Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid called on the United Nations to disband an “outrageous” inquiry into alleged Israeli crimes, saying it fueled anti-Semitism.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday, Lapid called on the globalist body’s head to follow through on his promise to combat anti-Semitism in all its forms.
The letter was in response to anti-Semitic comments by a member of the U.N’s three-person panel on the Commission of Inquiry (COI), Miloon Kothari, who told the Mondoweiss outlet that social media was “controlled largely by the Jewish lobby” and lots of money had been invested into discrediting the U.N. Human Rights Council.
“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs,” Kothari told Mandoweiss on a podcast.
In a separate interview published on the anti-Israel outlet’s website, Kothari said Israel “tries to undermine U.N. mechanisms” and questioned whether it should even be a member of the globalist body.
“I would go as far as to raise the question as why are they even a member of the United Nations, because they don’t respect — the Israeli government does not respect — its own obligations as a U.N. member state,” he added.
The head of the COI, rabidly anti-Israel Navi Pillay, defended Kothari and said his comments had been taken out of context.
Lapid slammed Kothari and Pillay’s defense.
“The fight against anti-Semitism cannot be waged with words alone; it requires action. It is time to disband the Commission. From Mr. Kothari’s outrageous slurs to Pillay’s defense of the indefensible, this commission does not just endorse anti-Semitism; it fuels it,” wrote Lapid.
He noted the United States, France, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Austria, as well as the European Union had also censured the inquiry over the comments.
“You pledged to take a stand ‘in the front line of the struggle against anti-Semitism and to make sure the United Nations is able to take all possible actions for anti-Semitism to be condemned, and if possible, eradicated from the face of the earth.’ You stressed that ‘Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules,’ ” wrote Lapid.
“Instead of taking a moral stance and repudiating these comments, Pillay chose to defend and excuse them. She doubled down on the commission’s support for Mr. Kothari’s comments,” Lapid said. “Pillay’s claim that the comments were taken out of context is false and was even rejected by the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council. I urge you to listen to Mr. Kothari’s interview and judge for yourself.”
The U.N.’s outgoing special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed, also denounced Kothari’s comments.
“In May last year, a foreign minister [Pakistan’s Shah Mahmood Qureshi] claimed that Israel controls the global media. Now this trope has come to the U.N.! The U.N. must take up my call to use [the] IHRA working definition for awareness-raising across the U.N. system, in line with international human rights standards.”
Several Jewish groups have joined the chorus of condemnation.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations over the weekend called for the COI’s disbandment.
“Since the U.N. General Assembly admitted Israel as a member state, there have been numerous attempts to deprive it of this membership. In view of the recent comments made by Kothari, as well as previous incendiary remarks made by other commission members, Navi Pillay and Christopher Dominic Sidoti, we call on the Secretary-General to end this shameful farce and help disband the harmful COI,” the group wrote in a letter to Guterres.
Kothari “invoked dangerous anti-Semitic tropes … where he singled out Israel and questioned its legitimacy while also spreading the age-old hateful canard that Jews conspire to control the media,” the group said.
B’nai B’rith International also called for the disbandment of the COI over Kothari’s “odious remarks” and “other blatant violations.”
“The UN is charged to uphold fairness and neutrality in its work, but is this commission fair and neutral? Clearly not,” the group said.
In an interview with Breitbart, head of the International Legal Forum Arsen Ostrovsky, called the comments and Pillay’s defense of them a “despicable new low.”
“This is a despicable new low, even for the UN. Kothari’s accusations, which are replete with age-old antisemitic tropes, and Commission Chair Pillay’s shameful defense of him, only underscore the gross illegitimacy and bias of this one-sided inquiry against Israel,” he said of the probe.
Ostrovsky went onto to say that the inquiry “should immediately be disbanded and placed in the dustbin of the UN’s antisemitic history.”
ILF also called on Congress to pass legislation ensuring no U.S. funding goes towards the COI and that the commission members, each of whom have exhibited a “visceral bias, hostility and antisemitism towards Israel, be denied entry into the United States, where they propose to lobby Congress for support,” Ostrovsky told Breitbart.
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