It's Almost Supernatural

South Africa’s appalling behavior at the UN continues …

Over the years, I have devoted much ink to exposing South Africa’s pro totalitarian behavior at the UN. Although human rights have often been declared by the ANC to be a cornerstone of their foreign policy, their representatives hardly ever miss an opportunity to side with dictators and tyrants against the free world. Sadly last week’s preparatory meeting for the infamous UN Durban 2 review conference on racism was not an exception. This time it was the issue of gay rights.

UN Watch, the best source for information for all things related to the United Nations but in particular the Durban 2 preparatory proceedings, is reporting that discrimination based on sexual orientation has been removed from the upcoming conference daft declaration with the support of South Africa. The original proposal by Western states in the draft text (par. 69) was to condemn ‘all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on sexual orientation.’ Not so controversial, one would think, for a conference ostensibly about discrimination and intolerance, as UNWATCH puts it.

The Czech Republic on behalf of the E.U., with the support of New Zealand, the United States, Colombia, Chili on behalf of the South American states, the Netherlands, Argentina and a few others, took the floor in support. But they were in the minority. Realising this and seeking a compromise solution the United Kingdom proposed to water down the language as follows: “Recognizes that experiences of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance are aggravated and intersect with discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation and gender identity, and condemns all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on these grounds.”

The inclusion of the words “discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation” however still made the paragraph unadoptable and unacceptable for the majority of member states at the U.N. These included South Africa on behalf of the African Group, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Botswana, Iran, Algeria, and Syria.

The South African representative argued: ‘Sexual orientation and discrimination. . . goes beyond the framework of the (2001) Durban Declaration.’ According to our section 9(3) of our much praised constitution grounds for discrimination include ‘ race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth’. How can the South African government support an international process that would seek to limit the scope of our bill of rights? Not only is it a moral disgrace but it is extremely worrying development for our democracy. It calls into question the ANC’s continued commitment to our constitutional order.

That the South African government in the build up to Durban 2 has consistently broken its promise to the Jewish community and gone along with the singling out of Israel and only Israel as part of this global ‘anti-racism’ process does not surprise me. I have come to expect that from a government whose deputy foreign minister engages in classic anti-Jewish libels. But for South Africa one of the most liberal societies in the world on issues of gay rights to side with countries like Iran and Egypt is absurd. Civil society stood by the Jewish community when Fatima Hajaig made her anti-Semitic comments. I think we have an obligation to stand by the gay community in this situation. No matter what our personal positions we should rally with the rest of civil society to force the government to recommit to the values enshrined in our constitution and pull out of this Orwellian circus that is Durban 2.

On the Holocaust, free speech and singling out Israel, South Africa again in the authoritarian camp

Former head of the Official Opposition in South Africa, Tony Leon, has written a brilliant speech-cum-article warning that the South African government is on a collision course with the new Obama administration over the ANC’s increasingly illiberal foreign policy.

But those in positions of authority in the Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs have failed to take heed. Once again, South Africa has shown its pro totalitarian leanings at the United Nations: this time during the Durban II Drafting Committee Meeting. Not only did the South African representative seek to minimize the Jewish aspect of the Holocaust in the text to be presented at the Durban Racism Review Conference but also supported Israel being singled out for unique criticism and tried to help limit the ability of the press to report on the preparatory meeting.

The last United Nations Racism Conference held in Durban in 2001 was marred by an unprecedented outpouring of anti-Semitism. There has been growing concerns that the follow-up session (known as Durban 2) to be held in Geneva this year would be a repeat performance. Thus the South African Jewish Board of Deputies has sought, and it was thought achieved, a commitment by the South African government to do its part to stop the conference from being hijacked. Yet South Africa’s behavior at the preparatory meeting last week would seem to contradict this promise.

