31-Aug-18: Lessons learned from the world's moral-arbiter-in-chief

Prince Zeid in his official "exit" speech [Video grab from this source]

Owing to specific circumstances in our personal lives, we have a larger-than-usual sensitivity to the double-talk of self-important public officials.

Still, we try to stay polite, considerate and respectful. Sometimes we keep silent even when struggling with the overwhelming urge to speak a little bluntly and try to take those figures down a notch.

We're suspending the silence today to speak out about the man who has just ended a term as "the world's moral-arbiter-in-chief" (according to this US report at the time of his appointment) and one of the most powerful operators in the United Nations civil service.

Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein's previous roles have included being Jordan's ambassador to the UN for seven years, and then Jordan's ambassador to the US and Jordan's ambassador to Mexico. And by the way, he's a cousin of Jordan's present ruler, King Abdullah II.

(Parenthetically, it may surprise some to Jordanian Prince Zeid is also the next in line to the throne of Iraq which doesn't currently have a king and probably never will again. The Hashemite clan of which Zeid is a member was granted royal domain over what we know today as Syria, Jordan and Iraq by the British in the 1920's. It hasn't worked out all that well for them: the last ruling Hashemite king of Iraq, Faisal II, was executed there in 1958. A USAToday commentary pointed out "the prince's lifelong ties to the Jordanian regime headed by his cousin... Zeid has not commented on Jordan's abuses, and some have questioned his suitability for the human-rights post". Is all of this relevant? Well, yes - it might be. Judge for yourself.)

Looking back at his four-year term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Jordanian prince went on the record a few weeks ago saying he will give his UNHCR successor the same advice his own predecessor, Navi Pillay, gave him: “Be fair and don’t discriminate against any country”. And “just come out swinging”.

Here's the encounter we had with him. We're not sure he's quite the swinger he thinks he is.

But first a word about us.

We are the parents of Malki, a child murdered at 15 in an especially savage Hamas terror attack on a pizzeria filled with children. For close to seven years and counting, we have been campaigning to have the mastermind of the massacre arrested where she now lives as a free citizen - in Jordan - and extradited to the United States. Why the US? Because our daughter held American citizenship. And under American law (18 USC Sec. 2332(b)), the perpetrator of an act of terror in which a US citizen is killed can be brought to justice in a US federal court.

The mastermind's name is Ahlam Tamimi. She has been on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list since March 2017.

Jordan, whose citizenship Tamimi (a close blood relative in multiple ways to the current Palestinian Arab "icon" Ahed Tamimi) holds, though she calls herself a Palestinian, refuses to extradite her even though it signed an extradition agreement with the US in 1995.

The US says the treaty is in full force and effect and there's no real doubt that's true.

On April 4, 2017, we emailed a personal letter to Mr Zeid in New York via three senior staffers each of whom who acts as his spokesperson and each of whom was separately addressed.

Re: Extraditing Ahlam Tamimi 

We were pleased to see the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, speak forthrightly [link] four days ago about how states must (a) honor their treaty obligations, (b) act on legitimate arrest warrants and (c) respect the great importance of the global struggle for justice and against impunity.  

Prince Zeid was addressing the failure of his own homeland, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in relation to a notorious fugitive from justice, the president of Sudan, who ought to have been arrested when he came to Jordan. 

We are the parents of Malki Roth who was murdered in 2001 in the horrific Hamas attack on women and children in a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem. Malki was 15. Fourteen other people were killed and 130 terribly injured. 

The mastermind of the attack is a Jordanian woman. She was eventually arrested and confessed to all the charges. She was convicted on 15 counts of murder and was sentenced to multiple life terms. Her sentence was drastically commuted eight years later in the 2011 deal Israel made with the Hamas terrorist organization to secure the release of an Israeli captive. She has lived free in Jordan since then, proudly taking "credit" for the murders and basking in the status of celebrity. 

