Love of the Land: UN propagates Israeli organ theft allegation

UN propagates Israeli organ theft allegation

Just Journalism
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

The International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD), a Libyan-founded non-governmental organization, has submitted a document to the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council--the body that commissioned the Goldstone Report, which alleged Israel was guilty of war crimes in Gaza--to investigate allegations that 'Israeli physicians, Medical Centres, rabbis and the Israeli army' may be stealing the organs of 'dead, kidnapped and killed' Palestinians for sale on the black market. The document has been circulated by the Human Rights Council as Agenda item 7 for the body’s thirteenth session (A/HRC/13/NGO/23), and although it has been covered by the Jerusalem Post and Canada’s National Post, no British media outlet has so far reported on it.

EAFORD was accredited as an NGO by the UN in 1981, and its focus, judging by its website and publications, is on equating Zionism with racism and South African apartheid.

Its present submission had been screened for publication by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, a post currently held by Navanethem Pillay, and granted the certified logo of the United Nations.

By way of introduction, EAFORD accuses Israel of 'ethnic cleansing and massacres' against the Palestinians, 'occupy[ing] the rest of Palestine,' creating 'largest open-air prison in the world,' whose 'consequences amount to an act of siege and economic genocide.'

EAFORD then proceeds to state the following:

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: UN propagates Israeli organ theft allegation

Love of the Land: Wall Street Journal: “Real Truth Tellers” will be at UN Watch’s Geneva Summit, not UN Human Rights Council

Wall Street Journal: “Real Truth Tellers” will be at UN Watch’s Geneva Summit, not UN Human Rights Council

UN Watch
Wall St. Journal
07 March '10

Friend and Faux on Human Rights

Iran bids to join the U.N.’s rights body.

Some of the world’s most courageous champions of human rights will convene today, Monday, March 8, in Geneva, seat of the United Nations’s Human Rights Council. But don’t expect the Council itself to welcome these distinguished visitors.

The Geneva Summit-organized by groups such as U.N. Watch and Freedom House, and chaired by Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel-will bring together political dissidents from China, Iran and Burma, rights activists for the Tibetan and Uighur peoples, a survivor of the North Korean gulag, plus a former Sudanese slave named Simon Deng who plans to speak about “the gross human-rights abuses by radical jihadists and the Islamic government in Khartoum.”

As for the U.N. Council’s meeting, the main drama (apart from the ritual Israel-bashing) will be Iran’s bid to get elected later this spring as a member. Among its presumptive qualifications, says Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki, is that last June’s elections were “an exemplary exhibition of democracy and freedom.”

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Wall Street Journal: “Real Truth Tellers” will be at UN Watch’s Geneva Summit, not UN Human Rights Council

Love of the Land: Guess who missed Iran's atrocities?

Guess who missed Iran's atrocities?

Steve Huntley
Chicago Sun-Times
26 February '10

For months, the streets of Tehran ran red with blood. After June's fraudulent presidential election, Iran's security forces and paramilitary thugs arrested, beat, shot and murdered protesters whose only crime was to be fed up with dictatorial rule. Those unfortunate enough to land in prison were raped, forced to lick toilet bowls, tortured by, for example, having their fingernails ripped out, and killed, some from abuse and some from show executions. All this is common knowledge because the whole world is watching, right?
Well, not exactly. Though the horrors of a theocratic-military regime brutally crushing dissent were spread via media around the world, all that has happened in Iran seems to have escaped the notice of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Thanks to a just-released report by U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based monitor of the United Nations, we know the council has not introduced, much less adopted, a single resolution condemning Iran. Nor has it held a single special session on the crisis. Nor has it mandated any investigations.

As reprehensible as the council's neglect of innocent Iranians is, it is not an isolated case. An analysis of 30 council resolutions showed that a majority, 18 of them, "turned a blind eye to the world's worst violations" of human rights, reports U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.

For instance, the U.N.'s rights agency cited Sudan in 2009 for "progress" on human rights -- you know, Sudan, home of the Dafur genocide. It ignored such infamous human rights abusers as Russia, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Nicaragua and Egypt, among others. In one resolution, the council launched a frontal attack on free speech by defining any discussion of terrorism committed in the name of Islam as a form of "defamation of religion" and "Islamophobia."

It's not that the council doesn't see bad actors in the world, it's just that the bad actor nearly always turns out to be -- you guessed it -- Israel. More than 80 percent of its condemnatory resolutions -- 27 out of 33 -- have been aimed at the Jewish state. A council double-standard offers cover to Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist murderers.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Guess who missed Iran's atrocities?

Love of the Land: Top UK military commander says Israeli advice key to British strategy against suicide bombers in Afghanistan, warns of “dark forces” in the BBC

Top UK military commander says Israeli advice key to British strategy against suicide bombers in Afghanistan, warns of “dark forces” in the BBC

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
22 February '10

A rare voice of sanity in the British establishment, Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of UK forces in Afghanistan, has mounted another devastating defence of Israel. In a speech at the annual dinner (which I attended) of the UK’s Zionist Federation in London last night, Kemp even revealed that prior to his deployment in Afghanistan a four hour briefing by a top Israeli general had been instrumental in formulating British tactics and strategy on how to deal with Taliban suicide bombers.

To my knowledge, such an intimate strategic relationship on such a sensitive matter has never before been revealed. If it has, it has certainly not received widespread coverage in the UK press.

