JNS
The double standard “just shows how detached from reality this most important of human rights bodies is,” David Michaels, of B’nai B’rith, told JNS.
Jürg Lauber, the Swiss ambassador to the United Nations, used his privilege as president, for 2025, of the U.N. Human Rights Council to repeatedly chide experts addressing the council and tell them to maintain “necessary dignity and respect.”
He opted to do so only when pro-Israel speakers referred to the Iranian regime’s documented offenses and not when critics of the Jewish state accused it of crimes.
David Michaels, director of U.N. and intercommunal affairs at B’nai B’rith International, told JNS that he wasn’t surprised to be berated as he addressed the council, given its “track record.”
“The council has a long history of chiding and interrupting speakers, particularly from the pro-Israel side, whether that’s member states or the chair,” Michaels told JNS.
Michaels, whose pre-recorded video message was played before the council on Tuesday, told JNS he followed Lauber’s responses in real time.
He told the body that the U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s latest report about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—which claims that Israel is conducting a Gazan “extermination” campaign—“accuses Israel and Israel alone of undermining another people’s identity, survival and ties to a land.”
“It accuses Israel and Israel alone of the crime of ‘extermination,’” he said in the recorded message, “and it accuses Israel and Israel alone of possible ‘genocidal intent.’” He added that the council had yet to discuss explicit Iranian regime threats to destroy Israel.
The U.N. Human Rights Council created the so-called Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, which several U.N. member states have denounced. The commission is assigned to probe the “root causes” of the conflict, and critics have said it has an oversized budget and staffing compared to other U.N. commissions. JNS has reported that all three of the commission’s members have been credibly accused of Jew-hatred.
With Navi Pillay, chair of the Commission of Inquiry, present on Tuesday, Michaels urged those reading its reports to compare the ideology, rhetoric and peace overtures emanating from Jerusalem and Tehran.
“If this COI were interested in the root causes of conflict, it would show some interest in the open intentions of those who chant, ‘death to America, death to Israel,’” Michaels said in his pre-recorded remarks, of chants by Iranian regime officials and terror proxies.
After the 90-second message, Lauber said, “I would like to request all participants to deal with the issues we are dealing with in this council with the necessary dignity and respect.”
“I call upon all participants to ask questions or make comments in relation to the scope of the current dialogue,” he added, sitting next to Pillay. He didn’t say which part or parts of the recorded message were disrespectful or beyond the scope.
As other speakers accused Israel of a wide range of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and called for sanctions and embargoes against the Jewish state, he said only “thank you” at the end of their remarks.
Michaels said such actions hurt the council’s standing and “any perception of seriousness” the council might try to convey, “even more than it has been already.”
“There’s something illuminating about that type of moment,” he told JNS. “To suggest that Iran’s role in the region—including Iran’s role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, its sponsorship of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, among other pieces of the puzzle—is irrelevant and beyond the scope of a discussion on the root causes of conflict, it just shows how detached from reality this most important of human rights bodies is.”
‘Total farce’
Anne Herzberg, legal adviser and U.N. representative at NGO Monitor, told JNS she had a similar experience.
In a recorded statement she submitted from Israel, Herzberg told the U.N. Human Rights Council that the Commission of Inquiry “is now presenting its eighth report to the council, but in the hundreds of pages it has produced, this commission has yet to say anything about Iran and its role in driving the Palestinian conflict with Israel.”
She called the omission “glaring” and added that the commission “claims it investigates all underlying root causes of instability and protraction of the conflict, yet it is silent as to how Iran is a root cause, with its genocidal agenda to destroy Israel and the terror armies it deploys to drive the conflict.”
Lauber jumped in after the remarks concluded.
“I would like to request, again, all participants to deal with human rights issues before this council with the necessary dignity and respect,” he said. “While speakers may refer to specific situations by way of example, for illustration, I call upon all participants to ask questions or make comments in relation to the scope of the current dialogue.”
Herzberg told JNS that while watching Lauber’s comments, she wasn’t “surprised at all, because from day one, it’s a total farce that this commission purports to be even-handed in any way.”
She described Iran’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “as the second main cause, after Palestinian rejectionism.” Lauber’s attempt to “silence me and denigrate what I said just shows they have no interest in being fair.”
“It’s a sham,” she said.
There is no established mechanism through which Herzberg could clarify with Lauber or with the council what she said that he considered out of bounds, but she intends to keep appearing before the council, she told JNS.
“I think it’s important, because you have to be there in the room,” she said. “They did show my video. So even though he tried to denigrate it after the fact, people still saw it.”
Similar incidents have occurred when Israel supporters have criticized the council, U.N. staff or their output.
In March, Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, was interrupted multiple times while addressing the council, as Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian “observer” to the global body in Geneva, accused him of being “affiliated with the Mossad.” The Palestinian representative said that Neuer should be barred from speaking.
After a second interruption, Paul Empole Efambe, a vice president of the U.N. Human Rights Council who was presiding over the meeting, did not yield back to Neuer. Instead, Efambe, the Congolese ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, called for “tolerance” and avoiding “disrespectful” comments.
Michaels told JNS that the system is fundamentally flawed. Civil society organizations must go through a rigorous accreditation process to even have the opportunity to submit a 90-second pre-recorded message in what is billed as an “interactive dialogue.”
“To be bombarded week after week, month after month, year after year, with thousands of pages of resolutions, so-called reports and other documents that all feed off of each other, and to be given 90 seconds, if you’re lucky, to say anything meaningful,” he said.
“Then to be berated and to see the chairperson and other members sitting through these proceedings and clearly not engaging in any constructive reflection, it really is a farce,” Michaels told JNS. “But it’s a farce with real-world ramifications.”
