Israel Matzav: The 'Human Rights Council': The cure was worse than the disease

Monday, April 09, 2012

The 'Human Rights Council': The cure was worse than the disease

At the United Nations 'Human Rights Council,' the cure is even worse than the disease. The UN has elected such paragons of 'human rights' as Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe and North Korea. And last week, on the same day that an Algerian Islamic terrorist murdered four Jews, one of whom was an eight-year old girl whom he chased down when she tried to escape, the Council was busy establishing a 'fact-finding mission' to 'investigate' Israel's establishment of Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) was established in 2006 after Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged that its forerunner, the Human Rights Commission, was mired in partisan agendas, allowed countries with appalling records to join and had lost direction. It was in dire need of reformation, he assured us.

The cure has proved worse than the disease, with nations such as Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe and North Korea – all of which violate human rights as official policy – voted onto the HRC. Libya, where abuse is commonplace, was elected to chair the organization while being investigated for corruption.

The loser in this shameful state of affairs? Human rights and human beings. The Iranian girls who can be forcibly married from the age of nine. Saudi women, who cannot vote, drive, walk outdoors without a male guardian or claim sexual abuse without four witnesses. The innocents of Darfur, Harare and Beijing who suffer indignities with negligible hope of the perpetrators being held to account. People who suffer homophobia, genital mutilation, child slavery.

Recently Mohammed Merah murdered a rabbi, three Jewish children and three French paratroopers, citing allegiance to al-Qaida ideology as his motivation. The viciousness of his actions – particularly the chilling cruelty with which he pursued eight-year-old Myriam Monsonego and grabbed her by the hair before shooting her three times – brought France to a standstill and its presidential campaign to a halt.

And the HRC – the world bastion of human rights? Did it find it within itself to denounce this barbaric violation of the most fundamental of human rights – the right to life? Or to pause, even fleetingly, to offer solace to the grieving families which had been destroyed in an act so callous as to cry out for condemnation? It didn’t happen. What did happen, hours later, was that the HRC mustered all due gravity to pass five resolutions condemning Israel, establishing a mission to investigate the “implications of settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people.”

The unashamedly one-sided resolution failed to mention terrorism, ongoing incitement by naming schools after suicide bombers, or rockets targeting civilians. Passed 36-1, its sponsors included Iran and Syria – the latter having slaughtered 10,000 of its own citizens in recent months. As with the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war – also a Human Rights Council “inquiry” – Israel was deemed guilty at the outset by virtue of its terms of reference.

Read it all.

Labels: United Nations Human Rights Council