Events Detail

Historic Conference on the Demonization of Israel by the United Nations

Sponsored by The Hudson Institute, Touro Law Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists

Millenium UN Plaza Hotel (44^th and 1^st Ave.), Sunday, November 18, 2007, 9 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

A first-ever conference on UN discrimination against Israel has been organized across the street from UN Headquarters to coincide with the General Assembly's annual adoption of more than 20 resolutions condemning Israel and not one critical of Sudan and its ongoing campaign of genocide in Darfur. 

"The discrimination against Israel at the UN has long been an outrage and must no longer go directly unchallenged," said conference organizer Anne Bayefsky, Director of the Touro Human Rights Institute and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute

Bayefsky, who is also the Editor of www.EYEontheUN.org – a website which follows the UN closely, points out:  "Under the banner of a UN Charter that requires the equality of men and women, as well as member states large and small, the Jewish state and Jewish non-governmental organizations are constantly subject to different treatment than all others."

Ambassadors, members of Congress, and top-level experts from three continents will cover four themes: The UN and Israel: Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism; The UN and Israel: The Real Double Standards; The UN and Human Rights: Hijacking First Principles; and The UN Message and Beyond: Other Rights Groups, the Media, and College Campuses.

Highlights will include addresses from John Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) (Chairman, House Republican Policy Committee); Ambassador Max Kampelman (Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient); and Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN).

Among the evidence of egregious UN discrimination against Israel to be spotlighted:

There have been 20 times more General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel than any other country on earth -- every year.

• There have been hundreds of thousands murdered, millions displaced, ongoing genocide in Darfur and yet no General Assembly resolution condemning Sudan for human rights violations in the past five years.
• 70% of all UN Human Rights Council country-specific criticisms have been on Israel.
• In its history, the UN Human Rights Commission never adopted a single resolution critical of states like China, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Zimbabwe; one-third of its country condemnations were directed at Israel alone.
• Three of five special sessions of the Human Rights Council have been on Israel.
• The only country permanently on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council is Israel.
• The only UN country human rights investigator with a never-ending term deals with Israel.
• The only UN member state not permitted to be a full and equal member of any UN regional group (groups which determine elections to UN bodies and voting patterns, as well as sharing key information) is Israel.  

Conference Speakers and Panelists

Professor Anne Bayefsky is a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute, Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and editor of www.EYEontheUN.org.

Ambassador Yehuda Blum is Professor of International Law (emeritus) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  Ambassador Blum is a survivor of the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and served as Israel's Ambassador and Permanent Representative Israel to the United Nations from 1978 to 1984. 

Ambassador John R. Bolton is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  He served as the United States Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations from August 2005 to December 2006. 

Ambassador Daniel Carmon is Israel's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) is a lawyer by profession and was elected to the United States Senate in 2002. Senator Coleman is a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee where he serves as the Ranking Member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) and also serves as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Nonie Darwish is an author and founder of Arabs for Israel an organization whose mission is to "promote reconciliation, acceptance and understanding" between Israelis and Arabs. Nonie Darwish's father was killed in a jihad against Israel and became a national hero, a "Shahid."  In 1978, she emigrated to America.  She is the author of "Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror" (2006). 

Stephen R. Greenwald is the President of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, and a scholar in residence at Fordham University Law School.  From 1999 to 2007 he was the President of Metropolitan College of New York.

Professor Malvina Halberstam is a founding faculty member of Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University where she specializes in international law, terrorism, and criminal procedure. 

Joseph Hess is Vice-President, Government Relations for the Jewish National Fund.  Mr. Hess is a retired Air Force Colonel.  Born in Germany, he was six-years-old when his parents, unable to obtain traveling papers for the whole family, got him and his 12-year-old sister out on the Kindertransport to England.  He represented the JNF application for UN NGO status in May 2007, an application that was rejected by the UN NGO Committee.

Ambassador Max M. Kampelman is a lawyer, diplomat and educator.  In 1989 President Reagan awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal, and in 1999 President Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.  He served as Ambassador and Head of the U.S. Delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

Dr. Bernard Lander is the founder and president of Touro College and a pioneer in Jewish and general higher education. 

Ambassador Itzhak Levanon is the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations in Geneva. 

Andrea Levin is National President and Executive Director of CAMERA, The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, an organization she has headed since 1991.

Herbert I. London is the President of the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.

David Matas is a lawyer in Winnipeg, Canada and senior honorary counsel to B'nai Brith Canada.  Mr. Matas was a member of the Canadian delegation to many international conferences, such as the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Conference on an International Criminal Court.

Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), is a bar admitted attorney by profession, and was first elected to Congress in 2002.  He is currently the Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, a leadership position once held by former President Gerald Ford and Vice President Dick Cheney. 

Ambassador Terry Miller is the Director of the Center for International Trade and Economics (CITE) at The Heritage Foundation. Prior to joining Heritage in October 2007, Ambassador Miller served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Professor Michla Pomerance is a Professor of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  She is a former fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.  

Dr. Walter Reich is currently a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior, at George Washington University and was the Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 1995 to 1998. 

Father Keith Roderick is an Episcopal priest and Christian Solidarity International's Representative in Washington, D.C. 

Professor Alvin H. Rosenfeld is the Director of the Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts, and a Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Indiana University, where he has taught since 1968.  He presently serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Executive Committee and is Chair of the Academic Committee of the Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

Claudia Rosett is a Journalist-in-Residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and an Adjunct Fellow with the Hudson Institute. Currently based in New York, she has reported over the past 26 years from Asia, the former Soviet Union, Latin America and the Middle East.

Roz Rothstein is the International Director of StandWithUs, a non-governmental organization with offices and chapters in twelve regions across the United States. Ms. Rothstein is a child of Holocaust survivors. 

Ambassador Dr. Robbie Sabel is a Visiting Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law and at the Department of International Relations of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.  He served for eight years as the Legal Adviser to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later as the Ministry's Deputy Director General for Arms Control and Disarmament.

Shimon Samuels is the Director for International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, based in Paris.  He is responsible for issues of contemporary racism and antisemitism in Europe, Latin America and international organizations. 

Pedro A. Sanjuan served as Director of the Political Affairs Division of the United Nations Secretariat from 1983-1993.

Professor Malcolm Shaw QC is the Sir Robert Jennings Professor of International Law at the University of Leicester, England.  His prior appointment was at the University of Essex, where he was the Founder-Director of the Human Rights Centre in 1983. He is the author of 'International Law", one of the world's leading international law textbooks now in its 5th edition, published by Cambridge University Press. 

Ambassador Raphael Walden is the Director of the Clemens Nathan Research Centre and an adviser to the Consultative Council of Jewish Organisations based in London, England.  Mr Walden was Deputy Chief of the Mission to the UN in Geneva, and finally Ambassador to Eritrea before retiring from the Foreign Ministry in 2000.