Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, September 27, 2010

Israeli reaction to biased UNHRC report

I posted two articles about the UNHRC report on the flotilla incident and Zvi wrote a more general article about the hypocrisy of the UNHRC.

Here are some Israeli reactions to the report.

From YNet:

How can a country with virtually not connection to human rights be a member of a formal body dedicated to the promotion and protection of human rights around the world? Is that not similar to putting a wife-beater in charge of a women's shelter? Welcome to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the most hypocritical and shameful body of an institution that knows a thing or two about hypocrisy and shame; a body that makes the UN more meaningless than ever.

Incredibly, about 80% (!) of the Council's censures were devoted to Israel. This is an unbelievable figure: Meanwhile, tyrannies such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, China and others were never condemned by the UNHRC. North Korea, one of the darkest regimes of the 21st century, was condemned once. Sudan, where genocide has been committed for years, was addressed in two UNHRC resolutions, none of which held the Sudanese government accountable (one actually praised it for its "progress" on human rights.)

On the other hand, Israel, a democracy that grants freedom, civil rights and human rights to all of its citizens, including minorities that belong to a people with whom Israel is involved in bitter conflict – is supposedly the worst human rights violator on earth, and in fact one of the only human rights violators altogether. This according to the UN sponsored wife-beater's best judgment.

From Danny Ayalon at JPost:

[O]nly 20 of the 47 nations on the UNHRC are considered “free” by Freedom House, an independent NGO which monitors human rights and political freedoms. This means the majority of nations currently represented on the UNHRC do not allow basic freedoms for their own people, let alone concern themselves with global human rights.

ONE OF the root problems is the influence of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) within the UNHRC.

The UNHRC heavily weights membership on its council to nations from Africa and Asia – two continents where the OIC has considerable influence. The OIC controls the lion’s share of the world’s energy resources, including oil, gas and uranium.

The OIC and its allies have an automatic majority on the UNHRC, and this is represented in the council’s workload.

Human Rights Watch claims that the OIC has “fought doggedly” and successfully within the UN Human Rights Council to shield states from criticism, except when it comes to criticism of Israel. The OIC’s mantra has been that the council should work cooperatively with abusive governments rather than condemn them.

This has led to the absurd situation in which Israel is condemned 33 times by the UNHRC out of a total of 40 countryspecific condemnations, while the UNHRC expresses only “deep concern” over Sudan and praises its cooperation.

When the UNHRC discussed issues relating to the Second Lebanon War in 2006, four of the council’s independent experts reported the findings of their visit to Lebanon and Israel. State after state from the OIC took the floor to denounce the experts for daring to look beyond Israeli violations to discuss Hizbullah’s as well.

This sent a very clear message that experts filing reports for the UNHRC involving Israel should never look at the conduct of any other party. Justice Richard Goldstone understood this very well, as was reflected in the report he gave the UNHRC. In an interview given to Al Jazeera in 2009, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the OIC, explained how his organization not only initiated, but drove the Goldstone process from start to finish.

The MFA said simply:

Israel is a democratic and law abiding country that carefully observes international law and, when need be, knows how to investigate itself. That is how Israel has always acted, and that is the way in which investigations were conducted following Operation Cast Lead, launched to protect the inhabitants of southern Israel from rockets and terror attacks carried out by Hamas from Gaza.

The Israeli investigation system, which conforms to all international standards, is being examined by the Turkel Committee, an independent panel with international observers. This committee is still carrying out its work.

In view of all this, as well as of the biased, politicized and extremist approach of the same Human Rights Council that had initiated the skewed Goldstone Report, Israel sees no reason to cooperate with this commission.

Israel will nonetheless read and study the report.

(h/t Joseph.E)

In Venezuela, anti-semitism is mainstream

From Pajamas Media:

