The speakers included the moderator Jan Lonn, from the International Youth and Student Movement for the United Nations; Krishna Ahooja Patel, from the Women International League for Peace and Freedom; Issa Amro, the chair of the Youth Against Settlements in Hebron; Marie Claude Julsaint from the Women's Christian Association Palestine and Richard Falk, UN "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories."
The moderator Lonn opened the meeting by comparing the International year of solidarity with the Palestinian people to "previous international years" created by the UN like the one "on mobilizing against apartheid."
The statement of Krishna Ahooja Patel included the following:
- "The Balfour declaration is good to read. It tells you what colonialism does. In the case of Palestine, you have apartheid, slavery, second class citizens. There is nothing in the book on discrimination that has not been applied there...Why didn't colonial powers give them territory in Europe? Why Palestine?...It is not because God said that, but because it was useful for colonial powers. The Palestinians became victims of the tremendous conspiracy which continues...You find in the UN when Palestine question comes up there is silence. How does Israel buy this silence how do you buy this silence for so many years including superpowers and transnational companies?"
Marie Claude Julsaint's contribution was to allege peaceful Palestinians fled Israeli-perpetrated violence in 1948 and since that time Israelis brutalize pregnant Palestinian women who are forced to give birth at Israeli checkpoints where their newborns die en masse.
UN's "expert" Falk referred to Israel as an "evil structure which has been imposed on Palestinians for far too long". He also said: "It was colonialist British office whose Balfour Declaration created this problem by promising the Zionist movement the territory where residents for generations and centuries were given no voices. It was pure colonialism..."
Since this is Falk's last Council session as an official UN expert, he held nothing back and after admitting that he is against the very existence of a Jewish state and Zionism, he went in to support the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) of Israel. "There is a change in political approach expressed by growing and strengthening of the BDS movement the way it was brought on racist South Africa. It was the global anti-apartheid movement which led to the fall of the South Africa elite... The Oslo agreement...is a phony charade which gives time to Israel to build settlements and finish the apartheid wall."
At the end of the meeting the representative of the Palestinian Authority to the UN in Geneva enthusiastically praised Falk for the "outstanding manner" in which he carried out his mandate and "his noble cause of shedding light on historic injustice."