UN Sponsors Anti-Israel Conference Promoting BDS

On February 4, 2017, featured speakers at a UN-sponsored conference held in Nicaragua called for the boycott of Israel, a UN member state, and accused it of ethnic cleansing. The conference, entitled "Building Bridges with Palestinian Diaspora in Central America," was organized by the UN's "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People," a committee dedicated to promoting the Palestinian political agenda.

Here are some of the statements issued at the conference according to the UN press release:

"Keynote Presentation
SAID MUSA, former Prime Minister of Belize, said...those who had expelled people from their ancestral land and killed others who resisted were called victims, and those driven out and massacred were called terrorists..., emphasizing that Israel had been built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine... it was important to challenge the idea that denouncing Israel's illegal action was constituted bias against Jews, which somehow had been made credible by invoking crimes against them in the 1940s... He also advocated for boycotting goods produced in illegal settlements; joining the academic and cultural boycott of Israel...

RIYAD MANSOUR, [Palestinian representative to the UN], said...there must be a distinction between Israel and the Occupied Territory, including East Jerusalem. 'They are not the same,' which opened the door for the diaspora to intensify efforts to delegitimize Israel's colonization... He ... challeng[ed] participants, whatever their political ideology, to exceed the efforts of the Jewish community...

Sergio Iván Moya Mena, Professor, School of International Affairs, National University of Costa Rica and Coordinator of Centro de Estodios de Medio Oriente y Africa del Norte...encourag[ed] diaspora members to take the diplomatic space away from Israel as a way to foster its global isolation."

An attendee used the conference as a platform to promote the revision of Jewish and Christian history by claiming Jesus was "Palestinian" rather than a Jew: "A speaker from Cuba, who said he represented both Palestinians and the Federation of Arab-American entities (FEARAB), stated that Palestinians had been the first Christians to follow Jesus Christ and that Jesus was himself a Palestinian."