The United Nations General Assembly holds Thursday in New York its first-ever meeting devoted to anti-Semitism in response to a global increase in violence against Jews — a meeting scheduled even before the recent attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris.
37 countries, including Israel, the United States of America, Canada, Australia and all members of the European Union, have called for this special session to address the upsurge of anti-Semitic incidents around the world.
The American, Canadian and the EU missions to the UN have partnered with Israel to host the event.
Noted public French philosopher and author, Mr. Bernard Henri Lévy, will deliver a keynote address.
Rabbi Yaacov Monsonego, principal of the Ohr Torah school in Toulouse, France will be among the speakers at the session. Rabbi Monsonego, whose daughter Miriam was brutally murdered in a terrorist attack in Toulouse in 2012, will speak on the issue of rising antisemitism in Europe.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, will address Thursday morning the General Assembly as well as representatives from Canada, France and Germany. A panel discussion in the afternoon will include U.S. and Canadian lawmakers and several human rights experts including an Israeli professor.
UN General Assembly spokesman John Victor Nkolo said the 193-member world body has discussed anti-Semitism many times in sessions dealing with intolerance, xenophobia, violence, racism and human rights violations. But he said "based on the available records we were able to check, this is indeed the first time that anti-Semitism as such is specifically the subject of an informal meeting of the U.N. General Assembly."
The meeting was requested by 37 countries who sent a letter to assembly President Sam Kutesa in Octrober calling for a meeting in response to "an alarming outbreak of anti-Semitism worldwide." They said they wanted a meeting because "a clear message from the General Assembly is a critical component of combatting the sudden rise of violence and hatred directed at Jews."
The killing of four French Jews at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket market during three days of terror in Paris two weeks ago month was just the latest attack to raise fears among European Jews. It follows killings at a Belgian Jewish Museum in May 2014 and a Jewish school in southwestern France in 2012.
The letter seeking the meeting noted Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's statement last Aug. 3 expressing concern at the spike in anti-Semitic attacks.
"At rallies, crowds have chanted 'Gas the Jews" and 'Death to the Jews,'" it said. "Firebombs have been thrown at synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses have been vandalized."
On Wednesday, diplomats, historians and NGO leaders spoke about the need to prevent genocide, at an event hosted by the Polish mission to the UN to mark 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz.
Among the speakers at the conference – titled “Why Have We Failed at Preventing Genocide and How to Change That?” – were representatives of four out of the five permanent UN Security Council members (China was absent), the Polish ambassador, and the ambassadors of Israel, Rwanda and Germany.
Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor opened his address by invoking the recent attacks on the kosher supermarket in France, characterizing them as “the same indifference for Jewish life” that existed 70 years ago.
“Europe is facing a new epidemic of anti-Semitism,” he said, and called out UN member states for not taking a hard enough line against today’s extremists.
“Nations have been reluctant to speak truthfully.‘’From their ivory towers, they can’t see that extremists are using human rights to abuse human beings and using the media to abuse journalists,” Prosor said.
“Say it like it is,” he continued. “Radical Islamists are the single greatest threat to global peace and security. We all have a responsibility to fight for the values we all believe in. We are not doing enough to stop extremists. The dangers of indifference and consequences of inaction are just too high.”