Lazar Berman is the diplomatic reporter for The Times of Israel
An occasion in Berlin planned to honor the head of an ongoing UN investigation into alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians was cancelled this week after the city’s mayor withdrew his for the City Hall ceremony.
Mayor Franziska Giffey said the event planned by the German non-governmental organization united Nations on Tuesday to celebrate Navi Pillay at the Rotes Rathaus, or Red City Hall, does not represent the prospects of Berlin residents.
“Holding such a presentation at Red City Hall, which is the city corridor of all Berliners, is supposed to have the general approval of the population of Berlin,” a spokesman for Giffey told The Times of Israel on Monday. “That’s not the case for this event. “
Pillay is the head of the UN International Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, adding East Jerusalem and Israel. to cancel the prize.
“Given the circumstances, we do not have to arrange the occasion through the German United Nations Association at Red City Hall,” Giffey’s spokesman said. “Also, we don’t have to award the prize to a member of the Berlin Senate. “
As Berlin’s mayor and lawmakers have stepped away from the event, the award rite was cancelled entirely through the NGO, which did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the United Nations Association for Germany, the organization “strives to inform the German public independently and critically about the goals, agencies and activities of the United Nations. “
Giffey’s change in attitude came after a verbal exchange he had with Israel’s ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, last week, the diplomat told The Times of Israel.
Prosor conveyed Israel’s considerations on Pillay and the U. N. investigation on the sidelines of an unrelated event in Berlin on Sept. 14.
“We made sure he knew who Pillay was and I have to tell him that he discovered him very, very temporarily and that he wasn’t going to give the prize and nobody in the Berlin parliament would,” Prosor said.
Pillay, a South African jurist, served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014, during which time she criticized Israel’s movements in Gaza.
She appointed last year to lead a UN investigation to investigate “all alleged violations of foreign humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of foreign human rights law” in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, filed in the wake of the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups.
Israel has said in the past that it will not cooperate with the commission, saying its members “have continuously taken public and hostile positions opposed to Israel on the very issue they are called upon to investigate” independently and independently.
Prosor described Pillay as “someone who actually demonizes and delegitimizes the State of Israel day after day. “
According to UN Watch, a pro-Israel observer, Pillay signed a petition in June 2020 organized through the South African Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (SA BDS) coalition, titled “Sanction Apartheid Israel!
Then, at a convention in May 2021, he described Israel’s remedy for Palestinians as “inhumane” and compared to Israel and apartheid South Africa.
Earlier this year, he endorsed committee member Miloon Kothari when he questioned whether Israel would be a UN member and said social media was “largely controlled through Jewish pressure. “
“Asking Navi Pillay to investigate Israel is like asking Putin to preside over an investigation into Ukraine,” Prosor said.
The commission is the first to have an indefinite mandate from the U. N. human rights body, and critics say such a permanent review shows an anti-Israel bias within the 47-member council. injustices suffered by Palestinians during decades of Israeli rule.
According to Prosor, Giffey explained that the resolution to present the award in the presence of the mayor of Berlin was made in 2019, before he took office, and was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Israeli envoy Giffey’s resolution is “truly incredible. “
“I don’t forget many times that we were looking for anything when the effects were so effective,” Prosor said. “The mayor and the organization itself did not present the award. “
According to Prosor, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s accusation at an August meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin that Israel committed “holocausts” opposed to the Palestinians has made Germany much more attentive to Israel when it comes to prejudice and anti-Semitism abroad. foreign stage.
“I think what Abu Mazen did here woke them up to essentially understand that this is something serious,” said Prosor, Abbas’s nom de guerre.
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