The venomous animosity displayed by the UN towards Israel has been amply documented (if generally ignored). Now John Dugard, the UN human rights envoy for the Palestinian Territories, has vented a stream of this poison. BBC Online reports him saying that he will urge the world body to withdraw from the Quartet of Middle East mediators unless it addresses Palestinian human rights, since the US, EU, UN and Russia were failing to protect the Palestinians.
‘Every time I visit, the situation seems to have worsened,’ he said in a BBC interview. This time, I was very struck by the sense of hopelessness among the Palestinian people.’ Mr Dugard attributed this to ‘the crushing effect of human rights violations’, and in particular Israeli restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement.
Yes, the Palestinians’ situation has worsened. This is principally the result of two things. a) The regime of terror instituted by the Hamas administration for which the Palestinians so unwisely voted and which is progressively making their lives a misery; and b) the restrictions imposed by the Israelis to counter the rockets which the Palestinians are lobbing at Israeli towns from Gaza, and the human bomb attacks they are ceaselessly attempting to perpetrate against Israelis. Strangely, Dugard makes no mention of either.
He said that although Israel did have a threat to its security, ‘its response is very disproportionate’.
Let’s see now: checkpoints to stop its citizens from being murdered? Very disproportionate. Targeted assassinations, to kill terror godfathers while sparing innocent Palestinians as far as possible? Very disproportionate. Sitting on Israeli hands while rockets fired from Gaza slam into southern Israeli towns? Very disproportionate.
And what does Dugard have to say about Palestinians murdering other Palestinians? Last Saturday, Palestinian Authority forces shot dead two Palestinians, including a 5-year-old boy in Qalqilyah on the West Bank. Last month, masked gunmen attacked an 28 year-old Christian woman in Gaza city and looted a church.What does Dugard say about such crimes? Nothing. How very disproportionate.
He said the purpose of some of the checkpoints in the middle of the West Bank was to break it up ‘into a number of cantons and make the life of Palestinians as miserable as possible’.
The checkpoints are there for one reason only; to protect innocent Israelis from murderous Arab savagery. If there was no Arab violence, there would be no checkpoints.
The South African retired professor of international law said the response of the Quartet was weak because it was ‘heavily influenced’ by the US.
Ah; now would that be the same US whose Secretary of State is currently saying:
‘It’s time for the establishment of a Palestinian state’
and intends to force Israel to agree, even while the Arabs in this putative state are showing what they would use such a state for by continuing even now to attack Israel by bomb and rocket — thus rewarding annihilatory terror and throwing Israel to the wolves?
The Quartet failed to engage properly on human rights, he said, and was also failing to deal with the current rift between the rival Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas. The militant Islamist movement Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in June, ousting Fatah, which is led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr Dugard said the rift was threatening the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and that the UN ‘should be playing the role of the mediator’. ‘Instead the international community has given its support almost completely to one faction - to Fatah,’ he said. “That’s not the role the UN should take.’
Of course not. It should give its support equally to a group that stands not just for the destruction of Israel and the murder and ethnic cleansing of Jews but the Islamisation of the entire region and its subjugation to tyranny.
Mr Dugard said he saw a greater danger - that of the Palestinian Authority raising expectations too high in the Palestinian community. ‘If those expectations are not met, I fear there may be serious consequences,’ he added. The consequences include the possibility of a third ‘intifada, a large-scale, violent uprising against the Israelis, he said.
Mr Dugard said this should be no surprise.’ Inevitably in a military occupation, there are likely to be those engaged in resistance.’ These people may be labelled terrorists, Mr Dugard added, but history treats them differently. He cited the example of the French Resistance during World War II, and those in Namibia who fought occupation by South Africa. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘they are in government and treated as heroes.’
So there we have it: a UN adviser who is endorsing and justifying a further campaign of genocidal mass murder against Jews by totalitarian Islamists, which he equates with the French resistance against Fascism. And people wonder why the world is teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
December 7th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Settlement? Settlement? I haven’t seen Har Homa, but I’ve seen Ramat Eshkol and Givat Hamivtar, which, like Har Homa, are in parts of Yerushalayim that until June 1967 were under unlawful Jordanian occupation. (In fact, they are right next to Ammunition Hill, where the Jordanian troops stockpiled munitions during that war.) They don’t look much like settlements; in the U.S., we would call them “neighborhoods.”