Peace Now activists and leader Yariv Oppenhei
Peace Now activists and leader Yariv OppenheiFlash 90

Far-left Israeli NGO "Peace Now" has come under fire for taking part in a conference organized by some of the world's worst human rights abusers, including the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Peace Now's campaigns manager Yaniv Shacham delivered a speech in Ecuador as part of a two-day anti-Israel symposium sponsored by a wide range of authoritarian regimes entitled "UN International Meeting on the Question of Palestine"

The leftist NGO - which campaigns vociferously against the presence of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria - drew fierce condemnation from right group UN Watch for "legitimizing a poisonous propaganda exercise run by a syndicate of murderers and rapists?"

In a statement on the group's website, UN Watch asked:

"Is Peace Now unaware that this latest 'UN International Meeting on the Question of Palestine,' taking place today and tomorrow under the innocuous-sounding theme of 'Engaging for peace – the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,' is run by the UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, whose member and observer states include the mass-murdering Syrian Arab Republic, slave-holding Mauritania, women-hating Saudi Arabia, along with tyrannies large and small such as China, Belarus, Cuba, Algeria and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic?

"Is Peace Now unaware that its host committee was established in 1975 on the same day as the infamous Zionism is Racism resolution, which Kofi Annan has described as the low point of the UN’s record on anti-Semitism? That it promotes organizations like the one headed by notorious anti-Semite Mahathir Mohamad?

"Is Peace Now unaware that its host committee’s year-round reports, meetings, conferences, and publications incite to hatred against Israel? That while claiming to care about human rights, its host has never once condemned the murder of Israeli civilians by rockets, bus bombings or stabbings, and instead legitimizes violence and terrorism?"

The furor erupted just a day after Peace Now's head, Yariv Oppenheimer, was accused of supporting terrorism against Israel over comments he made on Twitter concerning the IDF's fatal shooting of a man attempting to sabotage the security fence near Hevron in Judea.