Professor Anne Bayefsky, who serves as Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and also leads the Human Rights Voices organization, recently spoke with Arutz Sheva about the United Nations’ reaction—or lack thereof—to the brutal murder of Shiri Bibas and her two sons, four-year-old Ariel and 10-month-old Kfir. She also addressed the atrocities surrounding the return of their remains last week.
“The comments of [UN High Commissioner for Human Rights] Volker Turk and [UN Secretary-General] Antonio Guterres after the sheer horror of the Bibas’s kidnapping, torture, murder and final return, is one of the most sickening displays of moral turpitude in UN history. Turk is the UN’s top human rights official, and as Secretary-General, Guterres leads the entire organization, and the only sentiment these men could muster was to regret ‘the handover.’ They cared more about the PR annoyance of dead Jews coming home in a box than they did for saving Jews while they are still alive,” Prof. Bayefsky stated.
Investigators have confirmed that Ariel and Kfir were brutally strangled to death by their captors in November 2023. When their remains were returned last Thursday, Hamas handed over keys for their coffins that turned out to be useless. Additionally, the body they initially presented as that of Shiri Bibas was someone else entirely. Her actual remains were only returned the following day, on Friday.
Prof. Bayefsky condemned the response from the UN’s leadership, saying, “Turk and Guterres have been, and continue to be, the highest-ranking international drivers of Palestinian terrorism and antisemitism on a global scale in the world today. They personify the use and abuse of ‘human rights’ as a front to perpetrate evil. They have blood on their hands – including the blood of Kfir and Ariel Bibas.”
She recalled how, “Within 8 hours of Hamas’s barbaric atrocities on October 7, Turk analogized Israel to Hamas – calling on ‘all sides’ to ‘de-escalate.’ An immediate attempt to deny Israel its UN Charter right of self-defense. On October 10 Turk told the world about ‘everyone deprived of their liberty in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel’ – instantly setting up the perverse idea that a nine-month-old baby and all the other hostages were the equivalent of convicted terrorist murderers in Israeli jails.”
According to Bayefsky, Turk attempted to create a false equivalence between the innocent victims and their captors. “Turk set up a UN scorecard with the Bibas’s on one side and the depraved Palestinian kidnappers, rapists and sadists on the other, by announcing ‘all parties must respect international law’ – notwithstanding that the very raison d’etre of one party is to annihilate Jews.”
She also criticized Guterres for justifying Hamas’s actions, stating, “On October 9, with nine-month-old Kfir and four-year-old Ariel sobbing somewhere in Gaza with or without their mother, he told the world, ‘This most recent violence does not come in a vacuum. The reality is that it grows out of a long-standing conflict…Palestinians must see a clear perspective for the establishment of their own state realized.'”
Bayefsky pointed out the dangerous implications of these statements. “From the very top of the UN came justification, sympathy, understanding – for the butchers. And a win for the Bibas’s captors,” she said.
She asserted that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and their diplomatic partners in the Palestinian Authority were emboldened by these statements. “Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their diplomatic entourage, the Palestinian Authority, got Guterres and Turk’s message. They could count on UN handlers moving into high gear to blame and demonize Israelis and do everything in their power to invert the narrative of right and wrong.”
Bayefsky questioned why the Bibas family was not freed sooner. “Why were the Bibas’s not released before it was too late?” she wondered. “Because Turk and Guterres – not just Hamas – turned Jewish babies into bargaining chips. Because Guterres and Turk manufactured the terrible lie that the ‘occupation’ was the ‘root cause’ of the Bibas’s fate – not unadulterated Palestinian antisemitism. Because Guterres has sought from day one to contextualize Palestinian depravity – which we now know includes the Bibas’s torture, murder and mutilation.”
She concluded with a strong call for the United States to withdraw funding from the UN’s human rights body. “If ever there was a reason for the United States to refuse to fund the agency Turk leads – the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights – this is it. If ever Americans needed one more reason not to pay another cent for UN-driven lethal antisemitism, this is it.”
{Matzav.com}