Our daughter was a US citizen. Under US law relating to acts of terror, her killer must face justice in the US. The US formally requested some time ago that she be extradited by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. But Jordan has refused. The woman, Ahlam Tamimi, is subject to a US arrest warrant and appears on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. 

We are respectfully asking that the High Commissioner speak as clearly and forcefully to the King and government of his homeland, Jordan, about Tamimi as he did four days ago in that other matter. We ask him to tell Jordan that, in relation to Tamimi, it must (a) honor its treaty obligations, (b) act on legitimate arrest warrants and (c) respect the great importance of the global struggle for justice and against impunity.  

We appreciate you conveying this to the High Commissioner.  

Sincerely
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel

We expected the silent treatment from the spokespersons (yes, the irony of their job-titles versus their actual performance is not lost on us). And that's what we got. Instead an OHCHR staffer responded to one of our follow-up notes with these kind sentiments:

Thank you for your message and sorry for the delay in acknowledgement - I can assure you that all messages received by this office are taken seriously, with only one problem being that there are too many of them from across the world, with many serious crisis and violations still ongoing, and too few people and resources to handle all of them. Your message is of course well received, including by the Executive Office of the High Commissioner (where I belong) and the MENA section of the Office. It will be given proper attention - I can assure in this - and you will receive a response upon due consideration. With full understanding and sincere sympathy for your loss. 

We wrote again briefly, several more times with little to show for it. When our wait had stretched to three months, we sent this:

UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

July 17, 2017

Sir,

The chain of correspondence below, initiated by my wife and me on April 4, 2017 and addressed to your office ended in silence.

Not silence from us, since we are vociferous in attempting to fight the apathy of international bodies who by their passivity and passive resistance contribute to injustice.

Silence from your High Commission.

Today being International Criminal Justice Day and having just read some lofty and inspiring words [here] issued on the occasion by your office, I am making this additional attempt at trying to penetrate the barrier.

I am not optimistic that this time, more than three months after our first letter, you will respond. But I feel the need to try once again. As the parents of a child murdered by a Jordanian woman who is, and is treated as, a national Jordanian hero and given safe harbor by the Jordanian government despite its valid 1995 extradition treaty with the United States, we are outraged by the injustice and even more by the silence of those who ought to be speaking out and joining with us.

Sincerely,
Arnold Roth
Jerusalem

cc Joaquín Alexander Maza Martelli
President, United Nations Human Rights Council
InfoDesk@ohchr.org

Eventually, on August 30, 2017, we got this response to our request for a small dose of human rights and justice from the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights. It came from Prince Zeid's Chief of Office - Executive Direction and Management, in Geneva.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Roth,

I wish to acknowledge receipt of your various communications below to the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Most of all we wish to express our most sincere condolences on the death of your beloved daughter Malki Roth in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem in 2001.

Please accept our apologies for the time it has taken to respond to your request that the High Commissioner take action regarding extraditing Ahlam Tamimi to the United States. The Office’s legal department has reviewed this matter in detail. While we understand and appreciate your request for assistance, please be advised that the United Nations High Commissioner’s Office nor the High Commissioner himself do not have the mandate or jurisdiction to address the complex legal issues involving extradition between States and the extra-territorial application of US criminal statutes involved in your request. As such, the Office is most regrettably not in a position to intervene in the matter as requested.

It is our sincere hope that your persistent advocacy and commitment to the cause of justice, accountability and human rights will lead to a successful fight against impunity globally, and specifically in memory of your beloved daughter.

But we hadn't asked him to intervene.

What we did request was that he "speak as clearly and forcefully to the King and government of his homeland, Jordan, about Tamimi" as he had done just a few days before our first letter. Of course we understood we were flogging a dead horse.

We then had time to reflect.

How, we asked ourselves, does a seasoned diplomat who declines to get involved in international treaty matters that happen to put his own cousin in an unpleasant light use his exalted platform? What kind of apparently non-complex legal issues is he ready to address?

