 47 members voted no or abstained. That tracks with the 31 council members rated \u201cnot free\u201d or \u201cpartly free,\u201d according to Freedom House\u2019s annual\u00a0rankings<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chinese coercion and human rights abusers\u2019 camaraderie led to the motion\u2019s defeat. But deflecting criticism is not enough. To ensure the council\u2019s attention is distracted from abuses committed by autocracies, the\u00a0dictators club<\/a>\u00a0needs a convenient scapegoat \u2014 their target, \u201cthe Jew among the nations,\u201d is the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Approximately half of the council\u2019s country-specific condemnations have\u00a0targeted<\/a>\u00a0Israel. Nine out of its 35\u00a0special sessions<\/a>\u00a0have focused on the Jewish state. The UNHRC created a\u00a0blacklist<\/a>\u00a0to deter investment in territories controlled by Israel, something it has not done for any other disputed territory. And the UNHRC maintains a\u00a0special rapporteur<\/a>\u00a0devoted to uncovering supposed Israeli abuses. The list goes on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Special rapporteurs are expected to demonstrate \u201cimpartiality<\/a>\u201d and not \u201chold<\/a>\u00a0any views or opinions that could prejudice\u201d their work. Nevertheless, like flies to manure, this special rapporteur position has attracted individuals with histories of anti-Israel activism \u2014 and even antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2008, then rapporteur John Dugard\u00a0justified<\/a>\u00a0Palestinian terrorism as the \u201cinevitable consequence\u201d of Israeli actions. His successor, Richard Falk,\u00a0likened<\/a>\u00a0Israel\u2019s treatment of the Palestinians to the Holocaust. Falk\u2019s antisemitism was so pronounced that the United Kingdom\u00a0condemned<\/a>\u00a0him on three separate\u00a0occasions<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Current special rapporteur Francesca Albanese is embroiled in her own antisemitism controversy. Last month, Albanese\u2019s 2014 remarks\u00a0describing<\/a>\u00a0the United States as \u201csubjugated by the Jewish lobby\u201d\u00a0drew<\/a>\u00a0widespread\u00a0condemnation<\/a>, including by top US officials. In a separate post from that year, Albanese claimed that the \u201cIsraeli lobby,\u201d directed by \u201cIsrael\u2019s greed,\u201d skewed media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though Albanese tried to distance herself from her past remarks, in July 2022, she\u00a0defended<\/a>\u00a0another UN official who similarly claimed that the \u201cJewish lobby\u201d controls the media.<\/span><\/p>\n

Albanese has also doubled and tripled down on\u00a0opposing<\/a>\u00a0the leading benchmark for identifying anti-Jewish prejudice, claiming it stifles free speech. In its\u00a0definition<\/a>\u00a0of antisemitism, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a coalition of 35 member states and eight observers, provided examples to help understand how antisemitism manifests itself. Prior to her appointment, Albanese had made comments that likely fell under two IHRA examples of antisemitism:\u00a0comparing Israel to the Nazis<\/a>\u00a0and declaring Israel to be a\u00a0racist endeavor<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Congress can help stamp out the UN\u2019s anti-Jewish bigotry by\u00a0defunding<\/a>\u00a0any UN agency that supports or engages in antisemitism pursuant to the IHRA definition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether by removing Iran from the UN\u2019s women\u2019s commission, implementing human rights standards for UNHRC membership, or barring antisemites and anti-Israel activists from UN positions focused on Israel, the United States should work to prevent arsonists from serving as fire chiefs at the UN. With one fire put out for now, Washington should turn its attention to the others.<\/span><\/p>\n

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David May<\/strong> (<\/em>@DavidSamuelMay<\/em><\/a>) is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow FDD on Twitter\u202f<\/em>@FDD<\/em><\/a>. FDD is a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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At the United Nations, Israel is \u2018the Jew Among the Nations\u2019 David May The Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room of the Palace of Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. The room is the meeting place of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Photo: Ludovic Court\u00e8s via Wikimedia Commons. China presented itself as a champion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101330"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101345,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101330\/revisions\/101345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}