The "Arab Spring" Teaches Lessons about the Past

UPDATING 2-9&11&12&14&25-2012 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools.

Let's take the "Arab Spring" at face value. It is a struggle for freedom & democracy by peoples long oppressed by their own governments. Let's overlook the cultural pathologies that infect both Arab regimes/dictatorships and Arab peoples. Taking this supposed Arab version of the 1848 "Springtime of the Nations" at face value, we are left with the indisputable fact that Arab regimes have terribly oppressed their peoples. But this was a fact many years ago.

In 1982, Syria's Assad regime, then led by young Bashar's father, Hafiz, slaughtered thousands in the rebel-dominated city of Hama [Muslim Brotherhood rebels]. Estimates of those slaughtered range from 10,000 to 40,000. On June 27, 1980, about 800 political prisoners were released from the Syrian prison at the Palmyra oasis [Tadmor in Hebrew, Tadmur in Arabic]. They were released from the jail and were walking towards a place to catch buses. While walking on the road they were attacked by helicopter gunships and slaughtered, two years before Hama [see another version of the massacre here]. Even Tom Friedman, that notorious apologist for Arab cruelty and ruthlessness, used the Hama incident as a metaphor for all Middle Eastern cruelty and ruthlessness. He calls them: Hama Rules.

So the ruthless cruelty and barbarity, the murderousness of the Assad regime, were known --at least to those who wanted to know-- thirty years ago. The regime was quite capable of slaughtering fellow Arabs. Even the supposed cherished darlings of the Arabs, the Palestinian Arab refugees. Robert Hatem, a militiaman in Lebanon, wrote in a book that Syria was behind the Sabra-Shatila massacre of Palestinian Arabs in Beirut (1982) through the instrumentality of his own leader, Elie Hobeika, a Christian Phalangist militia leader secretly in the service of Hafiz Assad.

In the 1970s, Hafiz Assad had the Lebanese political leader Kamal Jumblatt --father of Walid Jumblatt-- assassinated. These assassinations were repeated in the year 2005 and since in Lebanon, starting with Rafiq Hariri, former Lebanese prime minister. Hariri's murder has been attributed to Hizbullah operatives by the International Tribunal for Lebanon. But the Lebanese know that Hizbullah operates in the service of Syria & Iran. The top terrorist of Hizbullah, `Imad Mughniyyah, lived outside Lebanon in Damascus under Assad regime protection [until his own assassination in February 2008].

Again, Assad regime murderousness has been no secret for 35 years or more. Yet Assad's Syria has been in good odor at the UN "human rights" commission and at its replacement, the "human rights" Council. Western "Leftists" and Western haters of Israel flocked to Damascus to pay homage to Assad Senior and Junior. George Galloway, the British hater of Israel and toady to Arab dictators, openly admired the Assad regime and sought its aid for an alleged "humanitarian" operation to "Free Gaza" and shame Israel in world public opinion through a "Gaza Freedom Flotilla." Likewise, the American Friends Service Committee, the social action arm of the Quaker Church [Society of Friends] and recipient of US Govt funds, was eager to carry out a "Free Gaza Flotilla" against Israel, denouncing Israel's partial blockade of Gaza which was and is ruled by Hamas, an Islamist, jihadist terrorist organization which happens to have its headquarters in --you guessed it-- Syria where the top Hamas leadership enjoyed Assad regime protection and sponsorship. In other words, Westerners who supposedly and avowedly wanted to liberate Arabs collaborated with the butchers of Arabs [and of Jews too, of course]. Michael Rubin points out the AFSC's hypocrisy here. Rubin asks: "Where's the Syria Flotilla?" We have not heard of Galloway or the AFSC or the Free Gaza gang or the "International Solidarity Movement" organizing a Free Syria Flotilla or doing anything to alleviate the suffering of Syrian Arabs, although every day lately brings reports of scores or even hundreds killed in Homs and elsewhere in Syria by those whom Galloway obsequiously called the defenders of Arab dignity.

Not only "human rights" fakers but diplomats and high ranking politicians in the West have been eager to win the favor of the Assads, Senior and Junior both. Several years ago, James Baker, a Bush-family hanger on, secretary of state for the first Prez Bush, got together with Lee Hamilton, a former US congressional representative and mentor to Prez Obama, drawing up a report that envisioned Israel surrendering the Golan Heights --which enjoyed a large Jewish population in Roman times and overlooks Israeli towns and the Sea of Galilee-- to Syria under Junior Assad. Israeli surrender of the Golan to Syria would supposedly do wonders for American interests in the Middle East, including stopping Syrian aid for terrorists attacking American troops in Iraq. In February 2008, Zbigniew Brzezinski, another Obama mentor and Prez Jimmy Carter's national insecurity advisor, went to Damascus to notify the Assad regime that Obama in the White House would mean a friend of theirs in power in Washington. Providentially, while Zbig was in Damascus, arch-terrorist mass murderer `Imad Mughniyyah was assassinated there.

Another Washington well-wisher of the Assads was Martin Indyk, ex-US ambassador to Israel, who tried to arrange a meeting in Damascus in 2009 for high-ranking Americans with Junior Assad and other regime personalities. One of those that Indyk wanted to bring to meet Assad was former US president, Bill Clinton, of "I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-woman fame." Fortunately, for whatever reason, the meeting did not come off.

