Prime Minister Yair Lapid yesterday (Sunday) sent a letter to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, demanding the immediate removal and disbanding of the members of the Commission of Inquiry against Israel acting on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council.
Last week, Milon Kotari, one of the members of the Investigative Committee against Israel, was interviewed by the “Mundo Weiss” website, and shared his thoughts there. Among other things, Kothari said that it is not at all clear why Israel is a member of the United Nations, and he also blamed the “Jewish lobby” behind the social networks. Navi Pillai, who heads the committee, claimed that Kothari’s words were taken out of context and refused to condemn his statements.
The Prime Minister’s Office stated that sending the letter is part of a comprehensive and intensive effort led by Israel in recent days. Thanks to the many efforts, it was reported, representatives from a number of countries have already condemned Kothari’s anti-Semitic comments, including: the United States, France, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria and the European Union. The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Garfield, wrote that the UN has no place for anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic statements like Kothari’s. The US representative to the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Taylor, wrote that Kothari’s words They provoke outrage. The British representative to the Human Rights Commission, Simon Manley, wrote that the things are offensive and unacceptable. “Anti-Semitism has no place in the United Nations,” he wrote on Twitter.
Already upon its establishment, it was clear that the commission of inquiry, which received an unlimited mandate in time and an almost unlimited scope of investigation, does not intend to judge in good faith what happened between Israel and Hamas during the “Guardian of the Walls” operation, and that its very establishment is a biased and political step against Israel.
The committee, of which Kotari is still a member, is headed by Navi Pillai, who, according to the NGO MONITOR organization, was responsible for the establishment of four investigative committees that dealt exclusively with Israel. Kotari himself entered Israel 20 years ago under the guise of an academic visit, in order to write an anti-Israel report in collaboration with several extremist organizations. In the same publication, he ignored the suicide attacks by the Palestinians, defined their terrorist activity as legitimate opposition and accused Israel of “massacre” and “ethnic cleansing”.
“The investigative committee was tainted from the ground up”
Last year, the UN Human Rights Council approved Pakistan’s proposal to establish a commission of inquiry, the reason for which is allegedly Operation “Guardian of the Walls” and the fighting against Hamas, but the mandate given to it is to investigate all events in the “Palestinian Occupied Territories, East Jerusalem and Israel”, including “The root causes of systematic discrimination and oppression based on national, ethnic, racial and religious identity”.
The first report published by the committee a month ago ignored the wrongdoings of Hamas and included a sharp bias against Israel. In a letter he sent yesterday, Lapid wrote that “the investigative committee has been tainted from the ground up due to the prejudices expressed by its leadership in public, which are not in line with the UN’s basic standards of neutrality, independence and impartiality”. Regarding Kothari’s statements in an interview last week, Lapid added that “these anti-Semitic comments cast a stain on the entire United Nations organization, and are unbecoming of a person in such a responsible position.” Lapid further wrote: “Instead of taking a moral stance and rejecting the statements, Ms. Navi Pillai, who sits at the head of the committee, chose to defend them and excuse them. In a public letter sent on July 28 to the President of the UN Human Rights Council, she reiterated and emphasized the committee’s support for the words Kotari. Pillay’s claim, according to which things were taken out of context – is false and was even rejected by the president of the UN Human Rights Council. I implore you to listen to Kothari’s interview and judge for yourself,” wrote Lapid.
“I remember the values you delivered at a conference in New York in 2017, when you said: ‘Denying the right of the State of Israel to exist is a modern form of anti-Semitism.’ All possible actions in order to condemn anti-Semitism, and if possible – uproot it.’ You also emphasized that ‘Israel deserves equal treatment like any other country, with the exact same rules.’ Mr. Guterres, I urge you today to respect your words in the scandalous case This, and to put things on the record. This thing cannot pass in silence. The slanders about a ‘Jewish lobby’ that works to ‘control’ the media, remind us of the darkest days of modern history,” wrote Lapid.