Israel calls UN Gaza report ‘anti-Semitic’

JERUSALEM, Monday

Israel slammed a UN report on the Gaza war as “anti-Semitic” today as it prepared to formally respond to allegations of war crimes during last winter’s devastating 22-day offensive.

“The Goldstone Report, the publications in Sweden about organ harvesting and similar reports, are simply a type of anti-Semitism,” Diaspora and Information Minister Yuli Edelstein told the YNet news agency ahead of a trip to New York, where he was to present Israel’s rebuttal to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday.

YNet suggested the Israeli leadership was planning an all-out attack on the report to coincide with the anniversary on Wednesday of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

“The connection between the Goldstone Report and the international Holocaust memorial day is not an easy thing. On the other hand, however, we must learn the lessons from what happened,” Edelstein said.

“Then too, those who yelled out were told that Hitler is a clown and that all the gloomy predictions of the 1930s were nonsense,” he added.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to attend the commemorations in Auschwitz, said on Sunday that anti-Semitism was on the rise in the wake of Israel’s onslaught in the Gaza Strip one year ago, which left some 1,400 Palestinians dead. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the fighting.

“The fight against anti-Semitism is more important than ever because there has been a significant rise in the number of expressions of anti-Semitism since Operation Cast Lead,” Netanyahu said.