Everybody knows by now that the new United Nations Human Rights Council is a sham that exists for the major purpose of singling out Israel and Israel alone among all of the world's nations for alleged human rights violations. The Chicago Sun Times has addressed this very issue in an editorial Despite new name, U.N. rights panel still a disgrace.
The editorial points to the hypocrisy of the UNHRC which recently rejected a report on last year's fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon because it listed violations by the latter as well as the former. The Council so fixated on the evils of Israel that it seems impotent to act on any other issue - certainly not the ongoing genocide in Sudan.
The new UN chief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is embarrassed and says he's concerned about the disproportional attention to Israel's alleged violations but the editorial rightly concludes that "until he says he's worried about the disproportional attention to Israel, period, while the council neglects human rights outrages around the globe, it's only a beginning. This council is a disgrace."
The editorial points to the hypocrisy of the UNHRC which recently rejected a report on last year's fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon because it listed violations by the latter as well as the former. The Council so fixated on the evils of Israel that it seems impotent to act on any other issue - certainly not the ongoing genocide in Sudan.
The new UN chief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is embarrassed and says he's concerned about the disproportional attention to Israel's alleged violations but the editorial rightly concludes that "until he says he's worried about the disproportional attention to Israel, period, while the council neglects human rights outrages around the globe, it's only a beginning. This council is a disgrace."
2 comments:
The people at UN Watch have it right:-
http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1313923&ct=3698367
And so do the people at the Wall Street Journal
"When it comes to actual human rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council reflexively discharges obfuscation, like a squid and its ink. That notwithstanding, the Council's fraudulence was made perfectly clear last week, when a routine hearing on "the Occupied Palestinian Territory" was disrupted by candor.
John Dugard, a U.N. "special rapporteur" on human rights, delivered a treatise on Israel's "colonialism and apartheid," denouncing the purported way in which the Palestinians are "brutally subjugated by a Western-affiliated regime." The envoy was given shows of support from the likes of Council members Cuba and Pakistan, as well as the "observer" states Sudan, Syria and Iran. The last accused Israel of "terrorist activities." Just another day in Geneva.
The U.S. put forward a tepid rejoinder, calling the remarks "unhelpful."
Enter Hillel Neuer, executive director of the NGO U.N. Watch. Seated before the Council, Mr. Neuer had the temerity to point up its modus operandi. "The dictators who run this Council," he said, "couldn't care less about the Palestinians, or about any human rights. They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state." He continued, "They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights."
Council President Luis Alfonso de Alba furiously responded, "For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement," thus violating U.N. protocol. He ruled the remarks inadmissible to the official record, and prohibited further statements "in similar tones."
In the depths of the U.N., this was of course logical: Mr. Neuer's commentary had been accurate."
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