TEL AVIV – The son of a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen murdered by Palestinian terrorists addressed the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, slamming it and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for inciting terror and “painting the train tracks to Auschwitz” by failing to condemn his father’s killers.
Five months ago, two Palestinians attacked an Israeli passenger bus in Jerusalem, murdering educator and civil rights and peace advocate Richard Lakin (pictured) along with two other civilians. Fifteen other passengers were attacked with guns and knives.
The victim’s son Micah Lakin Avni addressed the UNHRC in Geneva, challenging the body to condemn his father’s killers.
“What the Secretary-General and you, the UN investigator on Israel, and this Council, did not do was publicly condemn these terrorists or the rampant Palestinian incitement that fuels this brutality,” Avni said at the UNHRC session, noting that his father, “a kind, gentle person,” was shot in the head and stabbed multiple times, wounding most of his vital organs.
“Palestinians are not preparing for peace. Instead, Palestinian leader [Mahmoud] Abbas praised my father’s murderer – calling him a ‘martyr,’ ” he added, referencing Abbas’ meeting with the family of the terrorist in which the PA president described the killer as a holy martyr deserving of a place in heaven.
Lakin, a native of Newton, Mass. who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., founded a school in Jerusalem for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish children to study together.
Shortly before he died, Ban Ki-Moon visited the wounded activist in the hospital, but refused to condemn the unprovoked attack as terrorism.
Avni issued a direct challenge to Ban Ki-Moon and the UNHRC to condemn his father’s murder and put an end to the UN’s rationalization of the murder of Israelis as the result of Palestinian “frustration.”
“Your failure to condemn Palestinian violence and your continued rationalization of Palestinian terror is pushing peace away, making more death inevitable,” he said.
Speaking to Breitbart Jerusalem after his address, Avni commented on the level of anti-Israel bias at the UN. “The scope and quantity of anti-Semitism that goes on there is mind boggling,” he said.
“The UN is clearly inciting terror. You can incite terror by silence which is what the UN is doing. If you present a completely one-sided picture then you’re part of the problem.”
He said that listening to representatives from member states condemn Israel one after the other without once mentioning terrorism against Israelis was sickening.
“They’re painting train tracks to Auschwitz, there’s no other way to describe it,” he told Breitbart Jerusalem.
Avni remarked that Ban, “along with the rest of the UN’s fraudulent human rights apparatus,” should leave their positions if they fail to condemn Palestinian terrorism.
“If [Ban] is not able to stand up and say, ‘I specifically condemn the murder of Richard Lakin and I condemn Abu Mazen [aka, Mahmoud Abbas] for meeting with the killer’s father,’ then he can’t do his job as a world peacemaker and should resign.”
“The fish rots from the head. How can Ban expect members of the Human Rights Council to say anything if he’s not able to say the words himself?” he asked.
Israel’s Minister for Public Security and Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, thanked Avni for giving a voice to victims of Palestinian terrorism and joined Avni’s call to condemn incitement.
“I call on all of the countries involved in funding the PA’s incitement, including the schoolbooks used in PA and UNRWA schools, to stop their funding, and start it again only after the messages of hate are replaced by messages of coexistence and peace,” Erdan said in a statement.
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