What's New

Resources updated between Monday, September 28, 2009 and Sunday, October 4, 2009

October 2, 2009

Draft Resolution was adopted without a vote

Draft Resolution on the Assistance to Somalia in the Field of Human Rights Development

Draft Resolution was adopted without a vote

Draft Resolution on the Advisory services and technical assistance for Cambodia Development

Draft Resolution was adopted without a vote

Draft Resolution on Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners in Myanmar Development

Draft Resolution was adopted without a vote

Revised Draft Resolution on Freedom of Opinion and Expression Development

October 1, 2009

Limiting Freedom of Expression at the Human Rights Council, Part II: This speaker was interrupted by the representative of Egypt because he called the High Commissioner's Report on Gaza "biased"

Joint Statement by B'nai B'rith International and the Coordinating Board of Jewish Organizations on Item 7 at the Human Rights Council Development

Limiting Freedom of Expression at the Human Rights Council, Part I: This statement was ruled out of order by the President of the Human Rights Council, Alex Van Meeuven

Statement by the World Union for Progressive Judaism on the Goldstone Report at the Human Rights Council Development

September 30, 2009

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Human Rights Council, 29 September 2009, Geneva, Switzerland

Joint statement delivered by Anne Bayefsky on behalf of The Touro
Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and the Hudson Institute


The Goldstone mission will go down in history as the 21st century's equivalent to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – a notorious work of fiction which spun a conspiratorial web of deceit and distortion that has fueled hatred of Jews ever since.

At its core, the Goldstone report repeats the ancient blood libel against the Jewish people – the allegation of bloodthirsty Jews intent on butchering the innocent. Or as the Goldstone mission casts this abomination for a modern audience: Israel "deliberately...terrorize[d] a civilian population;" Israeli "violence against civilians w[as] part of a deliberate policy." (paras. 1211, 1690)

With this report the UN has come full circle. Rising from the Jewish ashes of crimes against humanity, it now purports to render the Jewish people's exercise of the right of self-defence as itself a crime against humanity.

Like all vehicles of hate it relies on many cogs in the wheel. Terrorists whose ambition is to annihilate the Jewish people. States which invented an instrument to affect that end by political means when armed attack repeatedly failed. And the lawyers whose prejudices and predispositions meant that they willingly carried out orders,

...by writing a report disguised as a human rights document that never mentions the racist genocidal intent of the enemy which Israel finally confronted after years of restraint,

...by inventing laws of war which never mention the "right of self-defence",

...by relying on testimonies from witnesses under circumstances – in its own words – that gave rise to "a fear of reprisals" should they have dared to tell the truth. (para 438)

In this so-called interactive dialogue, there is, therefore, only one question to put to you, Richard. How does it feel to have used your Jewishness to jeopardize the safety and security of the people Israel and to find yourself in the company of human rights abusers everywhere?

September 28, 2009