THEATER OF THE ABSURD AT THE UN: HUMAN RIGHTS [SIC] COUNCIL & RICHARD FAULK [SICK]

THE ANTI-ISRAEL AGENDA PREVAILS
Anne Bayefsky
Jerusalem Post, June 20, 2011

 

On Friday at 6 p.m. the Obama administration promise to fix the disreputable UN Human Rights Council by becoming a member died a predictable death at the UN General Assembly. Knowing they were headed for certain defeat, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Esther Brimmer, spoke to a Washington institute touting the President’s “reform” accomplishments from inside the UN’s top human rights body. And her whitewash was supplemented at the end of the week by a barrage of statements and press releases from the State Department. None of it passes House Speaker John Boehner’s “straight-face test” for Obama’s foreign policy.

While the GA was nailing the coffin shut on council reform in New York, the council itself was wrapping up its latest session in Geneva with its usual systematic efforts to demonize the State of Israel. Though Brimmer’s speech included a disingenuous declaration that US membership in the council was especially beneficial for Israel, Friday’s events will solidify the growing perception of the president’s dangerous disinterest in Israel’s welfare.

The council was the “reformed” version of the UN Human Rights Commission, which once flaunted a Libyan chair.…

From the day it began, the [current] council has proved to be even worse than its predecessor. Sitting in judgment on human rights violations worldwide are such luminaries as China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. Member Libya had no difficulty being elected, and its suspension didn’t occur until March of this year, when the numbers of dead finally proved too embarrassing. But throwing women in jail for driving, outlawing freedom of religion, rendering homosexuality a capital offense and periodically cutting off heads haven’t made a dent in Saudi membership.…

Council members [following the most recent HRC election have] adopted a fixed agenda of only a few items to govern their proceedings. One item is devoted to Israel alone and one to all other 191 UN member states. The Human Rights Commission spent 40 years adopting country-specific criticisms, a third of which condemned Israel. Fifty percent of the “reformed” council’s country-specific resolutions and decisions are devoted to Israel-bashing. There have been 12 special sessions in the last five years, and half of them have been on Israel alone. There has been only one “urgent debate” on a country—Israel. There have been more human rights reports commissioned on Israel than on any other state. And only one country is not allowed even to attend the lobbying and information-sharing regional meetings associated with the council sessions—Israel—while “Palestine” is invited to all of them.

Rather than discredit a body that calls itself a human rights authority but reeks of discrimination, and is tasked with promoting tolerance but provides a global platform for hate-mongering, Obama decided to give it American credibility and taxpayer dollars. His No. 1 excuse was the promise to reform it from the inside.…

On Friday, those promises were shown to be utterly fraudulent. Every major recommendation that American negotiators made over a process spanning many months, including instituting membership criteria and changing the discriminatory anti-Israel agenda, was rejected. Only four states voted in the GA against the outcome of the non-reform reform: Israel, the United States, Canada and Palau.…

The council majority is held by a combination of two regional groups—African and Asian—and OIC members are the majority on both of these groups, thus giving them the balance of power.

The consequences of this political landscape were reinforced by Friday’s events at the council session in Geneva. The council wrapped up its latest session by adopting one more resolution on Israel—this time about the eight Turkish extremists killed a year ago trying to ram a legal blockade of terrorist-run Gaza. There was no resolution on Syria—further condemnation by the council was put off until next session, three months away. And nothing from the council on Yemen, on account of insufficient data.…

According to the Obama administration, however, the current US approach to the UN is supposedly good for Israel. In Brimmer’s words, the council has “improved as the result of direct US engagement. If we cede ground, if our engagement in the UN system is restricted—these bodies likely would be dominated by our adversaries. A scenario…not good for the United States and certainly not for Israel.”

The Obama line about knowing what is in Israel’s best interests is beginning to wear very thin. The council’s vote on the flotilla resolution was 36 for, eight abstentions and one against—the United States. US membership has made no difference to the outcomes on Israel. But it has given those outcomes a credibility that they don’t deserve.

After Friday’s GA vote, Obama diplomat John Sammis labeled the council’s “effectiveness and legitimacy” as “compromised,” called its agenda “unfair and unbalanced,” and said its membership policy “discredits, dishonors and diminishes” the body. Talk is cheap. The decent thing for the US to do after finally coming to such a conclusion would be to announce its departure or at least allow its term to expire next year.

But Obama has done nothing of the kind. Ensuring the American team had no bargaining power, the administration declared in March—three months before the end of negotiations and a whopping 18 months in advance of the next election—that the US would run for a second term.…

 (Anne Byefsky is the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust
and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.)