Human rights NGO UNWatch, an authority on all things relating to Durban 2, has just issued a report on the nefarious happenings at the latest preparatory meeting. They summarize the meeting as follows:

‘With countries commenting on each proposed article (of the Draft Outcome Document of the Durban Review Conference), the session was dominated by a vehemently anti-Western agenda, with Islamic and Third World countries equating counter-terrorism with racism, calling to restrict free speech in the name of Islamic sensitivities—the so-called “defamation of Islam”—and focusing on the practice of slavery in the West but barring mention of the slave trade in the Arab world and elsewhere. Worst of all, Iran and Syria used the forum to engage in Holocaust denial, while many countries demanded new provisions to condemn Israel as a racist and criminal state...’

South Africa sadly featured prominently. When discussing proposed Paragraph 29, which provides that the Holocaust must never be forgotten and mentions that it resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, South Africa, representing the entire African Group, asked that the paragraph be cut down to simply ‘Recalls that the Holocaust never be forgotten’, removing all Jewish references. This proposal was heartily supported by Holocaust denying Iran and Syria. The Syrian representative welcomed the removal by saying that ‘I don't think we should get into a kind of statistical debate. As far as I know that there is no agreement on the consensus on the percentage of those who perished in the Holocaust.’

South Africa too played an important role in ensuring that only Israel would be singled out for condemnation. When the European Union requested that the paragraph on Palestine be deleted, South Africa was one of the countries who objected. Our rationale was amazing. South Africa said that the Palestinian issue was an important issue of the 2001 Durban Racism Conference, and thus should be an important issue of the Review Conference. Following that same logic perhaps, seeing that anti-Semitic cartoons and the notoriously anti-Semitic book the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were handed out at the 2001 Conference, we must make sure the same happens at this year’s conference. Rather than restraining those forces in the non-democratic world who would like to divert attention from their own appalling human rights records but making the sole focus of Durban 2 Israel and Jews, the South African government seems to be cheering them on.

Interestingly, while South Africa was eager to have Israel singled out for criticism, it did not feel the same way about fellow African states. It together with Nigeria advocated the deletion of a paragraph that “deplores militias to oppress ethnic populations” out of concern that this might be seen as condemning some African countries. This same level of hypocrisy was applied to the slave trade. While our representatives sought the deletion of references to the trans-Saharan (Arab) slave-trade, at the same time they urged provisions relating to the trans-Atlantic (Western) slave trade and the need for reparations to be emphasized.

Finally in a shocking display of contempt for press freedom, South Africa together with Pakistan and Egypt, called for two journalists to be expelled from covering the proceeding out of fear they would engage in ‘selective interpretation’ of the discussions. This took place as the debate on defamation of religion was getting underway. In what can only be described as Orwellian, South Africa together with its totalitarian friends are trying to make the case that limiting the right of people to criticize religion, particularly Islam, is somehow not illiberal but actually a position for free speech. They argue that they are fighting against the abuse of free speech. With such a view is it any wonder they kicked the journalists out?

Tony Leon concludes his piece by asking ‘do we want to be remembered for the distance our policies have travelled from Nelson Mandela's 1994 promise that "human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs?" Or will we seize the moment to reconnect our own constitutional commitments to equality, human dignity and liberty - to our voice and votes in world forums.’

South Africa has once again made its position clear. We proudly stand not with equality, human dignity and liberty but instead always hand-in-hand with our totalitarian friends at the United Nations.

UN Human Rights Council: Sewer of scum and villainy

This week the democracy of tyranny that is the UN Human Rights Council set into motion the draft resolution that will soon become the20th condemnatory resolution against Israel in the past 2 years. Since the UN Human Rights Council was reformed 2 years ago, 24 condemnatory resolutions have been passed and an outrageous 20 of them have been directed against Israel.

The resolution was drafted during the agenda item dealing with Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. This is the only country specific item on the UN HRC agenda. Not a single other country specific agenda item exists. As Hillel Neuer of UN Watch so puts it:

“The states that say they oppose country specific items are the ones that sponsor this very item. Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN expressed disappointment at the council’s decision to single out one specific agenda item given the range and scope of regional items of allegations of human rights violations around the world.”

There is absolute and unanimous consensus that the singling out of only the black kids at school would be racist. So why then, is there no consensus that the singling out of only the Jewish kids constitutes anti-Semitism?