Well, how about these human rights issues for instance? Each of them is a case from the past few weeks and months where Prince Zeid did find it possible to speak out:

• Reminding "all states" to "abide by their treaty obligations" or else face "weakening the global struggle against impunity, and for justice" [source] - almost exactly what he refused to do for  our cause.
• Warning Israel not to use "excessive force, following the many deaths and injuries sustained by Palestinians, including children, in Gaza";  over the past month. For the record, the prince and his office have consistently ignored the central and critical role of Hamas in whipping up the rioters and their violence, physically bringing them to the Israeli border, encouraging women, children and infants to serve as human shields, using live weapons including incendiary devices and guns and bombs. 
• Sharing his deep concern over proposed Israeli legislation that would "violate international law" and "have far-reaching consequences" that would "seriously damage the reputation of Israel around the world” [source]. Nothing too complex there, right?
• Calling [here] for an "independent investigation" into the death, allegedly at the hands of Israeli forces of a Gazan Islamist amputee, Ibrahim Abu Thuraya. On any fair-minded view, the role of the terrorists in Thuraya's demise - as outlined in this CAMERA report - raises questions that ought to have been reflected in the UN official's efforts to seek justice but were not.
• Sending out a warning letter on his office's letterhead advising some 130 global and 60 Israels companies that they are "in breach of international law" because of their activities in Israel and liable to be added to a blacklist. The companies include Caterpillar, TripAdvisor, Priceline, Airbnb, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Israel Aircraft Industries and Ahava among many others. It's been called "the latest incarnation of the decades-long Arab boycott and yet another singling out of Israel by the UN... The intent and impact is anti-Semitic,” according to an expert in UN matters and legal advisor for NGO Monitor [here].

This depressing logo decorated the rejection letter
we received months after we made our request

Israel, as others have noted, takes a prominent role in his organization's activities. And not in a good way.

We noticed that the OHCHR letter to us must have been sent in the midst of one of its many self-promotion campaigns; a cheerful-looking logo (on the right) adorned the page.

Seeing it there reinforced the painful reality that, for the global human rights industry, many human rights are clearly worth standing up for. But the human rights of a beautiful Jerusalem girl of 15 to be alive, to live free of the crushing assault of Islamist terrorists like Tamimi and the vicious, nail-enhanced bombs that serve as their sound track, are not among them.

Getting ignored or being fed insulting, offensive and nonsensical responses by public officials is an experience we have come to know from up-close and intimate encounters in the course of our efforts to get Ahlam Tamimi sent to face justice in an American court.

We're not ready to go into details yet (there are efforts underway right now beneath the surface) but we have been exposed to exceedingly shabby treatment by several top-level US diplomats and by multiple officials in the US State Department including the head of an important and highly-relevant unit. On the other hand, we are grateful for the good support we are currently getting from certain other administration officials and offices.

We wish people, including Prince Zeid himself, would ask themselves whether his deliberate silence about Jordan's refusal to extradite Tamimi to the US improve the chances that wall-to-wall support for lethal terrorism in Jordan will diminish? Or has it contributed to terrorism's steady growth in that hotbed of Islamist passions?

We were reluctant to go public with our thoughts on Prince Zeid's politicized non-response. But then he chose to launch a public relations offensive in the last moments of his time in office: 

• He said earlier this month, for instance, that "When we feel we need to speak, we will speak". For us, however, he did not. 
• His exit speech video on the UN WebTV site starts out with some dramatic music and sober-sounding words from Zeid: "If you don't sometimes speak out, if you don't threaten to speak out, you don't grab their attention. I would rather err on the speaking out part than staying silent... Our job is to defend the individual victims..." But we can observe that it's not all the victims.
• A Gulf State paper wrote yesterday that bitter criticism directed against the prince from some states was something he wished "to wear with pride, convinced that there is no honour to be found in silence". We agree: none at all.
• He declared [here] to wide media coverage that the silence of Myanmar's leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi over the oppression of Burma's Rohingya Muslim minority was "deeply regrettable". And so is his unwillingness to pick up the phone and remind his cousin in Jordan's royal capital that sending the mass murderer of Jewish children to face trial is not a political issue but a straightforward moral and legal imperative. And in the case of the cousin, it's a decision he can take with the snap of a finger. But doesn't and hasn't.

