UNHRC – What a joke
In a move that surprises no-one, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted earlier today to endorse the Goldstone Report.
The council has been meeting for the past two days in a special session called by the Palestinian representatives and supported by 18 of the worlds greatest defenders of human right – those nations are :Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.
Clearly a body that incorporates such defenders of human rights should be taken seriously.
Th final vote was 25 for the motion, 6 against and 11 abstentions.
More later.
Why Israelis have no faith in the UN
As if further proof was needed of the double standard that prevails at the United Nations, below is a footage shot a couple of days ago by IDF drones over South Lebanon.
On October 12, 2009, there was an explosion at a Hezbollah weapons storehouse in Tayr Filsay, in southern Lebanon. This aerial footage, taken shortly after the explosion, shows Hezbollah operatives closing down the area around the warehouse, driving in two trucks and removing weaponry from the site. They then took the weapons to a known weapons storage facility in the center of the village of Dir a-Nahar about four kilometers away. Only after Hezbollah removed the weaponry did they allow UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army to enter the site of the explosion. The IDF has sumbitted the footage to UNIFIL to aid in their investigation of the incident.
Source
The UN Resolution (UNSCR 1701) that brought an end to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 clearly states:
15. Decides further that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft;
* a. the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories, and;
* b. the provision to any entity or individual in Lebanon of any technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in subparagraph (a) above, except that these prohibitions shall not apply to arms, related material, training or assistance authorised by the government of Lebanon or by Unifil as authorised in paragraph 11;
Israelis ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, has rightly complained to the Security Council about “another serious violation” of the UN resolution.
Whether the UN can fit in to its busy schedule a debate on such violations of SC resolutions is, in my mind at least, questionable, as it seems quite busy right now looking into the Goldstone report.
As Goldstone had previously stated regarding the Gaza conflict, Israel should have complained to the UN about rocket attacks from Gaza – and yet Israel constantly complains about Hezbollah breaking 1701 and the UN sits on its hands and does nothing.
So if Israel is forced to take action again against Hezbollah will we hear another outcry from the likes of Goldstone?
And they wonder why we have no faith in the UN.
Added 16th Nov 09: Hezbollah video trying to refute Israeli allegations.
Goldstone report to be discussed at special session of UNHRC
Playing politics with the security of the Israeli people is something no human should ever advocate.
Mary Robinson knew that when she refused to Chair the UNHRC witch hunt against Israeli defensive actions earlier this year.
“the resolution is not balanced because it focuses on what Israel did, without calling for an investigation on the launch of the rockets by Hamas. This is unfortunately a practice by the Council: adopting resolutions guided not by human rights but by politics. This is very regrettable.”
Since it’s release the political football has been passed around the field. The UNHRC first were going to vote on the report only to have said vote delayed until March next year, apparently after Obama pressured Abbas to drop his demand for a vote, then a Libyan attempt to get the security council to look at the report failed, and now it would seem that Abbas, a man who has made an art out of doing nothing to further peace during his Presidency, has made public noises about requesting a special session of the UNHRC to debate and vote on the report.
The problem is the only reason why Abbas is making these moves is because he is fighting for his own political survival. Word on the Palestinian street is that Hamas were mighty miffed that the PA dropped their insistence of a vote the other week – so in a pathetic attempt to hold on to his political office, elections must be held next year, Abbas is hoping to bring forward a vote and use the UNHRC once again to demonise Israel, something that body does constantly.
The fall out from the Goldstone report is far from over – this is going to continue for some time. Speaking at the opening of the new Knesset session yesterday Binyamin Netanyahu attacked the report and its findings.
“Israel’s basic rights to self-defense and to exist as a Jewish state are under continued attack, which has become even stronger following the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. Our first mission is to repel them,” the prime minister said as he attacked the Goldstone Report.
“This report, written by the warped [Goldstone] Commission, questions Israel’s very right to self-defense. This report encourages terrorism and also endangers peace. I want to emphasize this. Israel will not take chances for peace if it cannot defend herself.”
