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

April 28, 2016

“Time for UN to convene high level Conference on Anti-Semitism”; Thousands Sign SWC Petition to Congress to Withhold Further UNESCO funding after 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 Palestinian Representative 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 those who resisted them as terrorists." Mark Weitzman, the Wiesenthal Center's Chief Representative to the UN in New York declared, "This travesty, coming during Passover, when the 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 vile screed. 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 of people 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 at the United Nations." “This is but the latest abuse of the podium of the international body, orginally founded to defeat Nazism, that makes a mockery of annual 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 rhetoric is 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 continue unabated,” Cooper concluded. In a related development, thousands of activists have protested a recent vote by UNESCO's Executive Board erasing Jewish ties to the Temple 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 is voided. Sign SWC Petition Here For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036.join the Center on Facebook, www.facebook.com/simonwiesenthalcenter, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent direct to your Twitter feed. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the 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).