United Nations- “Efforts to build a world of mutual understanding are being severely tested today by rising extremism and barbaric acts’’, says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
Ban said this in a message he sent to the Informal Meeting of the General Assembly in New York on Thursday.
He expressed concerns over the rise in anti-Semitism: “The poison of hatred is loose in too many places. Jews remain targets, as do Muslims and so many others.
“Our responses must avoid perpetuating the cycles of demonisation and playing into the hands of those who seek to divide.
“We must also avoid another trap involving the Middle East conflict. Grievances about Israeli actions must never be used as an excuse to attack Jews.
“In the same vein, criticisms of Israeli actions should not be summarily dismissed as anti-Semitism.
“This only suppresses dialogue and hinders the search for peace”, he said.
Over the centuries, and across the world, he added, Jews had been slaughtered and mistreated solely for being Jews.
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“They have suffered banishment and exile, stereotyping and exclusion.
“They have experienced a full spectrum of abuse from insidious bias to overt violence, including terrorism in supermarkets, homes and houses of worship.
“The systematic murder of millions of European Jews in the Holocaust showed anti-Semitism at its most monstrous form.
Ban said the fight against anti-Semitism is inseparable from our wider quest for peaceful coexistence and human rights for all.
“Where anti-Semitism flourishes’’, the Secretary-General said, other forms of discrimination are sure to be there too.
“But when we counter anti-Semitism, we uphold our common humanity. The fight against anti-Semitism is a fight for all of us’’, he said.
The meeting of the Assembly, he said, had been prompted by the troubling rise of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.
One of the cardinal missions of the United Nations, Ban said, is to prevent such horrors.
“A United Nations that wants to be true to its founding aims and ideals has a duty to speak out against anti-Semitism. (NAN)