To be sure, not all of the friends and would-be friends of the Assad regime or its allied Iranian regime are Americans or British, far from it. The Turkish intelligence chief obtained custody of Iranians fighting in Syria to suppress the uprising in behalf of the regime --and captured by rebels. He released them back to Iran after their capture in Syria. He was working in collaboration with the Turkish jihadist organization, IHH, tied to the present Turkish govt and sponsor of the "Free Gaza Flotilla" of 2010, and which in particular had sent the jihadist thugs on the Mavi Marmara --a ship under lease to it-- who attacked Israeli naval commandos who had boarded the ship to enforce the anti-Hamas blockade of Gaza. Michael Rubin commented: "The IHH may describe itself as a humanitarian organization, but in practice, its main goal is to provide aid and comfort to terrorists."

There is no "Free Syria Flotilla" by the usual "human rights" campaigners against Israel. There is no counterpart of the "Goldstone Commission" for Syria, no fact-finding mission to Syria sent by the UN "human rights" Council as was sent to Gaza.

Just in the past week, on February 5, while Syrian civilians were being slaughtered, bombarded with artillery shells in Homs, Human Rights Watch held a press conference in Jerusalem at the usual location for such events --the American Colony Hotel-- to denounce alleged Israeli abuses of Arab human rights. On that same day, this story was the top main item on the HRW homepage. But we see no comparable actions on the part of HRW in favor of Syrian Arab victims of their own government. [UPDATING: on 9 February this neglect of the story of civilians being slaughtered in Homs was finally corrected. On that day the story went up as the top item. However, the agony of Homs under bombardment had been going on for weeks. No urgency on HRW's part, of course]

We see that for decades, Western powers and other great powers, including Washington, were quite willing, indeed eager, to be friends with the Syrian Assad regime. All that time, wild, crude mendacious Judeophobia, implicitly genocidal, was emanating from Damascus against the Jews and Israel, including endorsement of the 1840 ritual murder libel in Damascus against the local Jewish community. This Judeophobia did not deter either the EU or USA from befriending the Assad regime. And some liars and some lunatics in the West believe that Israel controls Western policy.

Furthermore, we see that among those who worked against Israel in the name of humanitarianism and peace and human rights --as in the Gaza Flotilla/Mavi Marmara affair-- there was and still is a cynical disregard of humanitarianism and peace and human rights when Arabs oppress fellow Arabs, slaughter fellow Arabs, deny rights to fellow Arabs, and so on. So the real motive of the "peace," "human rights" and "humanitarian" assaults on Israel in the past was not as advertised. Can we exclude the possibility that humanitarian concern, and so forth, for Palestinian Arabs concealed and conceals rancorous Judeophobia and contempt for the rights and welfare of Arabs --as well as of Jews??

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UPDATING 2-9-2012
Lessons about past indictments and excoriations of Israel on moralistic grounds:
1- The Western press and electronic media have in the past minimized the severity and horror of Arab govt assaults on their own peoples. This can be applied to Iraq, Egypt, Sudan and of course Syria.
2- Western "human rights" and "peace" campaigners have neglected to a great extent Arab govt oppression and brutality against their own peoples. Western governments have done the same for decades, in step with their own "Leftist," "human rights" and "humanitarian" groups, or perhaps the moralistic "civil society" groups in Western lands were in step with their own governments.
3- Therefore, the Western moralizers, whether in govt or in civil society groups cared little for the human rights and welfare of Arabs if this could not be blamed on Israel. Therefore, the moralistic attacks on Israel were pretexts for Judeophobia.

Palmyra prison massacre of June 27, 1980. According to the French press that I read around that time, the prisoners were killed by helicopter gunships. Another version has troops entering the prison and killing the prisoners in their cells.
2-11-2012 Lee Smith uncovers the shameless toadying of Western elites, journalists, & academics to the Assads, father & son & their hangers-on [here]
2-12-2012 The late Franklin H Littell wrote back in 1990 [Jerusalem Post, 10-28] about Syrian slaughter of several hundred prisoners of war by the Syrian army. This was accomplished in October 1989 when the Syrian army --commanded by today's Assad regime-- was crushing [with US State Dept approval] the last remnants of Lebanese independence. The troops slaughtered were Lebanese army troops under General Aoun. These were Lebanese army troops, once again, and they had surrendered to the superior force and armaments of the Syrian invaders. Slaughtering them was clearly a violation of international law, but that did not matter to the "international community." Yet this "community," the UN, the Arab League, EU, the OIC, US, did not complain. International law, which is so often brought up when it seems that violations can be imputed to Israel, was largely disregarded worldwide when Syria clearly violated the international laws of war. The horror of the lack of international response or reprimand at that time is not lessened by the fact that Aoun has since switched sides since returning from France in 2005, apparently seeing no way for Lebanon to free itself from Syrian-Hizbullah domination and choosing joining the enemy as the safest course, that is, he likely saw allying with Syria and its Hizbullah catspaws as the safest course.

Fundamentally, Aoun was acquiescing to the pro-Syrian position throughout the years of the Great Powers, the UN, EU, etc. Franklin Littell points out the pro-Syrian policy of President Bush I which was not much different from that of Obama until embarassment over Assad regime brutality pushed Obama to demanding that Assad leave office several months after he had begun slaughtering his own civilian population. It took Obama and Hilary several months to realize --or to acknowledge-- what was going on. Until Assad's brutality in his own country was obvious to all, Obama and Hilary had always referred to him sympathetically [Assad was "a reformer"], as previous administrations had done for his father. Franklin Littell wrote in 1990 about Syrian completion of the takeover of Lebanon in October 1990:
"For an American, a most wretched aspect is the role the White House and State Department have played. They threw away a stable Lebanon, rescued from terrorist invaders [by Israel] when it was handed to them in 1982 [by Israel]. They apparently gave the signal to Assad that the US would not interfere. Assad [Senior], like Hitler in 1938 at the time of the Austrian Anschluss, had nothing to fear from the world." [Jerusalem Post, 28 October 1990]. Note that the American president at that time was not Obama but his supposed Republican antithesis, George Bush I.
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2-25-2012 Martin Sherman uses current events in Syria & Egypt to show the foolishness of Israeli leaders in the past.

