Jewish Heavy-hitters Swing at Iran

Hilary Leila Krieger, The Jerusalem Post:

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs announced Tuesday that it had enlisted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel and internationally renowned lawyers Irwin Cotler and Alan Dershowitz to its campaign to expel Iran from the United Nations.

The JCPA will be circulating a document at the UN calling for Iran's ouster based on the UN Charter, which says that member states "that have persistently violated the principles contained in the present charter" can be removed. READ MORE

The JCPA is maintaining that Iran has violated the convention against genocide by its threats to Israel and pursuit of nuclear weapons, as well as abrogated the foundational charter's requirement that member countries "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has indicated he plans to addess the UN General Assembly in the near future, even as the United States considers imposing sanctions for its pursuit of a nuclear program.

"The United Nations was established in the aftermath of the Second World War by member states who were determined to never let the crimes that had just occurred ever happen again," said Dore Gold, president of the JCPA and a former Israeli ambassador to the UN. "The UN had a dismal record in the 1990s countering acts of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, and therefore we view this call for taking the genocide convention seriously as an opportunity for the UN to redress the errors of the past."

Though kicking out a member nation would be a highly atypical event, Gold noted that there was precedent for such a step, citing the exclusion of South Africa when it was an apartheid regime.