UN official claims ‘Jewish lobby’ controls social media

In an interview with the radical anti-Israel media outlet Mondoweiss, United Nations official Miloon Kothari accused the “Jewish lobby” of controlling social media. 

“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by – whether it is the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs,” said the Indian-born Kothari, a member of the “U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and in Israel.” 

The U.N. COI was created in 2021 with the official task of issuing reports on real or alleged human rights abuses. Unlike other U.N. mandates, the COI is open-ended, which enables its officials to probe the Jewish state indefinitely. 

Kothari also questioned Israel’s membership in the United Nations. 

“I would go as far as to raise the question of why are they [Israel] even a member of the U.N.,” he said.

“The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They consistently – either directly or through the U.S. – try to undermine U.N. mechanisms,” claimed the official. 

“Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, and the persistent discrimination against the Palestinians lies at the heart of the systematic recurrence of violations,” he alleged.

NGO Monitor legal advisor Anne Herzberg blasted Kothari and the COI body. 

“COI is solely targeting Israel,” she said. “Kothari’s outrageous statements add to the extreme prejudice towards Israel expressed by the members of the COI prior to their appointment, and it is clear that they were selected precisely because of this prejudice.”

NGO Monitor is not the only organization to criticize the COI. In June, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder blasted the U.N. body for its systematic bias against the Jewish state. 

“The existence of the Commission of Inquiry on Israel itself speaks to the body’s biases and perpetuates a false narrative that distorts the facts and blindly ignores Palestinian terrorism that targets civilians,” Lauder stated. “As a group of U.N. Special Rapporteurs recently cautioned, inflammatory rhetoric during spikes of violence in the Middle East could lead Jewish persons and sites to be subjected to violence, discrimination and harassment.”

The problematic nature of the COI was evident from the beginning, when controversial senior U.N. human rights official Navi Pillay was appointed its leader. Pillay has a history of bias against Israel and of ignoring serious human rights violations committed by non-democratic governments, such as the Islamic regime in Iran. 

In June, U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer blasted Pillay’s Israel report. 

“The report turns a blind eye to Palestinian terrorism and embraces the Hamas narrative that Israel is the root cause of all conflict. This is exactly what we expected from Navi Pillay, who actively lobbies governments to ‘sanction apartheid Israel‘ and to condemn Israel for the very conflict that she is meant to investigate,” Neuer said.

The U.N., as a whole, has a history of systematic bias against Israel. In December 2021, the U.N. General Assembly issued six resolutions against the Jewish state and zero resolutions against Iran, Syria or any other regimes that have repeatedly committed crimes against humanity. 

False accusations of mythical Jewish organizations controlling the world media and financial institutions are central components in classic anti-Semitic world views. 

It was likely not a coincidence that Kothari felt comfortable articulating his bigoted views about Israel during his interview with Mondoweiss. 

The openly anti-Zionist American journalist Philip Weiss founded the media outlet Mondoweiss in 2007. The publication focuses on the Middle East and has become a voice for radical anti-Israel hostility and conspiracies. 

In addition, the publication claims to provide an alternative identity to American Jews that excludes support and identification with the Jewish state.