We regret Prince Zeid doesn't see matters that way. That's why we are writing this today.

13-Jun-17: We think we now have a deeper understanding of the human rights industry

The UN official previously known as His Highness Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein

When it comes to politicians, being the parents of a child murdered in the name of a political ideology can make a person, trust us, something of a cynic.

We're more sensitive now to how public figures like to get up on their soap-boxes and preach to others about what they ought to be doing. When they do, our strong inclination is to take a look behind the scenes and see whether the values of the speaker match the high rhetoric of the speechifying.

Take the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein as an example.

Once Jordan's ambassador to the UN and to the United States, he was appointed by acclamation to the HCR role by all 193 members of the UN General Assembly in June 2014, amidst flattering compliments and expressions of unbridled optimism. We have seen it described as a unanimous appointment but even if some people had their doubts, no one spoke out against.

He happens also to be a member of Jordan's royal family - a prince, in fact - as well as the pretender (an actual title) to the throne of Iraq. (Arab kingdoms tend to be both more complex and less complex than most people realize.)

Mr Ra'ad al-Hussein is busy this month as the notorious United Nations Human Rights Council over which he presides meets for its latest three-week-long gathering in Geneva. The HRC is made up of "47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe".

Sounds worthy, of course. But the reality tends towards the shabby. As one report noted in March 2017:

According to the U.N.'s top human rights body, Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world today. That’s the result of the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council which wrapped up in Geneva on Friday by adopting five times more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country on earth... The Bush administration refused to join the Council when it was created in 2006. On March 31, 2009, President Obama – fully aware of its entrenched anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias – made jumping on board one of his very first foreign policy moves. Moreover, in an unscrupulous attempt to control his successor, the former President obtained yet another three-year term for the United States on the Council that began on January 1, 2017... The Council plays a leading role in the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state by the United Nations. In its history, the Council has condemned Israel more often than any other of the 192 UN states. Comparative totals after this session’s pogrom tell the story:  Israel – 78 resolutions and decisions, Syria – 29, North Korea – 9, and Iran – 6.  As for Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, there’s nothing at all.

Lately, some member states have noticed. The British, for instance:

The UK has put the United Nations Human Rights Council "on notice" over what it called its "disproportionate focus on Israel". On the final day of the council's 34th session the UK mission to the UN said it would vote against all resolutions about Israel's conduct in the occupied Syrian and Palestinian territories if things did not change... [Independent UK, March 25, 2017]

The Americans have too:

Washington has long argued that the Geneva forum unfairly focuses on Israel's alleged violations of human rights, including war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The United States "remains deeply troubled by the Council’s consistent unfair and unbalanced focus on one democratic country, Israel", Erin Barclay, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, told the U.N. Human Rights Council. Barclay said that no other nation had a whole agenda item devoted to it and that "this obsession with Israel" threatened the council's credibility... "In order for this Council to have any credibility, let alone success, it must move away from its unbalanced and unproductive positions," Barclay said. "As we consider our future engagements, my government will be considering the Council's actions with an eye toward reform to more fully achieve the Council's mission to protect and promote human rights." The United States is currently an elected member of the 47-state Geneva forum where its three-year term ends in 2019... ["U.S. seeks end to U.N. rights council's 'obsession' with Israel", Reuters, March 1, 2017]

That was in March. What's changed since then? Not that much. Here's a report from just 6 days ago:

…In a speech opening a three-week session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein observed the 50th anniversary of when he "first heard the sound of war" as a boy in Amman, Jordan. He said Palestinians were now marking "a half-century of deep suffering under an occupation imposed by military force" and marked by "systematic" violations of international law. Israelis also deserve freedom from violence, Zeid said, adding: "Maintain the occupation and for both peoples there will only be a prolongation of immense pain..." ["End of Israeli occupation would benefit both sides: UN right chief", Reuters, June 7, 2017]

And this from yesterday:

“The High Commissioner notes the repeated failure to comply with the calls for accountability made by the entire human rights system and urges Israel to conduct prompt, impartial and independent investigations of all alleged violations of international human rights law and all allegations of international crimes,” the report said. Zeid's report also noted “the State of Palestine's non-compliance with the calls for accountability and urges the State of Palestine to conduct prompt, impartial and independent investigations of all alleged violations of international human rights law and all allegations of international crimes.” The report looked set to ignite further debate at the U.N. Human Rights Council, where the United States said last week it was reviewing its membership due to what it calls a “chronic anti-Israel bias.” ["Israel, Palestinians have failed to prosecute war crimes: U.N.", Reuters, June 12, 2017]

Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein first got our attention in April 2017. It was one of those cases we described above - a public figure lecturing others, in this case the authorities in Jordan where Prince Zeid (his other name) is (as we mentioned a few paragraphs up) a member of the royal Hashemite family.

We emailed a cluster of his senior staff people - this is the unedited full text:

April 4, 2017

Re: Extraditing Ahlam Tamimi 

We were pleased to see the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, speak forthrightly [link] four days ago about how states must (a) honor their treaty obligations, (b) act on legitimate arrest warrants and (c) respect the great importance of the global struggle for justice and against impunity.

Prince Zeid was addressing the failure of his own homeland, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in relation to a notorious fugitive from justice, the president of Sudan, who ought to have been arrested when he came to Jordan. 

We are the parents of Malki Roth who was murdered in 2001 in the horrific Hamas attack on women and children in a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem. Malki was 15. Fourteen other people were killed and 130 terribly injured. 

The mastermind of the attack is a Jordanian woman. She was eventually arrested and confessed to all the charges. She was convicted on 15 counts of murder and was sentenced to multiple life terms. Her sentence was drastically commuted eight years later in the 2011 deal Israel made with the Hamas terrorist organization to secure the release of an Israeli captive. She has lived free in Jordan since then, proudly taking "credit" for the murders and basking in the status of celebrity. 

Our daughter was a US citizen. Under US law relating to acts of terror, her killer must face justice in the US. The US formally requested some time ago that she be extradited by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. But Jordan has refused. The woman, Ahlam Tamimi, is subject to a US arrest warrant and appears on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. 

We are respectfully asking that the High Commissioner speak as clearly and forcefully to the King and government of his homeland, Jordan, about Tamimi as he did four days ago in that other matter. We ask him to tell Jordan that, in relation to Tamimi, it must (a) honor its treaty obligations, (b) act on legitimate arrest warrants and (c) respect the great importance of the global struggle for justice and against impunity.

We appreciate you conveying this to the High Commissioner.

Sincerely
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel

What happened next? Nothing. So we wrote to the same people a second time on April 6, 2017:

In case this slipped by. An acknowledgement of receipt would be appreciated. 

Then again:

Third try - sorry to note that we have no acknowledgement from any of you. In our view, the issue we have raised is a serious one, and the sort that ought to be addressed by the High Commissioner's office. With great respect to your roles and responsibilities, unless we have something from you today, we will assume no response is going to come and proceed accordingly.  

