After UN Human Rights Council COI accuses Israel of war crimes, defends anti-Jewish discrimination on Temple Mount, Touro Institute on Human Rights Prof. Anne Bayefsky tells Arutz Sheva the COI is attacking biblical history.
On Tuesday, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry against the State of Israel presented its latest report accusing the Jewish State of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its response to the October 7 massacre and in general.
Commission chairwoman Navi Pillay accused Israel of a “widespread and relentless assault against the Palestinian people, in which Israeli forces have committed war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians, and willful killing, and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
Chris Sidoti, another member of the Commission of Inquiry, threatened that individual IDF soldiers could be prosecuted for their actions.
Among the many criticisms the report made of Israel were alleged violations of the discriminatory “status quo” on the Temple Mount under which Jews would be barred from praying at the holiest site in Judaism. The report also criticized Israel for allowing more Jews to visit the Temple Mount than before.
Professor Anne Bayefsky, the Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and President of the Human Rights Voices organization, told Arutz Sheva – Israel National News that the content of the report demonstrates that, far from being concerned with human rights, the Commission of Inquiry seeks “the destruction of the Jewish State.”
“While Israel is under an existential threat from Iran, there is another existential battle being waged against Israel by the United Nations. Israel is fighting a kinetic war in which UN antisemites and reprobates are an integral part. The UN’s Commission of Inquiry (COI) was created to destroy the Jewish state and is now conducting itself accordingly. It knows no bounds. According to the COI, Israelis are Nazis, accused of ‘extermination’ of the Palestinians. The Jewish people are demonized, in the latest report’s words as ‘extremist Jews,'” Professor Bayefsky stated.
She continued, “The newest COI report is also a direct attack on biblical history. Led by Chair Navi Pillay, the inquisitors spout the blood libel that Jews praying at the holiest site in Judaism is an affront to Muslims. They claim Jews exclude non-Jews from religious sites, inverting the actual reality that only Israel protects freedom of religion to Christians, Muslims and Jews. Meanwhile, Palestinian Arabs have banned Jews and systematically trashed Jewish religious sites for a century, as well as conducting decades of murderous assaults on synagogues, Jewish schools, Passover seders, the Yom Kippur war and October 7th itself, which was launched on a Jewish holiday of tremendous biblical significance. All of that was totally omitted from the COI report.”
Moreover, “In a particularly obscene statement to the ‘Human Rights’ Council, member of the Inquiry Chris Sidoti equated Israeli hostages with what he referred to as Palestinian ‘hostages.’ In other words, according to the COI’s depraved thinking, Kfir Bibas, taken hostage and murdered at age 9 months, was equivalent to convicted Palestinian terrorists serving multiple life sentences.”
Prof. Bayefsky noted that, “Whereas I was chastised for calling out their overt antisemitism as disrespecting the ‘Human Rights’ Council and the Inquiry, speaker after speaker used words describing the State of Israel as ‘Judaizing’ Palestinian land and ‘exterminating’ Palestinians with ‘chilling genocidal intent’ – and met no rebuke or comment from the Council President.”
According to her, “We know that the COI’s report is a direct attack on the existence of the Jewish state by the words of the members of the Inquiry themselves. Pillay accused Israel of ‘the most ruthless, prolonged, and widespread attack against the Palestinian people since 1948.’ Algeria echoed Pillay, accusing Israel of an ‘illegal occupation of Palestinian land for more than 77 years.’ Pillay repeated her remark to the world’s press at her subsequent news conference, where she thanked the press ‘for educating the world because of the importance of this Commission.'”
“The COI is a menace to human rights and international peace and security. Its continuation is a permanent stain on the dangerous United Nations,” Prof. Bayefsky concluded.
