[noemon]

This past June, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley slammed the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for "singling out Israel" for criticism. This is not a new line: the "singling out Israel" accusation is a decades-old tactic that Israel's proponents use almost any time that Israel is challenged on its human rights record. The rise of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement calling for economic pressure on Israel for its human rights violations has only amplified the use of this evasive tactic.

At best, critics of Israeli government policies can expect to be accused of imposing an unfair standard on Israel; at worst they can face allegations of anti-Semitism for supposedly singling out the country for criticism. For example, during parliament's 2016 debate over a motion to condemn BDS, about a dozen Liberal and Conservative MPs toed this fictitious line when they declared, "Israel is singled out from the rest of the world." In addition, a few MPs actually suggested that BDS supporters are the new face of anti-Semitism because they "selectively condemn Israel."

But ironically, what the pro-Israel lobby has been arguing for decades about Israel being singled out is true — as Israel benefits from unparalleled favouritism. Israel has been given preferential treatment for years by Western governments, immune to criticism.

Consider how the world is preoccupied with North Korea's nuclear program, yet not a single Western government has ever criticized Israel for its nuclear weapons. Consider how the world responds when North Korea shoots a missile over Japan, yet ignored Israel's airstrikes on targets in Syria, or Lebanon, or Iraq. Rather than being berated for these destabilizing acts, Israel has been rewarded, as the number one recipient of U.S. aid since the end of World War II. In fact, since 1970, the half of the U.S. vetoes at the UN have been used to shield Israel from condemnation.

But why, Israel's proponents ask, is Israel being boycotted when other countries like Saudi Arabia are also committing human rights violations?

While it is true that other nations commit grave human rights abuses, the boycott of Israel is an explicit call to action launched by Palestinian civil society. It is justified using arguments of international law and has clearly stated objectives. Right or wrong, there is no similar campaign or set of objectives guiding any international boycott against Saudi Arabia. And just as the boycott movement against apartheid in South Africa was not designed to solve the problems in the rest of the world, BDS has objectives that are uniquely specific to Israel-Palestine.

To say that the UN is singling out Israel is like saying that the police are singling out a serial shoplifter after his 53rd arrest.
In a similar vein, Israel's allies suggest that Israel's critics overlook more urgent human rights crises. "Why isn't there a larger focus on Syria?" Israel's champions ask. "The situation there is so much worse." Indeed, the death toll and human rights violations in Syria this year supersede those in Israel-Palestine. Yet the conflict in Syria began in 2011, and will hopefully be resolved in the next few years, while Israel's occupation of Palestine is in its 50th year with no end in sight.

Conflicts around the world come and go, yet Israel's occupation remains, worsening with the bulldozing of every Palestinian home, and the construction of every illegal Israeli settlement unit.

Israel's champions also ask why the UN seems to pass such a disproportionate number of resolutions condemning the state. Yet, honestly, the international community has exercised a maddening degree of patience with Israel.

Despite a scathing 2004 decision from the International Court of Justice and decades of UN resolutions, Israel continues to commit human rights violations with impunity. In December 2016, after almost 50 years in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, UN Security Council resolution 2334 finally demanded that Israel cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), calling them a "flagrant violation" of international law. Nonetheless, as if to spite the Security Council, Israel made three separate settlement expansion announcements within weeks of the resolution, showing utter disregard for international law. To say that the UN is singling out Israel is like saying that the police are singling out a serial shoplifter after his 53rd arrest.

Canada too participates in this favouritism, shielding Israel from criticism. For example, in 2014, Canada boycotted a UN conference that called attention to Israel's illegal settlement activities.

More recently, a government decision allowed Israeli wine producers to sell inaccurately labelled wines produced illegally in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Making an unwarranted exception to Canada's own consumer protection laws, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ruled that it is acceptable to falsely label wines produced illegally in the OPT as "Products of Israel."

Israel can't have it both ways. If it's a liberal Western democracy as it claims, rather than smearing its critics, Israel should face up to its human rights failings. For whether it's Amnesty International or the UN Security Council, Israel's critics are only holding it to the standard it has set for itself.

[noir]

You're classic dhimmi.

[Ter]

Miranda Gallo is an Arab speaker and got a scholarship from State of Kuwait Scholarship in Islamic Studies.

She wrote other columns critical of Israel (see Huffpost and her LinkedIn profile)

Smells pretty biased to me.

[noemon]

Miranda's identity is irrelevant to her arguments and since there are no counter-arguments it logically follows that her arguments are correct.

[Ter]

Miranda's identity is irrelevant to her arguments and since there are no counter-arguments it logically follows that her arguments are correct.