Do the West & the Arabs Have the Right to Set Up a State to Be Called "palestine"?

The people of Israel, later called Jews, have lived in and been connected to the Land of Israel for about 3450 years since the going out from Egypt. From the time of Alexander of Macedon [died 323 CE] till Roman Emperor Hadrian, Greeks and Romans called the country Judea, that is, the Jewish land, the land of the Jews. The name is also spelled Judaea and IVDAEA in Latin. The name is confirmed in the Greek and Latin writings of that long period. It was not a land inhabited by Arabs, although there were some there and in the vicinity, no doubt. It was Hadrian who changed the country's name to Syria Palaestina [in 135 CE]. This was an act of hostility to the Jews who had rebelled against the Empire three times. Changing the name was meant as a punishment for the Jews and a way of obliterating the Jewish identity of their country. The Jews also suffered in that many were sold as slaves and otherwise driven off their lands, although Jews remained the predominant population in the country. Today, in a way not far different from Hadrian's, world empires use the name "palestine" in order to deny the Jews rights in their own homeland. The empires and much or most of the West, as well as the Arab and Muslim world, demand that Israel, the national state of the Jews, allow establishment of an Arab state to be called "palestine" in the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland. They follow in the footsteps of Emperor Hadrian.

Yet there never was a "palestinian people" in all history. Such a people is a modern invention of psychological/cognitive warfare, probably by British psywar experts. The notion that Israel was fighting not Arabs but a "palestinian people" came to world attention in 1964 with foundation of the Palestine Liberation Organization. At that time, the PLO declared to the king of Jordan, Hussein, that the land that they wanted for a state was NOT any land under his rule, not the "West Bank" of Jordan, but the part of the ancient Land of Israel under Jewish control, that is, the State of Israel within its 1949 armistice lines, since Israel had no land borders at that time. But if we examine this newly minted people, "the palestinians," we may ask how they differ in essential ways from the Arabs east of the Jordan? Or from the Arabs in Syria? Do they speak a different language? The PLO's declaration of a state of Palestine in November 1988 in Algiers expressed loyalty to the general Arab culture and cultural legacy. Indeed, the PLO has long been a member of the Arab League, another Arab state waiting to take power, as it were.

Today, now that Israel won in 1967 --in the face of Arab genocidal threats-- the lands of Judea-Samaria, formerly under Jordanian rule, and now that the PLO collaborates diplomatically with major world powers supposedly with the aim of setting up an Arab state in Judea-Samaria to be called "palestine," the Powers, the UN, the EU, and just about everybody overlook the basic refusal of the PLO/PA to make peace with Israel in any boundaries. Abu Mazen published an op ed [ghost written] in the NYTimes the other day in which he said that if the UN would recognize a PLO/PA state, the PLO/PA would use this status to prosecute Israel, to delegitimize Israel in world legal forums, such as the World Court at the Hague, the Int'l Criminal Court, the misnamed UN "Human Rights Council," etc. So no peace can come out of concessions made to the PLO/PA or out of negotiations with the PLO/PA. Actually, Abu Mazen has refused to negotiate with Israel for more than 2 1/2 years, since September 2008 when olmert was still prime minister. Further, the PLO/PA has made a pact with the Hamas for a joint govt of the territories already ceded by Israel to the racist, anti-Jewish PLO/PA. And the Hamas is brutally frank in its aim of genocide against the Jews. This aim appears in Article 7 of the Hamas charter. Obviously, Israel should not negotiate with a Nazi-like body such as Hamas. Hitler, to be sure, was never as frank in his genocidal purposes as the Hamas now is. But Obama may demand in today's speech that Israel negotiate with the Hamas Nazis nevertheless. He is part of the problem today.

Now let us return to the Jews' ties to the Land of Israel. Jews were a substantial part of Israel's population until the Crusader conquest. Between the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and 1112 or 1113, a dozen years later, the Crusaders massacred the bulk of the Jews in the country [according to historian Moshe Gil & others]. The Jews were ground down between two millstones, Islam and militant Christendom. Even after the Crusader massacres had subsided, the Jews were still a noticeable part of the population. After the Crusades, of course, the Jews returned to their pre-Crusades status of subjects of the Islamic state, dhimmis. And the Mamluk Empire, succeeding the Crusaders probably treated the worse Jews than they had been treated before, if that were possible. The flow of Jews to the Diaspora continued. Those who want to deny that Jews in the Dispersion were of Judaic descent, should bear in mind that the pagan Roman Empire had begun to forbid conversion of non-Jews to Judaism and this prohibition was made more severe under the subsequent Christianized empire. The prohibition served to preserve the original Jewish stock over the centuries. The genetic ties between Jews in the Diaspora from Minsk to Marrakesh and from Berlin to Baghdad have been confirmed by modern DNA studies, which even show a genetic affinity to some of the Arabs and other Mediterranean peoples, albeit there is not much affinity in cultural or moral terms between Jews and Arabs.