Unlike many anti-Semitic hypocrites in Europe or the USA, Chavistas don’t even bother to camouflage their Jew-hatred; it comes naked. Just take a look at Aporrea.org, their most important website, which is sponsored by the Venezuelan government. Use the searchword “judios” (Jews), and you will be amazed how similar the Venezuelan “socialism of the 21st century” and the German National Socialism of the 1930s are. In this article some examples will be given — which are perhaps not even the most bizarre ones (there are so many, and the race is really too close to call):
Pedro Mendez (“Judios, intrigantes y asesinos”) wants to prevent the Jews — who are “children of the father of lies,” according to his interpretation of the Bible — from “doing away with the race of the non-elect” and calls upon the world to unite against them before it´s too late. Likewise, Ivana Cardinale, a radio moderator from state radio station YVKE, is convinced that Jews view themselves as a “superior race,” treat non-Jews “like animals,” and aspire to control the world (“Palestina: Tierra robada por los judíos”).
Many Aporrea authors dispute the Holocaust (“Whether the Holocaust was real or an exaggeration is a pending issue”) or deny it outright, calling it a “myth” that the Jews designed in order to rule the world. When they speak about the “Holocaust” they mean the “Holocaust” that the Jews allegedly commit against the Arabs or, even more surprising, the one that the Venezuelan opposition tries to commit against the Chavistas: “They are fascists but we are not German Jews.” Evaristo Marcano Marin (“A cazar judios”) is a hunter: “To hunt a Jew should be a labor of peace and love. Every Jew you hunt down, catch him with a net of love and affection. Tell him that we humans know that they could also become humans and that if we achieve that noble purpose, they will be capable of: respecting, loving, feel solidarity with people, feel and love others. Tell him that those feelings exist and are part of some humans.”
Luis Rivero Badaracco, author of the article “Los Holocausteros,” mocks the victims of the Holocaust. “Why,” he wonders, had “the Jews (in the concentration camps) never rebelled?” There is “no evidence that they had ever rebelled,” he claims, and answers his silly question himself: “Jews are selfish.” They were thinking: “If I am good, I may be saved. To hell with the others.” As a “proof” he mentions the Jewish members of the Sonderkommandos: “The workers who brought the Jews to the gas chambers and collected the bodies were Jewish.” Who would give Mr. Badaracco — who, by the way, is a professor of agricultural engineering — some lessons in history? Maybe his Aporrea colleague James Petras (professor emeritus of sociology at Binghamton University), who calls Barack Obama “the first Jewish president of the USA“?
Under Chávez, Venezuela has turned into a madhouse where every anti-Semitic crank passes as a philosopher and fighter for social progress. Like the Nazis, the Chavistas associate the Jews with all the alleged evils of capitalism. They are perceived as a “dark force” that controls every part of the world economy.
Some of the propaganda can actually be described as incitement to genocide. This is best illustrated by the article “La Verdad sobre la Dominación Sionista: Genocidio Global Controlado y el ‘Armageddon’ Artificial” by Ever Pisani, director of the “Fundación Proyecto Libertador.” Mr Pisani starts with a paragraph about the “world today.” The decade began with the “collapse” of the World Trade Center, followed by the “sudden” and “mysterious” appearance of diseases like mad-cow disease, bird flu, and pig flu. Then came the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the financial crisis. Guess who is to blame for all the mess? Pisani knows.
...Of course, there are loonies in every country. But in Chavez’ Venezuela the hatred against Jews is endorsed by the government. “For the first time in recent history we see what I would call government sponsored anti-Semitism in a Western country,” says Sammy Eppel, a Jewish activist in Venezuela. In his notorious Christmas speech in 2005, Chávez deplored that “the descendants of those who crucified Christ … have taken ownership of the riches of the world.” Last year he called Colombia the “Israel of Latin America.” Police raids in Jewish schools foster a climate of fear and stigmatize Jews as the enemy of the “Bolivarian Revolution” — especially those Jews who dare to oppose the government.

This is worse than what one can find in any government sponsored Arab sites. Muslims at least pay lip service to Judaism being a "divine religion" and, for the past ten years or so, Arabs have made an effort to publicly distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-semitism (often just a word-substitution.) But this Venezuelan anti-semitism is unfiltered and extremely dangerous.

Egyptian cheese commercial goes viral

Some people are seeing this series of commercials as a metaphor for Egyptian totalitarianism, Arab inability to compromise, Chinese encroachment into the world's commercial marketplaces, or even American hegemony.

Others just think they are funny.

Those "dismantled" Al Aqsa Brigades keep popping up

How many times have we heard that the moderate PA has managed to dismantle the Fatah-affiliated Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, consolidated their security forces and made all terror groups illegal?

The first such announcement dates all the say back to 2007.

Somehow, however, they keep on popping up.

Just today the Al Aqsa Brigades announced that if Israel resumes construction in Jewish communities across the Green Line, they will "respond" and will teach Jews in the territories "unforgettable lessons."

They also claimed a shooting attack against a 9-months pregnant woman and her husband.

Isn't it strange that a supposedly banned and dismantled group, anathema to the "new" law-and-order PA, is still alive and kicking? Or perhaps it means that Fatah is not quite as moderate as they pretend to be when speaking to Western reporters?