All these people are on a mission, to persuade people about their views.
Of course I dispute the way she portrays her arguments.
She is basically saying that whatever else is happening in the world, Israel needs to be criticised more than anyone else. She mentions lightly that yes, the UNHRC is not ideal but blah blah. I am sure she likes it that Israel is on the agenda every single time the council meets, with blocks of Arab and Muslim countries blindly approving anti-Israel motions.

It is a useless Council, it made itself irrelevant with the obstinacy and blind hatred against Israel (and the US). So they can go on and play amongst themselves, and without American money.

Now the US needs to stop subsidising UNRWA.

(sorry for the double post)
my previous post has disappeared, I answered to Coliric
Colliric's post also disappeared

[noemon]

All these people are on a mission, to persuade people about their views.
Of course I dispute the way she portrays her arguments.
She is basically saying that whatever else is happening in the world, Israel needs to be criticised more than anyone else. She mentions lightly that yes, the UNHRC is not ideal but blah blah. I am sure she likes it that Israel is on the agenda every single time the council meets, with blocks of Arab and Muslim countries blindly approving anti-Israel motions.

It is a useless Council, it made itself irrelevant with the obstinacy and blind hatred against Israel (and the US). So they can go on and play amongst themselves, and without American money.

Now the US needs to stop subsidising UNRWA.

(sorry for the double post)
my previous post has disappeared, I answered to Coliric

Your off-topic posts have been moved to the Longest Thread Ever where you can carry on arguing about your personal and everyone else's bias in there.

Second that is not what she is saying. If you wish to respond to her arguments you should quote them and address them.

[skinster]

Debunking Israel's UN-bias claims
The UN's repeated buckling to US and Israeli pressure stands contrary to claims of an anti-Israel bias, analysts note.

Nikki Haley, the US envoy to the United Nations, made headlines in June when she denounced what she claimed was a pattern of "anti-Israel" behaviour at the UN.

"I have never taken kindly to bullies, and the UN has bullied Israel for a very long time," she said. "We are not going to let that happen any more. It is a new day for Israel in the United Nations."

While Haley's words were music to Israeli leaders' ears and echoed long-standing talking points of pro-Israel advocacy groups, analysts say there is little substance to her allegations that, in the words of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Israel has been "the UN's punching bag".

According to human rights lawyer Noura Erakat, the attention given to Israel/Palestine at the UN harkens back to a particular historical moment in the 1960s and 1970s, when "national liberation movements and newly decolonised countries used the UN as a site of protest" against "imperialistic" Western politics.

While issues concerning Namibia, South Africa, Cape Verde, Vietnam, Laos and others have in one way or another been resolved, Erakat told Al Jazeera, "the only one that hasn't is Palestine".

In 2016, the UN Security Council's activity focused on the likes of North Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Somalia and Libya. Sudan and South Sudan produced the most Security Council resolutions last year, with 11, while just one resolution dealt with Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. It was the first in almost eight years.

It is a different story, however, elsewhere within the UN, where Israel faces frequent condemnation for its actions through bodies such as the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

"Undoubtedly, the UNHRC and General Assembly do devote disproportionate attention to Israel/Palestine," South African international law professor John Dugard, the UN's former special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told Al Jazeera.

"But this must be viewed in the context of the UN political organs as a whole," Dugard added. "The Security Council and Quartet on the Middle East [UN, European Union, United States and Russia] are notoriously pro-Israel and refuse to pay adequate attention to Palestinian issues."

The UN's top official for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, an office that "represents the secretary-general and leads the UN system in all political and diplomatic efforts related to the peace process". The post comes under the authority of both the secretary-general, as well as the Department of Political Affairs (DPA), headed by US diplomat Jeffrey Feltman.

During his time as Special Rapporteur, Dugard told Al Jazeera that some senior officials in the DPA "made no attempt to conceal their pro-Israel feelings to me". He believes that more attention should be paid to the "bias" of the Security Council, Quartet and Secretariat.

In 2007, then-outgoing Special Coordinator Alvaro de Soto said in a leaked "End of Mission Report" that US and Israeli pressure was compromising the ability of the Quartet, and the UN, to act even-handedly in Middle East negotiations.

The current UN envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, is unlikely to make such complaints; he has made no secret of his admiration for Israel as a "strong democratic country", while as Bulgarian foreign minister in 2010, Mladenov visited the region and "made extremely friendly public comments about Israel at a time when such comments from foreign ministers around the world [were] anything but the norm", according to a report in The Jerusalem Post.

Recent months have seen an uptick in anti-UN hostility from Israeli officials. In March, UN official Rima Khalaf resigned from her post as executive secretary at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) after the secretary-general's office forced the withdrawal of an ESCWA-commissioned report on Israeli apartheid. A subsequent ESCWA report on the effect of the Israeli occupation was denounced by Israel's ambassador to the UN as a "blood libel".