In recognition of --among other things-- the preservation of Jewish ethnicity since Roman times, the international community at the San Remo Conference [1920] and in the League of Nations [1922] recognized the Land of Israel --which they unfortunately called "palestine"-- as the Jewish National Home. Britain accepted the League's mandate to foster development of the National Home, including fostering "close settlement" of Jews on the land [Article 6 of the Mandate]. Needless to say, Britain betrayed its commitment to the Mandate, and in fact prevented Jews from finding refuge in the Jewish National Home when the Jews most needed a home, that is, during the Holocaust. Today, the National Home as a legal entity binding on the international community is largely forgotten, certainly at the UN, and by Britain in particular. This teaches us that Jews cannot trust Britain or the international community in general. Unfortunately, the United States is now following the anti-Jewish, anti-Israel path earlier trod by the United Kingdom. The Powers cannot be considered morally competent to judge Israel or to determine its future. The Jews cannot rely on the promises of the Powers.

Obama's speech can only be awaited with suspicion at best.

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Jackson Diehl explains why suspicion is justified [here]

The UN Descends Deeper into Barbarism -- Universal Human Rights Go in the Trash

UPDATING 12-12&19&21-2010; 1-28-2011 see at bottom

The UN. . . has now become a permanent locus of the denial of human rights.

L’Onu . . . ormai è diventata sede permanente di negazione dei diritti umani.
Fiamma Nirenstein, Il Giornale, 9 December 2010

The UN never ceases to amaze. When will decent people realize that the UN now works against all the lofty and noble purposes set forth in its charter? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights promulgated by the UN 62 years ago has long been a dead letter. Yet the stinking zombie corpse of the UN's human rights pretensions, the so-called UN "Human Rights Council", struts and preens in its lair in Geneva, undermining human rights in fact throughout the world. It is dominated by the OIC [organization of the Islamic conference] which in turn denies the very principle of human rights, and instead promotes the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam.

Long ago, Gaglione and Yeselson pointed out that the UN was a "dangerous place" [in their book of that name] where agitation and incitement for war were given free rein. They wrote that the UN had as much to do with peace as a battleship or an atomic bomb. Nothing has changed in the nearly 40 years since they published their book. Let us clearly assert and affirm that the UN and its dominant member states are enemies of peace. Since the "log-rolling" effect of even a large, determined minority in any assembly where votes are counted can be dominant, the UN General Assembly is an enemy of peace. Hence, judging by its opposition to its own stated goals and purposes, peace, human rights, and so on, the UN is not a legitimate body. Only those who are fond of its monumental Orwellian hypocrisy, its turning all its judgments inside out and upside down, could deny that assertion.

The latest UN offense, pointed out by Fiamma Nirenstein, is that the UN removed homosexuality from a list of personal traits for which member states should protect persons from extra-judicial, arbitrary and summary executions on a discriminatory basis. Such traits were ethnic, religious and linguistic belonging, homeless children, homosexuals, etc. The resolution called on member states to protect the right to life of all human beings by investigating these wrongful killings, especially those of the groups just mentioned. Now, a recent amendment to the relevant resolution removes homosexuals from the class of persons who should be protected from such killings by member states. Now since Islam mandates killing homosexuals by Islamic law, and such Muslim states as Saudi Arabia legally practice such executions, etc., this amendment comes as an encouragement for more murder. It is a kind of authorization.

I am aware of course that homosexuality is more prevalent in Islamic lands than in most other places. This is in part because of the degraded and segregated state of women in most Islamic lands. Moreover, some forms of homosexual activity are not recognized as such and are indeed practiced by powerful persons in society and govt. But a charge of homosexuality constitutes one of the weapons that repressive govts in those countries can use against their opposition, whether or not a person accused of homosexuality does in fact practice it.

More important is that the UN is now an enemy of humanity and should be recognized as such, as Fiamma Nirenstein does.
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UPDATING 12-12-2009 A Washington Post editorial of 1 April 2009 exposes the hypocrisy of Arab League demands that Israel be held accountable for alleged violations of international law. The Arab League session in Doha, Qatar, in March 2009 featured praise and defense of Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, already indicted by the ICC [international criminal court] for war crimes in Darfur, western Sudan. The UN connection is that UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon was present at the Arab League meeting, together with al-Bashir, and did not object to al-Bashir's presence or have anything to say by way of urging the Arab League to urge al-Bashir to turn himself over to the ICC [at least not in public as far as I know]. So it seems that the UN sec'y general shows public contempt for another international body purporting to represent international law. Ban seems to have indirectly referred to the Sudan situation, pleading that "Relief efforts should not become politicized," which was interpreted as a plea to al-Bashir to allow relief agencies to come back to Darfur. This is hardly the same as frankly demanding compliance with the ICC indictment. But no doubt that the Arab League let Ban know ahead of time that he must not support or even mention the ICC indictment, even by insinuation. By appearing at the League's meeting in such an abject manner, Ban lent support to the League's backing for al-Bashir's war crimes.
12-19-2010 Bat Yeor talks about the OIC which has a strong grip on the UN [ici in French]. She argues that Islam as a religion wants to impose Muslim law, shari`ah, worldwide and a universal caliphate, and that those are the goals of the OIC [in French OCI].
. . .l’islam vise à appliquer la sharîa et à établir le califat, la gouvernance islamique mondiale à la fois politique, religieuse et législative. Tel est le dessein de l’Organisation de la conférence islamique (OCI). . .
12-21-2010 Omar al-Bashir, wanted for war crimes by the ICC [international criminal court], is defended by the OIC, & by Arab League. Al-Bashir, "innocent" protege of the UN sec'y general Ban Ki-Moon, of the Arab League & the OIC, promises more shari`ah in Sudan if the South breaks away [here].
1-28-2011 How UNRWA collaborates with Hamas -- they staff UNRWA [here]

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Nails the UN "human rights council"

The "peace" intended by the Peace Process is Peace of Mind for Antisemites.

