L'appello degli Hezbollah al genocidio degli ebrei condannato dal
Consiglio per i diritti umani - WUPJ News Release UN (Geneva

http://portal.ohchr.org/portal/page/portal/HRCExtranet/2SpecialSession/L-1%20final%20english.doc


News Release

HEZBOLLAH'S CALLS FOR GENOCIDE OF JEWS CONDEMNED AT UNITED NATIONS

The 2nd Special Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council is
to consider demands to condemn the militant Islamic organization
Hezbollah for its repeated calls for the genocide of all Jews. The
leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, whose fighters are waging a
bloody border war with Israel, firing missiles indiscriminately at
civilian targets, has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel
and all Jews

The World Union of Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) today submitted a
written statement* to the special session of the UN Human Rights
Council calling for the condemnation of the actions of Hezbollah and
to recognize that these calls are in contravention of the Genocide
Convention and for the Council take appropriate action.

The submission by WUPJ refers to statements by Hassan Nassrallah in
which he said:

"There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the
disappearance of Israel"

"If they (the Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble
of going after them worldwide".

The WUPJ says statements by the leader of Hezbollah are clearly in
contravention of Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which considers
genocide to be those actions "committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such." Any public incitement for the destruction of the State of
Israel – and, thereby, of a significant part of its population –
qualifies as a call for genocide. Such direct and public incitement to
commit genocide is punishable (Article IV) under the Genocide
Convention, which states in its Article III: "the following acts shall
be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c)
Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit
genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide."

ENDS

GENEVA: For immediate release 17:00 CET, 10 AUG 2006

For further information please contact WUPJ representative to the UN
(Geneva), David G Littman (0041) 79-4607185 or email itea@b...

* Full text of WUPJ statement follows (hrc extranet), which will be
'posted' / printed as NGO/3

 

Root causes of ongoing death, destruction and desolation in Lebanon
are Hezbollah

1. On 12 July 2006, Hezbollah forces crossed Israel's
international border, killing eight soldiers and taking two into
captivity in an unprovoked attack. This was the 20th assault against
Israel since May 2000.

2. Hezbollah ("Party of Allah") currently has 14 seats
in the Lebanese Parliament, one of the largest blocks, and two
ministers in the current government of Lebanon. Since 1992, Hassan
Nasrallah (Arabic: ÍÓä äÕÑÇááåý) (born 1960) has been Secretary
General of Hezbollah. A few quotations below from Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia on the net speak volumes on him: (1)

– "There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the
disappearance of Israel."

– "Peace settlements will not change reality, which is that Israel is
the enemy and that it will never be a neighbor or a nation."

– "And on this last day of the century,[1999] I promise Israel that it
will see more suicide attacks, for we will write our history with
blood."

– "I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even
recognize the presence of a state that is called "Israel." I consider
its presence both unjust and unlawful."

– "The Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities...Anyone who
reads the Koran and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions
sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and
slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history... Anyone who reads
these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with
them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948
but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer
which is liable to spread again at any moment."

– "If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly,
despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we
would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli."

– "If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the
trouble of going after them worldwide."

3. It is common knowledge that the Islamic Republic of Iran
supports this Hezbollah terrorist group with over $100 million per
year, and has supplied it with at least 13,000 rockets, and continues
to do so. As reported in a recent article: "Participants in a
network-sponsored symposium [Al-Manar television] urge that Israel 'be
completely wiped out' and, 'just like Hitler fought the Jews,' the
great Islamic nation of jihad should 'fight the Jews and burn them.'"
(2)

4. These statements echo those made by the President of the
Islamic Republic of Iran on 26 October 2005, at a Teheran conference
on 'The World without Zionism,' demanding that Israel be "wiped off
the map," adding that "very soon, the stain of this disgrace [Israel]
will be purged from the centre of the Islamic world." He menaced all
peacemakers: "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of
the Islamic nation's fury." This is the leadership which is
intransigent about Iran's right to develop a nuclear capability.*
Subsequently, in a speech to the Islamic Summit Conference in Mecca
(7-8 December 2005) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described how "the
Islamic world faces many serious problems and challenges," but the
major problem was "the presence of the Zionist occupation in the heart
of the Islamic region." Its "judicious removal", he predicted, "will
pave the way to the appearance of Islam's power in the successful
management of global [matters]." *

