EU/UN Conference Declares Israel Not Allowed Self Defense

The Two Day UN Conference of Anti-Israel NGOs organized by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People [to Kill Jews] (CEIRPP), ended with declaration telling Israel to stop defending herself.

The meeting wasn't all work --some of the attendees found time to try out their favorite laugh lines on each other, like this one found in the committee's press release

While Palestinians might have political differences, they did not have a tradition of resorting to violence to settle those differences, said Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer for Palestine to the United Nations.

All in all fun was had by all as the UN and its friends in the NGO world continued their efforts to delegitimize Israel.

Stop IDF ops'

UN conference concludes by calling on Israel 'to stop military operations against Palestinians'

Yaakov Lappin

A two-day UN conference of non governmental organizations, held at the European Parliament in Brussels, concluded on Friday with a call to "stop military operations against the Palestinian people".

The conference, organized by the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), has been condemned by UN watchdogs, Israeli diplomats, and members of the European Parliament (MEPs) as an anti-Israel gathering intended to spearhead a political war against Israel, rather than promote peace.

In a closing statement, the CEIRPP's Chairman, Paul Badji, who is also Senegal's Permanent UN representative, said his Committee "joined the European Parliament in calling on the Israeli Government to immediately stop the military operations against the Palestinian people".

Badji also called on Israel to remove "the roadblocks installed since September 2000, end the extension of settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem," and cease "the building of the wall beyond the 1967 borders".

In his speech, Badji added that "all imprisoned former Palestinian Ministers, legislators, mayors and many others, including minors," should be immediately released, and called on the Israeli government to "release all of the withheld Palestinian tax and customs revenues".

According to a UN press statement, Badji also condemned rocket attacks against Israel, and asked for "a cessation of those activities by Palestinian armed groups".

Most of Badji's ire was, however, reserved for Israel, described by the Senegalese diplomat as "the occupying power." According to Badji, Israel continued to "disrespect its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention," which in turn eroded "the credibility of the international legal system."

"Europe, the main contributor to the framing of the Geneva Conventions, should take the lead in ensuring respect for the Conventions," he said.

'Conference fixed from the start'

Responding to the statement, Hille Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, a monitoring organization based in Geneva, told Ynetnews, "The committee's verdict - (that) Israel is wicked and solely to blame - was fixed from the start."

"The conference was a wolf in sheep's clothing, clothing its rapacious political agenda in flowery words of peace," Neuer said. "The UN Palestinian division portrayed the event as building bridges, but they excluded anyone representing Israel's position, so these were bridges to nowhere," he added.

"The division feigned openness by featuring European and Israeli speakers who were in fact ardent pro-Palestinian partisans and vehement critics of Israel," Neuer said.

During the conference's first day, Haaretz columnist Danny Rubinstein, reportedly likened Israel to apartheid South Africa, and was subsequently dropped from a weekend conference organized by the Zionist Federation of Great Britain

"The organizers deliberately excluded anyone remotely representing Israeli society, or who might dare to speak for Israeli human rights - for Israeli women maimed by Hamas rockets, Israeli children traumatized by bus bombings, Israeli forests and eco-systems burnt and destroyed by Hizbullah rockets supplied by Iran and Syria," Neuer told Ynetnews, adding that "all of this was carefully excluded from the conference narrative."

Neuer described the conference as a "lynching of Israel," and called for an abolishment of "the UN's sprawling infrastructure of anti-Israel committees born out of the now-defunct, Soviet era 'Zionism is racism' resolution".

He called on the UN's Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon and leaders of the EU to "seize the opportunity to commit themselves to the goal of redirecting the division's budget to actually helping Palestinians by building medical clinics and schools that teach peace in the West Bank and Gaza," and added: "Instead of taxpayers from Europe and the US paying for more destructive propaganda, these funds should be converted into ploughshares of hope."

Second UN rights conference includes Iran

Meanwhile, a second UN conference, The Bureau for the Durban Preparatory Committee (Prep-Com), held simultaneously in Geneva, has also come under fire by UN watchdogs.

The committee, headed by Libya, gained publicity last week after it was announced that Iran would be included in a core planning committee.

"Both conferences provided a platform for radical anti-Israel NGOs to spread their rhetoric of demonization and intolerance," the Jerusalem based NGO-Watch said in a statement on Sunday.

Earlier, a spokesperson for the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights confirmed to Ynetnews that "Iran is one of 20 States who are members of the bureau of the Preparatory Committee," but added that "Iran does not occupy a leading role".

When asked how a state which openly denies the Holocaust could find itself in such a role, the spokesperson said: "The Preparatory Committee is an inter-governmental body, meaning States were chosen freely to sit on the Prep-Com. It is the Member-States who decide."