Anne Bayefsky
Thursday, November 9, 2006
On November 7, 2006 Iran, the sponsor of the terrorist organization Hezbollah and its recent war against Israel, said the following in a public session at UN New York Headquarters: "The Israeli government is behaving like a savage animal." He added that Israel had no right to exist: "the history of Israel has always been suffering from a lack of legitimacy." No one in the room stopped him; the UN rules of order saw nothing wrong with this kind of language - regardless of the equality of member states, the UN Charter, or the ashes of Holocaust victims upon which it stands.
The Iranian verbiage is not random. On November 8, 2006 Hamas spokesperson Ghazi Hamad, said: "Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth. It is an animal state that recognises no human worth. It is a cancer that should be eradicated."
Analogizing Jews to vermin was a hallmark of Nazi Germany. Today it marks the halls of the UN.