Egypt finds another half-ton of explosives on way to Gaza

From Ma'an:

Egyptian security forces seized a cache of explosives in the Sinai Pensinsula on Sunday, security sources said.

...[O]fficers uncovered a weapons depot containing half a ton of TNT explosives and anti-aircraft shells. The ammunition was packaged in bags ready to be smuggled through underground tunnels into Gaza, sources said.

Given the number of caches Egypt has found, how many do you think they miss?

I'm sorry, but Arab paranoia is endlessly amusing

I just stumbled across a site I had never heard of but which apparently has some popularity in various Arab countries, called ArabCrunch.

This blog claims that it is being targeted by the CIA and the Mossad.

Here are some of the breathtaking details:

We mentioned for the first time in the last post who is behind the terrorist DDoS attacks and criminal hack of ArabCrunch blog. Now we will reveal more plots, as all these plots were designed to force ArabCrunch founder to become a CIA agent or remove him from the leadership position or get red of him in one way or another or destroy ArabCrunch with anyway, whether by blocking advertisers from advertising on AC so there are no revenues and we go bankrupt, or to the level of cutting the line of communications for ArabCrunch have with the outside the world, by manipulating our email on google ( we did not talk about Voice yet).

The CIA/Mossad and the global Zionist movement are ready to go at any level to destroy AC. The Zionist infiltration of United States of America is secret to too many Americans, they way they operate is no different than they way Banana republicz operates, control key power elements: Media, Economy then you control politics.

In 1997 the world news was Bill Clinton Monika Laynski Scandal, The US president was blackmailed by this young Jewish girl, she had her shirt with the “evidence” for 2 years! why? because she was a trap (card) to be used when needed.

he blackmail some say in USA was orchestrated by the Israeli Prime Minister Natneyaho, Monika is a member of an Israeli Party and when she went back to “Israel” she was greeted with flowers and roses as a hero who saved “Israel.”

The Mossad is always actively fresh for new recruits as a recent announcement reveled that they have succeed in recruiting a son of a Hamas leader. Mossad tries to recruits not just Hammas leaders but their direct family members. Not just that anyone they can. One of ArabCrunch fans who owns shares in one of the most poplar sites in USA has been facing several lawsuits.

We asked him if those are because of his support to AC, he said Yes extreme Israelis are behind this! The guy is not Muslim or Arab by the way!

ArabCrunch was in negotiations with a major hosting company in Texas: Softlayer, the hosting deal would bring salable server bandwidth to serve AC’s growing visits. We were waiting for this deal to happen because we had a deal with another company that would bring us 10s of millions of visits per month and potentially make us the number 1 blog or 2 in all categories ahead of Huffington Post. Negotiations with the hosting company took sometime and was about to close when we were close to close the deal, boom a private equity firm comes and acquires softlayer!!! And who is this private equity firm?

It is GI Partners a firm that has secured $4.0 billion of capital commitments on behalf of recognized institutional private equity and real estate investors in the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

GI Partners is CIA front for its business, spy and military operations, GI Partners runs an imam program to brain wash Iraqi prisoners and destroy their well, a common tactic used before by clonal powers such as UK the program name is Russian and East European Partnerships (REEP) Inc., REEP/OSS Web site, also offers “intelligence support operations.”

That means not only the CIA and Mossad have access to our google email but the CIA have direct access to our server! Very nice! We mentioned before that the CIA and the Mossad had access to our email, now also confirmed: our server, We know that certain data that belong to us else where has been played with, and since there are thousands of files we do not know what else was added or deleted. Propably not just to fabricate crimes against AC’s founder and AC but also to wipe of any evidence of their transpasing!

And you thought that Jews were paranoid!

More on the UNHRC's extreme bias

In the UNHRC report on the June flotillas, we have already seen how the Human Rights Council has no compunction about twisting international law specifically to demonize Israel.

Elsewhere in the report, we can see how much they twist easily verifiable facts as well.

Here is how they justify believing biased, lying "eyewitnesses" over actual video evidence:

20. In ascertaining the facts surrounding the Israeli interception of the Gaza-bound flotilla, the Mission gave particular weight to the direct evidence received from interviews with eye witnesses and crew, as well as the forensic evidence and interviews with government officials. In light of seizure of cameras, CCTV footage and digital media storage devices and of the suppression of that material with the disclosure only of a selected and minute quantity of it, the Mission was obliged to treat with extreme caution the versions released by the Israeli authorities where those versions did not coincide with the evidence of eyewitnesses who appeared before us.