Kemp’s counter-orthodoxy views on Israel rose to global prominence in October last year when, against the background of the Goldstone Report, he appeared before the UN Human Rights Council to say of Operation Cast Lead: “..Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.”

(Read full post)

Related: UK Commander Challenges Goldstone Report

Love of the Land: Top UK military commander says Israeli advice key to British strategy against suicide bombers in Afghanistan, warns of “dark forces” in the BBC

Love of the Land: The Middle East Comes to Irvine

The Middle East Comes to Irvine

Jeffrey Goldberg
The Atlantic
09 February '10

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., tried to give a speech at UC Irvine but was shouted down by Muslim protesters, who apparently weren't equipped to argue with Oren, just drive him from the stage. All this is par for the course, but I did find this one bit of information amusing:

The Muslim Student Union said in its statement: "We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined."

To the Muslim Student Union, the fact that the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more than all the other countries of the world combined means that Israel is worse than all the other countries of the world combined. To more rational, less prejudiced people, this fact means that the UN Human Rights Council is not a serious organization, but one under the control of dictators and despots. (See: Banned Speech: The UN Council That Created the Goldstone Report)

Related Article/Video: 12 arrested for disrupting Israeli ambassador
.

Love of the Land: The Middle East Comes to Irvine

Love of the Land: Who's demonizing who?

Who's demonizing who?

Ben-Dror Yemini
Op-Ed Contributor/JPost
07 February '10

The New Israel Fund is angry. It thinks that it is okay to cooperate with the Goldstone commission, even though it was formed by an automatic majority of the benighted countries that control the UN Human Rights Council. The NIF thinks it is okay that Israel cooperate with the commission, even though there is no country in the free world that supported its formation. It thinks it is ok to disseminate unsubstantial accusations against Israel. It thinks it is okay to take part in the demonization campaign being staged by certain NGOs. And it is absolutely legitimate, in a democratic country, to do all these things.

But there is something else that is also legitimate: To reveal the truth about the fund and the groups that falsely claim to be “human rights” organizations. If some of the political organizations supported by the fund do not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state – don’t cry human rights.

Tell the truth: the denial of rights is to Jews only. The Palestinians have a right to a state of their own, as do the Croats, the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Slovaks and other nations – but not the Jews.

The New Israel Fund provides support (though not funding – editor, JPost), for example, the Zochrot organization. This is a nonprofit organization that openly strives to destroy Israel by means of the “right of return.” Not that there is any such right, and not that there ever was another precedent for a mass “return” after a population swap in the wake of war – but this does not bother the New Israel Fund. It will always jump in under the slogan of “human rights.”

All this doesn’t mean Israel is exempt from criticism. After all, out of the hundreds of allegations, there are a few of substance. But if many sane people loathe the human rights organizations, it’s not because they loathe human rights. Just the opposite. It’s because the sane majority is fed up with ‘human rights’ becoming the weapon of benighted forces.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Who's demonizing who?

Love of the Land: Rank hypocrisy and transparent double standards

Rank hypocrisy and transparent double standards

David Harris
In the Trenches/JPost
07 February '10

I know I shouldn't be surprised any longer, but I still can't help it.

In a recent edition of The New York Times, after seeing 25 column inches on page 4 devoted to an article entitled "Israel Rebukes 2 in Attack on U.N. Complex," I read a short news item two pages later. It wasn't quite eight lines long, the fourth of five items under "World Briefing."

Here are the first two (of three) sentences:

A human rights group criticized Jordan on Monday for stripping the citizenship of nearly 3,000 Jordanians of Palestinian origin in recent years. Concerned about increasing numbers of Palestinians, who make up nearly half the population, Jordan began in 2004 revoking the citizenship from Palestinians who do not have Israeli permits to reside in the West Bank."

Apart from the scanty news coverage of what is, after all, an important story - thousands of people losing their citizenship as a country seeks to tilt its delicate demographic balance - there is, of course, another issue.

Apart from the group that blew the whistle on this years-old policy, where is the outcry?

When Israel is accused, however unjustly, of any alleged misdeed against the Palestinians, the din is immediate and deafening. But when fellow Arabs are shown to be inflicting real damage on the Palestinians, there's hardly a peep.

Since the story surfaced nearly a week ago, I've looked in vain for editorials, columns, op-ed pieces, or letters-to-the-editor on the citizenship policy. Couldn't find a thing.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Rank hypocrisy and transparent double standards

Love of the Land: Blaming Israel First

Blaming Israel First

Business as usual at the U.N.

Peter Berkowitz
The Weekly Standard
Vol. 15, No. 17
January '10

Tel Aviv

With the possible exception of the U.S. armed forces, no military in the history of warfare has made greater efforts in the face of grave national security threats to avoid the use of force or has tried harder, when obliged to fight, to protect noncombatants than the Israel Defense Forces. With the possible exception of the U.S. armed forces, no military has investigated itself as rigorously as the IDF. With the possible exception of the U.S. judiciary, no courts have done more to hold their military accountable than Israel’s. And with the possible exception of America, no democracy has gone further in wartime to legitimize dissent than Israel.

It is therefore a bitter irony, fraught with consequences for the legitimacy of international law, that—with the same possible exception—no country’s military, judiciary, and democracy have been the target of greater vilification for alleged human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity than Israel’s.

