22-Mar-16: Speaking human rights truth to power at UNHRC

The Human Rights Council in Geneva
[Image Source: UN/Jean-Marc Ferré]

Kay Wilson had two minutes to speak to an assembly of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday (Monday). Here's the text, slightly modified from an article on the Israel National News website today, and a video below it.

I’m Kay Wilson, an Israeli Jewish tour guide and educator for StandWithUs. In December 2010, I was gagged, bound and held at knife-point for half an hour by two Palestinian terrorists, then butchered 13 times with a machete while watching my American Christian friend, Kristine Luken, hacked to death before my eyes because her executioners thought she was Jewish. The United Nations Human Rights Council immorally whitewashes terrorism as helplessness and frustration. As a survivor, I know that to be shackled in perpetual victimhood is not kind, helpful, moral or true. Personally, I’ve not also taken out my frustrations by holding Arabs hostage, tying them up and hacking them to death. Through the likes of their social media and educational institutions, the Palestinian Authority incites people to believe that Jews are unworthy of life. The incentive: American and European taxpayers’ money given to the Palestinian Authority, who rewards incarcerated murderers with monthly execution stipends.
Avoiding duty, and with pathological bias, you blame Israel, a Jewish democratic state of thriving coexistence, in which an Israeli Arab Muslim surgeon saved my life. Gagged with prejudice, bound with bigotry or held hostage by hate, and ineffective to do the goodness that will enhance people’s lives, may this council be set free, liberated to embrace both the integrity and impartiality needed to make our region a better place.

Here's the two minute video:

We have had reason to comment in the past on how Kay "passionately and articulately walks her audience through the before, the during and the after of being murdered - and surviving." See our post: "16-Jun-15: Kay Wilson's revenge". Also this: "30-Dec-13: Pretend walls, twisted messages: praising evil, condemning the innocents". 

The UNHCR defines its role as being

responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them [UNHCR website]

Around the globe might be an extravagant way of describing its actual focus. Since UNHCR's creation in 2006, it had managed to condemn one country, Israel, 62 times; that's more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined [source]. The council's monthly agenda includes one specific item - what it terms the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied territories” - every single month. That makes it the only region in the world getting that kind of attention. How well this safeguards "human rights around the globe" is a mystery.

Its membership is currently Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bolivia, Botswana, Burundi, China, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Maldives, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Namibia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Togo, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Venezuela, Viet Nam.

Ponder the list as you note that, in the UNHCR's own words, the members

are elected by the majority of members of the General Assembly of the United Nations through direct and secret ballot. The General Assembly takes into account the candidate States’ contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights, as well as their voluntary pledges and commitments in this regard.

Note also that Saudi Arabia, a chronic abuser of human rights, a place where 47 people were judicially beheaded in a single day some weeks ago, a seat-holder at the UNHCR because of a secret vote-fixing deal with the United Kingdom, and (absurdly) the elected head of UNHRC's Consultative Group, sees itself as the UNHCR's next president and no one within the organization seems to see that as a bitter joke.

And a reminder to all of us that the very most basic of human rights is the right to stay alive.

03-Mar-16: When the UN responds to terrorism, which victims does it entirely ignore?

Source: The UN website

Finally (we said to ourselves)! The United Nations makes a comprehensive listing of acts of terror covering these past four very difficult blood-drenched months. Under the title "UN response to acts of terrorism", it deals with dozens of cowardly, ideologically-driven deadly assaults and says what needs to be said.

In its cataloging of these acts of terrorism between November 2015 and February 2016, the UN civil service in Geneva along with the Secretary-General in New York City express concern, sympathy, condemnation, condolences. All that, plus demands that the thugs carrying out these abominable deeds along with those who sent them be brought to justice.

Bravo!

Then - following an alert issued in the March 3, 2016 Newsletter of Human Rights Voices [here] - we took a closer look, and that's when we realized the nature of this scandal. The UN's terrorism experts managed to identify acts of terror (sorted by us alphabetically) in

• Afghanistan
• Burkina Faso
• Cameroon
• Chad
• Egypt
• France
• Indonesia
• Iraq
• Lebanon
• Libya
• Mali
• Nigeria
• Pakistan
• Saudi Arabia
• Somalia
• Syria
• Tunisia
• Turkey

but they managed to find none - not a single one - in Israel. 