So when witnesses said one thing and video evidence showed something completely different, they chose to believe the liars.

And how do we know that the witnesses are unreliable at best, and liars at worst? Why, the UNHRC admits it! In paragraph 114:

The Mission does not find it plausible that soldiers were holding their weapons and firing as they descended on the rope.

Why does the report even bring this up? Simple - because that's exactly what the very same "eyewitnesses" claimed, in contradiction to the video evidence released both by the IDF and by the activists themselves.

Paragraph 114 proves that the UNHRC knows that the witnesses are unreliable but even so they judge them to be more trustworthy than direct, clear video evidence!

Even so, the UNHRC expects us to believe that "live ammunition was used from the helicopter onto the top deck prior to the descent of the soldiers" - as if the IHH fighters would have been standing on deck, as sitting ducks, waiting to be picked off one by one before the IDF soldiers rappelled onto the deck. And that the helicopter was firing 9mm rounds onto the deck (all of the dead were killed by 9mm bullets.) And that the IDF soldiers would somehow have avoided firing their weapons as soon as they hit the deck and allowed themselves to be beaten up with metal clubs even though the IDF had, according to the UNHRC, already been using live fire. The entire narrative is utterly nonsensical.

The rule seems to have been, when the UNHRC had no direct and incontrovertible evidence that passengers were lying, they must have been telling the absolute truth, and that the veracity of the "eyewitnesses" were not the least bit harmed by proof that they were wrong.

(h/t Professor Miao)

A great example of Elder's First Rule

Long time readers may remember Elder's First Rule of Arab Projection, that states:

Whenever Arabs accuse Israel of doing some crime, they are doing that exact crime, usually on a far grander scale than their accusations.

I just came across a perfect example of this rule, not by Arabs but by Muslims.

You know how Muslims like to accuse Israel of purposefully targeting Jewish interests in order to make Muslims look bad? Perhaps the example that has gained the most currency was the accusation that Zionists were behind a deadly synagogue bombing in Baghdad in 1951 in order to scare Iraqi Jews into leaving the country. That accusation was a lie.

However, check out what a Turkish general just admitted:

A retired general who has recently been accused of having conducted an assassination attempt on the life of Turkey's eighth president, Turgut Özal, has inadvertently confessed that he ordered the burning of a mosque as part of psychological warfare operations in 1974.

In remarks published in the Haber Türk daily yesterday as part of an interview with Gen. Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, who led the Special War Department in 1971 and also worked to mobilize civilian resistance during Turkey's military intervention on Cyprus in 1974, said: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent's incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example,” in an attempt to clear things up.

The joke that is the UN Human Rights Council (Zvi)

From Zvi:

To be a credible authority on human rights topics, an organization of states must ensure that a state can only participate if it provides basic human rights for its people and extends the same concepts of human rights to others. So it must:

* provide freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion
* provide free markets
* provide one person-one-vote in free and fair elections
* provide rule of law and criminalize terrorism
* rid itself of laws that are racist and anti-Semitic

While there could be some gray areas, it is absolutely clear which types of regimes would need to be absolutely and vigorously excluded.

Any so-called "human rights commission" that includes Libya and Iran is simply a farce and has zero credibility in the human rights arena. Human rights NGOs should boycott it, and governments should disband it. It is worse than useless. Any so-called "human rights" attack written by Venezuela and Cuba simply erodes the credibility of all human rights resolutions (possibly by design).

Any "human rights" forum that gives equal membership to a brutal dictatorship like Libya and a free country like Canada is the wrong forum for any kind of human rights protection, legislation, reporting, expertise or condemnation. Thus, the UN, which in theory treats all nations more or less equally (except for Israel, of course) is ABSOLUTELY THE WRONG ORGANIZATION to be in charge of human rights activities of any kind.

A separate international commission or organization could be established, one whose membership constraints are specifically crafted to exclude dictatorships (if dictatorships wish to join, they must give up power and establish free democratic systems, which most will refuse to do). There is nothing wrong with a 2-tier system - tier 1 consisting of democratic states and tier 2 consisting of those states that insist on repression. After all, you want dictators to have incentives to grant freedom to their people. Only the free countries would have a voting place in any body that defends human rights. Only such a body would have any reasonable claim to credibility as a world human rights forum.

