Experts slam U.N. action plan for combating antisemitism: ‘phony exercise in futility’

"Last month, the United Nations (U.N.) released its ‘Action Plan to Enhance Monitoring and Response to Antisemitism,’ partially in response to a ‘surge in antisemitic incidents targeting Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe, the United States of America and elsewhere.

Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and the president of Human Rights Voices, told Fox News Digital that the Action Plan was a ‘phony exercise in futility,’ that was ‘produced by what she claimed is the leading global purveyor of antisemitism…to pretend to do something to combat antisemitism.’

Developed by the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), the U.N.'s Action Plan emphasizes that ‘the ability to understand and identify antisemitism is crucial to global efforts to combat hatred and prejudice.’ Despite the critical nature of understanding antisemitism, the plan wholly fails to define what constitutes antisemitism.

The Action Plan mentions, but does not adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which 45 member states have endorsed and which Bayefsky said ‘the vast majoriy of major Jewish organizations and institutions around the world accept,’ because it ‘recognizes the connection with Zionism and Israel.’

‘The U.N. champions the idea that victims of hate and intolerance define their own experience of discrimination, isolation, and violence – except when it comes to Jews,’ she said...

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project and a former U.N. Monitoring Team coordinator, told Fox News Digital that ‘the CT[counterterrorism] strategy is a mess.’

Though he said that some U.N. efforts to counter terrorism are effective, he said that given the lack of agreement over what constitutes terrorism, the U.N. particularly struggles with identifying groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis as terrorists. ‘If something really dramatic happens, then often a group will find it is being accused of being a terrorist group,’ Fitton-Brown said, noting how the U.N. condemned the Houthis in the aftermath of their 2022 attack on Abu Dhabi airport but failed to designate them as a terror group. ‘On Hezbollah, the U.N. has been hopelessly weak,’ he explained.

He said that Hamas was ‘a good example of where the absence of a definition is problematic because you get something like the 10/7 attack…and the U.N. just completely failed in its response to that, and that is partly because of its failure to judge that a group that adopts terrorist tactics is a terrorist group.’

Bayefsky said that the U.N. Security Council ‘has never condemned Hamas for October 7th because they can’t agree on what counts as terrorism. That isn’t a success story. It’s a malevolent dereliction of duty.’

No Plan for Self-Monitoring

Among the Action Plan’s proposals are the implementation of training modules to help staff ‘recognize and understand antisemitism,’ and the requirement that senior U.N. officials ‘continue to denounce antisemitic manifestations as and when they occur.’

Bayefsky questioned the implementation of these plans. ‘The U.N. says it is committed to educating U.N. staff about antisemitism without knowing what counts as antisemitism. Any actual educator gives that lesson plan an ‘F,’’ she explained.

From the highest levels, Bayefsky claimed that the world body is not currently standing up against anti-Jewish prejudice. Though U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the world on International Holocaust Remembrance Day that ‘we must condemn antisemitism wherever and whenever it appears,’ Bayefsky said that ‘if the when and the who are inside the U.N., [Guterres is] not only sitting down, he goes mute.’

‘Take the cases of U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and U.N. Commission of Inquiry head Navi Pillay, both widely condemned for egregious antisemitic behavior,’ Bayefsky claimed. ‘The Secretary-General claims their ‘independence’ leaves him impotent. Nothing prevents him from using his platform to speak out about right and wrong. He’s mute by choice.’...

Bayefsky said that the U.N. ‘can’t combat antisemitism without acknowledging its guilt and starting with ‘mea culpa.’..."