On Monday, Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, arrived at its headquarters with a placard bearing a recent quote, from the Facebook page of a teacher at a UN-run school, praising Adolf Hitler. The school in question is one of many operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem, and whose schools are often engines of anti-Semitic and jihadist indoctrination—and, in Gaza, sometimes used by Hamas as human shields. Upon entering, Erdan—who planned to use the poster during his speech to the General Assembly—was told that no such items were allowed on the premises. Benny Avni observes:
The ambassador’s team “was informed that, in accordance with the relevant protocols, . . . the display of placards is not allowed,” says the UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric. Mr. Dujarric couldn’t cite any written no-placard rule, saying only that it was “established protocol.”
Yet, in a recorded speech to the General Assembly from his Ramallah office on September 24, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, displayed a placard of a map, purported to document how his “state” (which America, for one, has never recognized as such) has shrank since its mythical “historic Palestine” days, before the establishment of Israel in 1948.
UN officials admit the unwritten “protocol” barring placards at the General Assembly isn’t enforced across the board. “The rules are the rules,” Mr. Dujarric said. . . . Over the years, Israeli diplomats have consistently told me they respect UN rules and protocols and obey them diligently. So either they were unaware of the particular diktat, or the unwritten “protocol” is so obscure and unevenly enforced that it’s not worth the placard it’s written on.
Earlier in Geneva, during a typical Israel-bashing session on Saturday, the UN Human Rights Council’s president, Nazhat Shameem Khan, cut off a speech by [the pro-Israel activist] Hillel Neuer shortly after he started unveiling his organization’s deep investigation into anti-Semitism at UNRWA. . . . Neuer highlighted the same quote, as well as others.
Apparently the UNHRC rules also prohibit discussing the anti-Semitism of UN employees. So far, however, no one has discovered any rules that might discourage anti-Semitic pronouncements in the first place.
Read more on New York Sun: https://www.nysun.com/foreign/un-grows-nervous-over-how-a-teacher-it-backs-has/91683/