60 years on, Israel-bashing diminishes message of UN human rights council

[Behind the Aegis]

Even the chairman of the session could not keep silent. The Nigerian Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva called on participants to treat each other respectfully. His request was a direct response to the speech by the Iranian ambassador who, as is the custom of his government, called Israel "the Zionist entity," and not by its official name. The chairman's words were also meant to protest the fiery, if expected, speeches of the envoys from the Arab and Muslim countries who attacked Israel one after the other. The most prominent was the Yemeni ambassador, who called Israel's actions against the Palestinians the greatest atrocities in human history. No less.

He had not heard about the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks, the Holocaust of the Jews, and the genocide in Rwanda, the horrors of the Balkan wars. He did not remember that 40 years ago, his own country had been attacked with chemical weapons by the Egyptian army.

The occasion, last Thursday, was a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council. The discussion was being held close to the date the world will mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Out of the declaration grew a number of bureaucratic bodies to deal with this important issue, among them the Human Rights Commission and the Human Rights Council, established at the beginning of 2006. One of its most important instruments is the Universal Periodic Review: an accounting by each UN member of the status of human rights in its country: the attitude to ethnic minorities, religions, women, the gay community, freedom of the press, etc. Other countries respond and make suggestions for improvement.

Some in Israel thought that the issue of the territories should not be part of the review, since the matter comes up so often in other UN bodies, and that the focus should be on Israel within the Green Line.

However, it was eventually decided that it would be improper not to mention the situation in the territories. Israel's representatives, headed by the ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aharon Leshno-Ya'ar, told the council that Israel was living with terror and therefore some human rights are not absolute. Israel's representatives also said that the separation wall had proven itself efficient in preventing suicide bombers.

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[amdezurik]

1. Israel has diminished itself

by it's own actions as well. the dishonest attempt to ignore that is all to common

[Behind the Aegis]

2. Doesn't diminish the fact the UN HRC is a joke.

The dishonest attempt to ignore that fact is all too common by certain types.