New York, NY, July 20, 2009 … Calling it the "single most prolific source of material bearing the official imprimatur of the U.N. which maligns and debases the Jewish State," the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today urged the United Nations to immediately dismantle a strongly biased, anti-Israel U.N. committee.

The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) was created in 1975 and is the only committee in the U.N. devoted to a specific people.  It has been an infamous source of anti-Israel bias in the United Nations for more than three decades.

"The CEIRPP is the single most prolific source of material bearing the official imprimatur of the U.N. which maligns and debases the Jewish State," said Glen S. Lewy, ADL National Chair and Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  "It is crucial that the U.N. take stock of the prejudice the committee has come to represent and clearly affirm that the bias of the CEIRPP has no place in the U.N. system.  It is time for the U.N. to dismantle the committee immediately."

A new ADL report, "The United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People: 35 Years of Demonizing Israel," released ahead of the committee's meeting in Geneva this week, documents the CEIRPP's history of anti-Israel resolutions and actions from its inception through today.

In a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accompanying the report, ADL said, "The unequivocally prejudiced nature of the CEIRPP diminishes the prestige of the U.N. as a partner in the quest for peace.  Such bias is diametrically opposed to the very foundation upon which the U.N. was established, and the goals of respect, acceptance and inclusion which the U.N. should represent."

According to ADL, the CEIRPP consistently sponsors biased resolutions and organizes one-sided conferences against Israel.  The League said the committee represents the "worst example of institutionalized anti-Israel bias in the United Nations," and that it is "ironic that the committee established to ensure the rights of Palestinians, is exacerbating their situation by creating unnecessary obstacles on the road to peace and the creation of a Palestinian state."