5. Such Iranian histrionics are not new and have been repeated
annually in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. However, this is
the first time in a public statement since Ayatollah Khomeini's death
in 1989 – soon after he launched his lethal fatwa against Salman
Rushdie – that an Iranian president has made a "direct and public
incitement" to destroy a Member State of the United Nations, coupled
with a reiterated denial of the Holocaust.

6. In recent days Hezbollah has launched up to 200 missiles
indiscriminately against the Israeli population – over 2'000 missiles,
each with thousands of deadly pellets to kill and maim civilians.

7. The 1945 Charter of the United Nations states, under its
article 2, that "it's Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in
Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles:

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the
threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of any State, or in any manner inconsistent with the
Purposes of the United Nations."

8. Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide considers genocide to be those
actions "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such."

9. Any public incitement for the destruction of the State of
Israel – and, thereby, of a significant part of its population –
qualifies as a call for genocide, whatever political explanations are
given. Such direct and public incitement to commit genocide is
punishable under the Genocide Convention, which states in its article
III: "the following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b)
Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to
commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in
genocide."

10. Those who drafted the Prevention of Genocide Convention had
in mind the long incitement to hatred against the Jews by the Nazi
leadership, beginning with Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf. Few took the
Nazis seriously in the mid-1930s and did not foresee that hate
constantly repeated would lead to a systematic genocidal action.

11. The Genocide Convention is not only a framework for
civilized public discussion, it also calls for the punishment of
violators in its Article IV: "Persons committing genocide or any of
the other acts enumerated in Article III shall be punished, whether
they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or
private individuals."

12. Article VIII envisaged action by any State Member of the
United Nations in clear terms: "Any Contracting Party may call upon
the competent organs of the United Nations as they consider
appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or
any of the other acts enumerated in Article III." A direct and public
incitement to destroy a State should be seriously considered as
"incitement to commit genocide."

13. The time for words and "warnings" is past and the time for
urgent action is now. As we have pointed out, only one State needs to
call on the United Nations to act under article VIII of the Genocide
Convention. If speedy action is not taken, we can be sure that there
will be further calls to genocides from Iran, from Hezbollah, acting
as a 'State within a State' in Lebanon. A rapid UN move – at the
Security Council, and even at this special session of the Human Rights
Council – could be based on article III (c): "Direct and public
incitement to commit genocide" – related to the destruction of the
State of Israel, a Member State of the United Nations.

14. We call upon this 2nd Special Session of the Human Rights
Council to condemn the actions of Hezbollah, to recognise the actions
in contravention of the Genocide Convention and to take appropriate
action.

-----

1. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hassan­_Nasrallah



2. Andrea Leven, "Mideast Conflict: Destruction are Hezbollah's
goals.", IHT, August 9, 2006, p. 6 (this article first appeared in The
Boston Globe). See also Michael Rubin, "Eradication First Before
Diplomacy," National Review Online, July 17, 2006. For fuller
background data, see the remarkable article by Patrick Devenny,
Hezbollah's Stategic Threat to Israel," Middle East Quarterly
(Philadelphia), Winter 2006; available:
http://www.meforum.org/article/806



* For references trans. into English, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No.
1013, "Iranian President at Tehran Conference: 'Very Soon, This Stain
of Disgrace [i.e. Israel] Will Be Purged From the Center of the
Islamic World and this is Attainable'", 28 October 2005,
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP101305
; and MEMRI, Special Report – N° 39, 5 January 2006: "Iranian
Leaders: Statements and Positions" (Part I): Challenges Facing Islam,
1. Iranian President Ahmadinejad, p.13.
http://memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SR3906  ; also two reference
to Iranian sources: Joumhourie-e Eslami (Iran) 8 December 2005; IRNA
(news agency) 18 December 2005.