Casting the First Stone - full text

Casting the first stone
Both the United Nation's new Human Rights Council and its most vociferous critics are guilty of hypocrisy when it comes to Israel and human rights violations.

Ian Williams

April 4, 2007 9:30 PM | Printable version
It was a make-my-day event for UN Watch at the United Nations' human rights council in Geneva on March 23.

UN Watch is an organisation whose main purpose is to attack the United Nations in general, and its human rights council in particular, for alleged bias against Israel. Last week, the ill-advised president of the council, Mexican diplomat Luis Alfonso De Alba, who usually politely and formulaically thanks the "distinguished representatives" for their remarks, made a point of saying that he was not thanking the UN Watch representative, Hillel Neuer - although, to be fair, he did still call him "distinguished."

Ambassador De Alba also threatened that "any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records." De Alba's remarks stood out in the context of the somewhat rabid opinions frequently expressed by delegations in the council.

Neuer had made pointed, and indeed accurate, remarks about the council's shameful neglect of Tibet, Chechnya, and other regions, which he contrasted with its repeated special sessions on Israel. Neuer is quite right that most of the sundry tyrants around the Middle East care little about the Palestinians, as many of them demonstrate with their treatment of Palestinians in their own territory. He was also quite right to point out that the council has hedged and prevaricated on Darfur.

One cannot help but suspect that it was Neuer's strongly critical mention of the council's inaction towards China and Russia - subjects that even the US is not that desperately forward about - which tipped the Chair's gavel against him, although admittedly it could also have been Neuer's declaration that the council's "response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal. One might say, in Harry Truman's words, that this has become a do-nothing, good-for-nothing council," that most upset its president.

Whatever the reason, De Alba played right into his hands. The martyrdom of Hillel Neuer is now played up in all the usual suspect neocon places, from the Wall Street Journal's editorial page to the New York Sun and Canada's National Post. The video has been circulated widely, with a call for donations, and the usual cluckings about the UN.

UN Watch will not be getting a cheque from me. Not being thanked is not an attack on human rights. Being threatened with censorship in the future could be. But UN Watch refers to this speech as being censored. "Banned: the speech the UN refused to hear," shouts the email that UN Watch sent out. Which is odd, because the clip it is linking to on YouTube actually comes from a UNTV webcast, which it acknowledges when it invites people to download the Realplayer version.

Yet, sadly, the non-aligned majority in the new human rights council have lived down to the worst fears of human rights workers, and ensured that only Israeli repression of the Palestinians is condemned of all the horrendous human rights situations across the globe.

Don't get me wrong. Israel has been and is treating the Palestinians in a manner which Jimmy Carter was quite right to compare with apartheid. But to give a free pass to Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus, as the council has done recently, devalues the Palestinian case, and gives Israel and its friends a claim to discrimination.

Anyone carrying a hypocrisy detector through the UN would be distracted by its continuous beeping, as one would expect in places filled with politicians and diplomats. But passing UN Watch's office would set it beeping as well. If the organization could point to a single occasion when it had condemned manifest Israeli transgressions of the human rights of Palestinians, it would give itself a secure platform from which to criticize the human rights council. UN Watch rightly criticizes Sudan's refusal to let in a human rights council delegation into Darfur. But then how, with a straight face, can it avoid criticizing Israel for refusing to allow in rapporteurs from the same council?

Humanity, and the human rights council, should steer clear of obsessive Israel boosters just assiduously as it avoids those who obsessively attack Israel to protect other human rights offenders. Human Rights Watch or Amnesty will get any cheques I have to spare.