The anti-Israel agenda prevails:
by Anne Bayefsky, The Jerusalem Post.
On Friday at 6 p.m., the Obama administration’s promises to fix the disreputable UN Human Rights Council by becoming a member died a predictable death at the General Assembly. Knowing they were headed for certain defeat, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs Esther Brimmer gave a speech at a Washington institute last Wednesday touting President Barack Obama’s “reform” accomplishments from inside the UN’s top human rights body. And her whitewash was supplemented at the end of the week by a barrage of statements and press releases from the State Department. It didn’t even pass House Speaker John Boehner’s “straight-face test” for the president’s foreign policy.
While the GA was nailing the coffin shut on council reform in New York, the council itself was wrapping up its latest session in Geneva with its usual systematic efforts to demonize the State of Israel. Though Brimmer’s speech included a disingenuous declaration that US membership in the council was especially beneficial for Israel, Friday’s events will solidify the growing perception of the president’s dangerous disinterest in Israel’s welfare.
The council was the “reformed” version of the UN Human Rights Commission, which once flaunted a Libyan chair. The Bush administration and its UN ambassador John Bolton opposed this 2006 “reform” on the grounds that the changes were superficial and there were no membership criteria for election to what was, after all, the UN’s top human rights body. The European Union, however, was bought off by including a five-year review plan. That review ended Friday with the adoption of a GA resolution that kicked any further reconsideration down the road “10-15 years.”
From the day it began, the council has proved to be even worse than its predecessor. Sitting in judgment on human rights violations worldwide are such luminaries as China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. Member Libya had no difficulty being elected, and its suspension didn’t occur until March of this year, when the numbers of dead finally proved too embarrassing. But throwing women in jail for driving, outlawing freedom of religion, rendering homosexuality a capital offense and periodically cutting off heads haven’t made a dent in Saudi membership.
ON THE contrary, the most recent council election, which took place on May 20 at the GA, looked like this. Just before the vote, candidate Kuwait gave each state’s representative in the Assembly Hall a little box decorated with its flag and containing four delightful fresh dates. Austria gave delegates a package of cookies with a pretty bow marked “taste of Austria.”
Costa Rica distributed a colorful red wooden toy cart. India handed out “high elevation darjeeling tea,” and Romania gave out a very nice large calendar. Along with Burkina Faso, where most of the female population has undergone female genital mutilation – aka torture – they were all duly elected.
With their actual human rights credentials off the table, council members adopted a fixed agenda of only a few items to govern their proceedings. One item is devoted to Israel alone and one to all other 191 UN member states. The Human Rights Commission spent 40 years adopting country-specific criticisms, a third of which condemned Israel. Fifty percent of the “reformed” council’s country-specific resolutions and decisions are devoted to Israel-bashing. There have been 12 special sessions in the last five years, and half of them have been on Israel alone. There has been only one “urgent debate” on a country – Israel. There have been more human rights reports commissioned on Israel than on any other state. And only one country is not allowed even to attend the lobbying and information-sharing regional meetings associated with the council sessions – Israel – while “Palestine” is invited to all of them.
Rather than discredit a body that calls itself a human rights authority but reeks of discrimination, and is tasked with promoting tolerance but provides a global platform for hate-mongering, Obama decided to give it American credibility and taxpayer dollars. His No. 1 excuse was the promise to reform it from the inside.
Here’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice on March 31, 2009, explaining the reason to join: “The Council… is scheduled to undergo a formal review of its structure and procedures in 2011, which will offer a significant opportunity for Council reform.”
US Ambassador to the Council Eileen Donahoe, in a September 13, 2010, New York Times editorial, called the review “a serious self-reflection exercise” and claimed that “if we do not sit at the table with others and do the work necessary to influence the process, US values and priorities will not be reflected in the outcome.”
Even as late as March 25 of this year, a poker-faced administration spokesperson said: “The United States… looks forward to working with UN member states as the HRC review process continues in New York. There is still room to… ensure greater scrutiny of the human rights records of candidates for election to this body.”
ON FRIDAY, those promises were shown to be utterly fraudulent. Every major recommendation that American negotiators made over a process spanning many months, including instituting membership criteria and changing the discriminatory anti-Israel agenda, was rejected. Only four states voted in the GA against the outcome of the non-reform reform: Israel, the United States, Canada and Palau.