No Arab-on-Israeli attack from the last four months of non-stop violence managed to get across the UN's bizarre terrorism-detecting threshold. No hint of the tragic murders of such Israeli innocents as

• Reuven Aviram
• Alon Bakal
• Rabbi Aharon Banita-Bennet
• Ofer Ben-Ari
• Rabbi Reuven Biermacher
• Hadar Buchris
• Hadar Cohen
• Rabbi Ya’acov Don
• Eilav Gelman
• Alon Govberg
• Avraham Hasano
• Haim Haviv
• Eitam and Naama Henkin
• Genady Kaufman
• Shlomit Krigman
• Rabbi Yeshayahu Krishevsky
• Richard Lakin
• Rabbi Nehemia Lavi
• Alexander Levlovitz
• Omri Levy
• Netanel Litman
• Rabbi Yaakov Litman
• Dafna Meir
• Ziv Mizrahi
• Malachi Rosenfeld
• Shimon Ruimi
• Ezra Schwartz
• Yanai Weissman
• Benjamin Yakobovich
• Rabbi Aharon Yesiab

and other Israelis whose names and links we regret we were unable to pull together as we quickly prepared this post tonight.

That UN website features a link to another UN resource called "UNITED NATIONS ACTION TO COUNTER TERRORISM" which emphasizes the hypocrisy and double-talk exemplified by the UN statement. Here are the opening words of its home page:

All too often we are reminded that terrorism continues to inflict pain and suffering on people all over the world. Hardly a week goes by without an act of terrorism taking place somewhere in the world, indiscriminately affecting innocent people, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Countering this scourge is in the interest of all nations and the issue has been on the agenda of the United Nations for decades...

It's plainly true that the savagery of terrorism has always been about targeting "innocent people, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time". That's why we often try to remind people that no one is ever caught in the cross-fire when the terrorists do their barbarism. That's because those victims and their innocent lives are the entire goal, the whole target, the reason for the terror. Their suffering is what terror is all about.

How sad for all of us that the bureaucrats and the highly-paid management officials at the UN seem not to understand that the category "innocent people, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time" fully and accurately describes the victims of Arab-on-Israeli terror. If, in the eyes of the UN's experts, they are not victims of terror, is this because they were not innocent enough? Were in a place that was not wrong enough? Their loved ones were exempt from the pain and the suffering?

If their deaths by murder did not happen at the wrong time, is the UN's view that the Palestinian Arab stabbers, bombers, shooters and rammers killed them at the right time?

The struggle to defeat the terrorists is challenging enough without the world's most important union of countries applying politically-inspired cynical double-standards to the matter of who is a victim. Is anyone listening in Geneva or New York City?

UPDATE March 6, 2016: A friendly reader has just pointed us to the fact that the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California on December 2, 2015 (14 people killed, 22 seriously injured) is also absent from the UN's account. Disgraceful.

11-Sep-13: No need to speculate: Palestinian Arabs genuinely, overwhelmingly believe in barbarism as a strategy

Yasser Abed Rabo, co-author of 2003 peace
plan, with Israeli partner Yossi Beilin [Image Source]

A Pew Research Global Attitudes report issued today demonstrates statistically that

Overall support for violence in the name of Islam has declined among Muslim publics during the past decade... In many of the countries surveyed, clear majorities of Muslims oppose violence in the name of Islam. Indeed, about three-quarters or more in Pakistan (89%), Indonesia (81%), Nigeria (78%) and Tunisia (77%), say suicide bombings or other acts of violence that target civilians are never justified. 

But there is one demographic where a clear majority of respondents - 62% - told Pew's pollsters that "suicide bombing is often or sometimes justified". That demographic is Palestinian Arab Muslims.

Knowing the murderous intentions of the Palestinian Arab "street" concerning us ordinary Israelis (and keep in mind that Palestinian Arab terror is rarely directed at the Israeli military), it casts a deadly light on the current strategies of the Mahmoud Abbas regime's inner circle. 

A report published just yesterday by WAFA, the official mouthpiece of the PA, quotes Yasser Abed Rabbo summing up the 'peace' process currently underway. Abed Rabbo is said to be one of the authors of the 2003 Geneva Accord. 

“Israel is trying to benefit from the negotiations to pressure Europe to cancel the boycott (of settlement products),” he said on Voice of Palestine... The negotiations have not made any progress on the ground and that all Israel wants is that no one says anything about its settlements and other activities that violate the rights of the Palestinian people.
“There are no signs of progress... There is progress only in the settlements and in the violations, but not in the negotiations that can cause us to say that US efforts have achieved any real results on the ground or in the peace process..." [Abed Rabbo quoted yesterday by WAFA]

His voice is part of a choir. The Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes today on the Gatestone Institute website that -  

PLO, Fatah and Palestinian Authority officials have described the talks as "futile", "unproductive", "a waste of time" and "a cover for Israel to pursue its policy of creating new facts on the ground..." By sounding the alarm bell already, the Palestinians are hoping that when the talks fail they will be able to tell the world, "You see, we told you from the beginning that these Israelis do not want peace." But these statements and threats have also proven to be counter-productive. The more Palestinian officials and leaders talk about the "futility" and "ineffectiveness" of the peace talks, the bigger the opposition grows to the negotiations with Israel. [Khaled Abu Toameh on Gatestone Institute website, September 10, 2013]

Nearly two-thirds of the people ruled by the clique of which Abed Rabbo is a leading member are committed to the most extreme forms of lethal terrorist attacks on Israelis. In that light, do we need to speculate about the intended effect when PA insiders like him dismiss so comprehensively the current round of talks between their side and Israel?

