U.S. United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley rebuked a UN report accusing Israel of being “guilty of the crime of apartheid.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told The Times of Israel “the report as it stands does not reflect the views of the secretary-general” and was done without any dialogue with the UN secretariat.
Ambassador Haley slammed the report as “anti-Israel propaganda” in a statement Wednesday and demanded the UN secretariat to “withdraw” the study.
“The United States is outraged by the report,” Haley said in a statement. “The United Nations secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether.”
“The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the UN system and around the world,” she added.
In its conclusion, the report, commissioned by the U.N Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia stated, “A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles, living beyond.”
“This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime. They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence. This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon blasted the report as an “attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant lie.”
“It comes as no surprise that an organization headed by an individual who has called for boycotts against Israel, and compared our democracy to the most terrible regimes of the twentieth century, would publish such a report. We call on the Secretary-General to disassociate the UN from this biased and deceitful report,” he said in reference to ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf, a Jordanian national.
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