UN slammed for ‘softcore Holocaust denial,’ weak response to anti-Semitism

In a report released Monday by UN Watch, the monitoring group accuses UN officials of egregious failures to address anti-Semitism on the world stage.

By: World Israel News Staff

While the United Nations’ (UN) longstanding anti-Israel bias has been extensively documented, a report published on Monday by monitor group UN Watch includes new accusations, including widespread failure to condemn or fight anti-Semitism in meaningful ways.

Specifically, the report’s authors maintain that the UN’s vigilance in addressing racism and other forms of discrimination does not extend to speaking out against attacks on Jews.

Presenting “overwhelming evidence” that UN officials and bodies are “failing” to “combat[] anti-Semitism,” UN Watch demands that Secretary General Antonio Guterres take steps to confront “bigotry, hatred [and] violence targeting Jews worldwide.”

The report was presented in the Knesset on Monday, where MK Yair Lapid commented, “When it comes to Jews, when it comes to Israelis, the UN has become a hostile and biased body. The organization which is meant to fight anti-Semitism, which is sworn to fight anti-Semitism, is guilty of anti-Semitism itself.”

The report, which covers the years 2008-2017 and is titled “The United Nations and Antisemitism,” also accuses former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other top officials of “softcore Holocaust denial.”

“Ban Ki-moon routinely universalized the Holocaust and minimized it as a Jewish event,” the report claims based on an extensive review of Ban’s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day statements, which the report says reveal an “attempt to universalize the Holocaust … [and] downplay[] Hitler’s genocide of the Jews … falsely equating it to Nazi crimes against other minorities.”

“In a decade marked by shocking antisemitic violence in which Muslim extremists were behind the most devastating attacks and, particularly, in light of the inflammatory antisemitic incitement coming out of the Muslim world, Ban’s overall silence on this issue marks a moral failure,” the report claims.

While the report is also critical of Ban’s successor, Antonio Guterres, it lambastes UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordanian prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, whose tenure has been marred by “almost complete disregard when it comes to fighting antisemitism,” says UN Watch.

“Zeid’s office posted a total of 20 tweets mentioning Muslims or Islam; none mentioning Jews or Judaism; and three referencing antisemitism — one of these being a general post that also mentioned Islamophobia, and the other two relating to the 2017 Holocaust Remembrance Day and not to any particular antisemitic attack or current event,” the report charges.