8-May-13: "I am your partner. I am going to kill you now."

There's a sadly familiar feel to a story carried at the moment on the Times of Israel site. It concerns a man about whom we have written here numerous times, and here's how it is headed:

Top PA official: Israel ‘is our main enemy, resistance is still our agenda’ |  Arab states should put their money where their mouth is to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem, says Jibril Rajoub, a signatory to the Geneva Initiative who had pledged he was Israel’s peace ‘partner’

Jibril Rajoub, in his words, deeds, history and public profile, personally embodies much of what makes the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis so intractable.

Start with this. He is a perennial participant for the Palestinian Arab side in the negotiations for peace that have been part of the political landscape here for two decades. An ad campaign on behalf of the Geneva Initiative included him as one of its central media figures back in August 2010. Click below to view it - the Hebrew dialogue is translated via English subtitles:

Like the other high-profile Arabs who appeared in that very expensive media campaign, the words “I am your partner” are placed in his mouth and the mouths of other Arab personalities over and again. "There is a consensus in the Arab world", Rajoub recites, "to recognize the existence of Israel in return for an end to occupation”.

The purpose of the Geneva Initiative campaign - and keep this in mind as we take a closer look at this exceptionally unlovely individual - was expressed in the following terms by the campaign's spokesperson, Gadi Baltiansky:

The perception in the Israeli public is that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side... We all want peace, but don't believe there is anyone to talk to. We are trying to change this perception, to explain that there is a partner, and that the problem is actually with us. ["Shalom, this is Jibril" on Geneva Initiative website]

In reality, Rajoub rarely lets other people put words in his mouth. He actually appears much more comfortable spinning his own words and firing them off on cue, generally in the form of threats. Those threats have come with appreciable power accumulated via a series of publicly-funded roles he has filled over the years. He's a man with the rare ability to be in the right place at the right time in order to exercise serious power. 

Today Rajoub is one of twenty members of the Central Committee of Fatah, the highest decision-making organ of the Fatah political party, and the innermost circle of the Mahmoud Abbas clique. He stands at the head of both the Palestinian Football Federation and the Palestine Olympic Committee. 

But his past is much less sporty. He was the head of the Preventive Security Force until 2002, when Arafat appointed him national security advisor. As advisor, he knew where to place his loyalties: his tenure was marked by the use of force in harassing and quashing Arafat's political opponents by whatever it took, including resort to torture [Source: BBC]. When Hamas had to be taught lessons for being too religiously fundamentalist, Rajoub got the job of managing a crackdown and did it well enough [Wikipedia]. 

And before all of that, he was an ordinary terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison. Foreshadowing a process that has happened again and again, Israel released him and 1,150 other Arab prisoners in 1985 in order to win back the freedom of three Israeli hostages held one of the alphabet-soup factions of the Palestinian Arab terrorism industry. He was sent back to prison several more times for several more rounds of terrorism. He released exactly the same number of times, acquiring a smooth grasp of Hebrew and of Israeli culture along the way.

Now to Jibril Rajoub, 2013 edition. This prince of peace, this ambassador of the power of sport to build bridges across troubled waters, this recovered thug and reformed torturer, was interviewed on Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television channel on April 30, 2013:

Resistance to Israel remains on our agenda... I mean resistance in all of its forms. At this stage, we believe that popular resistance - with all that it entails - is effective and costly to the [Israeli] side..." [Al-Mayadeen]

The Arabic-to-English media watchdog, Palestinian Media Watch, which translated and published [here] the contents of the Lebanese TV program for the benefit of people who think Rajoub is (or ever was) a peace partner, provides some useful interpretation. In saying “resistance in all of its forms”, Rajoub simply means violence against Israel. Israel is “the main enemy” of Arabs and Muslims. So why negotiate? Because, said Rajoub, the Palestinians still lack military strength:

"We as yet don't have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we'd have used it this very morning."

Does this mean he has stopped being a partner for peace? No. Rajoub is a man of principle, one who says what needs to be said (depending of course on who is listening in). And one of the principles that has served him well throughout a successful career in public life is the expedient value of violence. And really, all he's doing is sticking to his guns.

But on the other hand, what are the salaried employees of the very well-funded Geneva Initiative (mostly by the governments of France, Belgium and Switzerland), those strategists who served up Rajoub as living proof that there actually is a partner for peace with beleagured Israel, saying now? Is "oops - sorry" even in their lexicon? Or is there a more subtle, peace-friendly way to interpret "If we had a nuke, we'd have used it this very morning"?