Israel's UN Envoy Tears Up Human Rights Council Report at General Assembly
A UN committee created to investigate May's Gaza conflict condemned Israel and disregarded Hamas' attacks on Israeli civilians
The Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan tore to pieces the human rights council's yearly report on the podium of the General Assembly, mimicking the gesture of former ambassador Chaim Herzog who did the same in 1975 when the UN declared Zionism a form of racism.
On Friday, a special hearing was held at the General Assembly in which the president of the human rights council presented its annual report to all member states. In the report are the results of an investigative committee that was founded after the May conflict with Hamas. Large parts of the report condemn and criticize Israel, but disregards Hamas' attacks on Israeli civilians.
"Since its establishment 15 years ago, the Human rights council has condemned Israel 95 times compared to the 142 against all other countries in the world combined," Erdan said addressing the assembly.
- UN Rights Chief to Haaretz: 'Israel Must Address Decades of Discrimination'
- Israeli Settlements Amount to War Crime, UN Rights Official Says
- Rights Groups Urge UN Probe Mission for Beirut Port Blast
"For just as that 1975 resolution, equating Zionism with racism, was itself a gross form of anti-Jewish racism, which has no place in this international body, So too, the Human Rights Council’s obsessive anti-Israel bias, embodied, once again, by this report, should have no place in any body concerned with human rights, security or peace," Erdan said.
Erdan, who is also the outgoing ambassador to Washington, also recently accused U.S. lawmakers who voted against funding for the Iron Dome anti-missile system of being "either ignorant or antisemitic" as he spoke to Jewish community leaders in September.
Gilad Erdan referred to the 11 lawmakers who either voted against the funding or abstained as "the extended 'Squad,'" a group of progressive Democratic lawmakers.
"Do they really not understand that the Iron Dome saves both Israeli and Palestinian lives?" Erdan asked at the event organized by the Jewish Federations of North America. "If Israel didn’t have the Iron Dome to protect our citizens from the thousands of rockets that Hamas fired, we may have needed to respond with a ground operation that would have inevitably resulted in many more lives lost."
Click the alert icon to follow topics:
Comments
ICYMI
He's From a Small Village in the West Bank, One of Three at His School Who Went to College
'There Are Similarities Between the Hasidic Community and Pornography’
‘RRR’: If Cocaine Were a Movie, It Would Look Like This
Yair Lapid's Journey: From Late-night Host to Israel's Prime Minister
Lake Kinneret as You’ve Never Experienced It Before
