Despite the global body’s long, documented history of antisemitism, Jewish U.N. employees who spoke anonymously to JNS said that their religious identities were not an issue before Oct. 7.
But since Hamas’s terror attack, the current U.N. employees said, the United Nations has become a very uncomfortable place for Jews to work.
After the Hamas attacks, the United Nations issued “a lot of reminders” telling employees to avoid taking sides or making statements on social media amid conflict, “particularly the conflict in Gaza,” the staffer said. “We are supposed to follow the values of the U.N.”
The staffer subsequently noticed colleagues posting about the plight of Gazans on social media, including on X and LinkedIn, with nary a word about the Israeli victims.
« I thought at some point I would have to speak out. But it’s also very difficult. We’re risking our jobs, » the person said.
The United Nations « is being exploited by Hamas » and that Guterres fell “into this propaganda trap”.
When presented with some of what Jewish U.N. staff members said, Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, told JNS that the
UN “is a cesspool of anti-Semitism.”
“The environment is incredibly hurtful, stressful and dangerous for any Jew or Israeli who cares deeply about the well-being of the State of Israel »
“One can only imagine how difficult it is to work for such an organization and depend on its bureaucracy for your well-being. »
Anne Bayefsky
« We have a duty not to take part in anything that’s happening or anything that we’re working with. We work with all the countries, with all issues,” dixit the U.N. lawyer.
“It’s part of the contract that we signed that says we have a duty of neutrality.” “You would have thought that in this conflict, as with other conflicts, people would remain professional and would keep this neutrality. That did not happen. Many people crossed that boundary.”
Colleagues didn’t direct comments directly at their Jewish co-worker “because they know that I would have reacted,” the lawyer told JNS. “But you hear it in the corridors.”
“Never in my life have I heard anyone here be outspoken about any other conflict »
“Every day, we hear complaints or about violations of human rights by countries, but no one is outspoken or takes sides because we work with everyone. There was an exception here.”
The employee told JNS that some Jews have left the United Nations due to it being “unbearable,” though some Jewish staffers remain because “it’s better to stay and influence. That is the consensus—to make sure that your voice is heard, and that you influence and change things from the inside, rather than giving up on it and leaving.”
Meirav Eilon Shahar, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and international organizations in Geneva and U.S. Ambassador Michèle Taylor, descendant of Holocaust survivors
Meirav Eilon Shahar, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and international organizations in Geneva, told JNS in a statement:
“Since Oct. 7, it has become clear that the United Nations and international organizations have not only failed the State of Israel but also failed their own Israeli and Jewish employees.”
“For too many of them, their place of work has become a place of fear, isolation and discomfort, where all rules of impartiality and restraints have been disregarded »
“Lots of people are hiding the fact that they’re Jewish. They’re not saying they’re Jewish out of fear.”
U.N. employee
« It’s time for U.N. leaders to step up to the plate and condemn abuse of U.N. principles and defend the rights of all their employees »
JNS asked Guterres’s office to make Jewish U.N. employees available for an interview for this article on the record, but the office declined.
“The secretary-general has worked hard to foster an environment in which every staff member, regardless of religion, nationality or gender, feels included and protected,” the secretary-general’s office told JNS in a statement.
“As someone who has been an unwavering voice against antisemitism throughout his life, he is concerned that some Jewish colleagues are feeling isolated or unheard due to the current conflict in the Middle East.”
“The secretary-general will not tolerate any actions or statements by staff members that violate the organization’s internal rules concerning the use of social media or violate their responsibilities as civil servants,”
…Guterres’s office ….added.
In 2023 Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) labeled the United Nations after a General Assembly a Fox New :
“Let me just tell you about the U.N. right now, it is the most antisemitic body on the planet.”
Lindsey Graham
In 2022, Newsweek wrote: « Instead of sending a clear message that the U.N. will not tolerate antisemitism, the U.N. is instead sending a message that it will not tolerate Jews.«
« UN, this irredeemably antisemitic, anti-democratic body of hate. »
Pillay Navanethem, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,herself has displayed a long-standing bias and virulent hostility towards Israel, having already accused the Jewish state of ‘apartheid’ and expressed support for the racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.
In 2022, during an International Holocaust Day address, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm about the « startling regularity with which conspiracy theories devolve into heinous antisemitic tropes. »
« Yet the secretary-general has been deafeningly silent as one of his own officials now expresses a conspiracy theory rooted to the core in Jew hatred, while another defends those very same antisemitic tropes. »
Newsweek 2022
JNS today: : UN Human Rights Council « promotes Jew-hatred, Hamas, atrocity denial« The Geneva-based agency is preparing anti-Israel resolutions to be approved next week. Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) began two days of deliberations on Israel on Tuesday in what will almost certainly culminate in a series of condemnatory, albeit non-binding, resolutions.
“The world is upside down,” said Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor organization, who addressed the council on Tuesday.
“Israel just experienced its most horrific massacre and instead of being provided with comfort and support for the victims,we are experiencing an explosion of antisemitism and support for Hamas.The U.N. Human Rights Council is promoting antisemitism, pro-Hamas propaganda and engaging in atrocity denial »
« U.N. officials are issuing repeated condemnations of Israel on social media while no one says anything about Hamas. No one said anything for the past 17 years allowing Hamas to turn Gaza into a terror fortress »
« But the condemnation is solely reserved for Israel. If one was really promoting human rights, they would be screaming to the hills against Hamas for taking over these hospitals and endangering patients”
Swiss Women in politics 