Regardless, it is certain that the UN cannot and will not function as a competent human rights policeman. The ability of dictators to dominate the UNHRC demonstrates why the UN is fundamentally flawed as a human rights defender. At an international level, it imposes the "tyranny of the majority" (or of the large aggressive unified bloc, anyway), providing no protection against persecution of minority states. It treats thugs and dictators who climb into their UN seats on the backs of countless millions of oppressed people as if they had any right to represent those people. And it treats every government or regime, whether it is the world's oldest or largest democracy or whether it is ruled by the world's most brutal and repressive junta or theocracy, as being identical in rights and privileges. And that is simply wrong.

Some might complain that the people of dictatorships have as much right to be represented fully in the UN as do the people of democratic states. And they would be right! But the sad fact is that the people living under dictatorships are not represented at all in the UN today; only their dictators are represented.

Some might complain that the UN should be there to represent all states, because a UN that does not offer first-class treatment to dictators will be unable to mediate when dictators are involved. And they are perhaps correct, in principle, but only where mediation and security is concerned. Such a function does not require that the UN provide Human Rights Commissions and Relief Works Agencies.

Unlike some, I generally support the existence of a (MORE LIMITED) UN. The world does need a structure that allows governments to coordinate certain kinds of security efforts in a manner that does not reinvent the wheel in every single crisis. This function has been useful at reducing the scope of wars in a highly complex global society. Sometimes even the ability of governments to bluster and act hypocritically has been useful in that regard. But the UNHRC, UNRWA and other purely political organizations that do nothing but perpetuate a 60+ year brutal attack on one small democratic country add nothing to the international system and must be eliminated.

While it is too late to "fix" the UN, it is not too late to deny it credibility in areas where it manifestly cannot be credible.

Latest Latma

I like this one:

We get results! World Bank now includes Israel in MENA

UNHRC tramples on international law to demonize Israel

Even a quick glance at the UNHRC's report on the flotilla shows extraordinary duplicity in describing international law.

We had already posted at length a number of scholarly articles about the legality of Israel's naval blockade of Gaza. The UN Human Rights Council finds that it must completely make up new laws in order to accuse Israel of breaking them.

First, it accurately quotes San Remo to define what a legal blockade is:

51. Under the laws of armed conflict, a blockade is the prohibition of all commerce with a defined enemy coastline. A belligerent who has established a lawful blockade is entitled to enforce that blockade on the high seas.41 A blockade must satisfy a number of legal requirements, including: notification, effective and impartial enforcement and proportionality.42 In particular a blockade is illegal if:
(a) it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential for its survival; or
(b) the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade.43

So far, so good. But look what comes next:

52. A blockade may not continue to be enforced where it inflicts disproportionate damage on the civilian population. The usual meaning of “damage to the civilian population” in LOAC refers to deaths, injuries and property damage. Here the damage may be thought of as the destruction of the civilian economy and prevention of reconstruction of past damage. One might also note, insofar as many in Gaza face a shortage of food or the means to buy it, that the ordinary meaning of “starvation” under LOAC is simply to cause hunger.44

The bolded text is simply made up by the UNHRC and has zero to do with international law. There is nothing in international law that says that "destruction of the civilian economy and prevention of reconstruction of past damage" is illegal under the laws of blockade.

Even worse, the footnote that it cites says this:

C. Pilloud and J. Pictet, Commentary on the additional protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (International Committee of the Red Cross, 1987), p.53 para 2089. See also Oxford English Dictionary definitions: “to deprive of or keep scantily supplied with food” or to “subdue by famine or low diet”.

They quote Pilloud and Pictet as if they say that "starvation" means to "cause hunger." Yet Pilloud and Pictet actually say:

The UNHRC is deliberately misinterpreting its own footnoted material to accuse Israel of starving Gaza with the blockade.

Of course it doesn't mention the tons of food that arrive daily into Gaza via Israel itself, nor the fact that not a single Gazan has yet been documented to have starved to death in the past four years.

Since the UNHRC made up a specialized definition of the legality of a blockade, tailor made for Israel alone, it is no surprise that they conclude:

53. In evaluating the evidence submitted to the Mission, including by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory, confirming the severe humanitarian situation in Gaza, the destruction of the economy and the prevention of reconstruction (as detailed above), the Mission is satisfied that the blockade was inflicting disproportionate damage upon the civilian population in the Gaza strip and as such the interception could not be justified and therefore has to be considered illegal.

The report goes on to the usual lies - claiming Gaza is occupied, saying that the IDF fired live ammunition from the helicopters before the first soldiers descended on the ship, and so forth. But here is a specific example where international law is being deliberately misinterpreted for the singular purpose of finding Israel guilty.

(h/t sshender)