JAKARTA - Israel is demanding that the UN panel investigating the 2021 war with Palestinian militants be disbanded, condemning remarks made by one of its members as anti-Semitic on Sunday.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid cited comments by UN Human Rights Council commissioner of inquiry Miloon Kothari in an interview.
"We are very disappointed that social media is largely controlled by the Jewish lobby or certain NGOs, a lot of money is being poured into trying to discredit us," Kothari said on the July 25 Mondoweiss podcast.
Israel itself has boycotted the investigation and barred its investigators from entering. It said the panel's interim findings in June were the latest in a series of biased reports.
"The war against anti-Semitism cannot be waged with words alone, action is needed. This is the time to act, it is time to dissolve the KPK", said PM Lapid.
"This commission not only supports anti-Semitism, it fuels it," said PM Lapod.
Separately, a UN spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Mondoweiss published a letter by commission head Navi Pillay, in which he said Kothari's comments were deliberately taken out of context.
Meanwhile, the United States and other Western countries, including Germany, Britain and Austria, also condemned Kothari's remarks as anti-Semitic.
"This unacceptable statement sadly exacerbates our deep concerns about the open & overly broad nature of the COI and HRC's disproportionate & biased treatment of Israel," tweeted US envoy to the council Michele Taylor on Twitter.
It is understood that, triggered by the 11-day Gaza conflict in May 2021, the mandate of the investigation includes allegations of human rights violations before and after it and seeks to investigate the root causes of tensions.
At least 250 Palestinians and 13 people in Israel were killed in heavy fighting, in which Gaza militants fired rockets at Israeli cities, while Te Aviv carried out air strikes across the coastal enclave.
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