In two separate incidents, the United Nations actively attempted to ban an ambassador and a human rights advocate from criticizing an agency operating at Palestinian refugee camps.

A poster carried by Israel’s ambassador to the world body, Gilad Erdan, was confiscated Monday as he entered the UN building at Turtle Bay. The poster highlighted a quote from a teacher at a UN-backed school in Gaza who had praised Hitler.

That came after the person chairing a meeting on Saturday at the UN’s Geneva-based Human Rights Council cut off a speech by the director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer. In it, Mr. Neuer highlighted the same quote, as well as others from employees of the UN Relief and Work Agency.

That agency was created in 1949 for the sole purpose of aiding Arab refugees from Israel’s war of independence, which is dubbed in official Palestinian Arab literature as “Naqba,” or catastrophe. UNRWA operates separately from UNHCR, an agency charged with aiding refugees in the rest of the world. The annual budgets of each of these agencies is roughly $850 million.

In recent years Israelis and Americans have amped up criticism of UNRWA, arguing that rather than relieve the plight of a dwindling number of the original 1948 Arab refugees and their growing population of descendants, the agency strives to maintain their needy status. President Biden, nevertheless, recently renewed America’s financial support of the agency, which was cut off by his predecessors.

On Monday, Ambassador Erdan brought in his poster, aiming to highlight UNRWA deficiencies, as part of the debate at the UN and beyond. The Ambassador’s team “was informed that, in accordance with the relevant protocols of the GA and its main committees, the display of placards is not allowed,” says UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Mr. Dujarric couldn’t cite any written no-placard rule, saying only that it was “established protocol.”

Yet, in a recorded speech to the General Aseembly from his Ramallah office on September 24, the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, displayed a placard of a map, purported to document how his “state” (which America, for one, has never recognized as such) has shrank since its mythical “historic Palestine” days, before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Similarly, in September 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netantahu famously brought an easel to the general assembly, using a magic marker on a cartoon bomb to illustrate what he called Israel’s “red line” on preventing Iran’s from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

So how “established” is the no-placard protocol?

“Today, the @UN tried to silence the truth,” Mr. Erdan tweeted Monday. “UN personnel prevented me from bringing in a photo showing the antisemitism and incitement that exists among @UNRWA teachers. Despite their best efforts, I will always continue to fight for the truth and defend Israel.”

Earlier in Geneva, during a typical Israel-bashing session on Saturday, the Human Rights Council’s president, Nazhat Shameem Khan, cut off a speech by Mr. Neuer shortly after he started unveiling his organization’s deep investigation into antisemitism at UNRWA.

Mr. Neuer took to Twitter, where he attached the incident’s videotape, writing, “No joke: The U.N. Human Rights Council just cut me off for testifying about UNRWA teachers who glorify Hitler. Chair says I made ‘derogatory, insulting & inflammatory remarks’ — by quoting their own Facebook posts. ‘This amounts to personal attacks. This statement is out of order.’”

In a separate tweet, Mr. Neuer called on the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, to publicly state “that the highest human rights body of the United Nations has just sent a dangerous message to the world” about blocking a speech. Yet, a mere couple days later, officials under Mr. Guterres blocked the Israeli ambassador from graphically making the same point.

UN officials admit the unwritten “protocol” barring placards at the General Assembly isn’t enforced across the board. “The rules are the rules,” Mr. Dujarric said, but “when it comes to heads of state or heads of government during the General Assembly session, the UN is obviously not in a position to intervene.”

Over the years, Israeli diplomats have consistently told me they respect UN rules and protocols and obey them diligently. So either they were unaware of the particular dictat, or the unwritten “protocol” is so obscure and unevenly enforced that it’s not worth the placard it’s written on.

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Twitter @bennyavni