A view of part of the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim on January 28, 2020 in Maale Adumim. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
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“These companies have done nothing wrong and many are involved in providing goods and services to Palestinians,” said NGO Monitor.
Edited by: TJVNews.com
The United Nations Human Rights Council has released a list of more than 100 companies it says are operating in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.
In a report issued on Wednesday, the council said that the activities of these companies “raised particular human rights concerns.”
The list is dominated by Israeli companies, including banks and construction firms.
However, it also lists a number of international firms, including travel companies Airbnb, Expedia, and TripAdvisor, tech giant Motorola, and construction and infrastructure companies including France’s Egis Rail and a British company, JC Bamford Excavators.
Ironically, Airbnb announced in 2018 that it would prohibit listing Jewish-owned homes in Judea and Samaria on its website but later reversed its decision before it was even implemented.
In January 2019, Amnesty International issued a report, calling on the Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor digital booking sites to refrain from conducting business in areas captured by Israel in the 1967 war. At the time, Israel’s Public Security and Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan responded with a tweet charging that “Amnesty has become a leader in the anti-Semitic BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] campaign.”
In the past, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet had delayed publication of a report on companies doing business in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Certain critics compared the UN blacklist to the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany in the 1930s.
“Working at the behest of the notorious UN Human Rights Council, the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights has officially decided to endorse anti-Semitic BDS by issuing a defamatory list of companies it claims are supposedly involved in ‘settlement activity,’” charged NGO Monitor on Wednesday.
“These companies have done nothing wrong and many are involved in providing goods and services to Palestinians pursuant to the Oslo Accords,” said NGO Monitor Legal Advisor Anne Herzberg in a statement.
“This list was made in conjunction with pro-BDS and PFLP-linked NGOs,” she added. The PFLP is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the European Union, as well as Israel.
Herzberg called on countries targeted by the publication of the blacklist, particularly Israel and the United States, to “reassess their relationships with Commissioner Bachelet’s office, including cancelling all cooperation and the millions of dollars and euros provided to her each year in funding. The maligned companies should begin assessing plans to take legal action against the UN officials who prepared the list and those who will propagate its false claims.”
On Wednesday evening, the Israeli Foreign Ministry tweeted that the UN human rights commissioner’s “announcement regarding the publication of a ‘blacklist’ of companies represents the ultimate surrender to pressure exerted by countries and organizations interested in harming Israel.”
Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY17/Rockland-Westchester), Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, issued the following statement on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ release of a “blacklist” of 112 companies with ties to Israeli settlements: “I am disappointed in UN High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s decision to release a ‘blacklist’ today of 112 companies that operate in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The High Commissioner was not mandated to make this list public and doing so will only advance the goals of the BDS movement. This action will push Israelis and Palestinians farther away from the negotiating table, while also hurting the Palestinians who depend on these companies for their livelihood. This is yet another disheartening example of the UN’s anti-Israel bias.”
Jack Rosen, the president of the American Jewish Congress said in a statement released to the media on Wednesday afternoon, “The American Jewish Congress is dismayed by the release of a “blacklist” of companies by the UN Human Rights Office. This thoroughly discriminatory list singles out more than 100 businesses that have business activities in the West Bank and indirectly enlists this institution in the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
This highly controversial “database” which singularly targets business enterprises that operate in the Israeli settlements is fundamentally wrong and counterproductive. UN institutions should serve as constructive forums for promoting peace and creating bridges of communication between the parties. Instead, the High Commissioner for Human Rights has once again put on display anti-Israel sentiments that do nothing to advance peace.
We call for the immediate retraction and rejection of this defamatory list. While the United States is actively engaged in helping all parties move forward in the peace process and solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this discriminatory decision and similar measures merely serve the status quo and harm Israelis, as well as Palestinians.”
A statement published by the Permanent Mission of Israel to the UN in Geneva said:
“Israel condemns the publication of the discriminatory so-called ‘database’ of enterprises doing business in Israeli settlements, pursuant to a resolution of the Human Rights Council adopted in 2016, under item 7.
Israel profoundly laments that the High Commissioner succumbed to pressures to publish this defamatory blacklist, and that she has turned her office into an instrument of those pursuing a discriminatory and politically motivated agenda, seeking to sanction companies not engaged in any unlawful activity, and becoming an accomplice of the BDS movement.
Bearing in mind the mandate, competence and methodology of the Council and the OHCHR, the ‘database’ is by definition partial, selective, unreliable and flawed. The list is not based on any acceptable judicial or quasi-judicial process; it was compiled using selective naming and shaming, relying on partial information and politically biased sources. It cannot be regarded as indicating that a company has been engaged in the claimed activity or in any wrongdoing.
With the publication of this list, the High Commissioner has lost all credibility or ability to promote human rights in our region. The publication of the list will lead to severe consequences for the relations between Israel and OHCHR.
Israel calls on all companies not to submit to these boycott measures, but rather, to join the hundreds of Israeli and international companies who operate in Israel, with full respect for the norms of corporate social responsibility and human rights.”
Hillel Neuer, the executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch NGO — tweeted, “The list has no precedent & turns the UN into Ground Zero for the global anti-Israel boycott campaign.”
Algemeiner reported that Israeli President Reuven Rivlin expressed solidarity with the named businesses, saying, “Boycotting Israeli companies does not advance the cause of peace and does not build confidence between the sides.”
“We call on our friends around the world to speak out against this shameful initiative which reminds of dark periods in our history,” he added.
The following companies are listed in the UN report:
(WIN & AP)
Read more at: worldisraelnews.com
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