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July 29, 2022
OTTAWA – B’nai Brith Canada is calling on Western nations to demand the immediate dissolution of the Commission of Inquiry of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
The Commission was set up last year to look into the “Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel,” as the Commission officially describes its mandate.
To express its objections and demands, B’nai Brith sent a letter Friday to Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations. On Thursday, Rae tweeted his condemnation of an openly-antisemitic diatribe by Commission member Miloon Kothari. (Read about Rae’s condemnation here).
Kothari’s antisemitic remarks were forcefully denounced by Rae and by Michèle Taylor, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. This input is welcome but, unfortunately, will not solve the problem of a hateful, biased panel.
Kothari’s antisemitic remarks were forcefully denounced by Rae and by Michèle Taylor, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. This input is welcome but, unfortunately, will not solve the problem of a hateful, biased panel.
The Chair of that Commission of Inquiry, Navi Pillay, has for years made no attempt to hide her hatred of Israel and had signed a petition in June, 2021, organized by the South African Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (SA BDS) Coalition, entitled “Sanction Apartheid Israel!” Pillay has given lectures calling Israel, the only democratic state in the Middle East, an “apartheid state.”
While the obvious lack of objectivity should have eliminated Pillay from consideration, other Commission members also have repeatedly taken public and hostile positions against Israel on the very subject matter that they are called upon to independently and impartially investigate. There is no objectivity.
“It’s time to call it like it is,” said Marvin Rotrand, National Director of B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights. “This Commission of Inquiry reflects the dysfunction of the UNHRC, comprised of many of the worst human-rights abusers in the world. Russia may have been kicked out as a member, but many of its ideological allies remain. It is not a surprise that this so-called Commission is, as predicted, little more than a megaphone for Hamas and other banned terrorist groups.”
Canada had previously denounced the Commission’s open-ended mandate that does not require annual approval by the UN General Assembly. The Commission tabled a first report in June that failed to recognize that Jews have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, where the Jewish people are indigenous.
“The Commission unfortunately can’t simply be ignored,” said Michael Mostyn, B’nai Brith’s Chief Executive Officer. “It is, after all, a part of the United Nations. Kothari’s openly antisemitic slurs should be the catalyst to wrap up this kangaroo-court exercise.”
B’nai Brith sees the Commission as an impediment to peace, an obstacle to the two-state solution favoured by Canada, Israel and Western nations and trying to turn the clock back to before the UN vote of 1947, which led to the rebirth of the State of Israel.
