The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday condemned as anti-Semitic remarks made on July 25 by Miloon Kothari, a member of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Territories.
In an interview with Mondoweiss, Kothari said that social media platforms are largely controlled by a powerful “Jewish lobby.”
Israeli President Yair Lapid’s International Spokeswoman Keren Hajioff tweeted in response:
“The international community should be outraged by Miloon Kothari’s antisemitic comments. His racist remarks about ‘the Jewish Lobby’ that controls the media and his questioning Israel’s right to exist as a member of the family of nations—echo the darkest days of antisemitism,” she stated.
Describing the U.N. Commission of Inquiry as “the epitome of moral hypocrisy,” Hajioff said, “It makes a mockery of the UN Human Rights Council’s own supposed standards of independence and impartiality. The evidence is clear: this illegitimate and biased Commission must be disbanded and its commissioners disqualified from UN work.”
In June, the Commission of Inquiry issued its first report, blaming Israel’s “occupation” for the protracted Arab-Israeli conflict.
Navi Pillay, who chairs the commission, said, “The findings and recommendations relevant to the underlying root causes were overwhelmingly directed towards Israel, which we have taken as an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one state occupying the other.”
