Once again, Israel displays its utter disregard for the United Nations which Tel Aviv believes is its enemy despite being the driving force behind the Jewish state’s birth. Members of the UN Human Rights Council recently voted by 36-to-1 with 10 abstentions in favour of forming an investigatory panel tasked with probing “the implications of the Israeli colonies on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Territories, including occupied East Jerusalem.”
The Council further requested Israel “not to obstruct the process of investigation and to cooperate fully with the mission.” During the same session, the Council criticised Israel for impeding Palestinian self-determination and the lack of human rights prevalent within the Occupied Territories. Given that just about every nation on the planet, including Israel’s closest ally, the US, believe ever-expanding Jewish colonisation is the prime obstacle to peace talks, the Human Rights Council’s response is long overdue. It should be mentioned that the US was predictably the only Council member to vote against all the decisions implicating Israel, behaving more like a mother hen defending her chicks than a superpower that never tires of lauding its own supposed moral values.
Israel’s reaction to the proposed investigation is as defensive and threatening as that of an alleged criminal with much to hide. Surely, if the Israeli government was convinced of the righteousness of its own colony policies, it would lay out the red carpet for representatives of respected international bodies. As you might have guessed, just the opposite is the case.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out, characterising the Human Rights Council a “hypocritical council with an automatic majority against Israel” adding that the body should be ashamed and “has nothing to do with human rights.” Other top Israeli officials and diplomats reading from the same ‘poor little victimised Israel’ script have been equally scathing. On Friday, Israel announced that not only it may choose not to cooperate with the proposed Council probe it is also considering cutting all ties with the body. Worse, the government is mulling how it can punish Palestinians for daring to submit their case via appropriate international legal channels.
Three Israeli ministers, including the hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, advocate the withholding of Palestinian tax revenues, a move Israel has previously taken to symbolise its displeasure regardless of the hardship such virtual theft causes those who rely upon the Palestinian National Authority. Lieberman has even accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of “diplomatic terrorism.”
That’s akin to suggesting that anyone who takes a powerful corporation to court or arbitration is guilty of “legal terrorism.” Moreover, if any side is perpetrating “diplomatic terrorism” it’s Israel and the US which rarely fails to wield its UN Security Council veto to stave off even the slightest condemnation of Israel. And, unlike the PNA, Israel has a massive propaganda machine as well as an overly-influential lobby in the US to ensure Congress remains in Israel’s pocket, or else.
Administrative detention
Palestinians are being terrorised diplomatically—and physically with frequent Israeli air strikes on Gaza resulting in the deaths of women and children. Israeli prisons are filled with youngsters who threw stones at armed soldiers wearing body armour as well as men and women who are being indefinitely incarcerated under so-called “administrative detention”; women like Hana Shalabi who’s been on a hunger strike since mid-February in protest against Israel’s breach of human rights law. Israel’s not so diplomatic emissaries also terrorise prominent international public figures into apologising for their forthright views, the latest in a long line being the EU’s chief diplomat Catherine Ashton. The European Jewish Parliament and the European Jewish Union are demanding Ashton’s apology or resignation over her comment on a gunman’s killing of seven in Toulouse. While speaking at a conference on Palestinian refugees, held in Brussels, she referred to the tragedy of “young people who have been killed in all sorts of terrible circumstances,” going on to mention the massacre of youngsters in Norway, the crackdown on civilians in Syria, the bus crash in Switzerland killing school kids—and “what is happening in Gaza and in different parts of the world.”
“What gets me especially incensed in the comparison between the targeted slaughter of children and the surgical, defensive activities of the IDF [Israeli Army] that are meant to hit terrorists who use children for human shields,” said Netanyahu. “Surgical, defensive activities,” what is he talking about? If those strikes are as surgical as he maintains then Israel clearly believes Palestinian babies are terrorists. Human shields indeed! Gaza is so overcrowded that almost every inch is populated with families.
I hope that Ashton doesn’t make a U-turn under Israeli pressure in the way Cherie Blair was forced to do in 2002 after suggesting Palestinian violence resulted from no hope. President Jimmy Carter felt obliged to give his heartfelt apologies to the Jewish community for negative statements about Israel in his book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. Even Judge Goldstone was somehow cornered into apologising for his own report on war crimes committed during Israel’s Gaza “Operation Cast Lead.”
Admittedly it takes guts to stand up to Israel, but unless bodies like the Human Rights Council and influential individuals refuse to be intimidated, Palestinians will have no non-violent avenues to pursue.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
Thank you for this much needed look at the zionist entity and its continuing efforts to quash any and all criticism of said entity.
When will America ever get a real Congress to stop all aid to that country until it finally allows the Palestinians the basic human rights that ALL human beings deserve? When will we, the American people, start electing people to Congress who will not bow down to the zionist entity?
It is way past time for America to cut off all aid to the zionist entity until that government finally treats ALL people in that region of the world as fellow human beings. It is also past time to get over the fairy tale of the “chosen people” garbage.
ENOUGH! Enough of ALL the damn fool, useless wars of choice.