Warped indeed, but Israel needs to respond to the ongoing campaign by Palestinians and other in the UN who attack our basic rights to defend our population from the murderous intent of our so called peace partners.
A new website has been created by a number of bloggers who have been following events very closely since last winter. They offer analysis and challenge some of the issues raised by not just the report itself but the very make up of the team. Over the weeks and months ahead this will turn into a valuable resource to counter the huge anti-Israel campaign that will follow. Check them out.
Swedish Foreign Minister supports Goldstone.
After the recent blood libel published in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladets why am I not surprised at this story in today’s Jerusalem Post.
Sweden supports Goldstone report
Sweden supports the Goldstone Commission’s report into Operation Cast Lead, the country’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said Thursday.
No real surprise there, remember Bildt at the time of the blood libel refused to condemn the series of lies published in the tabloid on the grounds of freedom of speech.
Bildt told reporters in Stockholm that South African judge Richard Goldstone was a person with “high credibility” and “high integrity” and that his report carries weight. He said the probe, which alleged that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during last winter’s Israel offensive against Gaza, is worthy of consideration.
Goldstone might have had credibility before he drank the kool-aid but as Elder of Ziyon has shown in a series of posts, Goldstone has no problem with ignoring evidence and publishing lies as truths.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman called Bildt’s remarks “disappointing,” and said they demonstrated his “lack of reading comprehension skills,” since anyone who read the report would know that it was biased.
Disappointing is a bit of an understatement, but I guess in diplomatic speak it’s quite substantial.
Palistinians fail to get vote on Goldstone Report, for now
Last night at the United Nations Human Right Council in Geneva a vote on the travesty that is the Goldstone Report was delayed until their next meeting in March 2010.
Much of the Israeli media is claiming that the vote that the Palestinian representatives pushed for had been dropped after US pressure.
Barak Ravid, writing in Haaretz claims:
The Obama administration has told the Palestinians that a renewal of the peace process must come before any diplomatic initiatives based on the Goldstone report, or any other initiatives that could stifle efforts to renew Israel-PA negotiations
Thats all fine and dandy, but the bottom line is that no negotiations can, or for that matter should, continue until the theocratic regime in Gaza is eradicated.
Whilst the Goldstone report glossed over Hamas ‘war crimes’ of shelling civilian targets during the three week confrontation it entirely ignored the key reasons for Israeli engagement in the first place, 8000 plus projectiles over a number of years being fired into Israeli civilian areas.
In fact, even today, Hamas sees nothing wrong with their actions prior and during the war. Speaking to the Ma’an News Agency senior Hamas official Ahmad Yousef talks about the Goldstone report.
Ma’an: What was your reaction to the conclusions of the Goldstone commission report that came out recently?
Yousef: It depends on how you look at the report. If you look at the report from a moral and political perspective you shouldn’t blame Hamas or the groups that were defending Gaza against aggression. The Israelis started the war, and they used the most advanced military technology known to man to cause that kind of large-scale destruction. So the groups are going to use whatever is necessarily and whatever is in their hands to defend the people.
The report tried to equate in one way or another between the aggressors and the victims. That is actually where we are not satisfied totally with the report.
But in general the report highlighted Israeli crimes against humanity, and they recommended that the United Nations, also, pressure the Israeli authorities to conduct more investigations to bring the criminals to justice. Blaming the Palestinians, one way or another, this is where we have some reservations. From a realpolitik standpoint, you can say the report, it’s quiet fair, because it highlighted the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians.
And that’s the crux of the matter, Hamas refuses to acknowledge that terrorising one million Israelis living in the south of the country as aggression. With that in mind, the call from Richard Goldstone for both Israel and Hamas to investigate themselves seems rather moot.
