Tag Archives: United Nations Human Rights Council

Anti-Semiticism At the United Nations?

According to Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, the United Nations Human Rights Council is number one opponent of Israel. By implication, this makes the UN a most anti-semitic institutions in the world. The following is the indictment proposed by Ambassador Ettinger.

On Friday, the HRC will conclude a month long deliberation by submitting four more resolutions condemning Israel.

The HRC heard testimony from a representative of the Assad regime, in formulating one of the resolutions, which denounces Israel for, alleged, violations of human rights on the Golan Heights. At the same time, the Assad regime has already murdered 8,000 Syrian dissidents and rebels, causing tens of thousands of refugees, some seeking asylum in Israel’s Golan Heights.

The HRC was privy to testimonies from Palestinian representatives, while an increasing number of Palestinians attempt to relocate to Jerusalem, in order to avoid the ruthless rule of the Palestinian Authority. The HRC never discussed intra-Palestinian violence, which has caused substantially more fatalities than those produced during Israel’s confrontation with Palestinian terrorism. It failed to act against the PLO/Hamas-led hate-education, brainwashing Palestinian children to become suicide bombers; rewarding Palestinian mothers for raising suicide bombers; executing rival Palestinians by throwing them off high-rise buildings; spraying them with bullets from the waist down; torturing, maiming and executing Palestinian opponents; abusing Palestinian civilians as human shields; physically abusing critical Palestinian journalists; suppressing Palestinian civil liberties; and systematically and deliberately targeting Israeli civilians for terrorism, missile launching and mortar shelling.

The HRC welcomed a report by Professor Richard Falk – who accused the US Administration for complicity and cover up in the September 11terrorism – on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Prof. Falk – a Hamas sympathizer, justifying suicide bombing as a legitimate struggle – was appointed in 2008 to a six-year term as UN Special Rapporteur. Falk succeeded Professor John Dugard, who shares his worldview.

The HRC is assisted by an advisory committee, chaired by Morocco’s Halima Warzazi, who, in 1988, blocked a UN initiative to condemn Saddam Hussein’s chemical warfare against Iraq’s Kurds. The vice-chair is Switzerland’s Jean Ziegler, who co-established the “Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights” and authored books accusing the USA of being responsible for global malaise. Another advisor is Nicaragua’s Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, former President of the UN 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 HRC’s permanent agenda. Out of the ten permanent items on the HRC agenda, eight are organizational and procedural, one deals with global human rights and “item seven” – “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 UN member to be ostracized annually, while its enemies are exempt from scrutiny.

According to former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, “there are permanent members of the Security Council and non-permanent members, but Israel is the only permanent non-member.”

80% of all 2010 UN resolutions criticizing specific countries for human rights violations were directed at Israel. Only six other UN members faced human rights criticism at all, one of which was the United States. The HRC subjected the USA to harsh criticism – by Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Russia – for, supposed, human rights violations. The HRC criticized the elimination of Bin-Laden and Israel’s defense against PLO, Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.

Simultaneously, the HRC has ignored Islamic terrorism, which has afflicted Asia, Africa, Europe and the USA. No emergency sessions and inquiries were held and no resolutions were adopted.

55% of the HRC members are Muslim countries, which contribute little to the UN budget, but dominate policy-making. The HRC is formally the guardian of human rights, but its members – e.g., Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Cuba, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Djibouti, Senegal, Mauritania, Malaysia, Russia and China – deny their peoples fundamental civil liberties.

Of course, Arab ethnicity originates from the same ancient gene pool as the Jews. Although discrimination against Arabs is usually called Islamaphobia or injustice to Muslims or prejudice against Arabs, anti-Semiticism has been associated historically with the Jews. Because Jews make up a majority Israel’s population, the best label for the anti-Israel stance of the United Nations is anti-Semiticism.

Is U.N. anti-semiticsm to be explained merely as the result of a majority of Muslim nations represented on the UN Security Council? Another factor may be that Israel has yet to bow to the Arab/Muslim demand to submit to their rule of all Palestine or get out of the land. The two-state solution seems a useful tool to that end. Why else would Israel’s previous efforts to give back the land in accordance with UN Resolutions 181 & 242 have been thrown in the dust by Palestinian and Arab leaders when Israel made its reasonable demands to ensure the safety and prosperity of its citizens?

UNHRC hammers away at Israel again in series of resolutions

The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday approved a resolution calling for Israel to pay Palestinians reparations for loss and damages suffered during last year’s Operation Cast Lead. The 47-nation council did not call for similar payments by Palestinians to Israelis. The vote comes one day after the same UNHRC approved three more anti-Israel resolutions, with the US being the only member to cast dissenting votes on all three. One resolution on “grave human rights violations” by Israeli forces in the Palestinian territories passed by 31 to 9, with 7 abstentions. Another resolution called on Israel to stop building in the territories and uproot those communities now there was passed by 45 votes, with the EU supporting it and only the US opposing. The third condemned Israel for what it called violation of the rights of the people of the formerly Syrian Golan Heights. Also on Wednesday, the UNHRC website posted a report issued by a Libyan NGO which accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed during operations in the Territories. The report also accused Israel of engaging in “ethnic cleansing and massacres” against the Palestinians. “The most preposterous, ridiculous and horrendous of all lies can gain respectability at the UN,” responded Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. The Council was founded in 2006 after the UN Human Rights Commission had lost credibility for its obsessive focus on Israel. However, the new forum has continued that record, with more than two-thirds of its resolutions which have condemned human rights abuses targeting the Jewish state.

Source: IECJ News, March 25, 2010.