In June, Israeli media reported that the foreign affairs ministry was demanding that the UN terminate the contract of senior humanitarian coordinator Robert Piper, under threat of revoking his visa. Piper was deemed to have overstepped by describing the 50-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "ugly". The same month, Netanyahu called for the dismantling of UNRWA, the UN refugee agency.

Such attacks have led some to question Haley's claims that Israel is a victim of bullying, rather than the bully. In 2015, Israeli officials reportedly threatened UN staff in a successful attempt to prevent the Israeli army from being listed as a serious violator of children's rights. Dugard's successors have also faced detention and denial of entry.

Noting how the US has protected Israel in the Security Council through its veto (or threat of veto), a Western diplomatic source told Al Jazeera that "over substantive reports or initiatives critical of Israel, the US and Israel always exert high-level political pressure and the office of the secretary-general usually buckles", leading "to a serious credibility gap for the UN".

When Haley, Netanyahu and others make the accusation that everyone is singling out Israel, Erakat said, "in fact, the exception is made in the reverse direction - Palestine is singled out from similar treatment to other colonies or other peoples living under foreign domination and subjugation. Palestine, like other sites of settler-colonialism, remains an exception to the world order."
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featu ... 49076.html

[Prue]

It's not Israel's policy towards Palestine that's the real issue - it's the incessant drumbeat of it by an organization which claims to give every nation a fair hearing.
Clearly, if you want to put the boot into someone else's face (read Russia and Ukraine/Baltics/Georgia/Chechnya, China and Sth China Seas/Tibet,
Saudi and Yemen etc etc etc) then it pays to be on this Human Rights Council - dominate it to control agendas and to provide diversions.
Neat trick. The UK might leave, and the topic is being discussed in Australia.

[colliric]

Your off-topic posts have been moved to the Longest Thread Ever where you can carry on arguing about your personal and everyone else's bias in there.

Second that is not what she is saying. If you wish to respond to her arguments you should quote them and address them.

Cool. I don't mind.

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201806 ... an-rights/

Not sure if anyone has posted this, but it's interesting. I agree the institution is useless and irrelevant.

[noir]

Not sure if anyone has posted this, but it's interesting. I agree the institution is useless and irrelevant.

You come to admit it, only after robust Nicky Haley decision making. For decades the Arab Islamic world use the Human Rights language to manipulate the gullible. The Apartheid accusation itself started years before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza.

[colliric]

You come to admit it, only after robust Nicky Haley decision making.

No I agree the UNHRC is useless, I said as such in am earlier post already. That does not mean I don't agree to some extent with the council that Zionism is a problem.

They are bashing one side and not the other. I believe there are human rights violations ON BOTH SIDES.

[Rancid]

Look at the bright side, at least we're not being hypocrites about human rights.

[noir]

This move should had be taken years ago, but the Arab Islamic world blackmailed the West with race card. White guilt is a tactic to advance their own racist cause.

[Zamuel]

This move should had be taken years ago, but the Arab Islamic world blackmailed the West with race card. White guilt is a tactic to advance their own racist cause.

Personally, I think it was more the OIL card than the race card.

Zam

[starman2003]

Consider how the world is obsessed with North Korea's nuclear program, yet not a single western government has ever criticized Israel for its nuclear weapons.

An even better example is Iran. Israel and its western toadies apply great pressure and threaten attack because of the single a-bomb Iran might build while Israel already has 100 plus!

[noir]

Personally, I think it was more the OIL card than the race card.

Zam

In the last two decades it's solely race card. Read the BDS thread and other spam threads. Listen for the arguments and the talking points the taqyyah agents use in their propaganda. Many use of "brown people", apartheid, racism etc. Nicky Haley is "brown" herself. As a Sikh Indian they can't blackmail her.

Believe it or not, but the use of racism was offered to them by Nazi propagandists.

[Zamuel]

In the last two decades it's solely race card.

I don't say there aren't voices raised against American actions. I say that most Americans could care less. "White Guilt" is not much of a factor ... What it costs to fill the tank -is- .

Zam

[noir]

The Western indifference to the Arab and Islamic human rights record is playing into their hand. The pressure on these fascist and racist states should go on

With the U.S. gone, it's up to UN Watch alone to call out the dictators.

Allotted only 90 seconds, Hillel Neuer asked:
"Why is...
Syria now Chair of UN Disarmament?
Iran on UN Women?
Saudi Arabia on 3 different women's rights bodies?
Turkey on the UN Committee on NGOs?
Qaddafi Prize founder Jean Ziegler on the UN Human Rights Council?"

#Video below. Transcript: https://www.unwatch.org/un-upholding-founding-mission/

[Zionist Nationalist]

Human rights is a bullshit concept and should be abolished altogether

[Rancid]

The US has always violated human rights, as every other nation has. That said, it's a noble pursuit, and nations should generally be shamed for violating human rights.