The UN's Sole Obsession - and its Numerous Failures
The UN organization has closed one more shamefuly biased and ineffective year and decade. The UN's General Assembly and so-called Human Rights Council have, yet again, made more resolutions against Israel than against all the other 190 states together; an absurd obsession in itself. In the same time the world's worst atrocities - war crimes, genocidal religious and nationalistic attacks, are ignored or treated lukewarmly by the United Nations. Appaling murderous human rights violations, like execution of gay people or of practitioners of prohibited religions (like the Bahai faith in Iran), and "honor killings" of thousands of women in the Muslim world yearly - have never been addressed in the HRC. The UN failed to do something constructive for peace, for human rights and against atrocities, among others in Rwanda, in Sudan, in Hamas-ruled Gaza, in Iran and in Libya.
Is the UN's inaction, is its ignoring the challenges a mere inefficiency? Is its disproportionate attention to Israel a simple obsession? It seems that all these together constitute a well-planned cover up to the actual great crimes going on undisturbed in the world, perpetrated frequently by the leaders of anti-Israel campaigns in the UN.
Can the UN recover, or should it be dismantled and replaced like its unable predecessor, the League of Nations was?
In early 2009 Take-A-Pen initiated and managed a global Petition to the UN about Hamas War Crimes, signed by 90,000 people around the world. What the UN "contributed" to the issue of Hamas war crimes, was the shameful Goldstone cover-up. Take-A-Pen has decided to pay more attention to UN misdeeds again in the following year. And act, what ever we can, to start a better year and decade in 2010.
Goldstone Report Approved despite Serious Flaws, like Suppressing Evidence
The UN "Human Rights Commission" and the GA adopted Goldstone's Report with great Muslim-led majority. In the HRC 25 states voted for, 6 against, 15 abstained or absent. The US, Holland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Ukraine voted 'against'. The US justified its vote by the report's "major flaws".
The Goldstone Report should be disqualified for its flaws, and not used for any further purposes. A fully self-satisfied Judge Goldstone challenges the US (on Al-Jazeera): let them show him those flaws. It would be easy: Take-A-Pen's article presents 8 major flaws solely in the context of how the Goldstone Report actively suppressed undesired crucial evidence.
Goldstone's self-serving desire stronger than evidences:
Judge Goldstone himself criticizes now the HRC decision as one-sided, but these first impartial words of him are "too little, too late". His motives are best described in a touching private letter: E-mail from an old friend To Judge Goldstone:"Richard,... this report did not arise from ignorance or naivete. I am trying so hard to resist the conclusion that your role and report might represent a self-serving desire to ingratiate yourself for a more senior position in the kangaroo court called the United Nations". (continues below video)
MEMORANDUM to President of the UN Human Rights Council
2009/09/30 - Take-A-Pen's Memorandum to the HRC emphasized that Judge Goldstone suppressed all evidence contradicting his conclusions. Proper use of the crucial evidence we and others submitted would essentially change the Goldstone Report and therefore it must be disqualified Read the Memo
Want to laugh at the Goldstone Report?
Take A Pen thanks Latma for permission to use this video
(cont...) No neutral and serious reader or writer protects the Goldstone Report any more. Goldstone's UN Fact-finding Mission to Gaza simply served the UN HRC's original prejudicial mandate: "to investigate the grave war crimes Israel committed in Gaza". In an unprecedented consensus on any subject, 94% of Israeli Jews are deeply disappointed from the Goldstone Report. Israel’s president, dovish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres called the report“a mockery of history”. Two outstanding Guardian articles Goldstone's Sins of Omission and "A moral atrocity" of October 20 are also blasting the UN Report. Only Hamas, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Syria and similar champions of human rights are satisfied with the Goldstone Report.
The 574 page long Report published on 15 Sept. may look like a serious document to the inexperienced reader. Attentive readers soon realize major faults. First, it is preoccupied with Israel and deals very briefly only with Hamas - when Goldstone had promised to investigate all parties. Another fault, with Peres' words again: the Report "fails to distinguish between the aggressor and those acting in self-defense".
The Summary speaks about 3 Israeli dead from Hamas rockets, which would be true during the few months around the Gaza fighting.
14 Israeli civilians killed, hundreds maimed and tens of thousands terrorized
for years, before the Gaza Operation, by 6300 Hamas rocket attacks, after Israel's full military and civil withdrawal from Gaza, and before Israel gave ultimatum to stop it and finally fought back. All this was left out of the Goldstone Report, because it would prove who was the aggressor.
The Goldstone Report's conclusions are worn out truisms: "war crimes possibly committed both by Israel and by Hamas". This is a false and meaningless balance. Of course deviations from norms happen in every war, they happened also in the war against Nazi Germany on both sides. What really counts, and what the UN investigators should have learned and reported are: Who was the aggressor? Who committed war crimes systematically? Who on the other side did its best to keep irregularities at minimum? Which side tries to tell the truth, with an independent press and legal system watching, and which side lies systematically - like about Jenin, the Al-Durra forgery, Pallywood - and now about Gaza. Goldstone knew that the accusations against Israel were mostly Palestinian fiction, collected under the well-known "freedom of speech" of the murderous Hamas regime - while the accusations against Hamas, the unilateral aggressor for years, have been based on facts. Thus his Report's "balance" is "evenhandedness towards the fire-fighters and the arsonists".
The dubious self-appointed Human Rights Watch organization was selected as the Goldstone Report's leading source of information and "facts", but Goldstone "forgot" to inform his readers that he was a senior member of HRW; this compromises his integrity even more.
The Report quotes tens of unsubstantiated pages by unreliable sources, but ignores information and hard evidence we and others submitted, if unfit for its predetermined conclusions. This constitutes illegal suppression of evidence.
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