The UN in Geneva. Photo: wiki commons.

The Hamas-affiliated and UK-based Palestinian Return Centre promoted the destruction of Israel at a June 22 event at the UN’s Palais des Nations in Geneva.

Leading up to the event, the UN billed the gathering on its website as “Human Rights Council, twentieth session, 18 June-06 July 2012.”

In a parallel meeting to the Human Rights Council session, Palestinian Return Centre official Sameh Habeeb said: “In 1947, 1948 and 1949 the Palestinian refugees were ethnically cleansed by the Israeli gangs…. Some Arab armies came to Palestine to fight the Zionist project, which came from all over Europe to take over Palestine and to make it as a national home for the Jews, although it was always the national home for the Palestinians for thousands and thousands of years.”

Among the meeting’s handouts was a map with the word “Palestine” covering all of Israel, reported Hudson Institute fellow Anne Bayefsky in a column for the Jerusalem Post.

In attendance was Eileen Donahoe, the U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council.