The continuing controversy over the Goldstone Report is a case in point.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Blaming Israel First

Love of the Land: Hardliners realise Britain is a soft touch

Hardliners realise Britain is a soft touch

George Walden
timesonline.co.uk
17 December 09

The Tzipi Livni fiasco illustrates how slavishly this country follows hypocritical UN edicts

As a piece of legal grotesquerie, the attempted arrest of the former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has its funny side. The biggest joke lies in the role of the UN. It was the UN Human Rights Council that endorsed the report by the retired South African judge Richard Goldstone on the Gaza conflict, in which Israel as well as Hamas was accused of war crimes.

The fun lies in the membership of this august body, and guardian of all our rights. Currently those empowered to sit in judgment on the Israeli democracy include Cuba, China, Russia, Kirghizstan, Djibouti and Qatar. In a non-democracy, of course, Ms Livni would have had no bother; with no elections to dislodge her she would still be a minister, and so exempt from arrest. There must be a lesson there.

The joke gains resonance when we remember that in 2003 the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Commission elected a Libyan to its chair. It is of course due to Israel being surrounded by similarly backward and corrupt regimes, such as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as to Israeli recalcitrance, that the Middle East remains in a permanent state of tension and Palestinians suffer.

So the Livni affair is a joke on democracies everywhere, though especially on us, which makes it a sombre matter. The move to get her arrested is part of the climate of creeping anti-Semitism in this country. We do not go in for the hard stuff yet, but whether it is subtly but relentlessly bent TV reporting of the Middle East conflict, or attempts in British universities to deny Israeli academics the freedom of expression notionally protected at the UN by countries such as Cuba or Libya, institutionalised anti-Semitism, assisted now by the law, is gaining ground.

Yet it would be a mistake to take too narrow a view of the business. Something in our culture and mind-set exposes us to asinine legal anomalies of this kind, and not just where Israel is concerned. While Ms Livni is absent from London, known Islamist terrorists are free to walk the streets, or to sit cosily at home filling in claims for benefits, because the law has made it impossible to convict them without endangering our sources of information.

(Full article)

Love of the Land: Hardliners realise Britain is a soft touch

Love of the Land: Israel-bashers hold a double standard on rights abuses

Israel-bashers hold a double standard on rights abuses

ONE OF the simplest ways to influence public opinion is to present a common enemy. Today, the favourite bogeyman in international affairs is the state of Israel

Ronald S. Lauder
The Irish Times
07 December 09

Israel-bashing is growing in popularity in many areas. At international sporting events, Israeli athletes are sometimes avoided, sometimes prevented from taking part by immigration officials, and sometimes not even invited. British, Canadian and South African trade unions have been calling for boycotts of Israeli goods. Universities and trade unions campaign for a boycott of Israeli scholars and businesses, and for international sanctions.

The founder of Human Rights Watch, Robert Bernstein, recently exposed this hypocrisy when he criticised his own organisation for treating Israel like a pariah state.

The height of cynicism is the attempt by many Islamic countries to delegitimise Israel, to deny it the right to exist. Such propaganda has been ongoing for years and is characterised by both expediency and hatred. This battle is increasingly fought by the governments of these countries in international forums, in particular the United Nations. By levelling false, sometimes slanderous, accusations against Israel and its democratically elected government, they try to undermine its legitimacy.

The UN, it seems, reserves most of its ire for the most liberal, free and progressive country in the Middle East. A country that guarantees and upholds religious freedom and offers all of its citizens, including its Arab minority, the same civil rights, is pilloried by those who blatantly disregard the values of the UN Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights.

In an interview with this newspaper last week, UN human rights commissioner Navi Pillay from South Africa referred to “propaganda which portrayed the [UN Human Rights] council as biased and a venue for bashing Israel”. Propaganda? Not really. The human rights council in Geneva, dominated by vanguards in human rights such as Libya, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, is almost obsessed with Israel’s alleged misconduct. Yet it overlooks, or downplays, crimes committed by Hamas and other terrorist groups. The council’s one-sided resolution on the Goldstone report speaks volumes.

In 2006, then UN secretary general Kofi Annan criticised the human rights council for “disproportionate focus on violations by Israel”, while neglecting other areas with “graver” crises. Things haven’t exactly improved since then – quite the contrary. In fact, at the general assembly in New York, no other Middle Eastern country is denounced in speeches and resolutions as often as Israel.

On most UN bodies, an inbuilt majority of non-democratic countries gives the Israel-bashers a free rein. Sometimes they are even backed by democratic countries. It was sad to see that Ireland was one of five European governments that supported the Goldstone report recently.

Israel-bashing enjoys widespread support in western media, as well as in universities, NGOs, trade unions and international organisations. Yet these critics often turn a blind eye to the realities in the Middle East.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Israel-bashers hold a double standard on rights abuses

Love of the Land: Israel is Europe's blind spot

Israel is Europe's blind spot

Many have been seduced by a false Islamic narrative. In fact, the more concessions Israel makes, the more it is attacked

Isi Leibler
guardian.co.uk
26 November 2009

I recently met with a group of Australian journalists, including editors of some of the leading dailies. They impressed me as a fair and open-minded group. In the course of discussions, one elegantly phrased question, not intended to offend, was put to me, which I have been mulling over.

"Did I ever take into account that if virtually the entire world has concluded that Israel is the principal cause for the Middle East impasse, perhaps they are right?"

The question is particularly pertinent in relation to Europe, which has turned so dramatically against Israel. In these "enlightened", postmodernist secular societies, which shun all manifestations of nationalism, Israel is no longer considered a revival of Jewish nationhood, but as a colonial implant that many would be happy to see somehow disappearing as a national entity. And, of course, there is the "new antisemitism" in which demonisation of Israel has become the surrogate for traditional Jew hatred – just as Jews in the middle ages were blamed for all the ills of mankind, so today the Jewish state is increasingly held responsible for the principal woes facing humanity.

