Simon Wiesenthal Center Denounces Anti-Semitic Rant and Holocaust Distortion by UN Palestinian Representative

“Time for UN to convene high level Conference on Anti-Semitism”; Thousands Sign SWC Petition to Congress to Withhold Further UNESCO fundingafter it designates Jerusalem’s Western Wall as Muslim Site

The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the anti-Semitic and historic distortions and slanders spouted by the UN PalestinianRepresentative to the United Nations, Dr. Riyad Mansour (pictured). He compared Palestinian terrorists who attack Israelis to Jews who resisted the Nazis during the Shoah, alleging, “All colonizers, all oppressors, including those who suppressed the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, labeled thosewho resisted them as terrorists."

Mark Weitzman, the Wiesenthal Center's Chief Representative to the UN in New York declared, "This travesty, coming during Passover, whenthe Warsaw Ghetto uprising was launched in 1943 and on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day when the Jewish People mourn their 6 million martyrs murdered by the Nazis, is a grotesque and vilescreed. Mansour's cynical attempts to manipulate history by comparing Israelis to Nazis insults the memory of the true victims of the Nazi genocide, their descendants, and the millions ofpeople who fought and died to defeat Nazism,” Weitzman continued, adding, “It is time for the UN to implement the request made by 40 nations last year to convene a high level conference atthe United Nations."

“This is but the latest abuse of the podium of the international body, orginally founded to defeat Nazism, that makes a mockery ofannual UN ceremonies to remember the victims of the Shoah, ” added Rabbi Abraham Cooper Associate Dean of the leading Jewish Human Rights NGO. “Until such time that such outrageous rhetoricis condemned in real time by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Ambassadors of the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, expect the Palestinian hate rhetoric to continueunabated,” Cooper concluded.

In a related development, thousands of activists have protested a recent vote by UNESCO's Executive Board erasing Jewish ties to theTemple Mount by recasting the Western Wall, (The Kotel), as the Islamic Al-Buraq Plaza. This SWC petition urges US Congress not to consider any future funding for UNESCO until this vote isvoided.

Sign SWCPetition Here

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families inthe United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament(Parlatino).