A few days later, this nice reply arrived:

Dear Ms and Mr Roth,
Thank you for your message and sorry for the delay in acknowledgement - I can assure you that all messages received by this office are taken seriously, with only one problem being that there are too many of them from across the world, with many serious crisis and violations still ongoing, and too few people and resources to handle all of them.
Your message is of course well received, including by the Executive Office of the High Commissioner (where I belong) and the MENA section of the Office. It will be given proper attention - I can assure in this - and you will receive a response upon due consideration.
With full understanding and sincere sympathy for your loss.
Kind regards,
Anton Nikiforov
Human Rights Officer
EDM
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

We waited until April 12, 2017 - a month and a half later - and sent this:

Dear Mr Nokiforev,
Consistent with your OHCHR's slogan, we sincerely support the idea of "Stand up for someone’s rights today" [that's the business slogan that appears on the OHCHR's website]. We hope today will be the day the High Commissioner conveys to Jordan the message we outlined in our letter to the Office of the High Commissioner of April 4. As you know, it has still gotten no response.
Sincerely,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel
(Grieving parents of Malki Roth) 

The kind Human Rights Officer didn't have an actual answer but replied nonetheless, and promptly - in fact the same day:

Dear Ms and Mr Roth,
Thank you for your support to our campaign worldwide. Your message is acknowledged and my response to you still stands. There is really no need to send reminders, all messages are taken seriously but they require proper consideration among many, many tasks and urgencies with inadequate resources to handle them all at the same time.
Sincerely,
Anton Nikiforov 

We felt sorry for the OHCHR whose annual budget for 2017 is US $253 million and which is beset with "many, many tasks and urgencies with inadequate resources to handle them". So we sat patiently and then sent this on May 28, a month and a half later, with copies to the same senior OHCHR people whom we had originally approached on April 4 and who were all otherwise engaged:

Dear Mr Nokiforev,
Six weeks after your last memo assuring us that we are not overlooked or forgotten, we think we are now privileged to have a fuller understanding of what OHCHR means by the word "someone" in your slogan "Stand up for someone’s rights today".
We again express the sincere hope that eventually, the High Commissioner will convey to Jordan the message we outlined in our letter to him of April 4 even though it has gotten no response.
But perhaps you or your colleagues copied on this email will acknowledge that OHCHR's silence until now speaks eloquently for itself.
We see ourselves free to now air this issue in public places.
Sincerely,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel
(Grieving parents of Malki Roth) 

No response so far from any of them. Those "urgencies" and the "many, many tasks" - which happily did not get in the way of the prince chastising his Jordanian friends over the matter of the Sudanese butcher all the way back on March 31, 2017 - seem to still be keeping the OHCHR team pre-occupied.

The bright side is we think we have a better gasp now of how the human rights industry sorts out its priorities. Bringing the murderers of Israeli children to justice does not rank all that high up, it turns out. We're very surprised by that.

If we're wrong, we hope Prince Zeid (in case he's reading this) or one of his staff people will still get back to us. But to be really frank, we're not holding our breaths.

2-Aug-14: Not satire: UN's chief human rights officer outraged that Israel and US fail to share Iron Dome technology with the Islamists

Pillay in 2011 [Image Source]

A reasonable observer could be forgiven for thinking that the people who manage some of the world's most influential and well-funded humanitarian organizations enter into moments of madness when Israel is on the agenda. Maybe not all of them, but certainly some.

Here's an example recorded on the Al Jazeera site ["UN says illegal Gaza blockade must be lifted | UN officials condemn Israeli attacks and warn of humanitarian crisis amid 440,000 displaced and lack of basic services"] from yesterday. It quotes Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights since 2008, speaking about the rights of the Gazans:

Pillay also criticised the US, Israel's main ally, for failing to use its influence to halt the violence. "They have not only provided the heavy weaponry which is now being used by Israel in Gaza, but they've also provided almost $1bn in providing the Iron Domes to protect Israelis from the rockets attacks," she said. "No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling."

Reuters ["World powers must hold Israel accountable: U.N. rights boss"] has it too.

