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Ireland urged to raise UN anti-Semitism motion

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The pressure is being exerted at a time of heightened fears of rising anti-Semitism on both sides of the Atlantic.
Fears of rising anti-Semitism, specifically in Europe, were raised at a recent European Union conference in Brussels.
Jewish leaders who addressed the conference, organized by the European Commission, called for the Irish UN resolution to be given a new airing.
Cobi Benatoff, president of the European Jewish Congress, urged EU members states to back Ireland’s draft UN resolution condemning anti-Semitism. The resolution was withdrawn by Ireland last December because of a lack of support in the General Assembly.
A separate Irish resolution broadly condemning religious intolerance was instead placed before the assembly. This alternative resolution, which Ireland has fostered every year for two decades, was general in its wording and did not mention any specific religion.
The resolution specifically pointing to anti-Semitism was a response to pressure on the Irish from, among others, the Israeli government. Prompted by a rising number of anti-Semitic incidents, the Israelis asked the Irish to include a reference to anti-Semitism in its annual resolution condemning religious intolerance.
The Irish balked at including a specific religious reference in this resolution and offered instead to introduce a distinct, standalone resolution condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly. Support for this resolution was forthcoming from the rest of the EU, the “accession states” about to join the EU, and several other nations, including Canada. The proposed standalone resolution condemned “all manifestations of anti-Semitism wherever they occur,” attacks on synagogues and other religious places, sites and shrines and all “intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief.”
But a number of UN member states, including many Arab and Muslim ones, insisted that the standalone resolution also include condemnation of intolerance against other named religious and ethnic groups.
The disagreement among assembly members prompted Ireland to withdraw the more specifically worded resolution and offer only the generally worded condemnation.
The anti-Semitism resolution was mothballed, but not torn up, an Irish diplomatic source stated this week.
This means that pressure to revive it could emerge at the upcoming six-week session of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
If it holds to form, the Geneva session would a strongly political one and an “obvious forum” for an effort to revive the Irish resolution, the source said, while adding that Ireland had no current plans to actually reintroduce the resolution.

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