In this environment, the left and many liberals now focus their rage against Israel and have succeeded in hijacking human rights groups to serve as vehicles to undermine the Jewish state.

On the international arena, the automatic majority of Islamic and other radical states guarantees the passage of all anti-Israeli resolutions initiated at the UN, no matter how absurd. The so-called UN human rights council (UNHRC), which includes some of the worst tyrannies among its leading members, is just one example.

Simultaneously, the realpolitik imposed by oil-producing countries when securing energy has become the national priority for most nations, together with the growing empowerment of radical Islamic groups throughout Europe, has resulted in many countries siding against Israel, rather than confront the jihadists within their own borders.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Israel is Europe's blind spot

Love of the Land: U.N. rights chief says criticism of Israel-bashing council is ‘propaganda’

U.N. rights chief says criticism of Israel-bashing council is ‘propaganda’

Hillel Neuer
U.N. Watch
24 November 09

Criticism of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s problematic record — where there have been more condemnatory resolutions, special sessions and fact-finding missions against Israel than on the whole world combined — is “propaganda,” UN rights chief Navi Pillay told the Irish Times.

The decision by the Obama administration to reverse a Bush- era boycott of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), despite “propaganda which portrayed the council as biased and a venue for bashing Israel”, was, Pillay says, of great significance.

Key members of the 47-nation body include China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Despite their poor records on human rights, none has ever been condemned by a council resolution, scrutinized by a fact-finding inquiry, or made the object of a special country investigator.

Pillay then praised Ireland’s vote as one of the few EU states to support the Goldstone Report and its lopsided findings favoring Hamas over Israel:

Pillay praises Ireland’s support for a recent UN resolution calling for investigations into allegations that war crimes were committed during the January conflict in Gaza. “I agree with Ireland’s reasoning that the call for investigation is a legitimate call. “If someone robs you on the street, you want an investigation, an identification of the suspect and a prosecution. Where societies have taken that route - my country’s truth and reconciliation commission, for instance - you find that there has been a management of the passions that arise from victims’ calls about injustice.” Pillay stresses the importance of the Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict - which prompted the UN resolution - because it is grounded in international law. “Whatever the justification to go to war is, you cannot use disproportionate violence and you cannot target civilians,” she says.

We at UN Watch will continue to urge the United Nations and its human rights council to return to the founding principles of Eleanor Roosevelt and Rene Cassin, and to call them out when, led by Qaddafi, Castro and Co., they veer off track. People in responsible positions should consider confronting the council’s egregious bias, and getting it to address millions of currently ignored victims, instead of shooting at the messengers.

Love of the Land: U.N. rights chief says criticism of Israel-bashing council is ‘propaganda’

Love of the Land: Outflank the UN

Outflank the UN

FresnoZionism.org
23 November 09

Recently a friend sent me this video (the audio is in English with Hebrew subtitles). Many of you may have seen it; the YouTube copy got over 426,000 hits since it was posted in 2007.

It shows Hillel Neuer, director of the UN Watch organization, eloquently denouncing the one year old UN Human Rights Council — which had been created because the previous version, the UN Human RightsCommission had been deemed ineffective, primarily because it was packed with nations notable for their disregard for human rights. The new Council is hardly better — unlike the Commission, Sudan and Zimbabwe are not members, but it still includes Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria, and other states that are not exactly exemplars of regard for human rights.

The Council, like its predecessor, specialized in accusations against Israel while ignoring serious violations by others.

Neuer is a good speaker who reminded me of Abba Eban. The tone of the response by the then-President of the Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, is contemptuous as he tells Neuer that any similar comments in the future will be removed from the record.

So why do I bring this up?

Because it is increasingly true that eloquence, logic, and appeal to facts are irrelevant today. Only the point of view matters. Look at the Goldstone Report and the trashy NGO reports from which much of it was copied: patchworks of unsubstantiated accusations, used to support outrageous conclusions — primarily that Israel deliberately targeted civilians. But there is no real evidence for most of the accusations, and no logical connection to the conclusions. The report earns an F even if considered as investigative journalism, not to mention as a legal brief that might have consequences for Israel or IDF officers.

Nevertheless, this hit-piece, mandated by the above-mentioned Human Rights Council to investigate Israel’s crimes alone is actually taken seriously!

(Continue reading ...)

Love of the Land: Outflank the UN

Love of the Land: Judge Goldstone: I Participated in a Farce

Judge Goldstone: I Participated in a Farce

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
16 November 09

Richard Goldstone seems to use interviews to chip away at the legitimacy of his own work. He told the Forward that nothing he uncovered in Gaza is credible enough to be admissible in court. And now he has admitted this to Haaretz:

Many Israelis are right to feel that the United Nations and its member bodies such as the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have devoted inordinate and disproportionate attention to scrutinizing and criticizing Israel. This has come at the price of ignoring violations of human rights in other countries, some of them members of those very same bodies. The time has come for the investigation of all violations of international human rights law and international law whenever they are committed, in any state.

A few thoughts: First, this is almost exactly what Bob Bernstein argued in his New York Times op-ed about Human Rights Watch — for which he was accused by HRW, on whose board Goldstone sat, of claiming that no scrutiny whatsoever should be applied to Israel. Will HRW now distort Goldstone and level the same charge? Not a chance.

