UN rejects Israeli humanitarian NGO, accepts Palestinian Hamas-affiliated group

After accepting a group that supports Hamas terrorists to its NGO committee, the UN rejected Israeli humanitarian organization ZAKA for the third year in a row.

The UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations on Tuesday rejected a request by ZAKA, an Israeli volunteer-based emergency response and rescue organization, to join the world body. It was a day after it approved the  membership of the Palestinian Return Center (PRC), a Hamas-affiliated NGO that promotes Israel’s destruction.

Volunteers at ZAKA (Hebrew acronym for Zihuy Korbanot Ason, meaning Disaster Victim Identification) operate as an emergency medical service at the scene of terror attacks and road accidents, among other crises. The group also operates internationally and offered aid, for instance, after the Nepal earthquake disaster and the GermanWings plane crash in France.

The 19-member UN committee, which includes Iran, Venezuela, Sudan, Turkey, China, Cuba and Pakistan, dismissed ZAKA’s request to receive “non-governmental organization status,” even though the ZAKA representative clarified that the NGO offers aid and treatment to anyone in need, including Palestinian victims. Israeli sources believe that the Palestinians had ensured that ZAKA would be rejected, Ynet reports.

Responding to the rejection, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor said that the UN was adding insult to injury. After welcoming a group associated with Hamas terrorists” with open arms,” the UN again rejected an organization tasked with “holy work,” he stated.

PRC “is an organization that contends with the murder and destruction caused by the terror organizations that the world cannot or does not want condemn. The UN faces two simple options: to continue with its consistent surrender to terror, or it can start fighting it,” Prosor asserted.

This is the third consecutive year ZAKA has been turned down by the UN body. ZAKA will try again and the request will once again be brought to a vote in January 2016.

The London-based PRC promotes anti-Israel activity and propaganda in the political world, on campuses and on the European street.

Prosor charged that at this rate, “one day we may find Hezbollah sitting at the Security Council and ISIS (the Islamic State), voting at the Human Rights Council. This is the peak season for the UN’s Theatre of the Absurd.”

PRC denied its connections to Hamas, but Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called the PRC chairman Majd A-Zir to congratulate him. Haniyeh lauded the group’s support of the socalled Palestinian refugees’ right of return, which would ultimately lead to Israel’s demise.