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A video purportedly showing Israel's United Nations representative tearing apart pages is going viral on social media.
The claim stated that the UN had issued a 20-page notice to Israel for human rights violations linked to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
What is he saying?: The envoy says, "This report...it should have no place in anybody concerned with human rights, security or peace. Its only place is in the dustbin of antisemitism and that is exactly how we shall treat it",
(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)
What's the truth?: The video dates back to October 2021 and is unrelated to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
It shows Israeli Envoy to the UN, Gilad Erdan, tearing up the UN Human Rights Council’s annual report at the UN General Assembly.
He alleged that the report was being biased against Israel.
How did we find out the truth?: We performed a relevant keyword search on Google and came across multiple media reports about this incident.
A report published by The Palestine Post on 30 October 2021 carried a screengrab from the viral video.
It stated that Gilad Erdan, Israeli Envoy to the UN, tore up the UN Human Rights Council’s annual report at the UN General Assembly claiming it was biased against Israel.
It also added that the UNHRC report condemned and criticized Israel for the brutal attacks on Gaza that killed over 260 Palestinians.
Another report by The Jerusalem Post also carried the viral video and mentioned similar details.
Erdan also took to X (formerly Twitter) on 30 October 2021 to share an extended version of this viral video.
He also wrote, "I addressed the UN General Assembly and spoke out against the baseless, one-sided, and outright false accusations from the Human Rights Council's annual report."
He also stated that the UN has a history of anti-Israel bias.
Erdan's speech in the extended video: In the extended version of the video Erdan says, “It was on this stage, at this very body, that the very right of the Jewish people to have a national home was itself declared to be racist. A decision that was justly overturned. A decision that Israel’s ambassador at the time, Chaim Herzog, tore up before the United Nations."
Erdan goes on to say that that is "exactly what should be done to this antisemitic, distorted, one-sided report. For just as that 1975 resolution, equating Zionism with racism was itself a gross form of anti-Jewish racism, which has no place in this international body, so too, the Human Rights Council’s obsessive anti-Israel bias, embodied, once again, by this report, should have no place in anybody concerned with human rights, security or peace."
He concludes by saying that the "only place" for such a report was in the "dustbin of antisemitism and that that is exactly how we shall treat it."
Then he proceeds to tear the report.
Conclusion: An old video of an Israeli Envoy to the UN tearing up the UNHRC's report is being falsely linked to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
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