During the session, the various speakers once again raised the levels of incitement against Israel, like a filthy sewer spewing forth its scum and stench, speaker after speaker joined teh chorus of anti-Israel invective.

Despite the grim historical ties that former Palestinian leader Haj Amin Al-Husseini had with Adolf Hitler, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN once again compared the Israelis to Nazis.

“The Palestinian people, tormented by persecution and humiliation, mirror the past suffering of Jews in Europe... This occupation, which has transformed Gaza into a large concentration camp and the West Bank into isolated Ghettos, cannot be sustained.... Israel knows exactly the meaning of concentration camps and ghettos!"

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was in attendance, and didn’t utter a single word of dissent.

Click below to view a UN Watch recording of the session, along with Hillel Neuer’s forthright response.

The New and ‘Improved’ United Nations ‘Human Rights’ Council

This week the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a ‘reform’ package purportedly aimed at strengthening the organisation’s ability to combat human rights abuses around the world. The outcome however, was a return to the discriminatory practices of old. Israel’s actions have once again become a permanent item of the UNHRC’s annual agenda. At the same time they have removed Cuba and Belarus from the list of special mandates. It would seem that the more things are reformed at the United Nations the more they stay the same.

In other developments at the UNHRC this week, the council adopted 2 more resolutions condemning Israel raising its total condemnations of Israel to 11. Israel is the only country to be condemned by a UNHRC resolution. In response, highlighting the UNHRC’s sickening hypocrisy, UNWATCH Executive Director Hillel Neuer argued that

“After a week of slaughter by Palestinian gunmen that claimed some 100 lives—with Hamas and Fatah gunmen shooting hospital patients, throwing handcuffed men off of rooftops, and executing victims in mosques, universities and before their children’s eyes—and the firing of rockets into Israeli cities, it is all too typical of the Human Rights Council to slam Israel” (www.unwatch.org)

Deputy U.S. permanent representative at the United Nations, Alejandro Wolff, went even further accusing the council of "a pathological obsession with Israel".

South Africa is a major proponent of the UNHRC. South Africa has on numerous occasions argued that it should be strengthened at the expense of the ‘undemocratic’ Security Council. So adamant are our diplomats in this regard that they have even refused to condemn Burma’s human rights abuses at the Security Council, arguing that the issue belonged in the UNHRC. And yet South Africa voted for this latest ‘reform’ package.

This is shocking, but not surprising. South Africa’s voting record at the UNHRC has been even worse than its much criticised voting record in the Security Council. Human Rights Watchdog, UNWATCH, in their latest report ranked South Africa as having one of the most undemocratic voting records of any member of the council, including Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Cuba. This is a disgrace for a country that purports to champion of human rights.

Previously at IAS

• South Africa sets its UN voting record straight
• South Africa voting hall of shame continues
• South Africa backs UNSC move to condemn Israel
• South Africa supports one sided resolution condemning Israel after Gaza offensive
• UNSC convenes first session; Condemns Israel

UN Funds Palestinian Propaganda

United Nations Bankrolled Latest Anti-Israel Propaganda.

The United Nations bankrolled the production of thousands of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the slogan "Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem," which have been widely distributed to Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip, according to a U.N. official.

UN Human "Rights"

The UN continues to confuse morality with madness as they appoint the prime human rights abusers to oversee an action panel that will heavily influence the UN Human Rights Commission.

Yesterday it was reported that Zimbabwe, Cuba, and China will join this panel. Zimbabwe, Cuba, and China have persistently tried to increase their involvement in the UNHRC to stop any investigations into their own abuses. Placing diplomatic niceties above everything else, the UN sees nothing wrong with this.

Cuba has the largest amount of political prisoners per capita in the world. Reporters without Borders recently called Cuba the "biggest prison for journalists in the world."

The UN is steamrolling it's way towards complete irrelevancy.

I'm yet to find a link for this so you will have to take my word on it for now.

UPDATE

I'm good for my word: A reader (thanks Anti-UN) informs me that there is a link at LGF: Rights abuser Cuba put on action panel.

