Keynote Speaker at UN Event Says Holocaust Remembrance is an Excuse for Jewish Racism

The keynote speaker of a UN-organized "Palestinian Diaspora" meeting, Said Musa, claimed Holocaust remembrance is an excuse for Jewish racism and then called on the UN to create a "Palestine Occupation Remembrance Day." The meeting, entitled "Building Bridges with Palestinian Diaspora", was held on February 4, 2017 in Managua, Nicaragua, organized by the UN's Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Said Musa, a former Prime Minister of Belize who claims Palestinian descent, was invited to be the keynote speaker by the Committee.

Musa also accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, extermination, crimes against humanity, racial exclusivity and apartheid, before concluding with support for President Obama's UN Security Council on Israeli settlements, and a call for boycotts of the Jewish state.

In Musa's words:

"2017 is a time when the world seems to be upside down, when those who ruthlessly expel people from their ancestral land and kill those who resist are called victims, and those who are driven out and massacred are called terrorists. It is time to go back to basics. The State of Israel was built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcefully driven from their homes and thousands were brutally killed. We call this the Nakba, and although it began in 1947, it has continued since and is still practiced today...

The Israeli State has simply refused to acknowledge this right of return of the Palestinian refugees. Part of the reason for this is the denial of the Nakba, a pretense that the founders of the Israeli State did not, with malice aforethought, carry out the crime of ethnic cleansing by the brutal forceful removal of Palestinians from their land, accompanied by dozens of massacres, desecration of holy sites, land robbery on a massive scale and other crimes against humanity...

We need to challenge the idea that anyone who denounces the illegal acts of the State of Israel is biased against Jews. This is made credible somehow because of the Nazi crimes against Jews and others in the 1940s. And so the Holocaust is invoked to justify the 'right' to a racially exclusive Jewish state on the land of the Palestinians. But nobody has explained why Palestinians are required to pay for Nazi crimes. Israel has refused to acknowledge guilt for its violent colonial land seizures, massacres and ongoing oppression...

Everybody knows that from the time it was established Israel has maintained a strictly apartheid system... The atrocities committed there over the past decade are too well known for me to repeat them in this forum, but it is useful to recall the judgment of The Russell Tribunal on the evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution...

We should support a move for a resolution to be passed at the United Nations to create an International Palestine Occupation Remembrance Day...

Resolution 2334, with its clear depiction of all the Jewish settlements on Palestinian land as illegal, makes it easier for us to encourage our governments and peoples to join the boycott against all producers and goods produced by Israel in the illegal settlements. We should also support and have our governments enforce the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. In short, the actions we can take to advance the cause of peace in the Middle East must pass through reaching a just solution to the crisis of Israeli occupation of Palestine, and what we can do is: Pursue effective measures that will make known the truth of the situation to the peoples of our region so that they can support their governments to take appropriate action or pressure them to do so; We can support international measures to achieve that objective world-wide; Join in the boycott of goods produced in the illegal settlements in the occupied territories and against those companies investing therein, in keeping with the call in Resolution 2334 for all States 'to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967'. Join the intellectual, artistic and cultural boycott of Israel as long as it persists in its present policies; Recognize the State of Palestine and encourage all types of relations with it..."