EU High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell spoke at the 24th EU-NGO Forum on Human Rights on Wednesday.
Most of his speech properly listed the worst human rights issues facing the world nowadays:
- The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to have resulted in 6 million deaths.
- Thousands of people imprisoned in Belarus for protests.
- Over a thousand killed in Myanmar and 4,500 more in jail for protesting.
- Between 600,000 and 800,000 people dead in Ethiopia from famine and cutting off basic services.
- Afghanistan's oppression against women, the Taliban saying they were going to erase women from society.
- Russia trying to systematically destroy Ukraine, with millions of lives at risk this winter.
- Iran's killing hundreds of protestors and repressing women.
- China's persecution of a million Uyghurs.
And then after listing all of these huge and very real human rights catastrophes, Borrel just had to imply that one of the worst was Israel:
That is why we are setting today a new Global Observatory on the Fight against Impunity....and we are going to allocate €20 million for that.This Observatory will gather information and build knowledge about genocide, about crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations. They are there. I have not mentioned Palestine, for example. But what is happening in Palestine – I am sorry, I have to say, although I know that it will bring me a lot of criticism. But yes, we have to remember what is happening in Palestine. During this year, more than 100 Palestinian people have been killed by the Israeli security forces. I do not deny that there are security issues. I think, and I issued a lot of statements condemning and expressing our strong concern about the high level of violence in the occupied territories in the West Bank.
As anyone who does a modicum of research would know, the vast majority - over 90% - of the Palestinians killed this year were terrorists, while actively attacking.
The vast majority of Jews killed in terror attacks this year were civilians, which is what started Israel going on the offensive.
But he doesn't mention them.
Borrell has the nerve to equate the deaths from crossfire of a handful of Palestinians with the events in Myanmar, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran, China and Ethiopia? He feels he must single out Israel as a major human rights violator? And that is the only example he mentions after saying that this new organization will research "genocide, about crimes against humanity and other serious human rights violations" - implying that Israel is guilty of the worst human rights abuses, after listing all the others.
Mentioning "Palestine" in the same speech as these other issues, and in the same paragraph as the new Observatory, changes it from what could have been am announcement of a good initiative, a chance to look at human rights objectively, into what sounds like just another political organization that will attack Israel while doing nothing more than lip service to real human rights abuses.
Nearly 1100 people were killed by police in the US so far in 2022. Why didn't Borrell mention that? Because it isn't in the same ballpark as the mass atrocities of the other countries.
Neither is Israel.
But Borrell just couldn't resist making it sound like Israel is in the top tier of human right abusers.
Which makes one wonder, was the rest of his speech as unreliable as this part was?
(h/t Irene)