 

UN-BELIEVABLE
Alan W. Dowd
FrontPage, July 13, 2011

 

Perhaps the most amazing attribute of the United Nations is its boundless capacity to discredit itself. Whether through inaction or action, it never ceases to show the world what a farce looks like. The latest example is North Korea’s accession to the presidency of the UN Conference on Disarmament. This is the same North Korea that has been caught shipping illicit weaponry overseas, testing long-range missilery and detonating nukes—all in violation of UN resolutions.…

Given that the disarmament panel focuses on “cessation of the nuclear arms race…nuclear disarmament…and prevention of an arms race in outer space,” it’s ironic but typical of the UN that joining North Korea on the disarmament panel are China, Pakistan and Iran.

China, it pays to recall, has singlehandedly restarted the arms race in space. Its unannounced test of anti-satellite weapons in 2007 and 2010 set other space-faring nations on edge and obliged the United States to refocus on the U.S. military’s role in space. Pakistan helped both North Korea and Iran with their outlaw nuclear programs. North Korea has tested nukes during the Bush and Obama administrations, and is intent on deploying long-range rockets. And Iran is enriching uranium, building underground missile silos and racing to join the nuclear-weapons club.

“It gets even better,” as French president Nicolas Sarkozy sarcastically observed during a blistering critique of the UN’s record in North Korea and Iran. For example, the UN Human Rights Council, charged with “promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all,” includes China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The People’s Republic of China simply does not believe its subjects have any human rights. What else could be said of a place where religious activity is dictated by government bureaus, the state determines how many children a family can have, freedom of speech and assembly are nonexistent, and people are sentenced to slave labor for their political or religious views?

Likewise, in Cuba, there is no freedom of speech. The state imprisons individuals for their political views. And there is no economic freedom. The Russian government silences dissent and smothers the press with intimidation, ginned-up mobs and “random” gangland-style killings. It targets non-Russian ethnic groups with harassment campaigns and worse. As for Saudi Arabia, it allows virtually no freedom to half its citizens—women. Religious freedom does not exist. And freedom of the press and freedom of speech are severely circumscribed.

Yet these regimes sit on a body that sits in judgment of the human-rights records of every country on earth. This is the bizzaro world of the UN, where those pursuing the noble if naive goal of disarmament sit alongside the world’s most notorious weapons proliferators, where the worst abusers of human rights are chosen to protect and promote human rights, where North Korea’s deadly attack on a South Korean ship is condemned but the attacker is not, where it takes eight weeks to agree on a resolution requiring Iraq to comply with existing resolutions, where those who vote for such resolutions refuse to enforce them, where Srebrenica can be called a “safe haven,” where Rwanda and Bosnia turn for help and receive only Pilate-like excuses.

This is not an argument for the U.S. to withdraw from the UN…but it is an argument for ending the charade that President Obama and too many other policymakers play. The UN does not, to use Obama’s words, have the “capability to keep the peace, resolve disputes, monitor disarmament and support good governance around the world.” And it never will.

At its best, the UN is a place where the U.S. and its closest allies can go to get international cover for genuine efforts to keep the peace—not approval or legitimacy, but cover. At its worst, it’s a joke, “a sham…a frothing of words,” to borrow a phrase from Churchill, who feared in 1946 that the UN would become what it is today.

 

IRAN: WORLD VICTIM OF TERRORISM
Joseph Klein
FrontPage, June 29, 2011

 

Has the United Nations no shame? Apparently not, as it continues to legitimize some of the world’s worst tyrants and human rights abusers.

The most recent example is the UN leadership’s endorsement of the so-called “World Without Terrorism Conference” hosted by the Iranian regime in Tehran on June 25-26, 2011. The “distinguished” roster of attendees included the indicted international criminal Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, the corrupter-in-chief Afghan president Hamid Karzai, and the hear-no-bin Laden, see-no-bin Laden Pakistani president Asif ‘Ali Zardari.

The conference website set the tone with an anti-Semitic cartoon depicting a hooked-nose Israeli soldier looking like the devil with horns and another cartoon displaying the Statue of Liberty holding a stick of dynamite in her hand.

Kicking off the conference were the Iranian terrorist-sponsoring leaders, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Each of them tried to outdo the other in branding the United States and Israel as the world’s leading terrorist states.

Khamenei, who fancies himself as the 12th Imam’s deputy on Earth, lamented the “satanic world powers which use terrorism in their policies and in their planning to achieve their illegitimate goals.” Of course, he wasn’t talking about his own government or the genocidal Al-Bashir, as he should have been doing. He was referring to the “Zionist regime” and to the U.S., the United Kingdom, and other Western governments that have a “black record of terrorist behaviors.”

