The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jordanian Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, compared the fate of Palestinians who have attacked Israel repeatedly and refused to acknowledge the existence of a Jewish state with the genocidal extermination of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The comparison was made in his remarks at the opening of the 35th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 6, 2017. Although Hussein noted in his speech that some would respond "that the experiences of the two peoples are not equivalent, how could I mention them in one breath? Indeed, I agree," he nevertheless proceeded to do so.
In his words:
"Fifty years ago, this was the day I first heard the sound of war. I was three and a half years old and, while fragmentary, I still remember military men milling around our home in Amman, an armoured car stationed nearby and later, planes that flew overhead. It was a war that shaped my life, and forged my later desire to understand the depths of Palestinian suffering but not only that, Jewish suffering too – the latter spanning over two millennia, and which culminated in that colossal crime, the Holocaust.
I grew up not far from the massive Palestinian refugee camp in al-Baqa'a. I worked across the street from the al-Wihdat refugee camp. In the past thirty years, I have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau, visited Dachau, seen Buchenwald. I have studied in depth the trials at Nuremburg and elsewhere, the long and painful history of anti-Semitism in Europe, Russia and later, Arab countries – which remains still present in far too many places around the world.
Some will respond, mechanically almost, that the experiences of the two peoples are not equivalent, how could I mention them in one breath? Indeed, I agree – the Holocaust was so monstrous and so mathematically planned and executed it has no parallel, no modern equal.
Yet it is also undeniable that today, the Palestinian people mark a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by military force."