U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has done incredible work to redress the world body’s bias against Israel, but the work is not finished yet. There are several special U.N. entities dedicated to fight Israel and to promote the Palestinian cause that the Western world and the United States are financing. This must end.
The oldest, created in 1968 is the “Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories.”
Exactly 37 years after Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”), a General Assembly Resolution 3376 (XXX) of Nov. 10, 1975 created the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, “which is the body within the United Nations exclusively devoted to the question of Palestine, to consider and recommend to the Assembly a program of implementation, designed to enable the Palestinian people to exercise its rights.”
This committee became, in effect, part of the PLO propaganda apparatus, issuing stamps, organizing meetings, preparing films and drafting resolutions in support of Palestinian “rights.” On the same day in 1975, General Assembly Resolution 3379 was passed to determine that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.
The General Assembly also created a “Division for Palestinian Rights” to “organize international meetings and conferences in all regions, in consultation with the Committee and under its guidance.” This Division prepares a monthly bulletin on international actions on the question of Palestine, containing resolutions, decisions and communiqués of the relevant United Nations and other Intergovernmental Bodies and Agencies, a monthly chronological summary of relevant events based on press reports, a special bulletin on the observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an annual compilation of resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly and the Security Council relating to the question of Palestine. In 2007, this division had a budget of millions of dollars to promote anti-Israel propaganda throughout the world.
On Nov. 1, 2007, U.N. Watch presented at Yale University a report on the United Nations and Anti-Semitism: “The busiest corridor of the Palais des Nations, the European headquarters of the U.N. in Geneva, displays no fewer than ten larger-than-life panels devoted to the Palestinian cause. The clear message is that the Palestinians are the world’s most affected human-rights victims, Israel the world’s most prominent human-rights abuser. There are no other such exhibits treating any other country or cause to such extent.”
The division has also developed “UNISPAL” (United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine), an electronic database containing “all significant United Nations documents relating to the question of Palestine.” Among these documents are the following: the conclusions and recommendations of the Commission to Examine the Status of Building in Judea and Samaria. This “Levy report” on settlements can be found on the UNISPAL website, but the legal part of the Levy Report, which demonstrates that the establishment of Jewish (presence) in Judea and Samaria is legal under International Law, cannot be found. We can understand that those administrating the Unispal Website do not like the report’s legal part since it demonstrates that the establishment of Jewish (presence) in Judea and Samaria is legal under international law.
On April 14, 2010, the U.N. General Assembly by Resolutions 64/10 and 64/254 called for an investigation, and a committee of three independent experts was established by the Human Rights Council’s A/HRC/RES/13/9 on 14 April 2010, to monitor “serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law reported by the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission, led by Justice Richard Goldstone.” Judge Mary McGowan Davis, former Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York and former federal prosecutor was appointed as chair of the committee. On March 18, 2011, the McGowan Report of the Committee of Independent Experts in International Humanitarian and Human Rights Law was submitted.
This report cannot be found on the UNISPAL database. UNISPAL published one document, “Council Holds Interactive Dialogue with Committee of Independent Experts on Follow-up to Recommendations in the Goldstone Report.. This document refers to the McGowan Report, but when clicking on the word “report,, what appears is the Goldstone Report instead of the McGowan Report. Thus, the McGowan Report of the U.N. Committee of Independent Experts is not to be found at in UNISPAL. Fortunately, that report can be found on the web site of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.
We can understand that those administrating the UNISPAL Website do not like this report and may have taken measures to prevent access to it and to promote instead the Goldstone report alone.
Let us hope also that Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon and Haley, before leaving the United Nations, will intervene with the U.N. Secretariat to correct these actions of the UNISPAL’s civil servants and/or administrators of the UNISPAL website, who send the readers to the Goldstone Report instead of the McGowan Report (Committee of Independent Experts), and that the U.N. Secretariat will include the legal part of the Levy Report on the UNISPAL website.
And let us wish that the U.S. administration will find a way to stop paying, with its taxpayers’ money, for the Palestinian and Muslim propaganda of the Division for Palestinian Rights and the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
Dr. Michael Calvo is an international lawyer and author of the book “The Middle East and World War III: Why No Peace?” with a foreword by Col. Richard Kemp, CBE.
