When Raeisi took UN podium and reminded world of Israeli apartheid

By David Miller

The 78th session of the UN General Assembly was held last month in New York. The issue of Palestine featured prominently in this year’s summit more than before, thanks to Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi, who again reminded the world of the Israeli apartheid.

In his thunderous speech, Raeisi discussed the occupation of Palestine by the Zionist entity.

“Has the time not come” he said, “to bring an end to 7.5 decades of the occupation of Palestinian lands, of the demolition of their homes, of the blood of their women and children and for the people of Palestine to be recognized officially as a country… with its rightful capital in Jerusalem.”

Iran’s president also referred to how the “occupying regime in Jerusalem… is seen as a perpetrator of much of the violence in the region.”

“The people of the region see Iran as a secure partner for their own security and the occupying regime in Jerusalem is seen as the perpetrator of much of the violence in the region,” he asserted with confidence and poise.

Fittingly enough, it was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, who tried to interrupt his speech by walking into the hall holding up a picture of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman whose death was hijacked by the West last year to stoke unrest in Iran.

Unlike the Western media propaganda, Amini was not “murdered” by anyone. Her death while in police custody was due to underlying health issues, as established by my multiple medical and forensic reports.

Nevertheless, the performance had Girdan escorted away and detained by UN security officials – an experience Israeli regime officials will have to get used to in coming years.

Erdan stated that he protested to “make it clear that the State of Israel stands by the Iranian people,” and he earlier posted a video of himself standing in a protest held by Iranian “oppositionists” in front of the UN headquarters in New York.

He only succeeded in making it clear to the world that the regime is deeply involved in attempting to sabotage and subvert the Islamic Republic because it poses a real and credible threat to the Zionist occupation.

The Prime Minister of the Zionist entity also addressed the UN General Assembly and predictably launched what the Hindustan Times referred to as an “all-out attack” on Iran. 

In his speech, he even said that Iran must face a “credible nuclear threat”, a remark his office later tried to walk back, fearing a backlash.

The United Nations has not been the greatest friend of the Palestinians, for the most part because of the United States and UK veto on criticising Zionism.

However, the UN does have a burgeoning apparatus focused on assisting Palestinian rights. 

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People was established by the General Assembly in 1975.

It has around 50 states as members or observers including Algeria, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Venezuela, Vietnam and Yemen.

In May this year, the UN marked Nakba Day – the 75^th anniversary of what was referred to as a “scar on humanity”.

Despite more than 1,000 resolutions adopted on this issue since 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly, Security Council and Human Rights Council, not a single one has been implemented including the most important resolution demanding a right to return for Palestinians forced out in 1948 and after.

The UN Human Rights Council works closely with the Special Rapporteur on Palestine.

 Francesca Albanese has been in this post since May 2022 and is already a major point of focus for the Zionists. The regime itself accused her of bias before she even took up the position and then denounced her “antisemitism” for the use of the term “Jewish lobby” back in 2014. 

While the term is not scientifically correct, (the Zionist lobby or movement is more accurate), it is perfectly clear that the main social actor that systematically confuses Judaism with Zionism is of course the Zionist movement itself. 

It is a core element of the ideology of Zionism to pretend that it represents all Jews. 

Until or unless the Zionist movement desists from this conflation, it can hardly expect non-Zionists to abide by rules it systematically violates.

Some 116 human rights organizations signed a statement defending Albanese against the Zionist regime smears.

In their letter, the record of the Zionist entity in harassing, intimidating and smearing previous incumbents of the office of special rapporteur is detailed.   

Albanese is regularly abused and smeared by the regime itself and by three key front groups.

• First, NGO Monitor, which is based in occupied al Quds and is dedicated to harassing Non-Governmental Organisations which are critical of Israel.  It is so extreme that it even attacks Zionist groups – such as the New Israel Fund -which are insufficiently hardline. It was created by the US Zionist group B’nai B’rith International, which also created the spy agency the ADL. It has been funded by the Israeli regime Jewish Agency and several funders of the Islamophobia network in the United States.

• Second, UN Watch has tried to pretend it has “complete independence” from the American Jewish Committee the US Zionist group that runs it. But the public record shows the AJC admits it is under its “full control”. UN Watch has repeatedly smeared and attacked Albanese from its Geneva office with fabricated allegations.

• Third the Combat Antisemitism Movement, which was co-founded by the former Israeli spy and Director General of the anti-BDS Ministry of Strategic Affairs, Sima Vaknin-Gil. It claims 650 members in its supporters' network. As a result, the group is hardly able to present itself as independent of Israel’s foreign policy objectives. Its CEO Sacha Dratwa, a Belgian settler, has led smears against Francesca Albanese.  Dratwa has been a full-time propagandists since his student days when he worked at the Interdisciplinary (the only private university in the Zionist entity, now called Reichman University) with the regime cut out StandWithUs. Based on campus, students were recruited to push Zionist lies through a group called HelpUsWin from 2008/9. After that, he was social media chief for the Israel Occupation Forces where he was chiefly known for blacking up with mud and labelling his photo “Obama style”.

Lest we forget: Zionism is intrinsically and fundamentally racist.

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