UN Rights Expert Urges EU to Suspend Ties with Israel 
Hillel C. Neuer
October 14, 2004
UN Watch
http://www.unwatch.org/speeches/ReleaseZieglerOctober.html http://www.unwatch.org/speeches/ReleaseZieglerOctober.html
GENEVA, October 14, 2004 – A UN human rights expert on Thursday called on the European Union to suspend its trade ties with Israel, saying they were the only lever available to stop alleged violations of the Palestinians’ “right to food.”  Critics, however, accuse the expert of being “obsessed” with condemning Israel to the neglect of recognized food emergencies (click here for comparative chart), and accuse him of wrongfully writing in the name of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
 
According to Agence France-Presse, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he had written to EU Commission president Romano Prodi asking for the EU’s Association Agreement with Israel to be temporarily suspended until the food situation improved, and would be writing again to the next Commission chief Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, who takes over next month.

As a far-left parliamentarian in Switzerland for many years, Mr. Ziegler is well known in Europe for his anti-American and anti-Israel politics.  Mr. Ziegler was in the news earlier this week for his involvement in launching “L’Empire”, a new Swiss journal dedicated to the United States that, according to Geneva’s Le Temps, “hopes for the decline of [its] empire.”
A case against Mr. Ziegler for bias and abuse of mandate is pending before the UN Commission on Human Rights.  In a legal brief filed with the Commission in July, UN Watch, a Geneva-based NGO, accused Ziegler of singling out Israel alone for repeated and unfair condemnation.  “Ziegler routinely ignores the 35 countries listed on the UN’s Food Emergency list,” said Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch.  “Instead he is obsessed with the Palestinian territories, which have never ranked as a food emergency on any list.”
The brief argues that Ziegler breached his obligations as a UN expert to act with impartiality, non-selectivity and objectivity.  “Search Ziegler's web site, reports, infinite media interviews and press releases, and there is not a single statement for the hungry of Food Emergency states like Burundi, Congo, or Liberia, let alone blame for any party,” said Neuer. “Yet type in ‘West Bank and Gaza’, and one turns up dozens of pronouncements, with Israel cast by Ziegler as perpetrator of ‘state terror’ and ‘war crimes’.” 
This is not the first time that Mr. Ziegler has written a letter critical of Israel using the stationery of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.  A May letter calling on Caterpillar Inc. to boycott Israel was disowned by the High Commissioner.  “High Commissioner Louise Arbour must discipline Ziegler once and for all,” says Neuer.  “Her office cannot say ‘he speaks only in his own name’ while at the same time permitting him to publish anti-Israel boycott letters on the High Commissioner’s own stationery.”
UN Watch was founded in 1993 to monitor UN compliance with the principles of its own Charter.  During the last session of the Commission on Human Rights, UN Watch was a leading voice for political rights in Zimbabwe, religious rights in China and women’s rights in Iran.