Itongadol.- Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid on Monday called on the United States to stop funding the United Nations unless its Human Rights Council treats Israel fairly and stops its anti-Semitic declarations.
“I am the son of a Holocaust survivor, let me tell you something about anti-Semitism,” Lapid said as he addressed a rally of pro-Israel groups in Geneva.
“Anti-Semites, in this era, never admit that they are anti-Semitic. They always give it a different name. They say it’s something else. So we learnt, in the past two thousand years, that it doesn’t matter what they say. It only matters what they do,” Lapid said.
“What they are doing here today, in the United Nations Human Rights Council is pure, old style, anti-Semitism,” Lapid said.
He spoke as the UNHRC debated five anti-Israel resolutions that are due to be approved at the end of its 31st session on March 24. It is also expected to pass one resolution on Iranian human rights abuses and one on Syrian violations. The UNHRC held its debate under Agenda Item 7, which mandates a debate on the Israeli violations of human rights over the pre-1967 lines at every session. Israel is the only country for which such a mandate exists.
Its the first time that such a rally by pro-Israel groups has been held during an Agenda Item 7 debate.
“We stand here, Jews and non-Jews. From Israel and from across Europe, to protest the fact that here, in that building behind me, in the United Nations Human Rights Council, instead of doing what they’re supposed to do – they are encouraging murder, encouraging terror, encouraging injustice.
“And we are not willing to remain silent anymore,” Lapid said.
“That is not a council for Human Rights, that has become a council for Terrorist Rights,” he added.
Since its inception in 2006, the UNHRC has passed 55 resolutions on countries that violate human rights and 62 on Israeli violations. That is seven resolutions more for Israel than the rest of the world, Lapid said.
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only ranked 49th in the number of casualties in conflicts across the world. But there is only one country – only one – which the rules of Human Rights Council dictate has a special agenda item,” Lapid said.
He listed some of the human rights abuses around the world, 400,000 people murdered in Syria, tens of thousands in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, Lapid said.
“Women are raped in Rwanda, Sudan and all across the Middle East,” Lapid said and added, but “the council condemns Israel,” he added.
“Why? Because they no longer even try to conceal their support for the terrorism of Hamas, of Hezbollah and of the knife attackers in our streets. Because they no longer even pretend to be objective. Because they no longer even try to hide the fact that they are anti-Israel, anti-Jews and anti-justice,” he said.
“The treatment of Israel by the council is far beyond bias. It’s obsessive. It’s insanity,” he said.
This particular UNHRC session, he noted, it taking place amid a wave of Palestinian terror attacks.
“In the past six months terrorists have stalked the streets of Israel, shooting at our children, stabbing women and the elderly, carrying out car ramming attacks,” Lapid said.
The Israeli politician called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and democratic countries to take a stand against the UNHRC’s “moral distortion.”
He told the rally goers that he asked Israel’s friend in the US Congress to make UN funding dependent on ending discrimination against Israel at the UNHRC.
“I call upon the members of the United States Congress – the US is the largest funder of the United Nations, why do you allow American money to be used by an organization which continually provides encouragement for fundamentalist Islamic terror?” Lapid asked.