Where was the Baroness?
Emanuele Ottolenghi wonders why the European foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton, has held her tongue since a pronouncement in Ramallah two weeks ago. Baroness Catherine Ashton, the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, is not afraid to speak out. In August alone, she issued no fewer than 36 statements and speeches on a wide range of foreign policy issues; in July it was 56.Gee, I wonder why. /sarc
Since July, Ashton has seen fit to weigh in on the Arab Spring, speaking on Bahrain, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Africa, Syria and Yemen. She has addressed EU relations with Kazakhstan, tensions in South Kordofan, elections in Thailand, the shooting of protesters by Malawian police, and human-rights abuses in Belarus. She has decried the arrest of female journalists in Iran, and voiced regret over the execution, in Texas, of Humberto Leal Garcia, a Mexican citizen convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl. Ashton welcomed the release of seven Estonian cyclists abducted in Lebanon. She celebrated the arrest of Serbian war criminal Goran Hadzic. She condemned the execution, in Delaware, of Robert Jackson, a man convicted of ax-murdering a woman during a botched burglary in her home. She even issued a festive statement on the occasion of the International Day of the World's Indigenous People.
But on August 22, the Palestinian Authority postponed local elections indefinitely, and Ashton had nothing to say.
No, it's not because she wasn't there. Ashton was in Ramallah this week and kept her silence. You see, Ashton is a hypocrite.
Middle East peace remains Europe's top priority, and it is a European axiom that Israeli settlements stand in the way of that vision. Ashton thus expressed "profound disappointment" at the Israeli government's announcement last month that it would permit the building of 900 new housing units in East Jerusalem. In the following weeks, she expressed deep regret over the same state of affairs, noting that "This is the third time since the beginning of August that the Israeli government has approved settlement expansion in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem."The world may be against us, but the world is a bunch of hypocrites. Ashton is typical.
...
Baroness Ashton began her journey as EU high representative when she spoke at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, on March 15, 2010 - barely nine months before the Arab Spring began. Addressing an audience of autocrats, Ashton never spoke of democracy in the Arab world. She only mentioned the word "freedom" once - with regard to Palestinian freedom from Israeli occupation, not human freedom from repression, a topic that, no doubt, would have resonated with ordinary Arabs, but might have infuriated her hosts.
Eighteen months and several Arab revolutions later, Europe's top diplomat is waxing lyrical about democracy in the Arab world, as if she, or Europe, had always championed it. Yet, the basic tenets of her first flawed speech, designed to ingratiate Europe to Arab dictators, did not change. Israel building a few hundred more houses in the West Bank is a threat to peace, which solicits disappointment, concern and regret. But this is not the case when, in the midst of the Arab Spring, the PA makes once more a mockery of democracy. Ashton might have expressed disappointment, concern or regret at this development.
...
Instead, the consolidation of another corrupt and autocratic Arab regime in the West Bank does not even merit a gentle nudge.
Labels: Catherine Ashton, European hypocrisy, Palestinian elections
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:09 AM
2 Comments:
As A European, it infuriates me to
have such a COW as a
representative.
On top of this, she's also a bloody
hypocrite, one one hand she sees herself as a Socialist, at the other hand she enjoys being called a Baroness.
Nobody elected her.
Nobody voted for a European foreign mission.
She doesn't speak for anyone.
Down with the EU! Free Europe!
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