21st Condemnation Of Israel

UN Rights Council Readies 21st Condemnation Of Israel, Emboldens Hamas

Geneva, January 12, 2009 — UN Watch, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that monitors the world body's actions on human rights, criticized today's U.N. Human Rights Council resolution on the Hamas-Israel war, saying its failure to mention Hamas amounts to impunity for a terrorist organization that is responsible for the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians alike.

“Another one-sided resolution from the U.N. Human Rights Council grants further legitimacy, impunity and encouragement to Hamas’ deliberate attacks against civilians, promising only more violence and victims -- and still more of the same emergency sessions,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer.

“Today's lopsided text is a U.N. wink and nod to terror, and creates another obstacle to the better future that both sides so desperately need. Driven by the powerful Arab and Islamic voting blocs, and an automatic majority from countries like China, Russia and Cuba, the U.N. is once again sending Iran and its violent proxies all the wrong signals, setting back the cause of peace and stability, for people in the Middle East and around the world."

"It's telling when a session organized under the banner of human rights is led by the world's worst violators of human rights," said Neuer.

Sponsors of the session include Council members such as Angola, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Jordan, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Senegal.

The resolution is almost entirely critical of Israel. One sentence was amended, however, to also include a call to end "the launching of the crude rockets against Israeli civilians that resulted in the loss of 4 civilian lives and some injuries." Inclusion of a similar phrase in a January 2008 Council censure of Israel was cited at the time by Switzerland as justification for it being the sole European country to support the measure.

But according to Neuer, "under the pretense of balance, this language deliberately mocks the trauma, terror and suffering by Israelis targeted since 2001 in 10,000 rocket attacks. Its tongue-in-cheek downplaying and dismissal of Israeli suffering really has no parallel in the U.N. system, and certainly not in any text dealing with victims. It only underscores the pervasive double standard embodied by today's resolution."

ENDS

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