![Antonio Guterres](https://a7.org/files/pictures/781x439/1155242.jpg)
On Monday, the United Nations marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Professor Anne Bayefsky, the Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and President of the Human Rights Voices human rights organization, spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News about the contradiction between the UN's commemoration of the Holocaust while it employs antisemites and is tied to the Hamas terrorist organization, the organization that committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023.
"Holocaust remembrance at the United Nations is an oxymoron," Prof. Bayefsky said.
"The pathological global purveyor of antisemitism took the opportunity this year, as in the past, to masquerade as on the right side of history," she said. "Except just this month it released an 'Action Plan' on UN steps to combat antisemitism that refused to define the phenomenon as including the evil demonization of the Jewish state. Instead, the Plan pointed to alternative definitions of antisemitism that strive to protect condemnation of Zionism (the self-determination of the Jewish people) as racist and criminal."
According to her, "The UN isn't just guilty of crimes of omission when it comes to Jews, it is guilty of criminal acts of commission - active incitement and support for Jew-hatred. Starting with the antisemitism spewed by Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres. The same Secretary-General who thought there was a logical explanation for October 7th rooted in the behavior of Jewish victims, had the audacity to address the world on this Holocaust remembrance occasion and to attempt to generalize the crime."
"What did Guterres not say? He didn't acknowledge that October 7th was antisemitism. That Palestinian Arabs targeting Israelis with war after war, terrorist attack after terrorist attack, for 77 years is antisemitism. That UN double standards, discrimination, and constant efforts to boycott and criminalize Israeli self-defense is antisemitism. Today's UN has learned nothing from the Holocaust - except how to fake concern one day of the year, and work every other day of the year to repeat it," she said.
In October, the Knesset passed two bills banning the activities of UNRWA, the UN organization for the descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees from 1948, in Israel were approved in the Knesset last Monday with a historic majority of 92 out of 120 MKs. The deadline for UNRWA to cease all operations and remove itself from Jerusalem is tomorrow.
UNRWA, which has long been criticized for cooperating with Hamas, has come under increased scrutiny as its workers have been found to have been directly involved in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel revealed in January of 2024 that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks. It then presented a dossier showing that the UNRWA workers who participated in the Hamas massacre kidnapped a woman, handed out ammunition and actively took part in the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, where 97 people were murdered.