Jeffrey Goldberg shows how the UN "human rights council" gives hope and encouragement to bigots, friends of terorism and mass murder. He quotes what the Muslim Student Union at Univ of California at Irvine said in a flyer protesting the appearance there of Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren.

09 Feb 2010 04:38 pm

Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., tried to give a speech at UC Irvine but was shouted down by Muslim protesters, who apparently weren't equipped to argue with Oren, just drive him from the stage. All this is par for the course, but I did find this one bit of information amusing:

The Muslim Student Union said in its statement: "We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined."

To the Muslim Student Union, the fact that the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more than all the other countries of the world combined means that Israel is worse than all the other countries of the world combined. To more rational, less prejudiced people, this fact means that the UN Human Rights Council is not a serious organization, but one under the control of dictators and despots. [The Atlantic Monthly, Jeffrey Goldberg blog]

Goldberg's last sentence is fully confirmed by previous posts on Emet m'Tsiyon regarding the moral incompetence of the UN"hrc" and the initiation of the goldstone report by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which wields great influence over the UNhrc where much of the membership belongs to the OIC.

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Also see: here & here & here & [in Italian] qui.

The Muslim Militants of the Organization of the Islamic Conference Initiated the "Goldstone Report"

UPDATING links added 11-17 & 11-27-2009 & 4-2010&10-4-2010 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

The secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference boasts that his body started off the whole process of the Judeophobic Goldstone Report:

"Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Let me first start by completing the story of the history of the Goldstone report. What I would like to put on record is that the OIC was the initiator of this process." [see here]

On January 3, during the attacks on Gaza, we convened the executive committee of the OIC on a ministerial level. It was decided that the OIC group in Geneva should ask the Human Rights Council to convene and consider the possibility of sending a fact-finding mission to Gaza. [here]

The OIC was instrumental in getting through this resolution and thanks to the good offices of Ms Pilay, the UN high commissioner [for "human rights"], that she formed this fact-finding mission headed by Judge Goldstone.

In other words, it was not a body of disinterested humanitarians and zealots for peace and international law who initiated the Goldstone Report. It was a Muslim body, a very interested, party, a partisan body on the side of Muslim interests that initiated the whole process of the Goldstone Report. Note that the UN "Human Rights" Council works hand in glove with the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC] that basically supports the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights which aims to vitiate the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cairo Declaration has been analyzed by David Littman [here] and by Carlo Panella [in his book, Il "Complotto Ebraico", L'Antisemitismo Islamico da Maometto a Bin Laden (Torino: Lindau 2005)]

Let us quote from Article 1b of the Cairo Declaration in order to see how subtle and smooth these Islamists can be in affirming Muslim superiority and the Muslim right to supremacy.

All human beings are subject to God and the most beloved by Him are those who are most useful to the rest of His subjects, and no one has superiority over the others except on the basis of piety and good actions. [Article 1 b, Panella, p 247]

Now, just who are "the most beloved. . . who are most useful to the rest"? In any event, some are superior to others "on the basis of piety and good actions." Now, who are truly pious if not Muslims --and only Muslims-- in the view of the OIC? Whose actions are truly good and what are those "good actions"? Could establishing Islamic law, shari`ah, throughout the world and making Muslims superior to all others be a "good action"? Could fighting a jihad be a "good action" as Muslim law affirms?

So those who deny universal human rights and universal human equality guide the actions ["good actions"?] of the UN "human rights" council!

On the corruption of the UN human rights council's predecessor, the human rights commission, consider how Christian Rocca put it, in an article for Il Foglio April 27, 2005.

At the UN, the Torturers Watch over Human Rights

China, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have three things in common: they are ferocious dictatorships, they reject the concept of human rights, and they are enthusiastic members of the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2003, Libya even presided over its work... The regimes that torture and repress and keep their own subjects in chains are never missing from the Commission. Indeed, they are the ones that seek most tenaciously to get a seat at Geneva.... Even Kofi Annan's wise men have recognized that some countries go into the Commission "not to reinforce human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize other countries."

Note that Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Libya are all members of the OIC which endorses the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights, meant to vitiate the original 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We plan to post on torture in Libya in the case of the Bulgarian nurses falsely charged with injecting AIDS virus into Libyan children as scapegoats for Libyan medical failure. A Palestinian Arab doctor was also charged along with the Bulgarian nurses and he too was jailed for eight years.

The OIC also overlooks any Jewish heritage, any Jewish holy places in Jerusalem, essentially it disregards any Jewish history in Jerusalem. It recognizes only Arab rights and Muslim and Christian holy places which, of course, would not have had any meaning in Jerusalem were it not for the prior Jewish history and Jewish holy places there.

About two weeks ago at Unesco's general assembly in Paris, I [Ihsanoglu] called on the UN and Unesco to declare East Jerusalem, the historical city of Jerusalem, as a world historical site - untouchable. That way it would preserve the Muslim and Christian monuments.