Abandon Ship

The UN was created after WW2 to protect the world from the "scourge of war" and to maintain "international peace and security".

Much of the ire I have with the UN is a consequence of their relationship with Israel. The UN has become a mechanism through which the Arab world has formally promoted their slander and abuse of Israel. Amidst the gallery of resolutions that have targeted Israel, I think this point best depicts just how undemocratic the UN really is.

The UN acts through a system on UN run bodies, each with a different set of objectives. Representation in several key UN bodies, like the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council, is based on groups of nations called regional groups. In order to sit on these committees, a member nation must belong to one of these groups. Yet the Asian group, in which Israel belongs geographically, is comprised mainly of Arab states that have blocked its entrance for over fifty years. For Israel to gain acceptance, the nations in the Asian group must agree unanimously, which will not happen in the foreseeable future because this requires the assent of nations like Syria and Iran. Because of Israel’s exclusion from the Asian group, Israel has been the only member nation not eligible to sit on bodies like the Security Council. In June 2000, Israel finally gained membership in another regional group, the Western European and Others Group (WEOG). While Israel’s WEOG membership significantly increases Israel’s rights within the UN, the membership lasts only four years and is limited to WEOG offices in New York. Israel is still unable to participate in discussions about a variety of issues including human rights and racism in every other UN office around the world. While Israel’s acceptance into WEOG is a step in the right direction, Israel is still the only nation not afforded the rights of every other member nation.

If the UN is serious about protecting us from "the scourge of war" then how can it be explained that of the only ten UN emeregency sessions ever convened in the UN, 6 have been focused on condemning Israel. Surely Rwanda, Yugoslavia, should have also then merited one of these special emergency sessions?

(cartoon from Cox & Forkum Editorial cartoons)

Kofi Annan's Uncertain Future

US Senator Norm Coleman says that Kofi Annan must go. I agree. The UN has become a massive and expensive hoax that shoud be disbanded. Seeing that the US provides 22% of the UN budget they should have some say in the dysfunctional body's leadership.

While many questions concerning Oil-for-Food remain unanswered, one conclusion has become abundantly clear: Kofi Annan should resign. The decision to call for his resignation does not come easily, but I have arrived at this conclusion because the most extensive fraud in the history of the U.N. occurred on his watch. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, as long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks and under-the-table payments that took place under the U.N.'s collective nose. Mr. Annan was at the helm of the U.N. for all but a few days of the Oil-for-Food program, and he must, therefore, be held accountable for the U.N.'s utter failure to detect or stop Saddam's abuses. The consequences of the U.N.'s ineptitude cannot be overstated: Saddam was empowered to withstand the sanctions regime, remain in power, and even rebuild his military. Needless to say, he made the Iraqi people suffer even more by importing substandard food and medicine under the Oil-for-Food program and pawning it off as first-rate humanitarian aid. Since it was never likely that the U.N. Security Council, some of whose permanent members were awash in Saddam's favors, would ever call for Saddam's removal, the U.S. and its coalition partners were forced to put troops in harm's way to oust him by force. Today, money swindled from Oil-for-Food may be funding the insurgency against coalition troops in Iraq and other terrorist activities against U.S. interests. Simply put, the troops would probably not have been placed in such danger if the U.N. had done its job in administering sanctions and Oil-for-Food.

Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

...it's the UN of course.

Thanks to a motion put forward by South Africa, the UN General Assembly voted to avoid any resolutions against Sudan and Zimbabwe, two of the worst violaters of human rights on this planet.

