Reject the U.N.: United Nations Seals the Condemnation of Israel#links

This is scary, very scary. It's so outrageous, I don't know what to say.

When are we going to WAKE-UP ???

Please read the following posted over at Reject the UN, cross-posted by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

United Nations Seals the Condemnation of Israel

Very Clever Photo courtesy: NewsCorp

Cross-posted by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's insight into the corrupt and loathsome workings of the United Nations, has proven spot-on, once more. This from the Heritage Foundation:

The United States was one of only four countries that voted against the U.N. General Assembly reso­lution that created the council.The U.S. cast its vote out of concern that the new council would lack safeguards against the problems that afflicted the CHR. Regrettably, this concern has proved to be well founded....

The blacklist of human rights abusers has just been officially whitewashed. Under first-year leadership of the new U.N. Human Rights Council, Cuba and Belarus are dropped from the the list of countries under scrutiny for human rights offenses, but Israel, according to UN Watch, is blatantly targeted for "permanent indictment under a special agenda item."

Anne Bayefsky, writing for the Wall Street Journal and Eye on the UN

The political lesson here is that the U.S. and Canada don't have the power to push the council to protect human rights, and the European Union would rather sacrifice Israel and hide its own weakness by joining the consensus.

Under this "special agenda," the Palestinians are the only people to receive recognition as "abused":

Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories, which includes Human rights violations and implications of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and other occupied Arab territories; and "Right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.Israel holds the distinction of being the only country on the planet that the U.N. deems a human rights abuser:

...not genocide in Sudan, not child slavery in China, nor the persecution of democracy dissidents in Egypt and elsewhere.

The investigations of Israel, under the "special agenda" will continue "until the end of the occupation," and the new Council has deemed the "investigation" not to be worthy of review, at any time.

How does a newly formed Council, charged with protecting the world's human rights, gain the power to point its accusatory finger at democracies and ignore profound human suffering at the behest of Kings and dictators? Bayerfsky sheds some light:

The U.N. General Assembly created the council without specifying membership criteria, such as, say, actually respecting human rights. The council now includes the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Egypt, Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Less than half of its members, using the Freedom House's yardstick, are fully free democracies. And after a successful take-over bid of regional blocs within the council, the Organization of the Islamic Conference now dominates it.

Other "not free" countries elected to the Council are Algeria, Cameroon, and Tunisia, and others are suspect, or as Freedom House labels them: Nations at a Crossroads. It can be noted that the U.N. Human Rights Council consists of 13 seats for African states, 13 seats for Asian States, 6 seats for Eastern European states, 8 seats for Latin American and Caribbean states and 7 seats for Western European and Other states.

Jackson Diehl's Washington Post piece is, perhaps, the deepest I've found, and it is worth reading. Here's an excerpt:

The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council's 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council's attention on the world's worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union "has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions." At one point before last week's meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe's representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel "is certainly not ideal . . . we have a basis we can work with.

"For a video exposing the U.N.'s clear support of Nations viewing their citizenry as lower than chattel, see U.N. Watch: Up Against Human Rights.

Posted by: Maggie M. Thornton

On: July 19, 2007