Israel Matzav

New Human Rights Council hits bottom, digs deeper

I predicted that the 'new' United Nations Human Rights Council would continue to bash Israel just like the old Human Rights Commission did. So did US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton (who, by the way, still has not been confirmed), which is why he urged the US to stay off the Council. But what's amazing about this New York Sun story is how blatant it is. So blatant that even Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and UN Secretary General Kofi Goofy Annan want it stopped.

The council is expected to hear reports today by several envoys, known as "rapporteurs," who during the last session were sent on missions to Lebanon and Israel. The special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, will report only on the human rights situation in Lebanon; he did not even visit Israel on his trip to the region.

Last week, the rapporteur John Dugard issued a report to the council on the situation in Gaza. After Israel turned the area over to the Palestinian Arabs, it transformed Gaza into a "prison," he said. "In other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing, but political correctness forbids such language where Israel is concerned," he added.

Amnesty International, usually a critic of Israel, has chided members of the council for focusing on what it termed their "narrow political objectives." And Human Rights Watch has said the new council's "one-sided approach" on the Israeli-Arab dispute is a "blow to its credibility and an abdication of its responsibility to protect human rights for all."

Although Human Rights Watch supported the creation of the Geneva-based council last spring, its global advocacy director, Peggy Hicks, told The New York Sun yesterday, "We are not satisfied at all" with the way its has functioned so far.

...

Secretary-General Annan has hailed the creation of the council as a major achievement. But since its inception, the only country-specific resolutions the Human Rights Council has passed have concerned Israeli violations.

In an address to the U.N. General Assembly last month, Mr. Annan said, "Supporters of Israel feel that it is harshly judged" at Turtle Bay.

"Too often this is true, particularly in some U.N. bodies," he added, and urged the Human Rights Council to widen its focus beyond one country.

"Anyone observing the council's agenda this week might easily mistake it for a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference," the executive director of U.N. Watch, Hillel Neuer, said.

So far, the 47-member body — where a voting bloc composed of OIC members controls the agenda with an automatic majority in regional groups — has conducted two regular sessions and two emergency sessions on the Arab-Israeli dispute; it has passed resolutions condemning Israel in each of these sessions without addressing violations elsewhere, Mr. Neuer noted.

Who is funding the Council anyway? Is the US taxpayer paying for this Israel bashing? (I will bet that the answer is yes).

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:51 AM