In an interview with Christiane Amanpour of CNN on Wednesday (posted below), Goldstone had this to say when asked about Hamas justice:
CA: We talked about each side conducting their own investigations; Israel has its justice, the wheels of justice that turn. [What] would you expect really that you could get out of Hamas in Gaza.
RG: Well Hamas has courts open. There are courts in Gaza. People are convicted. Some people are, regrettably in my view, are sentenced to be executed. But if Hamas hasn’t got the sufficient resources, hasn’t got sufficient lawyers and judges, which I doubt, I’ve no doubt that the international community will fill any gap that there may be in such an absence of resources.
If this wasn’t so serious it would be funny. Here we have a man who has chaired The South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, a man who was Chief UN Prosecutor for in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well chairing the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo, and here we have a man who believes that Hamas is fit to investigate itself because, “well, hamas has courts open”.
Compare that to his comments earlier in the interview about Israeli justice, and you see how far this man has denigrated himself and his profession.
CA: To follow up there, there are some 100 investigations according to the Israelis that are going on, and some 23 or so that are possibly being brought to criminal trial. Does that go to what you were asking for? Because you talked about individual responsibility.
RG: No, not at all. These are secret military enquiries, in very few cases have the victims been spoken to My understanding is that the Israeli military are relying almost entirely on what they get from their own forces. That’s hardly the sort of enquiry that’s going to satisfy victims.
Like I said, it if this wasn’t so serious it would be funny.
UNHRC to Israel – You can not defend your citizens from Attack
The United Nation Human Right Council is meeting in Geneva this week to review the report written by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone.
For those unfamiliar with the report should read it, all 570 odd pages of it, but to summarise, the NY Times wrote:
ISRAEL intentionally went after civilians in Gaza — and wrapped its intention in lies.
That chilling — and misguided — accusation is the key conclusion of the United Nations investigation, led by Richard Goldstone, into the three-week war last winter. “While the Israeli government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercises of its right to self-defense,” the report said, “the mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.”
Whilst a report written for the UNHRC attacking Israel for defending her citizens is no great shock, considering the council had appointed Christine Chinkin, a Professor of Law in London who earlier this year, during the Gaza war, signed her name to a letter accusing Israel of war crimes.
In fact the framework for the mission that wrote the report was so deeply flawed, that when former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Right, Mary Robinson was initially offered the role of Chairing the mission she is quoted to have said:
“the resolution is not balanced because it focuses on what Israel did, without calling for an investigation on the launch of the rockets by Hamas. This is unfortunately a practice by the Council: adopting resolutions guided not by human rights but by politics. This is very regrettable.”
Robinson, a woman not known for being pro-Israel who previously had Chaired the 2001 anti-Israel World Conference against Racism, was spot on. The UNHRC – a body made up of such supporters of Human Rights like Egypt, Pakistan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia – has once again used a UN body to condemn Israeli actions in defence of her citizens.
Israel, for her part, naturally refused to co-operate with Goldstone because its mission was solely to investigate Israeli war crimes.
What is fascinating about the report is that Goldstone and his group have taken as fact every little lie fed to them by Hamas. Their time in Gaza investigating the war was spent with Hamas minders, every Gazan they interviewed was done so in the presence of Hamas, so when the report concluded that they found no evidence of Hamas firing from civilian areas, they believed them, ignoring the vast amount of footage filmed by Israeli drones during the war.
The report, unsurprisingly, found no evidence of Hamas using Mosques and schools for weapon stores. It did however conclude that Israel had deliberately target civilians, a claim easily refuted by Israel with film footage shot during the three week conflict, conveniently ignored by Goldstone.
Palestinian sources are already claiming they have enough votes on the UNHRC to pass the report to the UN General Assembly and the Security Council.
This report is a travesty. It ignores the time frame prior to the war where Hamas and its fellow terrorists in Gaza fired 8000 plus rockets into Southern Israel. If passed by the UNGA it sets a dangerous precedent where a nation state is being told by the international community that they may not, under any circumstance, defend their citizens from attack.
