"The call from a United Nations human-rights panel for U.S. leaders to 'unequivocally and unconditionally' reject prejudice and hate speech and to investigate the 'proliferation of such racist manifestations' falls flat in view of the world body's own biases.
The admonition from the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination follows the violence in Charlottesville, Va., during which three people died and 19 were injured when a car slammed into counter-protesters at a 'Unite the Right' rally, CNN reports. Separate from the committee's critique, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted that 'Racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia are ... poisoning our societies.'
Never mind that the Justice Department already has launched a federal civil rights investigation into the Charlottesville violence. Calls to order from the same world body that excoriates Israel at just about every opportunity are, to say the least, 'disingenuous,' according to a human rights advocate.
'These same authorities on racism champion the U.N.'s racist Durban Declaration (which associated Israel with racism), support the U.N.'s rampant discriminatory treatment of the Jewish state and turn a blind eye to the modern forms of anti-Semitism,' says Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights.
On bias and prejudice, especially anti-Semitism, the U.N. needs to direct its focus inward, lest it be accused of Glass-House Syndrome."