UN Human Rights Council exposed

UN Human Rights Council exposed

Yoram Ettinger

The U.N.’s Human Rights Council and human rights constitute an oxymoron. The council – elected by the majority of the U.N. members -- constitutes an authentic reflection of the U.N.

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

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

The council 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 council 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 with terrorism, missiles and mortars.

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.

According to former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, “There are permanent members of the Security Council and non-permanent members, but Israel is the only permanent non-member.”

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.

In view of the track record of the U.N. in general, and the council in particular, and in light of the intensifying threat of Islamic terrorism, the free world should grow independent of the U.N., both militarily and in policy. The members of the free world should heed Bolton’s assessment that “the U.N. was marginal during the Cold War, and is well on its way to marginalizing itself when it comes to the world’s greatest threat, terrorism.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1594