Israel Matzav

That old UN double standard

There was a great editorial in Saturday's National Post that ripped the UN 'Human Rights Council' for its double standard in praising Sri Lanka's defeat of the Tamil rebels while condemning any action Israel takes against Hamas.

If more proof were needed that the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a feckless, biased, intellectually corrupt haven for dictators and Islamofascists, the evidence was clearly on display this week. The UNHRC voted to affirm Sri Lanka's right, justifiably, to self-defence from terror attacks launched against its citizens and territory by the Tamil Tigers. Indeed, the council went further, "condemning all attacks that the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) launched on the civilian population and its practice of using civilians as human shields." Sri Lanka had every right to protect itself, the council concluded, even at the cost of an estimated 20,000 civilian Tamil lives since the beginning of May alone.

Why, then, when Israel seeks to do the same -- protect its citizens and territory from rocket and terror attacks launched from Gaza -- does the very same council accuse Israel of being a "genocidal empire?" No quarter is given for the way Hamas --every bit as much a terror organization as the LTTE -- hides its rocket bases and ammunition caches in schools, apartments and hospitals and launches its attacks on Israel from behind innocent human targets so that if the Israel Defense Forces wish to retaliate it is impossible for them to do so without taking civilian lives.

We are not disagreeing with the UNHRC's assessment of Sri Lanka's actions. Even more than Hamas and its jihadi brothers-in-arms, the Tigers were enthusiastic suicide bombers, targeting shops, public squares and Sri Lankan government offices. So proficient had they become, the Black Tigers -- the LTTE's suicide squads -- could calculate how many Sri Lankans would die in their initial blasts and how many more would be cut down by flying glass and debris. After nearly three decades of fighting and at least 70,000 deaths on both sides, we sympathize with the Colombo government's desire to bring their civil war to an end, once and for all.

Our question is merely: Why such a double standard when it comes to Israel?

It should be obvious why there is a double standard with respect to Israel: It's the World's oldest hatred.

And it's a double standard that is not the unique domain of the 'Human Rights Council,' but one that cuts across nearly all UN agencies and international bodies in general. Think of the Security Council, the General Assembly, UNESCO (which is about to elect a director general who called for banning and burning Hebrew books in his home country), the 'World Court' and countless other international bodies in which Israel is condemned on a daily basis.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:23 PM