{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Honest Take","title":"A Verdict Waiting for a Trial: Where 'Israel Is Committing Genocide' Came From, Decades Before Gaza | With Hillel Neuer","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2389,"description":"\"Israel is committing genocide.\" It's a sentence heard every day since October 7, and it is far older than the war. Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch in Geneva, returns to The Honest Take to trace where the charge came from, and how it was in circulation decades before the war it is now used to describe.\nNeuer traces the vocabulary back to Soviet propaganda that he says probably began in the 1950s, and to the UN's 1975 \"Zionism is racism\" resolution, which was repealed in 1991. A decade later it was revived at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, which the United States and Israel walked out of 25 years ago this month. As Neuer puts it, \"a conference that was supposed to be against racism became a conference that promoted racism.\" Marchers equated Zionism with Nazism. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were handed out as literature. A parallel NGO Forum adopted a declaration accusing Israel of \"acts of genocide,\" \"Israel's brand of apartheid\" and \"racist crimes against humanity.\" At the time, Human Rights Watch's Reed Brody, while accusing Israel of \"serious crimes against Palestinian people,\" told CNN that \"it is simply not accurate to use the word genocide.\" Congressman Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, called the conference \"the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.\"\nNeuer argues that the charge never went away. The same accusation now comes from UN mechanisms, including the Human Rights Council's commission of inquiry and Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.\nThe UN is still marking the anniversary. On Monday, September 28, the General Assembly holds a high-level meeting to commemorate 25 years since the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. The resolution setting it up passed in July, 142 to 3 with 13 abstentions; Argentina, Israel and the United States voted no. Ten countries pulled out of the 2009 Durban Review...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/MWvudMeeQbLLprkXao5bQURkY3G_5oMcfe3JeW4xoBg/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS81Nzg1/NjYxZjIyMzBiODU5/OTczZmQzNjUzMmZi/YWIwNC5qcGVn.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}