As one of the UN’s main anti-Israel bodies, CEIRPP receives $3.1 million annually to support its programs and operations, according to a 2024 UN report.By Ailin Vilches Arguello, The AlgemeinerFifty years after the United Nations labeled Zionism as a form of racism, experts warn that the organization’s operations and committees continue to reflect the same entrenched anti-Israel mindset.“There’s been a long-standing demonization of Israel and an entrenched anti-Zionist infrastructure within the UN,” Ben Cohen, a senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based think tank, told The Algemeiner.“In some UN bodies, Israel continues to be portrayed as a colonial and racist entity,” he said. “This isn’t about Israel’s policies or actions, but about a broader narrative and institutional bias.”In November 1975, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism — the national movement of the Jewish people to reestablish a state in their ancient homeland — with “racism,” reflecting long-standing antisemitic stereotypes and anti-Israel agendas.In a new FDD report released last month, Cohen argues that the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), established under the 1975 resolution, remains one of the clearest examples of the UN’s institutional bias against Israel.Even though that resolution was ultimately overturned in 1991, the study shows how CEIRPP has continued to promote the same anti-Israel ideology.According to Cohen, Resolution 3379 was an attack on Israel’s right to exist, empowering UN committees and agencies to adopt its anti-Zionist themes in their work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.“All these tropes are key components of the global legal and political assault on Israel, unprecedented in scale, that unfolded after the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023,” the report says, referring to the global hostility toward Israel that followed the Palestinian terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israeli communities.“For the past half-century, [CEIRPP] has worked to delegitimize the State of Israel by amplifying Palestinian efforts to depict the Jewish state as a ‘colonial’ and ‘apartheid’ regime,” it continues.The newly released study also argues that the UN has violated the principle of sovereign equality of all its members for years, giving Palestinians a dedicated platform while Israel is the only member state to face such a relentless campaign.“The UN has long acted as a willing partner with the Arab world in keeping Palestinian refugees in that status for generations,” Cohen told The Algemeiner.As one of the UN’s main anti-Israel bodies, CEIRPP receives $3.1 million annually to support its programs and operations, according to a 2024 UN report.Gil Kapen, executive director of the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI), explained that the UN provides little clarity on the activities of certain departments or how their funding is allocated, pointing to a troubling lack of transparency.“In many ways, these offices are even more egregious — they are nothing more than pure propaganda, promoting the most extreme version of the Palestinian narrative: that Israel has no right to exist,” Kapen told The Algemeiner.“We don’t believe Israel should be immune from criticism, but creating an entire institution solely to target Israel — something that doesn’t exist for any other country — is both problematic and destructive,” he continued, noting that such efforts undermine international attempts to uphold the current ceasefire with Hamas and bring a lasting end to the war in Gaza.FDD’s study argues the committee should be dismantled, calling on Washington to lead the effort, encourage member states to withdraw, and prevent additional funds from being allocated to its work.“As the largest donor to the United Nations by far, the United States possesses tremendous leverage, especially at a time when the [UN] faces a massive financial crisis due to the pause in US contributions,” the report says.“By insisting on a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for one-sided and unique anti-Israel institutions, Washington can absolutely refuse to grant consensus for any budget that includes funding for these bodies,” it continuesOfficially, CEIRPP operates across five main areas: promoting Palestinian self-determination, advocating for an “immediate end” to Israel’s control of territories captured in the 1967 war, mobilizing international support, coordinating with UN bodies on the Palestinian question, and engaging civil society organizations and parliamentarians to advance the Palestinian cause.“While the committee does not directly impact the foreign policy of member states, it influences policy discussions and provides anti-Zionist NGOs with access to UN diplomats, staff, and financial resources,” FDD’s report says.In practice, CEIRPP “promotes the Palestinian narrative and uses UN funds to act as another pro-Palestinian UN body.”For example, the committee designated Nov. 29 — the anniversary of the 1947 UN vote to partition what was then British-administered territory into one Arab and one Jewish state — as the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”“But this day has grown each year into an increasingly prominent platform for anti-Israel rhetoric, featuring speakers who compare Israel to Nazi Germany or call for a ‘Free Palestine from the river to the sea,’” the study explains.“From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” is a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.The post Fifty years after ‘Zionism is Racism’ resolution, UN committees still push anti-Israel agenda, experts warn appeared first on World Israel News.