The UN’s conclusion that Israel is committing genocide is a “modern-day blood libel,” Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said at The Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference at the Friends of Zion Media Center on Tuesday.
Ohana spoke less than an hour after the publication of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory report, which determined that Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
They include the following: Killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
'Truth is a lie and a lie is truth' at the UN, Ohana says
“The UN has become a despicable institution where truth is a lie and a lie is the truth,” Ohana said in response. “This is a modern blood libel, much like those spread by the Nazis.”
He also spoke of the UN General Assembly vote on Friday, which approved a path to a Palestinian state. The seven-page resolution was endorsed by 142 countries, with 10 against and 12 abstentions.
“The UN rewards terror, ignores massacre, and obstructs the path to real peace,” the Knesset speaker said.
“Europe once convinced itself that appeasement could tame aggression,” Ohana continued. “Today, some of its leaders are repeating the same mistake, indulging illusions of statehood while Hamas still holds hostages and perpetrates senseless violence against Israeli civilians.”
However, he said, the people of Israel will “not cower from terror” and “will not be the midwives for a state whose sole goal is to bury us.”
“When they write resolutions, we will write the reality on the ground. And while they twist reality to align with their cowardice, we will speak the truth that the only path to peace runs not through stage declarations, but through the defeat of evil,” he said.
Ohana also said that appeasement always ends in bloodshed and betrayal of the very values and liberties Jews stand for, then praised the Post for standing for freedom of speech and democracy.