UN panel refuses to criticize Zimbabwe and Sudan

Developing nations, led by South Africa, successfully presented a "no action" motion that puts off the Zimbabwe and Sudan resolutions until next year. The European Union, Australia and the United States argued that cutting off debate prevented serious consideration of gross rights violations. On Zimbabwe, the European Union said the government of President Robert Mugabe intimidated human rights defenders, parliamentarians and opposition leaders. Dutch Ambassador Dirk Jan van den Berg, representing the EU, told the committee that "no country large or small can be regarded to be beyond consideration." But Pitso Montwedi, the South African Foreign Ministry's director of human rights, said the EU, which has imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe, had succeeded in "naming and shaming and poisoning" the committee. "The European Union purports that human rights are violated only in developing countries," he said, adding that the EU chose confrontation on issues that can be solved bilaterally. The draft resolution on Zimbabwe, sponsored by mainly developed nations, accused Harare of impeding free elections and torturing, arresting and executing its opponents. On Sudan, South Africa's Montwedi said there was "absolutely no need to burden this committee with a preemptive resolution." He said criticism would undermine the African Union's peace process and the U.N. Security Council's meeting in Nairobi last week, aimed at a peace pact between Khartoum and its southern opposition.

US ambassador John Danforth wasn't impressed.

U.S. Ambassador John Danforth, who transported all 15 Security Council ambassadors to Nairobi last week, castigated the assembly on Tuesday when it became clear the measure would be scuttled by a procedural vote. "One wonders about the utility of the General Assembly on days like this. One wonders if there can't be a clear and direct statement on matters of basic principle," he said. "Why have this building? What are we all about? This to me is a very bad situation," Danforth told reporters.

The U.N. Discovers the Cause of Anti-Semitism: Jews

(Link via LGF)

Anne Bayefsky points out the UN recommendations to curbing anti-Semitism - Jews should stop defending Israel, and they should stop being Zionists. They also pretend that anti-Semitism never existed in the Arab world before the creation of Israel:
Your Tax Dollars at Work 

Yesterday the House International Relations Committee revealed that money from the United Nations Oil for Food program, which was supposed to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, helped pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. This shouldn't come as a surprise. The U.N. has a problem with anti-Semitism: It doesn't know what it is. In order to figure it out, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Unesco invited a group of experts to Barcelona last week. Their mission: to provide the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diéne, with advice on anti-Semitism as well as "Christianophobia and Islamophobia." From whom did the U.N. get advice? There was Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland's Fribourg University, who was denied entry to the U.S. in August on the basis of a law concerning aliens who have used a "position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity" or are considered a "public safety risk or a national security threat." But apparently the U.N. thought it was worth listening to the views on racism of someone who said on Sept. 25, 2001, that "[Osama] Bin Laden is perhaps a useful straw man, like Saddam Hussein, whose diabolical representation perhaps serves other geo-strategic, economic or political designs." Then there was anti-Semitism expert Esther Benbassa from the Sorbonne. She wrote in September 2000, "Today, especially in the United States, Jewish philanthropy is exerted in the name of the perennization of the memory of the Shoah [Holocaust]. The money flows to create pulpits on anti-Semitism and the genocide, to finance museums, and research. As if nothing else were significant or had ever existed." In her written contribution to the meeting, she artfully refers to "merging the image of the extermination with the might of Israel against the Palestinians, the one image reducing the significance of the other, and the Jew as both victim and executioner." Maybe the U.N. tapped her for her expertise at encouraging anti-Semitism? Also in Barcelona were two Israelis who sit on the board of the same nongovernmental organization, the Alternative Information Center, a perennial U.N. favorite though it is on the fringes of Israeli society. The Center's co-chairman Michael Warshawski wrote in a 1996 newsletter: "Ethnic cleansing is a basic Zionist principle and policy." Fellow board member and Tel Aviv University professor Yossi Schwartz presented a paper at the center's workshop this past May "with the support of the Basque Government" entitled "Anti-Zionism Not Anti-Semitism." Calling for the elimination of the Jewish state is not new to Mr. Schwartz, who has written--after quoting from Trotsky's "epoch": "The solution of the working class to the national question in Israel/Palestine is not one or two or three capitalist states but a socialist federation of the Middle East." Some invited Jews canceled their participation in the Barcelona conference, though some did attend, including another Israeli. They were compelled to spend their time taking exception to contributions from experts such as "superimposing the Jewish symbol of the Magen David on the Nazi swastika is not anti-Semitism."