Gloating over the total defeat of the Obama plan were Syria (speaking for the Arab group), Russia (speaking for a revealing “cross-regional group” comprising Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Syria, Venezuela, Vietnam and Yemen), Tajikistan (speaking for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)), Iran and Egypt. Syria called the president’s bluff this way: “Warmest thanks… Our efforts were crowned by arriving at the document before us today… The main objective of our work was… not reform because the Council was already a reform of the Commission.”
Islamic states have reason to be pleased. The council majority is held by a combination of two regional groups – African and Asian – and OIC members are the majority on both of these groups, thus giving them the balance of power.
The consequences of this political landscape were reinforced by Friday’s events at the council session in Geneva. The council wrapped up its latest session by adopting one more resolution on Israel – this time about the eight Turkish extremists killed a year ago trying to ram a legal blockade of terrorist-run Gaza. There was no resolution on Syria – further condemnation by the council was put off until next session, three months away. And nothing from the council on Yemen, on account of insufficient data. Of the eight votes in total held at this session, the US was on the losing side for six of them.
According to the Obama administration, however, the current US approach to the UN is supposedly good for Israel. In Brimmer’s words, the council has “improved as the result of direct US engagement. If we cede ground, if our engagement in the UN system is restricted – these bodies likely would be dominated by our adversaries. A scenario… not good for the United States and certainly not for Israel.”
The Obama line about knowing what is in Israel’s best interests is beginning to wear very thin. The council’s vote on the flotilla resolution was 36 for, eight abstentions and one against – the United States. US membership has made no difference to the outcomes on Israel. But it has given those outcomes a credibility that they don’t deserve.
After Friday’s GA vote, Obama diplomat John Sammis labeled the council’s “effectiveness and legitimacy” as “compromised,” called its agenda “unfair and unbalanced,” and said its membership policy “discredits, dishonors and diminishes” the body. Talk is cheap. The decent thing for the US to do after finally coming to such a conclusion would be to announce its departure or at least allow its term to expire next year.
But Obama has done nothing of the kind. Ensuring the American team had no bargaining power, the administration declared in March – three months before the end of negotiations and a whopping 18 months in advance of the next election – that the US would run for a second term.
Not coincidentally, on Friday the administration decided to circulate a list of the council’s accomplishments at the last session. In addition to itemizing mere statements from groups of countries on issues that the council itself refused to handle, they pointed to the Council decision to launch a new study of discrimination and violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.
For Obama, progress on other human rights issues takes priority over the unequal treatment of Israel and Jewish self-determination. It’s an old trick, playing groups off against one another. But at the end of the day there is no escaping the fact that in the name of human rights, the administration has trashed the fundamental norm of human rights protection – equality. And genuine human rights advocates ought to know only too well how exemption clauses on human dignity are bound to turn out.
These 150+ backward nations need desperately the light from Israel. Indeed it is very dark in the UN Human Rights Council.
The US a dim light only.
Aesop in one of him best known fables described a certain frog.
Apparently the one with the birth certificate internalized the concept and is still inflating. Regretfully many meandering former Jews felt attracted to the bloated item. In the interim Mr. Netanyahu visited Soetoro a couple of times. The last visit should have been of interest to the expanding frog. So far that does no appear to be the case. We all know the end of the fable…
Septembers happened before and will w/o a doubt continue to happen, regardless of what the islamics plot to do or what the abovementioned Aesop creature believe he is going to do as well.
Eretz Israel is in place for thousands of years and will remain so for many more.
I have my doubts about the frog though.
“But Obama has done nothing of the kind”:
because his world, and therefore the world, is supposed to turn
according to Before and After ‘Palestine’- if not this UN September,
another UN September.
Kudos to Yamit82 for the list of Obama’s “firsts”! Can we print it and make into a campaign ad to defeat him in 2012?
Even the worst aggregate of misfits attempting to do a good job could not “fail” as accurately as the one with the birth certificate at the WH and his “team” have “failed”. They failed simply because they mean to “fail”. Their intent is to destroy what is left of the USA and along those lines they also seek to harm Eretz Israel and us all.
As to the “un”. I would like to read the best available explanation w/o stupid cliches as to why any normal State would be part of that sewer.
Our country must, in a well planned fashion move out from there
Yamit, Barry Goldwater said it, you and I believe it, a majority of Americans believe it.