Second, this statement would seem to validate Shimon Peres’s critique that Goldstone is a “small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence” who was “on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel.” Goldstone has admitted that the lawfare campaign against Israel, of which he has become the de facto leader, is a perversion of justice: disproportionately and selectively applied. It is the equivalent of a police force that pursues the arrest of Jews, and scarcely anyone else, for violations. Such a police force is inherently illegitimate. Yet Goldstone chose to become the chief of that police force, and now denounces the fact of its — his — own iniquity. What psychodrama. What a small man.

Third, there is one person perfectly situated to rise to the challenge of even-handedness and proportionality that the good judge has placed before the world: his name is Richard Goldstone. He has earned his bona fides as a harsh and tendentious critic of Israel. Because of this, he has immense credibility at the UN and among “human-rights” activists worldwide. When will his campaign of inquisition against other democracies begin? Someone should ask him.

Love of the Land: Judge Goldstone: I Participated in a Farce

Love of the Land: At Brandeis, Israel's guilt and innocence on display

At Brandeis, Israel's guilt and innocence on display

Jeff Jacoby
Boston Globe
07 November 09

TO BRANDEIS University last night, South African jurist Richard Goldstone brought his international reputation as a legal scholar, a human rights advocate, and the former chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, brought facts and figures, maps and photographs, and audio and video in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

The two men were at Brandeis to discuss Goldstone’s highly controversial UN report on Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli attack in Gaza last winter. The report, written after a fact-finding mission with which Israel refused to cooperate, accuses the Jewish state of committing war crimes by using “disproportionate force’’ to inflict widespread destruction on Palestinian civilians - a policy that amounted to “collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip.’’ Last night’s encounter marked the first time since the report was issued that Goldstone publicly debated the report’s merits with a leading Israeli figure. It would not surprise me to learn that he is in no hurry for a second.

That is not to say that Goldstone didn’t speak well, even eloquently, in defending his own integrity and his chagrin at Israel’s refusal to have anything to do with his commission’s inquiry. Nor was there any mistaking his sincere outrage when he itemized the physical devastation he viewed in Gaza - 5,000 homes destroyed, 200 factories disabled, water systems wrecked, poultry farms demolished - or when he denounced the bombing of a mosque during prayers. “If that isn’t collective punishment, what is?’’ Goldstone asked. Such attacks, he said, “scream out’’ for investigation by Israel.

But Goldstone spent much of the time talking about himself - he recounted his dealings with the chairman of the UN Human Rights Council, his nightmares about being kidnapped by Hamas, his pleased discovery that ordinary Palestinians were “just like’’ ordinary Israelis - while his interlocutor focused relentlessly on facts and evidence. Gold played video of Israelis under Hamas rocket attack, and noted that such attacks had increased 500 percent after Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. He displayed aerial photographs of Hamas military installations located amid schools and mosques. He described Israel’s extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties, and showed Palestinian TV broadcasts confirming those efforts. He presented images of weapons caches inside Palestinian mosques and homes.

It was a powerful presentation - so powerful, in fact, that Goldstone regretted not having seen it earlier. “The sort of information shown to us by Ambassador Gold,’’ he said, “should have been shown to us during the [UN] investigation.’’

Yet to my mind, what was most striking of all was Goldstone’s inability to give a clear answer to an essential question: What should a law-abiding country do to defend itself against relentless terrorist attacks?

In one form or another, that question came up repeatedly. In his welcoming remarks, Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz observed that we live in a “new age of warfare,’’ in which civilized nations confront terrorists able to “mix and melt’’ into the civilian population. Asked Gold, after describing the thousands of rockets launched by Hamas at Israeli communities: “What would you do if your population was facing repeated attacks for eight years?’’ During the question-and-answer period, a student asked Goldstone - who had condemned Israel’s “disproportionate’’ attacks - what he would have considered a “proportionate’’ response.

But the judge, astonishingly, had no answer. He responded that that was a decision for the Israelis to make. He said it was a question that had given him “many sleepless nights.’’ He mused that perhaps undercover “commando attacks’’ would have been more appropriate. (“Gee, why didn’t the Israelis think of that?’’ murmured a voice in the audience.) He even suggested that it might make a good subject for a Brandeis research paper.

Judge Goldstone uses his international platform to pronounce Israel guilty, in other words, but will not say how Israel could have avoided such a verdict.

For the truth is, no other verdict was possible. Where the UN is involved, the guilt of the Jewish state is always taken for granted. The eminence of its chairman notwithstanding, the Goldstone Commission was a sham, and its bottom line was foreordained. The mystery isn’t why the Goldstone Report has been so widely denounced, but why Goldstone agreed to write it in the first place.

Love of the Land: At Brandeis, Israel's guilt and innocence on display

Love of the Land: Disfigured Terror Victim Confronts Goldstone in U.N. Debate

Disfigured Terror Victim Confronts Goldstone in U.N. Debate

04 November 09

U.N. Human Rights Council witnesses dramatic face-off when head of controversial UN "fact-finding" mission on Gaza unexpectedly confronted by one of his own witnesses. Dr. Mirela Siderer, an Israeli doctor brutally disfigured by a 2008 rocket attack fired from Gaza into her Ashkelon medical clinic, pointedly accused Judge Richard Goldstone of ignoring her July oral testimony in his report, and of failing to disclose material information concerning the mandate and members of the mission. Both declared Israel guilty in advance. Testimony arranged by the Geneva human rights organization UN Watch.






