Avid Editor's Insights: A Report on the Canary

The State Department yesterday released a report on Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism that, in the words of the press release, not only ‘documents traditional forms of anti-Semitism . . . but also discusses new manifestations of anti-Semitism, including instances when criticism of Israel and Zionism crosses the line into anti-Semitism.’

An entire chapter is devoted to the United Nations. Both Anne Bayefsky and Claudia Rosett have periodically chronicled the incessant anti-Semitism of the UN, but it is still instructive to read it all summarized in one place, in the language of an official U.S. governmental publication. Here is an excerpt from the UN chapter:

[T]he UN General Assembly . . . has established [three] bureaucracies with the sole mandate of singling out Israel as a violator of the human rights of others: The Division for Palestinian Rights (established in 1981); the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (1975); and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories (1968). These bodies and their staffs receive funding from within the regular UN budget assessed against all Member States. No other Member State is singled out in this fashion.

Between 2001 and September 2006, UNGA’s plenary and main committees . . . together adopted over 120 human rights-related resolutions focused on Israel, with more anticipated by the end of the 2007-2008 UNGA. During that same period, only ten resolutions were adopted by these same bodies regarding the situations in North Korea, Burma, and Sudan.

In fall 2006, UNGA adopted two resolutions on the Palestinian people that solely blamed Israel for the then current conflict (with no mention of Hamas shelling Israeli civilians or Hamas and Hizballah having kidnapped Israeli soldiers). . . . Meanwhile, the dire situation in Sudan in which hundreds of thousands of civilians have been deliberately targeted did not merit a single focused resolution (although one resolution on assistance to refugees in Africa did pass).

The United Nations General Assembly has held a total of 10 Emergency Special Sessions since 1956. Six of these sessions have been about Israel. . . .

For many years before its abolition, the Commission on Human Rights had a separate agenda item focusing solely on alleged violations of Israel . . . . This allowed multiple resolutions against Israel, while no other country could have more than one resolution run against it each year. No other country beside Israel had an agenda item exclusively scrutinizing it. . . .

Several important countries, including established democracies, follow a policy of voting ‘on principle’ against all resolutions that criticize a specific country regardless of the merits — unless that country is Israel, in which case they consistently vote in favor of critical resolutions.

In 2006, the Commission on Human Rights, which had lost legitimacy due to the inclusion in its leadership and membership of Member States that are serious, serial human rights violators, was replaced with a new body, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). . . .

The new body has proven to be even more prone to protect serious violators of human rights and more prolific in its criticism of Israel than its predecessor. The UNHRC adopted 15 anti-Israel resolutions or decisions in its first 16 months . . .

The UNHRC has taken little significant action against other countries, including the world’s most notorious human rights violators, with the exceptions of Sudan (one resolution, one decision, and one special session resulting in one decision) and Burma (one special session resulting in one resolution). Instead, the Council decided to end the scrutiny of notorious violators of human rights such as Belarus and Cuba given by the predecessor Commission, while expanding its scrutiny of Israel. . . .

In 2006, in the wake of the conflict between Hizballah and Israel, polemical resolutions or statements critical of Israel were introduced in a number of UN forums . . . Each of these resolutions was one-sided (not even mentioning the other party involved in the conflict) and outside the mandate of the respective organization. . . .

Likewise, the UN’s lead agency responsible for the global promotion and protection of women’s rights, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), ended its 51st session on March 9, 2007 by criticizing only one state — Israel. . . . The same session of the CSW saw fit to pass no resolutions at all on the international problem of honor crimes, female genital mutilation, rape as a weapon of war, and other serious abuses against women.

At the September 2001 World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) held in Durban, South Africa under UN auspices, anti-Israel rhetoric was pervasive . . . . The only panel on the 4-day NGO forum program that dealt with anti-Semitism was disrupted by anti-Semites. Arab activists joined each subgroup of the drafting session arguing that the Holocaust be equated with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and that anti-Semitism be re-labeled as ‘anti-Arab sentiment’ since Arabs are Semites. . . . The conference culminated in the Durban Declaration in which Israel was the only country singled out for criticism.

In a report released in February 2007, John Dugard, the UN’s ‘Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,’ announced that ‘Israel’s policies resemble those of Apartheid.’ . . . . Dugard’s reports consistently and deliberately omitted any word about Palestinian terrorism or incitement that would provide an explanation for Israeli actions other than that of racial prejudice.

The anti-Semitism of the UN suffices to deprive the UN of any moral authority, but equally damning is what the above record shows the UN has done about the genocide in Sudan, the brutal governments in North Korea and Burma, the notorious human rights violations in Belarus and Cuba, the blatant war crimes of Hezbollah and Hamas, and the international problem of honor crimes, female genital mutilation, rape as a weapon of war, and other abuses of women by UN members: nothing.

The UN is unable even to adopt effective measures against a country openly planning another Holocaust.

It is a record that fully justifies Paul Johnson’s description of anti-Semitism as a massively self-destructive mental disease. It deprives people of the ability to make basic moral distinctions, or intelligently assess the world, or respond to anything other than their own debilitating prejudice. When an entire organization is infected with it, the organization is a danger to peace. It is a tragedy that the institution formed after World War II to prevent a reoccurrence of the conditions that led to that war has indisputably succumbed to two of those very conditions: anti-Semitism and the appeasement of anti-Semites.

‘

(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)