So tell me why the US, Israel, GB, France, Italy, Germany, India and the rest of the good nations are still playing in this cesspool?
TO HELL WITH THE UNITED NATIONS
Professor Paul Eidelberg
“The United Nations is the most pernicious, malevolent, and corrupt organizations on earth. Israel should quit this den of iniquity.”
“Praiseworthy is the man who walked not in the counsel of the wicked, and stood not in the path of the sinful, and sat not in the session of scorners” (Psalm 1:1.)
It is already dominated by our enemies. The only solution is to abolish the UN.
What has succeded?
President Barack Obama’s Complete List of Historic Firsts
• First President to Violate the War Powers Act
• First President to Orchestrate the Sale of Murder Weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels
• First President to be Held in Contempt of Court for Illegally Obstructing Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
• First President to Defy a Federal Judge’s Court Order to Cease Implementing the ‘Health Care Reform’ Law
• First President to Require All Americans to Purchase a Product From a Third Party
• First President to Spend a Trillion Dollars on ‘Shovel-Ready’ Jobs — and Later Admit There Was No Such Thing as Shovel-Ready Jobs
• First President to Abrogate Bankruptcy Law to Turn Over Control of Companies to His Union Supporters
• First President to Demand a Company Hand Over $20 Billion to One of His Political Appointees
• First President to Encourage Racial Discrimination and Intimidation at Polling Places
• First President to Arbitrarily Declare an Existing Law Unconstitutional and Refuse to Enforce It
• First President to Threaten Insurance Companies if they Publicly Speak out on the Reasons for their Rate Increases
• First President to Tell a Major Manufacturing Company In Which State They Are Allowed to Locate a Factory
• First President to Withdraw an Existing Coal Permit That Had Been Properly Issued Years Ago
• First President to Fire an Inspector General of Americorps for Catching One of His Friends in a Corruption Case
• First President to Propose an Executive Order Demanding Companies Disclose Their Political Contributions to Bid on Government Contracts
• First President to Golf 73 Separate Times in His First Two-and-a-Half Years in Office
But remember: he will not rest until all Americans have jobs, affordable homes, green-energy vehicles, and the environment is repaired, etc., etc., etc.
I can’t think of anything Obama has worked to accomplish, that has not fail miserably. What has succeded?
1. The economy? Unemployment has gone up under his term, and stayed there; the housing market is worse than in the Great Depression; the national debt has soared to historic levels and, because of interest payments the US Government has to give to the international bankers, we will never pay it off; OBAMA HAS RETAINED ALL THE BUSH PEOPLE, PUTTING THEM IN CHARGE: PAULSON & GEITHNER, BERNANKE and GOLDMAN SACHS; he nationalized Chrysler, then sold it to foreigners; there is no end to the collosal failures, attributable directly to Obama.
2. Job creation? Trillions of dollars have been pumped into the economy, and nearly every cent has gone to the international bankers; the “shovel ready” jobs he promised don’t exist, never had, and never will; and more and more college-educated Americans are either unemployed or doing menial labor.
3. International relations? Our old friends now all hate us, along with our old enemies.
4. Peace? Bush gave us Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has given us a greatly expanded Afghanistan, plus Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and who knows what next. He has repeatedly promised a Middle East Peace agreement; but instead, old agreements such as Oslo have completely collapsed, the Israeli-Egyptan treaty is on its way to oblivion and the whole region is in flames — largely due to American intervention.
5. The Environment? Obama could not stop the largest oil spill in history from happening in the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of citizens are still trying to rebuild their lives after it.
6. Energy Independence? We are more dependent than ever on foreign oil, despite the discovery of massive American reserves
7. Health care? The health care system remains in crisis for the needy; and those who could afford good health care under Bush are now losing it.
I can’t think of anything that Obama has actually DONE during his term of office, that has benefitted Americans, YET THERE IS A HIGH LIKELIHOOD THAT THEY WILL RE-ELECT HIM. An ancient writer once said,
“…the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
— 2 Tim 4:3-4”
That saying is true today: The evidence is clear and omnipresent; but people refuse to believe it; they voted for CHANGE, but only got more of the worst, at historic levels; and they are very likely to re-elect SAME-O SAME-O and dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole, thinking they are ascending the mountain. That’s because Obama scratches their itching ears; he tells them what they want to hear, and they can no longer hear the truth: It’s everywhere, right in front of them, but they can’t hear it.