Ayatollah Khamenei also pointed to “noble teachings of Islam” as the solution to ending the global terrorist threat. He just happened to leave out the “noble teachings of Islam” which teach about jihad against all unbelievers to establish Islam’s Sharia law worldwide.…

For his part, Ahmadinejad claimed that Iran was one of the chief victims of terrorism. He also revived his 9/11 truther claims: “Some believe that the motive behind the September 11 attacks was to ensure the safety of [the] Zionist regime, to foment insecurity in regional countries, to distract U.S. public opinion from the chaotic economic situation in the country, and to [line] the pockets of uncivilized, belligerent capitalists.… But the real truth has been kept from the Americans and the world[.]”

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad wouldn’t let their conference go by without making sure they got together for a tête-à-tête with Sudanese president Al-Bashir…[whose] Islamist Arab regime presses on with its relentless massacre of the defenseless black African population inhabiting central Sudan’s Nuba Mountains located in an area known as South Kordofan.

Did the United Nations condemn the travesty of this supposed conference against terrorism hosted by terrorist-sponsoring Iran and attended by the international criminal Al-Bashir? Did it call for the immediate arrest of the Sudanese president on the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court? Not a chance. To the contrary, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon actually praised Iran for its initiative in hosting the conference.…

Sadly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon let another opportunity go by without calling out the Iranian government’s evil when he sees it and exposing its blatant hypocrisy. Instead, he allowed the United Nations to legitimize yet another Iranian exercise in anti-Western, anti-Semitic propaganda.

 

UNMASKING THE ‘INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY’
Caroline B. Glick
Jerusalem Post, July 1, 2011

 

For many years, the Left in Israel and throughout the world has upheld the so-called “international community” as the arbiter of all things. From Israel’s right to exist to climate change, from American world leadership to genetically modified crops, the Left has maintained that the “international community” is the only body qualified to judge the truth, lawfulness, goodness and justice of all things.

Most of those who uphold this view see the United Nations as the embodiment of the “international community.” US President Barack Obama has repeatedly made clear that his chief litmus test for the viability or desirability of a foreign policy is the support it garners in UN institutions.…

Given the totemic stature of the UN in the minds of the American president and the international Left, it is worth considering its nature.

A glance at UN affairs in recent days is revealing.

Last week UN members elected Qatar President of the General Assembly and Iran one of the body’s vice presidents. Both countries’ representatives will use their platform to advance their regimes’ anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Western agendas.

As Prof. Anne Bayefsky noted in The Weekly Standard last week, their first order of business will be leading the Durban III conference that will take place in New York on the sidelines of September’s General Assembly meeting.… In addition to their anti-Jewish conference, the Qatari and Iranian leaders of the General Assembly will reliably advance a General Assembly resolution embracing Palestinian statehood and condemning Jewish statehood.

Perhaps anticipating its new leadership role in the “international community,” last weekend Iran hosted its first “World Without Terrorism Conference.” Speaking at the conference, Iran’s supreme dictator Ali Khamenei called Israel and the US the greatest terrorists in the world. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the US was behind the September 11 attacks and the Holocaust and has used both to force the Palestinians to submit to invading Jews.…

According to Iran’s Fars news agency, “In a written message… read by UN Envoy to Teheran Mohammad Rafi Al-Din Shah, [Ban] Kimoon [commended] the Islamic Republic of Iran for holding this very important conference.…”

So as far as the UN’s highest official is concerned, when it comes to terrorism there is no qualitative difference between Iran on the one hand and the US and Israel on the other. Here it is worth noting that among the other invitees, Iran’s “counterterror” conference prominently featured Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on genocide charges for the genocide he has perpetrated in Darfur.

The new General Assembly vice president is not merely the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. It is also a nuclear proliferator. This no doubt is why Iran’s UN representative expressed glee when earlier this month his nation’s fellow nuclear proliferator North Korea was appointed the head of the UN’s Conference on Disarmament.…

The international institution considered the repository of the will of the “international community” is wholly and completely corrupt. It is morally bankrupt. It is controlled by the most repressive regimes in the world and it uses its US- and Western-funded institutions to attack Israel, the US, the West and forces of liberty and liberalism throughout the world.

Given the utter depravity of the UN and the international system it oversees, what can explain the international Left’s kneejerk obeisance to it? From San Francisco to Chicago to Boston; from Stockholm to Paris to London, members of the international Left claim they support the victims of tyranny. They claim they stand for liberal values of freedom and tolerance and human rights. But like the UN, the truth about the international Left shows that its members are the opposite of what they claim to be.…

The extraordinary intolerance of the Left for Israel is on full display among the participants in the so-called “flotilla.” The purpose of the flotilla is to break international law by providing aid and comfort to Hamas-controlled Gaza and to weaken with the intention of ending Israel’s lawful maritime blockade of Gaza’s Hamas-controlled coastline.