Love of the Land: Disfigured Terror Victim Confronts Goldstone in U.N. Debate

Israel and the UN Kangaroo Court

Israel and the UN Kangaroo Court

Gregg Rickman
The Cutting Edge
26 October 09

Last week’s consideration of the one-sided Goldstone Report has once again shown the fecklessness and bias of the Human Rights Council. Israel’s indictment by that body should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the UN. Israel simply cannot receive a fair hearing for any accusations placed against it there. As such, the Human Rights Council, and to be more accurate, the entire UN system is rigged against Israel making the process a kangaroo court.

In June 2008, while decrying the US refusal to continue its engagement with the Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch, could not avoid pointing out these important facts about the Council explaining, “In its first two years, however, the Human Rights Council has failed to address more than 20 human rights situations that require its attention, eliminated human rights monitoring in places desperately in need of such scrutiny, and adopted a long stream of one-sided resolutions on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories which failed to consider the roles and responsibilities of the Palestinian authorities and armed groups.”

Moreover, according to the Democracy Coalition Project study, “Human Rights Council Report Card, 2007-2008,” while “the Council considered numerous country situations throughout the year, it acted only on a few. It failed to effectively address several unfolding human rights crises, such as Zimbabwe and Tibet, or speak forcefully on ongoing situations as urgent as Darfur. The Council discontinued the mandates on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Group of Experts on Darfur, two areas of the world where gross and systematic human rights violations continue to take place.”

Since its inception, the Council has held 12 Special Sessions, with six directed at Israel. This sounds frighteningly familiar to the Council’s predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission. Between 2001 and when it was disbanded in 2006, the UN Human Rights Commission passed 26 resolutions and one decision that were critical of Israel. The situations in North Korea, Burma, and Sudan warranted a combined total of 11 resolutions and decisions during the same period.

Let’s look at the “special attention” the Council has given Israel in the past few years. Here are the first twelve sessions of the Council and the results of their meetings.

• 1st Special session of the Human Rights Council, July 5-6 2006, yielded a resolution S-1/Res.1: Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

• 2nd Special session of the Human Rights Council, Geneva, August 11, 2006 yielded a resolution S-2/1: The grave situation of human rights in Lebanon caused by Israeli military operations

• 3rd Special session was on Israeli military incursions in Occupied Palestinian Territory, November 15, 2006

• 4th Special session of the Human Rights Council was on the human rights situation in Darfur, December 12- 13, 2006

• 5th Special session of the Human Rights Council was on the human rights situation in Myanmar: October 2, 2007

• 6th Special session of the Human Rights Council focused on alleged rights violations emanating from Israeli military incursions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the recent ones in occupied Gaza and West Bank town of Nablus, January 23-24, 2008

• 7th Special session of the Human Rights Council was on "The negative impact on the realization of the right to food of the worsening of the world food crisis, caused inter alia by the soaring food prices", May 22 2008

• 8th Special session of the Human Rights Council: The situation of the human rights in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, November 28, 2008

• 9th special session of the Human Rights Council: "The Grave Violations of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including the recent aggression in the occupied Gaza Strip," January 9, 2009

• 10th special session of the Human Rights Council: "The Impact of the Global Economic and Financial Crises on the Universal Realization and Effective Enjoyment of Human Rights" - Friday, 20 February 2009

• 11th special session of the Human Rights Council: "The human rights situation in Sri Lanka," May 26-27 2009

• 12th Special Session of the Human Rights Council: "The human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and East Jerusalem," October 15, 2009 (The Goldstone Report condemning Israel was considered and a recommendation was passed endorsing it.)

Once again, the Council’s preoccupation with Israel is evident. For many years before its abolition, the Commis¬sion on Human Rights had a separate agenda item focusing solely on alleged violations of Israel—namely, Item 8, “Question of the violation of human rights in the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine.” This allowed multiple resolutions against Israel, while no other country could have more than one resolution run against it each year. No other country beside Israel had an agenda item exclusively scrutinizing it. This shameful tradition of bias and has been continued by the UN Human Rights Council.

According to the U.S. State Department Report on Global Anti-Semitism of March 13, 2008, “This new institution has proven to be even more prone to protect serious violators of human rights and more prolific in its criticism of Israel than its predecessor. The Council adopted 15 anti-Israel resolutions or decisions in its first 16 months (ending September 30, 2007).”

If one looks at the composition of the Council, it’s easy to see why it is impossible for Israel to be judged fairly. Again, according to the Democracy Coalition Project study, “In addition to these regional groups, there are several cross-regional blocs active at the Council that represent geopolitical alliances, including the European Union (EU), the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Group of Arab States [5 states], and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The OIC, with 15 members on the Council during the 2007-2008 cycle, carried more weight than any of the single regional groupings. The OIC frequently spoke and voted as a group, and was joined in its positions on many issues by the African Group, as well as Cuba and Nicaragua.”

Also, they added, “The current style of “bloc” politics at the Council has led to negotiations among regional and cross-regional groups that are increasingly conducted behind closed doors and pursue consensual outcomes. In many cases, this has prevented states from speaking independently and clearly on serious human rights concerns.” Finally, the report states, “The OIC generally supported the African line on opposing country scrutiny with one major exception, the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The UN system has been turned into a weapon by terrorist states to incite violence and hatred specifically against Israel and generally against the West. Because of this, Israel cannot and will not receive a fair hearing there. As long as we continue to support this corrupt process, we will see more and more of this abuse. A good start would be to end the UN’s kangaroo court we call the Human Rights Council.

