How Navi Pillay is resucitating the Goldstone Report
Navi Pillay is the United Nations 'High Commissioner for Human Rights.' In an email on Monday, Anne Bayefsky sent me a lengthy expose of how Pillay has colluded with Richard Goldstone, Christian Tomuschat, Param Cumaraswamy, Mary McGowan Davis and others of her former colleagues from courts in South Africa and Rwanda, to demonize Israel, advance their own careers and enrich their own pockets. It's a complex web that is way too long to post, and I urge you to
read the whole thing. You will be astounded at how openly and brazenly corrupt the UN is. Here's the bottom line:
So this is how the U.N. works. A High Commissioner with a clear bias, shared by the U.N.’s most unscrupulous set of state actors, contrives to create a series of committees to forward her agenda. The job descriptions are liberally sprinkled with the word “independent.” But, in fact, she ensures that individuals who are anything but “independent” fill the positions. They are either indebted to her or to each other. They share her biases or are tied to those who do. And in the face of criticism, they manufacture and give each other awards. Those with bruised reputations depart, only to be replaced by other reliable friends.
It is hard to know which of these many steps is more deplorable than the next. In the name of “independence” and “accountability,” the U.N.’s top human rights official is busy promoting a vicious campaign to demonize one U.N. member state and throwing the rules about impartiality and fairness out the window.
Commissioner Navi Pillay and her appointments, Lennert Aspegren and Mary McGowan Davis, are the wrong people to take any leadership role in demanding accountability from others.
Read the whole thing.
But don't worry - none of this will get the Obama administration to quit the 'Human Rights Council.' After all, the US already had its 'review.' What could go wrong?
Labels: Christian Tomuschat, Goldstone Report, Lennert Aspergren, Mary McGowan David, Navi Pillay, Politics, Richard Goldstone, US Politics, World Politics
Goldstone implementation committee in 'disarray'
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
You will recall that Christian Tomuschat, who chaired the committee to implement the recommendations of the hopelessly biased Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead
resigned last week. Now, it looks like a second member of the three-member panel is also going to resign. And the committee is described as being in '
disarray.'
Following criticism of the Goldstone Report for its anti-Israel bias, critics had hoped that the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, would appoint a more balanced committee; however, no sooner had the appointments been made when questions swirled over the impartiality of Tomuschat. The Swiss based non-governmental organization UN Watch issued a report that stated Tomuschat had performed legal work for Yasser Arafat, "had frequently compared Israeli actions with the "barbarism" and "inferno" of World War II; and had repeatedly accused Israel of "state terrorism."
Fox News asked Tomuschat about the accusations of an anti-Israel bias and he responded in an email saying in part,"I have no comments to make on my decision not to accept a new mandate as member of the Committee of Experts regarding investigations into violations in Gaza." He referred Fox News to his letter to the Human Rights Council president which reads in part, "Let me point out to you that I do not feel deterred by specific attempts to discredit my impartiality and objectivity. These attempts could rather have led me to brush aside my reservations."
Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and Touro College tells Fox News,"The committee is now in disarray, despite the best efforts of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay and the UN Human Rights Council to create a second monstrosity following the initial outrageous report of Richard Goldstone himself ",
Bayefsky's comments follow the announcement that a second member of the committee is also stepping down. A spokeswoman from the UN Human Rights Council told Fox News that Param Cumaraswamy, a Malaysian national, was "unable to serve as a member of the Committee under the renewed mandate."
Bayefsky says that, "Tomuschat and company jumped at the chance to spend some time at UN center stage by repeating the Goldstone blood libel and sidestepping criticism of Hamas. With their biases fully exposed and their reputation as serious lawyers suffering, however, they jumped ship."
The committee is supposed to present its next report in March 2011. So far no replacements have been named.
Heh.
Labels: Christian Tomuschat, Goldstone Report, Operation Cast Lead, United Nations Human Rights Council
Christian Tomuschat, Head of the Goldstone Implementation Committee, Resigns
Christian Tomuschat, who was heading the committee appointed by the United Nations 'Human Rights Council' to implement the Goldstone Report, has resigned. This is a press release I received by email from Eye on the UN's Anne Bayefsky.
Christian Tomuschat, who headed a UN committee charged with implementing the Goldstone Report, has reportedly resigned. He had been appointed by UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay. Tomuschat’s credentials were questioned earlier this year, in a July 14th, 2010 article by Anne Bayefsky.
Tomuschat’s resignation is the second blow to the credibility of the UN’s efforts to implement the Goldstone report. Following Bayefsky’s July article, the UN secretariat official whom Pillay had assigned to coordinate the Tomuschat committee’s activities, Ahmed Motala, was removed from the case.
In July, Bayefsky pointed out that Tomuschat and the other two members of his committee were tainted by their close affiliation with an NGO which had been deeply involved with the Human Rights Council’s campaign to vilify Israel. Bayefsky’s article also revealed that the UN staffer Motala appointed to work with Tomuschat doubled as an anti-Israel blogger. In the midst of the Gaza war he had written that Israel targeted Palestinian civilians in order to impress voters. The Tomuschat committee staffer wrote “What better way to gain the support of the Israeli electorate than to…kill innocent civilians”
On July 15 Jerusalem Post correspondent, Benjamin Wienthal, revealed prior statements by Tomuschat that indicated deep prejudices on the very issues he had been assigned to tackle. Wienthal reported in the Weekly Standard and the Jerusalem Post that in 2007 Tomuschat told a German newspaper that Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin was “as ruthless as the attacks of terrorists.” Later in July, Wienthal reported that Tomuschat had once provided legal advice to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.
Last month, UN Watch reported on further examples of Tomuschat bias.
Tomuschat’s resignation ought to further undermine the credibility of the report he submitted to the Council in September. In his report Tomuschat repeated the odious claim that Israel engaged in “violence against civilians as part of a deliberate policy.” Tomuschat’s report went on to criticize Israel’s legal system for failing to mount a witch hunt for “officials at the highest levels.” Referring to a Hamas internal “investigation,” in which Hamas exonerated itself from all wrongdoing, Tomuschat’s team could only conclude that it “is not in a position to ascertain the veracity of any of these assertions.”
Following that report, the Human Rights Council reappointed Tomuschat and his other two committee members, Param Cumaraswamy and Mary Davis. They have been charged with producing yet another report by next March.
Unfortunately, many other UN authority figures, selected precisely because of their history of anti-Israel and anti-Western bias, remain. For further information see EYEontheUN’s list of current UN authorities.
Unfortunately, the continual discrediting of the 'Human Rights Council' doesn't stop it from acting and doesn't discredit it in the eyes of the majority of the 'international community.'
Labels: Christian Tomuschat, Goldstone Report, Operation Cast Lead, United Nations Human Rights Council
Navi Pillay is the United Nations 'High Commissioner for Human Rights.' In an email on Monday, Anne Bayefsky sent me a lengthy expose of how Pillay has colluded with Richard Goldstone, Christian Tomuschat, Param Cumaraswamy, Mary McGowan Davis and others of her former colleagues from courts in South Africa and Rwanda, to demonize Israel, advance their own careers and enrich their own pockets. It's a complex web that is way too long to post, and I urge you to read the whole thing. You will be astounded at how openly and brazenly corrupt the UN is. Here's the bottom line: 
