Video: U.N. Bashes Israel While Minimizing Three Kidnapped Teens

A new video from an advocacy group that tracks anti-Israel sentiments at the United Nations depicts how the U.N. has appeared to downplay the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers while at the same time attacking Israel over purported human rights abuses.

The video from Human Rights Voices juxtaposed scenes of the mothers of the three missing boys — Naftali Frenkel, 16, Gilad Sha'ar, 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19 — who on Tuesday traveled to the U.N. in Geneva, next to images of Israel being criticized by the international body.

Human Rights Voices labeled “U.N. apologists and terrorist enablers” as the “real human rights villains.”

Racheli Frenkel (at the microphone), the mother of Naftali, 16, described “every mother’s nightmare” of having her son kidnapped. Sitting behind her are the mothers of the two other kidnapped Israeli teens. (Image source: YouTube)

“My son texted me — said he’s on his way home — and then he’s gone. Every mother’s nightmare is waiting and waiting endlessly for her child to come home,” Racheli Frenkel told the U.N. Human Rights Council Tuesday.

That same day, Israel faced a litany of charges of “ethnic cleansing,” “human rights abuses” and calls for restraint as the Israel Defense Forces continue to search for the boys, who disappeared two weeks ago.

Though Frenkel’s mother thanked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for condemning the abduction and calling for the boys' immediate release, Ban last week had said through a spokesman that there was no “concrete evidence” that the youths had been kidnapped.

The Israeli government says that Hamas was behind the abduction, though neither Hamas nor any other well-known terrorist group has issued a claim of responsibility.

Human Rights Voices asserted that despite the kidnapping, “The U.N. has returned to its usual preoccupation: Decimating Israel’s right to self-defense and the people of Israel’s right to live in peace and security,” including a U.N. spokesman calling on Israel to “investigate allegations of excessive use of force” by the IDF as it was engaged in the massive West Bank manhunt to search for the teens.

Another senior U.N. official on June 23 voiced concern over the more than 350 Palestinians having been arrested and several Palestinians killed in clashes during the search, lamenting “harsher conditions on detainees affiliated with Hamas who are in Israeli custody.”

The video showed how the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on June 24 — the same day the mothers spoke — was a stage for a litany of anti-Israel oratory.

One after another, speakers spoke of the kidnapping of the “settlers” - an erroneous description – with no mention that they are teenagers.

The Palestinian Authority representative called Israel “the biggest violator of human rights in the world.”

“Sixty-six years have passed since the tragic events of the nakba when the majority of Palestinians were expelled from their lands or fled in fear due to ethnic cleansing by the Israeli forces,” the Pakistani representative said referring to the 1948 nakba or “catastrophe” of the founding of the state of Israel. “Since the three Israeli settlers went missing on 12 June it is a matter of serious concern that that occupying power has embarked on a brutal campaign of repression against the Palestinian people.”

Image source: YouTube

Egypt, speaking on behalf of Arab nations, called Israel’s operation in search of the teens “a violation of the Geneva conventions.”

“Grave violations and abuses of human rights are still committed, the last being the excessive reaction by Israel toward the missing of the three Israeli settlers,” said the representative for Indonesia. The Jordanian representative complained of Israel's “policy pursued to Judaize the Arab Jerusalem.”

Racheli Frenkel told the council that children should be out of the game.

“It is wrong to take children, innocent boys or girls, and use them as instruments of any struggle. It is cruel,” Frenkel said. “This council is charged with protecting human rights. I wish to ask: Doesn’t every child have the right to come home safely from school?”

Human Rights Voices concluded its video with the text: “#BringBackOurBoys (despite the U.N.).”

The text of Racheli Frenkel's speech can be found on the website of U.N. Watch, the non-governmental organization that sponsored her visit to Geneva.

(H/T: Israel Matzav)