Article by Dr Shimon Samuels published in The Jerusalem Post
8 June 2022
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-708920

Peace cannot be bought. But incitement through hostile media keeps the Goebbels fire burning and sadly, the lies persist.

Then-US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell attends a rally protesting anti-Israel bias
outside the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, in 2019 (photo Denis Balibouse/Reuters).

The United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva holds the infamous Item 7 pertaining to Israel and the OPT – the so-called Occupied Palestinian Territories – at each session.

The following Item 8 applies to the rest of the world.

Similarly, the UN has a plethora of organizations regarding the Palestinians, as opposed to the UNHCR UN Refugee Agency in Geneva, responsible for all displaced and stateless refugees over the world, including those Palestinians unabsorbed by Lebanon and war-torn Syria.

The problematic group of Palestinians is not within the purview of the UNHCR, due to the question of how can their majority residing in Palestine be considered as refugees? As well, how can those born in Palestine be considered as refugees?

Overview of the session of the Human Rights Council during the speech of U.N. High Commissioner
for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, February 27, 2020
(photo Reuters/Denis Balibouse).

On November 10, 1975, the UN General Assembly passed two notorious resolutions:

1) Resolution 3379: whereas, “Zionism is Racism and Racial Discrimination”– belatedly revoked in 1991 with resolution 46/86.

2) The mouthful, Resolution 3376: creating the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), which conducts programs and propaganda through its annual training program with civil society worldwide. On November 29, they organized the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. That is the date in 1947 when the General Assembly voted for the partition between a Jewish and an Arab state. The Jews accepted, the Arabs chose war. That is also a date the Palestinians refer to as the Naqba (catastrophe).

In 1977, a Special Unit on Palestinian Rights was born to gather documents in service to the annual session on the question of Palestine.

In 1979, the UN Division for Palestinian Rights appeared.

The Security Council now holds a quarterly debate on the Palestinian Question, led by the CEIRPP chair, its 25 member states, the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the African Union.

Next, the UN Division’s UNISPAL (UN Information System on the Question of Palestine) appeared.

Other participants are:
-the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO);
-the Training Program for Palestinian Broadcasters and Journalists (now named after the late Al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh);
-the Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls; and
-the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees).

These events are attended by a slew of special rapporteurs:
-on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
-on the right of assembly and association;
-on the situation of human rights defenders;
-on the situation of human rights in the OPT; and
-on violence against women.

This is a reflection of Nazi propaganda minister and book burner Joseph Goebbels: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it!” That is, reportedly, the role of rapporteurs to the media, who keep the lies alive. This house of cards is costly, but maintained – not by the Arab world, as one would expect – by the largesse of Western democratic tax payers and sometimes through well-endowed NGOs.

Peace cannot be bought. But incitement through hostile media keeps the Goebbels fire burning and sadly, the lies persist.

The writer is the director for International Relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.