Fact Check: Old video of Israel's UN envoy tearing human rights report linked to ongoing conflict

Hyderabad: A video reportedly of Israel’s United Nations representative tearing a report is going viral on social media. Users claim that the video shows an Israeli diplomat's reaction to the UN issuing a 20-page notice to the country for human rights violations linked to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

“This report 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,” the man in the video can be heard saying while tearing the document.

An X premium handle shared the video using hashtags #IsraelAttack #IsraelPalestineConflict #HamasWarCrimes. The video was captioned, “UN issued 20-page notice to Israel that it has violated human rights Israeli representatives came on stage for 2 minutes, took the notice in their hands tore it, and threw it away saying that terrorists have no human rights. The World Loves Israel. (sic)”

Several X and Facebook users have shared the video claiming the same. Click here, here, and here to view the posts.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video is two years old and has no link to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

We ran a relevant keyword search and came across a report by The Jerusalem Post, published on October 31, 2021, titled ‘Erdan tears up UNHRC report at UN General Assembly - watch.’

The report said expressing dissatisfaction with the UN bias against Israel, Gilad Erdan, Ambassador to the UN, tore up a report of the Human Rights Council during an address at the UN General Assembly. The report also carried the viral video.

We also found the viral clip in a report by The Palestine Chronicle of October 30, 2021, titled ‘WATCH: Israel’s UN Envoy Tears up Human Rights Council Report.’

Erdan also shared the extended version of the viral video on X on October 30, 2021, where he 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.”

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.”

He further adds “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.”

Erdan 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.”

Hence, we conclude that an old video of the Israeli envoy tearing up UNHRC’s report is being falsely linked to the ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict.