Israel Slams Qatar for U.N. Exhibit Rejecting Jewish State’s Existence

Ahnaf Kalam

Ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations and International Organizations in Geneva blasted the Qatari regime on Sunday for sponsoring a UN exhibit that denies the existence of the territory of the Jewish state, including Jerusalem as the capital.

The Swiss news outlet Blick first reported on the latest antisemitism scandal involving Qatar’s regime. The exhibit claims that the Israeli cities Jerusalem, Beersheba, and Jaffa are Palestinian cities, it said.

A Blatant Erasure of Jewish History

“This is a denial of Israel’s territorial integrity and our right to exist,” Eilon Shahar said, adding that the UN is “spreading propaganda and false information.”

The ambassador sent a formal letter of complaint to the UN’s Director General in Geneva, Tatiana Walowaja, Blick reported.

Qatar sponsored the anti-Israel exhibit that shows six cities, including cities within Israel, as Palestinian territory. Eilon Shahar said the Qatari exhibit strips the “Jewish people of their historical connection to Jerusalem” by declaring it a Palestinian city.

Egregious Spreading of Antisemitic Tropes

She also took the UN in Geneva to task for allowing an antisemitic brochure to circulate in the UN building titled “The Story of Fire and Blood.”

The ambassador said the brochure “glorifies terrorism and portrays Jews with big noses and propagates antisemitic conspiracies” and called on the UN to investigate it. The UN told Blick regarding Eilon Shahar’s criticism that “We are aware of this matter.”

Blick wrote that “The antisemitism in Geneva’s guise is symptomatic of the double game that the desert state of Qatar has been playing for years, cheerfully adding fuel to the fire.”

Qatar’s regime did not respond to a Blick press query. State-controlled media outlets Al Watan and Al Jazeera have glorified Palestinian terrorism and the Hamas massacre on October 7, according to translations of reports and TV broadcasts conducted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Benjamin Weinthal, a Ginsburg/Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, reports on Israel, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Europe for Fox News Digital. Follow him on Twitter at @BenWeinthal.

Benjamin Weinthal is an investigative journalist and a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is based in Jerusalem and reports on the Middle East for Fox News Digital and the Jerusalem Post. He earned his B.A. from New York University and holds a M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge. Weinthal’s commentary has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Haaretz, the Guardian, Politico, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Ynet and many additional North American and European outlets. His 2011 Guardian article on the Arab revolt in Egypt, co-authored with Eric Lee, was published in the book The Arab Spring (2012).
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I recently witnessed something I haven’t seen in a long time. On Friday, August 16, 2024, a group of pro-Hamas activists packed up their signs and went home in the face of spirited and non-violent opposition from a coalition of pro-American Iranians and American Jews. The last time I saw anything like that happen was in 2006 or 2007, when I led a crowd of Israel supporters in chants in order to silence a heckler standing on the sidewalk near the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts. The ridicule was enough to prompt him and his fellow anti-Israel activists to walk away, as we cheered their departure. It was glorious.