The person charged with promoting and policing global human rights has been actively abetting global jihad.
By RUTHIE BLUMUnited Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.(photo credit: REUTERS)
On Thursday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay accused Israel of “deliberate defiance” of its obligations under international law. Referring not only to the current operation in Gaza, but to past confrontations, Pillay said that Israel has repeatedly ignored calls to respect the laws of war.“The same pattern of attacks is occurring now on homes, schools, hospitals, UN premises,” she said, alluding to previous instances of what she considers to be Israeli aggression.As if that weren’t bad enough, Pillay added, “None of this appears to me to be accidental.” In other words, what the world’s human rights chief – and ostensible champion – was implying was that Israel has been targeting innocent civilians in Gaza, particularly the weak and infirm.This is but one of many times over the years that Pillay has ripped into the only democracy in the Middle East for crimes it did not commit, while siding with its enemies, whose human rights abuses are as well-documented as they are indigenous to their societies.Addressing the UN Human Rights Council in April, for example, she dusted off an old accusation lodged against Israel in 2005 by then UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Yakin Ertürk. According Ertürk, and subsequently Pillay – two reputed feminists – Israel is at fault for the fact that Palestinian men are abusive to women. This is due, you see, to the “occupation,” which robs Palestinians of their manhood. Feeling castrated by Israel, these poor emasculated males necessarily take out their frustration on their wives and daughters.Delusional? Yes, but no more so than Pillay’s criticism on Thursday of the United States.“They have not only provided the heavy weaponry which is now being used by Israel in Gaza,” she said. “But they’ve also provided almost $1 billion in providing the Iron Domes [sic] to protect the Israelis from rocket attacks; [yet] no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.”What she failed to mention was the reason for both the weaponry and the Iron Dome interception system, namely, the ongoing war against Israel by its terrorist neighbors who pose a threat to Western democracy and – dare one remind her? – human rights.Even worse was her going beyond asserting moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, to present the former as guilty of employing all means to keep its citizens safe from missile, mortar, rocket and drone attacks originating in Gaza.Nor did she bring up the matter of the massive tunnel infrastructure built by Hamas with billions in foreign aid, including from the US and Europe, whose entire purpose is to kidnap and kill Jews. That the money has been spent solely on death traps for innocent Israelis seems to have eluded her completely.Never mind that Hamas members who surrendered to Israeli troops told their interrogators that they had been planning to carry out a mega-attack on Israeli civilians during Rosh Hashana in September, or that IDF troops have found tunnels stocked with weapons, handcuffs, IDF uniforms and syringes containing anesthetics.The argument that she and the rest of the UN have been making is that the residents of Gaza are the true innocent civilians, being wantonly killed in Israeli air strikes. Though innocent civilians may be dying, it is Hamas that is responsible, not Israel.Not only does the Israel Air Force drop leaflets warning Gazans of imminent shelling in specific areas, but pilots who spot women and children in the vicinity of targets abort their missions. In addition, the only reason that civilian areas need to be bombed in the first place is that Hamas has strategically placed all of its weapons and explosives under homes, hospitals and mosques. Oh, and under UN schools, as well as embedded in the walls of UN hospitals.In the meantime, while Israel set up a field hospital at the Erez border crossing to treat wounded Gazans, Hamas not only fired mortar rounds at the clinic, but beat up anyone attempting to seek help there. So, too, did Hamas brutally prevent civilians from evacuating danger zones, in order to incur as many civilian casualties as possible.Yet not a word from Pillay about Hamas’ human-shield policy; not even a minor retraction of blame placed on Israel for damage caused to a Gaza power plant by Hamas rockets falling short of their mark.“It is completely unconscionable that the proportionality and precaution that international law requires is being ignored,” Pillay declared. “We cannot allow impunity. We cannot allow this lack of accountability to go on.”Indeed. Had she said the above about Hamas, she would have been doing her job. Instead, the person charged with promoting and policing global human rights has been actively abetting global jihad. George Orwell would not have been the least bit surprised.“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation,” he wrote in his prescient novel, 1984. “These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”The writer is the author of To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’
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