We hope that the political will of the 57 member states of the OIC will be able to levy international pressure - through various channels - on Israel to stop threatening the al-Aqsa Mosque. [here]

Of course, no mention is made of the Temple Mount as a Jewish holy site which was the original direction of prayer of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Nor are Jewish rights on and to the Temple Mount recognized.

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Our previous post on the Moral Incompetence of the UNHRC [here]
La Dichiarazione del Cairo sui diritti umani nel Islam [qui]. Commenti da Carlo Panella [qui]
Moshe Sharon [Hebrew U prof] on Islam as a conquering, imperialist religion [see excerpts here]
Hugh Fitzgerald on UN corruption in general, and pro-Arab Judeophobic corruption in particular [here]
For a more comprehensive view of the UNHRC'S "fact-finding commission report," see the Understanding the Goldstone Report blog [here]
4-2010 Anne Bayefsky reports on OIC domination of the UNHRC and the dangerous, destructive futility of America's joining that corrupt body [here] plus the Obama administration's submission to OIC values and purposes.
10-4-2010 Bat Yeor on the OIC and its purposes [here]

Hamas Goes along with Corruption in Noah's Time and Now

Hamas goes along with corruption both in today's world and in the Biblical story of Noah and the Flood, read last sabbath in synagogues around the world. How so?

Hamas is a Hebrew word meaning brutality, thuggery, violence and the like. It appears in Genesis 6:11.
And the Earth became corrupt before God and the earth was full of hamas.

[ ותשחת הארץ לפני האלקים ותמלא הארץ חמס [בראשית ו, יא

Isn't that true today? The earth is corrupt and full of violence, thuggery, brutality. Who can deny it? And an Arab/Muslim terrorist organization, named Hamas, is a major perpetrator of brutality and thuggery against Jews and against its own people. Yet, major governments, Western govts, that pose as defenders of civilization, the United Kingdom & United States and others, not to mention the European Union, court the Hamas. Some want to bring it into "the political process" for the sake of making peace with Israel, supposedly. Yet Hamas's charter distinctly states the aim of destroying Israel, indeed, the charter expresses the aspiration to genocide of Jews. This is done by quoting a medieval Muslim hadith tradition in Article 7. To summarize: At Judgment Day the Muslims will kill Jews. The Jews will hide behind rocks and trees. The rocks and trees will address the Muslims, saying: A Jew is hiding behind me. Come kill him.

Those who cannot recognize that that is a call to genocide are corrupt. I don't say that they are stupid, for even a moron can understand what it means. Yet Tony Blair and his minion in British intelligence, the aptly named Alistair Crooke, have been dealing with Hamas for years, trying to bring them into the "political process" or "peace process." Condoleeza Rice, Prez Bush II's secretary of state, insisted that Hamas had to be allowed to take part in Palestinian Authority elections, for the sake of democracy. Other than the fact that Hamas is not truly democratic --unless democracy merely means majority rule, even if minority rights are not respected-- the Oslo Accords of 1993 banned any party from Palestinian Authority elections that did not accept the Accords and the so-called "peace process." Hamas does not accept those accords and openly declares the aim of destroying Israel and killing the Jews. Nevertheless, Ms Rice demanded Hamas participation in PA elections against the disagreement of both Israel and Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority. It was all for the sake of democracy. Ms Rice just loves democracy.

Humorists describe Hamas' commitment to democracy as: One man one vote one time. In other words, once they get in power, they will never give it up willingly.

The corruption in Washington is not limited to Rice. All sorts of think-tank half-wits, "policy wonks," are calling for contact with Hamas and its elder sister, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which is the main source of Hamas ideology. These calls for an opening to Hamas and the MB are made in the name of "peace" and "democracy." Well, maybe it is all a matter of definition. I have no doubt that James Jones, the US national insecurity advisor is licking his chops at the thought of the bloodthirsty Hamas being elevated higher than it already is. Here the corrupt in Western govts embrace the party of lies and brutality, the Hamas.

Another blatant case of corruption is the United Nations, which was founded as an instrument -- the naive believed-- of attaining world peace. Within the UN, perhaps the most corrupt body is the UN "human rights commission," now renamed "human rights council." The body remains corrupt and a corruptor of the UN's original high ideals in a very Orwellian manner. Christian Rocca put it this way, in an article for Il Foglio April 27, 2005.

At the UN, the Torturers Watch over Human Rights

China, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Libya have three things in common: they are ferocious dictatorships, they reject the concept of human rights, and they are enthusiastic members of the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2003, Libya even presided over its work... The regimes that torture and repress and keep their own subjects in chains are never missing from the Commission. Indeed, they are the ones that seek most tenaciously to get a seat at Geneva.... Even Kofi Annan's wise men have recognized that some countries go into the Commission "not to reinforce human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize other countries."

Here's Rocca's original:

Cina, Cuba, Sudan, Siria, Arabia Saudita e Libia hanno in comune tre cose: sono feroci dittature, rifiutano il concetto di diritti umani e sono stati membri entusiasti della commissione dell’Onu sui diritti umani. La Libia nel 2003 ha addirittura presieduto i lavori, mentre nel 2002, cioè subito dopo l’11/9, gli Stati Uniti sono stati esclusi dalla commissione per effetto della strana alleanza tra le dittature e quei paesi europei contrari alla politica di Bush. I regimi che torturano e reprimono e tengono in catene i propri sudditi non mancano mai dentro la commissione, anzi sono quelli che cercano più tenacemente di ottenere uno scranno a Ginevra. La metà di quei regimi che il rapporto annuale di Freedom House definisce “the worst of the worst”, “il peggio del peggio”, vuole entrare, ed entra, nella commissione. Il motivo è semplice: dall’interno è più facile evitare le critiche per non aver rispettato i diritti umani. Anche i saggi di Kofi Annan hanno riconosciuto che alcuni paesi entrano nella commissione “non per rafforzare i diritti umani, ma per proteggere se stessi contro le critiche oppure per criticare altri paesi”.

