NEW YORK — Reacting to reporting that United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres added the Israeli Prison Service to the annex of the annual report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CSRV), the World Jewish Congress (WJC) issued the following statement:
“There was a time when Secretary-General António Guterres spoke with genuine moral clarity about the Jewish people — even acknowledging that Spain and Portugal suffered profoundly after the destruction of Jewish life during the Inquisition. He understood that when societies turn against Jews, they ultimately turn against themselves.
“That is why it has been so deeply troubling to witness the shift in tone and moral equivalence emerging from parts of today’s United Nations leadership.
“The UN was created in the shadow of the Holocaust to ensure that the horrors inflicted upon the Jewish people would never happen again. But when the world’s only Jewish state, Israel, is constantly treated as uniquely illegitimate — or worse, rhetorically compared to the terrorists of Hamas — something has gone terribly wrong.
“Criticism of governments is legitimate. The normalization of narratives and conspiracies that demonize the Jewish state is not.
“Institutional change is in order. The credibility of international organizations depends on their ability to consistently reject antisemitic double standards, and remember why they were created in the first place.”
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