SWC News Items 
 March 21, 2005
CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL - SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE
 
LATEST OFFICIAL UN 'HUMAN RIGHTS' REPORT LEGITIMIZING ANTI-ZIONISM, PROOF THAT SECRETARY GENERAL RIGHT TO DISBAND UNCHR
The Simon Wiesenthal Center charged today that a UN human rights special rapporteur's recommendations which purports to combat religious intolerance, instead legitimizes anti-Zionism and insults the fundamental precepts of Judaism.

Dr. Shimon Samuels,  the Jewish human rights NGO's Director for International Liaison, blasted today's UN Commission on Human Rights report by Doudou Diene, a UN Special Rapporteur, for his report entitled, Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

The report's section entitled Defamation of Religious and Global Efforts to Combat Racism: Anti-Semitism, Christianophobia and Islamophobia, ...not only failed to denounce anti-Zionism as a key component of the resurgence of antisemitism, but legitimized those who want to reconstitute the infamous 1975 UN resolution that 'Zionism=Racism', Samuels charged.

Instead of tackling antisemitism head-on, Samuels added, Diene’s report is based upon so-called high-level experts known for their opposition to a Jewish State who insist that:
     - anti-Zionism is the expression of opposition to a political project motivated either by anti-colonialism or by faith;
     - anti-Zionism was a majority view in Jewish communities until the genocide of the Jews in Europe;
     - the Jewish communities of the Diaspora oppose any use of Judaism to legitimize and justify political violence.

In many ways this is a repeat of the 2001 Durban UN World Conference Against Racism where NGO's, instead of denouncing antisemitism, demonized Jewish victims of hatred. It is about time that the Secretary General put an end to such attacks on the Jewish State's legitimacy. The total revamping of its Human Rights Commission, overstocked by tyrannical regimes, is a good place for Secretary General Annan to begin, concluded Samuels, who served as the Chair of the Jewish organizations throughout the Durban process.  Dr. Samuels is currently in Geneva and can be reached at: +33 6 09 77 01 58