It's hard to ignore her silence on the brazen (and suicidal) siting of jihadist rocket-fire emplacements inside residential buildings, schools, hospitals, mosques by the men of Hamas. And she says nothing about the absence of bomb shelters or other protective structures to serve Hamas' Gazans; the terrorist regime has been in power since 2006 and presided over its descent into ever deeper poverty and hopelessness, with tragically little attention to the infrastructure needs of those they rule. Does this not impact on Gazans' human rights? Of course it does, but it's an inconvenient truth.

But more than anything else, it's just breathtaking to see how, confronted with an entirely defensive system that can bring no harm to the fat-cat (and largely absent) insiders of Hamas or to the masses of Gazans suffering under their fanatical rule, Judge Pillay criticizes Israel for the Iron Dome system too.

It's too easy to characterize Pillay's (and OHCHR's) distorted reality as merely bizarre. It comes against a more serious, sadly rich background of distortion and agenda-driven partisanship, as Anne Bayefsky pointed out some days ago in "Depravity at the UN Human Rights Council":

• A native of Durban, South Africa, Pillay spent her time in office championing the racist anti-racism conference that took place in her hometown in 2001... She choreographed the second and third UN Durban conferences in 2009 and 2011 that “reaffirmed” the Israel-is-racist canard. 
• Pillay also initiated, and subsequently became the lead spokesperson for, the 2009 slanderous UN Goldstone Report. Though Goldstone himself later recanted the charge, the report accused Israel of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians the last time Israel had the audacity to mount a sustained response to the Hamas killing machine in Gaza.
• Pillay opened the [UN Human Rights] Council session on July 23, 2014. For her, “suffering” was a description applicable only to Palestinians. She carefully presented the charge of “crimes against humanity” – knowing full well that the image projected was one of Israelis as the new Nazis. She simultaneously called for an investigation to discern the facts and recounted a list of supposed Israeli-driven horrors... [including] “unimaginable death, destruction, terror and life-long consequences.”
• In the end, the Human Rights Council’s resolution “deplores” and “condemns in the strongest terms” Israel’s “grave,” “widespread, systematic, and gross” “violations of human rights.” The word “Hamas” is never mentioned. And the UN launched a second Goldstone-like inquiry...
• There have been twice as many urgent debates and special sessions of the [Human Rights] Council on Israel in its entire eight-year lifespan than there have been on Syria with upwards of 200,000 dead... One-third of all the resolutions and decisions critical of a single state - for all 193 UN members - have been directed at Israel alone. 

Six years after Ms Pillay took office, presiding over 1,000 employees and a budget of $120 million, we're entitled to wonder how close she came to fulfilling the predictions made at the time, like those of UN Watch, whose head said in 2008 as the undoubtedly-talented woman was getting into the driver's seat:

"Pillay will need to use her unique [platform] to throw a spotlight on the world's worst violations, including Sudan's mass killing in Darfur, Burmese brutality, Chinese persecution, and Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe"...

His optimism is admirable. Pillay, too, sounded an optimistic note in the same report on her way into the job:

"This is the only office at the UN to be fiercely uncompromising and independent about human rights standards. The commissioner is the voice of the victim everywhere." [BBC, July 28, 2008]

We're still puzzling over how the rights of Israelis, pounded by more than 3,000 civilian-seeking rockets from Gaza between January 1, 2014 and the end of July [Wikipedia], have gained from that $120 million budget, those thousand OHCHR bureaucrats, and those uncompromising UN actions and standards.

Actually, we're not entirely puzzled. That's because of a rare and not-very-pleasant one-on-one meeting we had some time ago with one of the key UN officials whose travels and views play a key role in OHCHR reports and thus on Ms Pillay's policies.

In a post entitled "28-Feb-08: John Dugard", we wrote of how Mr Dugard, another South African lawyer , has the improbable job description - according to the business card he handed over when we met him - of Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967". In less bombastic terms, his actual role was to look exclusively at one side of a multi-sided conflict.

Come to think of it, meeting him was good preparation for trying to make sense of Navi Pillay's depressing pronouncements.