Cutting Edge commentator Gregg J. Rickman, Ph.D, served as the first U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism from 2006-2009. He is a Senior Fellow for the Study and Combat of Anti-Semitism at the Institute on Religion and Policy in Washington, DC; a Visiting Fellow at The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; and a Research Scholar at the Initiative on Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco.

Originally posted by Love of the Land

Love of the Land: Another Tack: Ban Israel's bomb

Another Tack: Ban Israel's bomb

Sarah Honig
JPost
08 October 09

How sweet the vision: our world nuke-free and menace-free, enveloped in harmony and goodwill. Lofty sentiments without a doubt - assuming they are sincerely subscribed to and remotely attainable.

That's a whopping assumption, though.

Ban-the-Bomb appeared a praiseworthy cause at its cold-war 1950s inception. No doubt lots of fine folks genuinely trusted they were doing their best for mankind and life on earth. Not many suspected right off that they were played for suckers, that no authentic grassroots anti-nuke outcry was possible behind the Iron Curtain, that the endgame was to weaken western deterrent - and guess who wanted that to happen?

In time, anti-bomb fervor subsided, but not deep within the anti-establishment subculture inhabited, among others, by Barack Obama and assorted diehard radical cronies. In the name of that ideal of old, US President Obama pretentiously chaired the UN Security Council session which re-ignited the vision of nuclear disarmament. Yet again, intentions may have been noble.

Nevertheless the niggling question is whom are sponsors of the renewed Security Council morality-drive out to weaken? Some argue that high-minded pontification is but a thinly veiled campaign against the burgeoning, very potent Iranian nuclear threat.

But since this was obliquely left for the vast and varied UN membership to interpret according to entrenched self-serving predispositions, then anything goes. And it will. You can bet your bottom shekel that the resultant anti-nuclear ardor will be nothing like what it may seem or like what certain manipulators would like to make others believe that it seems.

PARDON THE jaded perception. Less starry-eyed, admittedly more world-weary observers saw it all before. Déjà vu. Most aspirations ceremoniously ballyhooed in august international forums sound commendable and honorable. Yet inescapably these virtuous standards will be applied to one country exclusively - little Israel.

The Human Rights Council, until recently infamous as the Human Rights Commission, concentrates all its energies on painting Israel as the planet's great repressive ogre. It was the HRC which commissioned the recent farcical Goldstone Report at the benign behest of such liberal paradigms as Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

The UN after all once equated Zionism with racism. That was when it was headed by former Nazi Kurt Waldheim. It routinely singled Israel out for an exemplary set of unique restrictions. Israel alone is prohibited from responding to overt terrorist aggression. Decades before operations Defensive Shield and Cast Lead, all retaliatory raids of the Fifties and Sixties were identically condemned.

Unlike any country, Israel is obliged to fight - if at all - according to incongruent asymmetrical pacifist rules. Israel may not resort to weaponry allowed or overlooked in the case of other states. All hell breaks loose if "collateral damage" is incurred in any Israeli action, although Israel faces enemies given to hiding behind their women's skirts and tots' t-shirts. Schools, hospitals and the like are used as rocket launching pads against Israeli civilians. But Israeli civilians are expected to take it on the chin and not disturb the world's peace with interminable Jewish whines.

Israel's security fence, erected to hamper suicide-bombers, is raucously vilified in the name of freedom of movement. Yet this laudable principle isn't requisite for other UN members. Numerous governments fortify their borders via barriers of all sorts to obstruct the influx of economic migrants and foreign gatecrashers. It's quite acceptable for the US, to say nothing of Spain whose need to bar entry into Spanish Sahara goes unchallenged. Nobody minds that European Spain still has territory in Africa, which it still refuses to cede.

Spain, mind you, is hardly alone. Plenty of UN members, from the US, UK, Russia, Turkey and China - to name just one handful - occupy the territory of others without incurring extraordinary wrath or even a negligible demerit. Plenty establish settlements on usurped lands - the above handful comes to mind again, but not only it. Worldwide, untold millions of noncombatants were evicted, indeed entire ethnic populations. None of the dispossessors are expected to accept dislodged enemies or even innocuous refugees back. No way will Poles, Czechs and other Europeans take back expelled Germans (and rightly so). What's done is done.

Except in Israel's case. Israel is unique. Israel must abet its own extinction via inundation by millions of hostile Arabs, whose own belligerent forebears caused their displacement to begin with. Israel is the one testing ground for all disingenuous ethical experiments bombastically launched by the international community.

China may occupy Tibet with no ill-consequence. China has no justification for subjugating Tibet. It's land-lust and nothing but. Israel of course is weighed on different scales. Merely nine miles wide - enclosed by temporary armistice lines rather than recognized borders - Israel was forced into war in 1967 in order to avoid annihilation. It regained territory which was partly Jewish-owned and Jewish-inhabited just 19 years earlier and all of which constitutes its homeland.

THIS IS no faraway conquest motivated by greed and coercive realpolitik. If Israel cedes lowly hills overlooking its densest population center, one airport and exposed highways, it's a goner. Yet this is precisely what the international community, including professed friends, stridently clamors for.

