Anti-Israel Conference Underway in Geneva

By ECLJ1248276982497

This is the latest report from ACLJ Special Counsel Anne Herzberg:

Any doubts that the Question of Palestine conference in Geneva would try to have a veneer of balance were quickly erased.  The meeting got underway this morning in the large conference room directly above the main General Assembly hall.  Delegates from Congo, Saudi Arabia, Syria and hundreds of UN and non-governmental organizations (NGO) delegates filled the room.  The presenters all invoked the rhetoric of international law leveling unfounded claims and accusations against the Jewish state and glossed over the deliberate crimes of Hamas and its state backers Iran and Syria.  Many presenters also attacked the United States for its support of the Israeli government.

The President of the Question of Palestine Division, from Senegal opened the meeting by condemning the Israeli operation in Gaza and praising NGO superpowers Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) for bringing “Israeli impunity” to light.  He accused Israel of an “onslaught” against Palestinians and a “total disregard for international humanitarian law”.   He repeated as established fact, the anonymous claims of Israeli soldiers made by the EU-funded ‘Breaking the Silence’ that have been widely discredited.   And he accused Israeli army rabbis of waging a “holy war”. 

President of the General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann prepared a statement that was read aloud calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel and praised the British government for canceling five arms contracts with Israel.  He, too, praised the work of Amnesty International, the NGO leading the boycott campaign against Israel.  Of course, Mr. Brockman did not call upon Iran, China, or Syria to stop its arming of Hamas and Hezbollah or for these groups to stop their relentless rocket assaults on Israeli civilians.

Ibrahim Khraishi - the official representative for “Palestine” - called Israel’s government “extremist” and accused Israel of “unlawful colonization of Palestinian lands”. He, like all of the speakers, called for enforcement of the compromised advisory opinion of the  International Court of Justice against Israel’s security barrier, even though the opinion is of no legal effect and was fraught with procedural and legal irregularities.

Rudy Salles, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians and engaging in “collective punishment”. Mr.Salles also called for the Jerusalem to “once again” become a “city of unity and peace” ignoring the denial of Jews and Christians to their holy sites while the city was under Arab control before 1967.  Mr. Salles also called the European Union one of the most “wonderful adventures of humankind”.


 

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