Mike Wagenheim/JNS.org
The Argentinian, Australian, Canadian, French, German, British and American Jewish communities, known as the J7-Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism, asked United Nations member states to take combating Jew-hatred into account when they chose the next U.N. secretary-general.
“The United Nations was founded on the promise of equal dignity, human rights and the protection of all peoples,” but antisemitism, which is “expressed through the conduct of mandate holders, in materials produced under the U.N.’s emblem and in a culture permitted to take hold in parts of the human rights system,” is “among its serious failures,” the J7 wrote in an open letter published on Sept. 22.
The group of the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel released the letter ahead of a fourth straw poll on Tuesday in the race for the next secretary-general.
António Guterres, the outgoing secretary-general, has drawn criticism frequently from Israel and from Jewish organizations. Replacing him, the J7 said, is a “defining moment for the United Nations and for the fight against antisemitism.”
Jewish communities in Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States called the pending selection of the new U.N. secretary-general a “defining moment.”
Marina Rosenberg, senior vice president for international affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, told JNS that the letter was organized, “because we felt it was important to come with one voice and one clear message, asking member U.N. states to choose wisely the next secretary-general, so that person will put antisemitism in the center of the agenda of the U.N. and not treat it just as an afterthought.”
In meetings last week between foreign delegations and Jewish groups on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, there were mixed reactions to the letter, Rosenberg previously told JNS.
Some countries “understand that there’s a window of opportunity here with a new secretary-general to really change this argument and the way that the United Nations has been managing around Israel and around Jewish issues,” she said.
Evan R. Bernstein, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS that the secretary-general race came up in conversations on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, but “no one’s gone too deep on it.”
“There are certain salient points that we needed to make,” he said.
Member states are “going to have to figure out how to deal with it as the election takes place,” Bernstein told JNS.
‘Failures have real consequences’
The task force urges the next U.N. secretary-general to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred and to consider appointing a special envoy on antisemitism.
It also calls for reforms in the U.N. human rights system, “whose outputs seep into the political discourse of member states and the daily experiences of Jewish communities worldwide.”
The group urges the global body to create “rigorous, transparent vetting processes for the appointment of officials and mandate holders across the full U.N. system.”
Finally, the signatories call for the United Nations to stop using resources for “mechanisms that single out people or one state for economic or reputational pressure in a manner applied to no other.”
“These failures have real consequences for the Jewish communities our organizations represent and for the credibility of the institution itself,” the group stated.
Rosenberg told JNS that the group isn’t endorsing a U.N. secretary-general candidate, which she said can be “counterproductive.”
“We want to be very specific about it, be smart about it,” she said. “We’re basically putting down the requests of the countries and what they should take into consideration in choosing the secretary-general and not telling them you should or shouldn’t do the search for them.”
Endorsing now “would be a way of killing that candidacy,” William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JNS. (The Conference of Presidents and its member, ADL, make up the U.S. part of the J7.)
“But we are very much on top of it and very much appreciate the work of many of the member states to ensure that the next secretary-general is someone who is dedicated to reforming the institution of the United Nations by, among other ways, making it a real, effective opponent of antisemitism rather than being a promulgator and a petri dish for antisemitism,” he told JNS.