China crowded out native Tibetans with Chinese settlers immeasurably outnumbering Israel's entire population, but their removal isn't a precondition for much of anything. Chinese settlement construction isn't even called that, as wasn't the Russian counterpart in the Baltics. We won't even get into the thorny subjects of the US or Britain (still in the Falklands, just a hop and a skip from Whitehall). Different strokes for different settlers.
(Continue)

Love of the Land: Another Tack: Ban Israel's bomb

Love of the Land: The U.N. Blood Libel

The U.N. Blood Libel

Posted by Rachel Abrams
The Weekly Standard
07 October 09

This is a must-watch video by Eye on the UN’s Anne Bayefsky of responses to the Goldstone Report by Human Rights Council members Iran, Libya, Yemen, Venezuela, and Sudan. Do not miss her j’accuse moment at the end, nor the disgusting pusillanimity of the Council’s president, Alex Van Meeuwen.

Love of the Land: The U.N. Blood Libel

Love of the Land: Obama's new leverage - against its ally

Obama's new leverage - against its ally

Anne Bayefsky
JPost/Opinion
06 October 09

On September 29, Richard Goldstone presented his report on the Gaza conflict to an enraptured UN Human Rights Council. The Council, in which the Organization of the Islamic Conference holds the balance of power, commissioned his report. Goldstone promoted his 575-page smear campaign against the State of Israel by parading his Jewishness and then analogizing his work to his prior efforts to combat apartheid.

At its core, the report repeats the ancient blood libel against the Jewish people. Or as Goldstone casts this abomination for a modern audience, Israel "deliberately…terrorize[d] a civilian population;" Israeli "violence against civilians w[as] part of a deliberate policy."

The report claims to be a human rights document but never mentions the racist, genocidal intent of the enemy which Israel finally confronted after years of restraint. It invents laws of war which never mention the "right of self-defense," and it relies on testimonies from witnesses speaking under circumstances that gave rise to "a fear of reprisals" from Hamas should they have dared to tell the truth.

After the report was presented, the Council resembled an assemblage of vultures moving in on their prey. But instead of adopting a resolution intended to implement the report's recommendations, on October 1, the matter was tabled until the following Council session in March 2010.

REPORTS INDICATE that the American administration told the Palestinian Authority to back off. So the delay is not an indication that the hysterical Goldstone report went too far even for the UN. After all, this lead human rights body is populated by the likes of China and Saudi Arabia.

What is less clear, however, is what the breathing space will mean. Does President Obama plan to use the opportunity to extract concessions from Israel in exchange for putting the Goldstone report permanently to rest? Or does he appreciate that there can be no peace progress so long as Israel's alleged "peace" partners are bent on gutting its right of self-defense, and the phrase "living side-by-side in peace and security" is meant to apply to a party of one? Initial signs are worrying.

The Bush administration refused to lend the Human Rights Council any credibility. While aware of the fact that the Council had adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all other 191 UN member states combined, the Obama administration reversed course. The United States joined the Council and took its place as a full member for the first time at this latest session.

Given the Council's preoccupation with Israel, participating and lending it legitimacy handed the Obama administration new leverage - against its ally. In the past, Canada insisted that anti-Israel resolutions be brought to a vote, rather than railroaded through by "consensus," and courageously voted against.

But when the United States came on board, Canada rotated off the Council, thus creating a dynamic in which Israel became dependent on US proclivities.

The Goldstone report, however, has forced the Obama administration to recognize that the leverage over Israel presented by Council membership is not cost-free. No Israeli administration is going to take a seat at a negotiating table that its "peace partner" has festooned with a sword of Damocles.

So the report presents the president with a dilemma: how to avoid alienating his new friends in the Arab and Muslim world while keeping the peace process percolating? Moreover, sooner or later the Goldstone "rules" of engagement could well be turned against American action in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond.

The Obama administration needs to make a policy decision on the Goldstone report quickly. There are likely to be various attempts to insert references to the report at the UN General Assembly this fall.

Goldstone himself can be expected to continue seeking the limelight. In September, he made the unprecedented move of commandeering the UN Headquarters' press room in New York to release his report, even though it had been authorized by a Geneva institution and was due to be considered shortly. Having made recommendations to continue the witch hunt, including at the Security Council, Goldstone is very likely to attempt to turn the report's "implementation" into a permanent meal ticket.

The president, therefore, should be under no illusions. Waxing eloquent about multilateral engagement will not make the report and its progeny all go away - if that was ever his game plan.

UNFORTUNATELY, IT appears that the president may have a different agenda. Speaking at the Council in the presence of Goldstone, the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner said that the United States was ready "to engage in discussion of this report," and the US takes Goldstone's allegations against Israel "seriously." Posner was well aware that the report found that violence against Palestinian civilians was part of a deliberate Israeli policy, and yet could only manage to respond: "The report makes negative inferences about the intentions of Israeli officials… on the basis of a limited factual record." The only problem with referring the allegations to the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court, according to Posner, was that "then the role of the Human Rights Council would be dramatically different."

In language similar to Goldstone's trashing of the Israeli judicial system, Posner asked the Council to adopt a resolution telling "Israel to investigate and address allegations through a credible domestic process." It therefore appears that the Goldstone report will continue to fester and that administration officials may be preparing to use its threatened revival as a bargaining chip.

Now is the time for concerned Americans and members of Congress to demand that this scandalous report be buried permanently and immediately, and that it not become a weapon in behind-the-scenes struggles between Israel and the United States on vital issues. The right of every democracy to defend itself against a fanatical enemy who is prepared to put its own people in harm's way depends on it.

The writer is a professor at Touro College, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the editor of EYEontheUN.org

Love of the Land: Obama's new leverage - against its ally