United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry member Miloon Kothari has claimed that social media is controlled by a "Jewish lobby" and questioned why the Jewish state is a member of the United Nations.
In an interview this week with Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist blog, Kothari said, "We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it's the Jewish lobby or it's the specific [nonprofit groups]. A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us."
He added that the commission "will get to the apartheid question, at some point in the future, because we will be looking at discrimination in general, from the River to the Sea."
"I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations. The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms."
Keren Hajioff, international spokesperson for Israeli interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid, responded Thursday to antisemitic Kothari's remarks, tweeting, "The international community should be outraged by Miloon Kothari’s antisemitic comments."
"His racist remarks about 'the Jewish Lobby' that controls the media and his questioning Israel's right to exist as a member of the family of nations – echo the darkest days of antisemitism.
"The Commission of Inquiry is the epitome of moral hypocrisy. It makes a mockery of the UN Human Rights Council's own supposed standards of independence and impartiality. The evidence is clear: this illegitimate and biased Commission must be disbanded and its commissioners disqualified from UN work."