So "human rights" are used to promote political interests of states against other states and, no doubt, against their own peoples. Meanwhile, the UN "human rights council" with its Orwellian name is working to whitewash Hamas through the ill-begotten Goldstone Report. Corrupt?

Then we have the new JStreet gang in Washington that pretends to be pro-Israel and pro-"peace." Like Condi Rice, JStreet looks with favor on Hamas, viewing it as a needed part of the "peace process." By having James Jones, the Obama White House's national insecurity advisor, as the main speaker at its Washington conclave JStreet demonstrates once again that it was created with George Soros' money to support the State Department's long-standing anti-Israel policy. Various reports in the media indicate that JStreet sees encouraging State Dept and White House pressure on Israel to make concessions to Arab mass murderers as a main part of its mission.

The last case of corruption that we will now take up [but not necessarily the least] is the censorship by Yale University of a book published by the Yale Univ Press on the Muhammad Cartoons affair. A book about this affair ought to contain the cartoons too, so that readers know what is being talked about, right? Well, not at Yale or its Yale Univ Press. Martin Kramer suggests that Yale is trying to establish monetary relationships with Saudi Arabia and the oil rich Persian Gulf states. One potential Saudi contributor to Yale is Prince al-Waleed. We wouldn't want to insult our benefactors by publishing the cartoons that they didn't like, would we? So at Yale, academic standards go out the window, while money-grubbing comes in through the front door as Yale awaits its prince charming.

Of course, quite a few other American universities have already taken big bucks from rich Arabs to set up Muslim study centers and Islamic institutes and Middle Eastern studies centers and so forth, while allowing their Islamic benefactors/paymasters to set the terms for conduct and for research limits at these centers. The American university is already corrupt. Yale is not the first.
Nor the last.

And the Earth became corrupt and full of Hamas.

The Moral Incompetence of the UN, of its "human rights council," and of the UNHRC's Goldstone Commission

UPDATINGS 9-16 & 9-21-2009 & 10-21-2009 & 11-27-2009 links added at bottom

The Goldstone Commission report is now delivered. But vital issues concerning its background remain. Before having time to deal with analysis of the report, which is now going on, here are considerations about the moral competence of the UN itself in general, of the UN "human rights council" in particular, and of some members of the commission. This statement was prepared earlier and is still valid of course.

Can the world expect a reasonable, factual judgment about human rights violations during January’s Gaza War, “Cast Lead,” to emerge from the upcoming report of the Goldstone Commission? Indeed, we can expect the opposite.

First of all, we may say in general that the UN is a body made up of states, each of which has its own interests –which may in themselves be right or wrong, just or unjust. Yet, secondly, the Goldstone Commission was appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Council, one of the more disreputable, more Orwellian, of UN bodies.

Thirdly, the mandate that this “Human Rights Council” gave to Goldstone refers only to crimes supposedly committed by Israel, not to crimes committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians and its own people through the use of “human shields” explicitly forbidden by the international laws of war. This makes the Goldstone Commission rather obviously one-sided. The Commission did come to Israel to take testimony but would not go to Sderot to hear witnesses there. Yet Sderot had been a target of rockets shot from Gaza for eight years at the time of the war. Hence, Goldstone’s Commission could not see with their own eyes the results of Hamas rocket bombardments there nor learn from victims there of how they and their children had suffered from Hamas rockets.

Fourthly, a member of Goldstone’s Commission is one Christine Chinkin who has already very blatantly expressed her hostility to Israel.

How can a balanced, reasonable, factually based report come out of this background?

Now, we can elaborate on points made above. The UN is a collection of states, each taking part in UN debates, votes, and other activities with a view toward protecting or advancing its own interests, be they reasonable or unreasonable, just or unjust, or perhaps just in the view of that state’s government and/or its people. In this group of states, the 20-odd Arab League states have special power, since they tend to vote as a bloc on many issues, especially in regard to Israel. The Arabs are reinforced by more than thirty non-Arab Muslim states that sit with the Arabs in the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The OIC with its nearly sixty members is in an especially favorable position in the UN because of what Americans call “logrolling.” That is, in a voting assembly, a large bloc of votes or delegates can get its way without being a majority. That is because other delegates want the support of the bloc for their own interests. Hence, a state that is neither Arab nor Muslim will be tempted to support the Arab League or OIC position in UN voting in order to obtain support for its own positions, needs, interests, etc. One glimpse of the OIC’s character came at a meeting in Malaysia several years ago. This OIC conclave was the venue for an ugly, bigoted attack on Jews by Mahathir Muhammad, then prime minister of Malaysia. He charged that Jews controlled the world and its economy, although a half-dozen states belonging to the OIC, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, Qatar, Abu Dhabi are among the states with the highest per capita income in the world, exceeding many Western countries.

