Israel Matzav

Not just another United Nations agency

It's no secret that the United Nations is biased against Israel, and has been for a long time. "Oom Shmoom," said Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. But what you may not realize is that the United Nations' 'human rights council' brings anti-Israel bias to a whole other level, partly because it wraps itself in the cloak of human rights, and partly because of the way the council is structured. Yoram Ettinger explains why the 'human rights council' is different than other UN agencies.

The council welcomed a report by Professor Richard Falk, who accused the U.S. administration of complicity and a cover-up in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Falk – a Hamas sympathizer, who justifies suicide bombing as a legitimate struggle – was appointed in 2008 to a six-year term as U.N. Special Rapporteur. Falk succeeded Professor John Dugard, who shares his worldview.

The council is assisted by an advisory committee, chaired by Morocco’s Halima Warzazi, who, in 1988, blocked a U.N. initiative to condemn Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare against Iraq’s Kurds. The vice chairman is Switzerland’s Jean Ziegler, who co-established the “Gadhafi International Prize for Human Rights” and authored books accusing the U.S. of being responsible for global malaise. Another adviser is Nicaragua’s Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, former president of the U.N. General Assembly, an admirer of Ahmadinejad, a defender of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, a friend of Fidel Castro and self-hating Americans such as Ramsey Clark and Noam Chomsky.

Since June 2007, Israel has been the only country to be listed on the council’s permanent agenda. Out of the 10 permanent items on the council’s agenda, eight are organizational and procedural, one deals with global human rights and item no. 7 – “the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories” – is the only one that is country-specific. The outcome of the investigation is prejudged, not subject to review. Israel – the only Middle Eastern democracy -- is the only U.N. member to be ostracized annually, while its enemies are exempt from scrutiny.

...

Eighty percent of all U.N. resolutions criticizing specific countries for human rights violations in 2010 were directed at Israel. Only six other U.N. members faced human rights criticism at all, one of them the U.S. The council subjected the U.S. to harsh criticism – by Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Russia – for supposed human rights violations. It criticized the elimination of Osama bin Laden and Israel’s defense against PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.

Simultaneously, the council has ignored Islamic terrorism, which has afflicted Asia, Africa, Europe and the U.S. No emergency sessions and inquiries were held and no resolutions were adopted. Fifty-five percent of the council’s members are Muslim countries, which contribute little to the U.N. budget while dominating policy-making. The council is formally the guardian of human rights, but its members – Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Cuba, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Djibouti, Senegal, Mauritania, Malaysia, Russia and China – deny their peoples’ fundamental civil liberties.

At the 'human rights council,' the anti-Israel bias is structural. The council issues pious platitudes against Israel, while allowing real human rights abusers to cloak themselves in false concern for the rights of others. It doesn't get much more hypocritical than that.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: UN hypocrisy, United Nations Human Rights Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:45 AM