A representative for the Palestinian Authority (PA) dodged questioning in the United Nations on Aug. 13 regarding the PA’s anti-Semitic rhetoric, the Jerusalem Post reports.
U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination Committee Member Chinsung Chung asked the PA delegation to explain “anti-Semitic and anti-Israel prejudice and incitement to hatred, especially in the [Palestinian] media and speeches of state officials.” Committee Member Silva Albuquerque also asked the delegation about the anti-Semitism that permeates PA textbooks.
PA Deputy Foreign Minister for International Affairs Ammar Hijazi replied, “We do not discriminate against any of our citizens based on ethnicity and religion or sex. We are a state that is trying to find its path and still formulating its laws.” He alleged that the NGOs’ reported instances of PA anti-Semitism were “untruths” meant to “deny Palestinians their rights.”
The PA also railed against “Israel’s racist occupation” while failing to address their own policies and statements, according to U.N. Watch.
“The PA exploits the reporting process of the anti-racism committee as yet another UN vehicle to attack Israel,” U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “This is a waste of the committee’s time and resources, as Israel is subject to its own review later this year.”
Prior to the aforementioned questioning, U.N. Watch Legal Advisor Dina Rovner provided a briefing to the committee about the PA’s anti-Semitism.
“This incitement is part of the basic Palestinian narrative which dehumanizes Jews and Israelis calling them ‘apes and pigs’ and accusing them of all manner of evils from drinking the blood of Palestinian children to poisoning Palestinian wells and ruling the world, likens Israeli officials to Nazis, and rejects the rights of Jews to their own state in any part of the territory,” Rovner said. She also pointed out the PA frequently denies the Jewish connection to Israel as well as encourages terror attacks against Jews.
The committee’s hearing regarding the PA will resume on Aug. 14.
