UN Human Rights Council cuts off speaker denouncing antisemitic officials

The council president said Anne Bayefsky used “insulting and inflammatory” language.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The UN Human Rights Council cut off a speaker who was denouncing UN officials by name for their antisemitism Friday, deeming her language “insulting and inflammatory.”

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and Holocaust, was about two-thirds through her minute-and-a-half video statement to the council in Geneva when her feed was terminated.

Bayefsky had called out UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk for his “master class in unaccountability” accusing him of whitewashing a report on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its top prosecutor, Karim Khan.

She referred to Khan as an “alleged serial rapist” due to several women’s complaints against him for serious sexual improprieties.

Khan went on administrative leave last May after an investigation was launched some seven months after the first complaint emerged, with no findings announced as yet.

She then criticized Türk for “providing material support” to three UN officials “who traffic in blatant antisemitism.”

She named UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and the former chairs of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti.

The commission has a unique open-ended mandate to investigate alleged Israeli violations of Palestinians’ human rights and identify alleged perpetrators. Its latest report, on the war in Gaza, was issued last September.

Both the U.S. and Israel have criticized it as heavily biased and antisemitic.

Bayefsky further alleged that the trio had “covered up Palestinian use of rape as a weapon of war,” referring to documented atrocities Hamas-led forces committed during their invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

At this point, Bayefsky’s image disappeared and U.N. Human Rights Council President Sidharto Suryodipuro interrupted the broadcast, stating that her comments amounted to “derogatory, insulting and inflammatory” personal attacks that were “unacceptable.”

While acknowledging that “everyone has a right to express their views,” Suryodipuro said statements must adhere to “the appropriate framework, terminology and decorum” of the United Nations.

In comments to Fox News Digital, Bayefsky said she was “the only American U.N.-accredited NGO with a speaking slot, and I wasn’t allowed even to conclude my 90 seconds of allotted time.”

“Free speech is non-existent at the U.N. so-called ‘Human Rights Council,'” said Bayefsky, a longtime defender of Israel at such events.

Other speakers at the session, who sharply criticized Israel, including accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, were permitted to complete their statements.

Anne BayefskyFrancesca AlbaneseUN Human Rights Council