At UN Headquarters Meeting: Wiesenthal Center Rejects UN ‘Disproportionate Use Of Force” Criticism Of Israel

July 20, 2006

At UN Headquarters Meeting: Wiesenthal Center Rejects UN ‘Disproportionate Use Of Force” Criticism Of Israel

A delegation from the Simon Wiesenthal Center that included a survivor of a suicide bombing, met with senior UN officials at the offices of the Secretariat in New York to discuss international terrorism. During the one hour meeting with Assistant Secretary General Robert Orr, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s founder and dean, rejected Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s assertion today that Israel was guilty of using “disproportionate use of force and collective punishment of the Lebanese people” in it’s struggle to defeat Hezbollah.  “While we acknowledge that the Secretary General explicitly blamed Hezbollah for the starting this crisis, we reject the implied moral equivalency. Further, Mr. Annan’s failure to assign any responsibility at the doorstep of the Lebanese government which for 6 years failed to disarm Hezbollah as it stockpiled thousands of rockets and took total control of the border region with Israel in contravention of UN Res. 1559, will imperil any future diplomatic solution” Hier said.

Secretary Orr reaffirmed the UN Secretary General’s efforts that all member states must accept “the unacceptability of terrorism in any form without qualification.”

Also at the meeting was the family of a 16-year old American, Daniel Wultz, who died seven weeks ago from injuries sustained in a suicide attack in Tel Aviv this past April. In an emotional plea, Tuly Wultz, Daniel’s father who was also seriously wounded in the attack, pleaded with UN officials to teach children the world over to reject the “culture of death and embrace the value of human life as the ultimate human right. On the day my son died, the saddest day of our lives, the mother of his murderer went on Al Jazeera and stated that she can’t wait for her two daughters to join their ‘martyred brother’ as suicide bombers,” Mr. Wultz said.

Photo: L-R Amanda Wultz, Tuly Wultz, sister and father of Daniel Wultz, murdered by suicide bomber earlier this year during visit to Israel, Rabbi Marvin Hier, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, Rabbi Abraham Cooper.

Attending the meeting with Rabbi Hier were Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center; Mark Weitzman, the Center’s Chief UN Liaison in New York; Daniel Wultz’ parents Tuly and Sheryl Wultz and their daughter Amanda; and Edward Mortimer, the UN Secretary General’s Director of Communications.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS and the Council of Europe.

For more information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036.