The ban, by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, of the report by the United Nations Regional Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA): "Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid" sheds blunt light on the interference of the United States and Israel inside UN matters, and the approving silence of the EU countries, among them France.
Written by two American professors of international law, Richard Falk and Virginia Tilley, it concluded from the fact examination, and with incontrovertible evidences never denied by the censors, that “Israel is guilty of policies and practices constituent of the crime of apartheid”. Its censorship and its removal from the ESCWA website lead Rima Khalaf, the Commission’s executive Secretary to resign, declaring she refused to cover up the concealment of a crime.
And now we hear that a proposal, aimed at characterizing anti-Semitism in terms of its reference to Israel, has been referred to the Commission on Freedoms at the European Parliament. Proposed examples of anti-Semiitism : « Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” or “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, (...), than to the interests of their own nations.”, or else “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” Such imprecise characterisations largely open the way to all kinds of drifts and amalgams.
Nothing is more pernicious than establishing such equivalence relations between crticism of the policies of a State and expression of racism. The concurrence of these attempts, both in the United Nations and in the European Parliament, to silence any criticism of the Israeli policies is serious. We see it, as also the threats we received from extremist groupuscules, as new expressions of this « situation of intrusion » so typical of the action of the currrent Israeli leaders.
There is here a major concern for the very practice of our freedoms and the cohesion of our society. It is the responsability of civic organisations and of all democrats to strongly oppose such maneuvrings. And especially to remind that no one can play with the fight against anti-Semitism, nor with freedom of expression.
The Executive Board of the AFPS