Now, Malaysia brings us to another problem of the UN “Human Rights” Council. The legislation in Malaysia makes almost half the population there suffer from inferior rights and unjust restrictions. I am not referring to the women, although their status is legally inferior. I am referring to the non-Muslims in Malaysia, most of them of Chinese and Indian descent. They are not Europeans. They suffer from the “Bhumiputra system.” This is a whole system of limited freedoms, inferior rights, and legal restrictions imposed on non-Muslims. It is a system inspired by traditional Muslim law. Yet the Malaysian denial of human rights on religious and ethnic grounds is not the subject of regular debate and condemnation at the UN “Human Rights” Council. Indeed, in 2006, Malaysia was selected for a three-year term as a member of the Council!! [see link: http://forum-asia.org/hrc/?p=180#more-180 ]

In the same vein, Libya, an oil rich Arab despotism, was elected to be chairman of the predecessor body of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Human Rights Commission, in January 2003. At that time, Libya was holding as prisoners five Bulgarian nurses working in Libya plus one Palestinian Arab physician on the spurious charges of deliberately infecting Libyan children with AIDS. The nurses were sentenced to death by firing squad [link: http://www.aegis.com/news/re/2004/RE040511.html ] Here we are not talking about a mere member of the HR Commission but about the chairman. In any case, the chief difference between the previous UN HR Commission and the present UN HR Council is the name council instead of commission. The UN Human Rights Commission was the UN body that organized the monstruous 2001 anti-Jewish hate fest in Durban where mobs full of hate for Jews roamed the grounds of the so-called "anti-racism" conference. Mary Robinson was the UN High Commissioner for "Human Rights" at that time. She prepared the Durban conference in cooperation with the regime of the bigoted ayatollahs in Teheran, Iran.

The Human Rights Council [formerly HR Commission] was and is Orwellian because it is a body made up –even led in Libya’s case— by states that regularly abuse human rights yet hide behind the motto, the cover of human rights. That is, a lofty principle hides a reality that violates the lofty principle. As far as many Muslim state members are concerned, they do not recognize or acknowledge human rights even in principle, since they adhere to traditional Muslim law, the Shari`ah, that grants rights solely to Muslims whereas non-Muslims are dependent on the whims of the Muslims. Moreover, the Muslim states affirmed their opposition to the principle of human rights, which must be universal by definition [that is, applied to all humans], by their support of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam [1990] that was meant as a rejection of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1948]. Having states that reject the very concept of human rights being dominant --or even only influential-- in a world council ostensibly devoted to human rights is one of the many Orwellian absurdities that mark the UN but are seldom noted by diplomats, politicians, and the communications media.

The mandate of Goldstone’s Commission is found here. On January 12, 2009, United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) adopted Resolution S-9/1. The Council:

14. Decides to dispatch an urgent, independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President of the Council, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission

Note that
1) Israel is called "the occupying power" in Gaza, although Israeli troops had not been stationed in Gaza since 2005; this is willful misinterpretation of "occupation."
2) the "Palestinian people" is a victim, not the people of Israel. This is a form of racism.
3) Israel's defensive war is stigmatized as "the current aggression."

This is the Goldstone Commission's mandate. It does not recognize the possibility that Hamas may have committed war crimes before and during the January war in Gaza.

Lastly, we have the bias of members of the Commission. Christine Chinkin, one member in good standing, has openly and blatantly expressed her hatred for Israel. She said in a public statement with others of her ilk:

"Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defence – it’s a war crime."

As the blogger Ami Isseroff has commented, "She has already decided the matter, it would seem that from her point of view there is no need to have any investigation. In a fair judicial procedure, a judge like Chinkin would have to recuse herself, but the nature of this "judicial procedure" should already be evident."

Goldstone himself, a former judge in South Africa who cooperated with apartheid [see letter of Louis Garb, Jerusalem Post, 3 September 2009], has been a board member of the dishonest and discredited “Human Rights Watch,” another body with an Orwellian character

We cannot expect any reasonable, fair, honest judgment to emerge from the forthcoming Goldstone Commission report.

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Goldstone has now --15 September 2009-- delivered his report to that paragon of righteousness, the UN. He and his commission performed as badly as expected.

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UPDATING 9-16-2009

Pres Shimon Peres on Goldstone report [here]

Lorenzo Cremonesi's report in Corriere della Sera about Hamas use of human shields during the Gaza war [in English here][in italiano qui], January 21, 2009.
Title in Italian:
"'Cosi i ragazzini di Hamas ci hanno utilizzato come bersagli' Abitanti di Gaza accusano i militanti islamici: 'Ci impedivano di lasciare le case e da li sparavano'"
"'Thus the Hamas boys used us as targets'. Inhabitants of Gaza accuse the Islamic militants: 'They prevented us from leaving the houses and shot from them.'"

Alan Dershowitz [here]

Ari Shavit in HaArets on double standard for killing civilians [here].

Israel's foreign minister on Goldstone report [here]

Augean Stables here & here.

Jackson Diehl of the WaPo: "As for the Goldstone report, the heat it briefly produced last week will quickly dissipate; the panel was discredited from the outset because of its appointment by the grotesquely politicized U.N. Human Rights Council." [see here]

10-21-2009 Claudia Rosett in Forbes [here]
See the all important website on the "Goldstone Report", Understanding the Goldstone Report [here]

Gregg Rickman on UN "Human Rights" Council [here; hat tip SPME]
Edwin Bennatan on goldstone, UNHRC, HRW, and related matters [here]
UPDATING 11-27-2009 Hugh Fitzgerald on UN corruption generally, & pro-Arab, Judeophobic corruption in particular [here]