As Ehud Rosen exposed Thursday in a report for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, this year’s flotilla is organized by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood with the active participation of leftist anti-Israel groups. In their public statements, participants in the Hamas flotilla profess bottomless tolerance for Hamas and its genocidal agenda. And they profess no tolerance whatsoever for Israel or its right to exist.…

While emptily mouthing slogans of tolerance, all these adherents to the rule of the “international community” embrace the agenda of the most violent, intolerant, totalitarian forces in the world. Not only do they embrace them, they serve them. It doesn’t take much to tear off their flimsy mask of sweetness and light. Pity so few can be bothered to do it.

 

THE FAILINGS OF RICHARD FALK
Gabriel Latner
National Post, July 8, 2011

 

On June 29th, Richard Falk, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s expert on Israel, wrote an article for his blog. The essay itself is unimportant. The six pictures Falk included are what make the article stand out—two copies of the ICC’s logo, a photo of its headquarters, a picture of President Bush Photoshopped to put him behind bars, a photo of an ICC lawyer and a cartoon.

Falk must have thought the cartoon was highly amusing, because it bore little relation to his article. It depicts Lady Justice, with robes and scales, holding a dog by a leash. The dog is eating a dead body and urinating on Justice. On closer examination, the dog is wearing a coat that says “U.S.A.,” as well as a skullcap decorated with the Star of David, the emblem the Jewish people.

Surely, the UN-appointed investigator of human rights in Israel wouldn’t laugh at—let alone disseminate—a vile, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish cartoon. After all, he works for the UN. He’s supposed to be impartial.

What is even more disturbing was Falk’s reaction when confronted over the cartoon. On July 6, UN Watch, a human rights organization that monitors the UN’s Human Rights activities, submitted a complaint to Navi Pillay, the high commissioner for Human Rights and Falk’s boss. The same morning, Falk then wrote on his blog: “It is a complete lie. I know nothing about such a cartoon, and would never publish such a thing, ever.”

After a reader sent Falk a link showing the cartoon on his own website, Falk wrote: “Maybe I do not understand the cartoon, and if it offends in this way I have removed it from the blog. It may be in bad taste to an extent I had not earlier appreciated, but I certainly didn’t realize that it could be viewed as anti-semitic [sic], and still do not realize.”

What a heart-stirring apology. In under twenty minutes, Falk went from denying not only having posted the cartoon, but that he knew it existed, to denying that he thought it was offensive, to denying that it is offensive, while being polite enough to remove it so as not to offend a delicate reader.

Three hours later Falk wrote that “since it offends people I have removed it without understanding why.…”

This was Richard Falk, a UN expert charged with investigating serious allegations of human-rights abuses in the Middle East. How could someone who failed to find offense in such a slanderous cartoon be expected to deal with the subtleties of the conflicts in Israel? How could he possibly be able to perceive the implications of a Hamas TV show that features Mickey Mouse teaching children how to be suicide bombers? Or comprehend the not-so-subtle discrepancies between what Hamas leaders say in Arabic, and what they say they said in English?

Perhaps I’m giving Mr. Falk too much credit. After all, as a lawyer he argued that a terrorist who bombed a university and killed a man was morally justified because he was protesting the Vietnam War. As a pundit he gave Ayatollah Khomeini a glowing recommendation, predicting that he “might yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a Third World country.” And as a writer, Falk has lent support to 9/11 conspiracy theories, stating that the “American elites” have “something to hide and much to explain”.

On Israel, Falk’s bias is evident. He wrote an article comparing the country to Nazi Germany, entitled “Slouching towards a Palestinian Holocaust,” and has repeatedly accused Israel of ethnic cleansing. Simultaneously, Falk says that he is “impressed” by Hamas’ efforts to negotiate with Israel, and that the terrorist organization should be treated as a political actor. He described Hamas as the “helpless protectors” of the Palestinians.…

Falk’s behaviour presents his employers at the UN with a dilemma. If they believe his half-hearted apologies, they are forced to face the fact that an expert in their employ lacks the perceptiveness and basic intelligence required for the job, and he must be fired. On the other hand, if they see through his excuses, and decide that he knew exactly what he was doing, then they must deal with the fact that they have an employee who is too hateful, vicious and biased to perform impartially in his job, and he must be fired.…

(Gabriel Latner is a Canadian law student at the University of Cambridge.
He previously worked at UN Watch in Geneva.)