The Courage to Dissent 
September 6, 2004
National Post (Canada)
– HYPERLINK http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/comment/story.html?id=6bab4574-0419-445f-8a09-56b48afe59b1 http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/comment/story.html?id=6bab4574-0419-445f-8a09-56b48afe59b1 

Today's commentary by Hillel C. Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, exposes the selectivity practised by Jean Ziegler, whose UN mandate on food has been abused to promote an anti-American and anti-Israeli political agenda. 
As Mr. Neuer points out, Mr. Ziegler is regrettably not alone among UN experts. 
For our part, we think Canada's citizens have a right to be concerned about the tacit approval of such behaviour by Canadian appointees at the UN, particularly when their elevation to such posts is the result of our government's intervention on their behalf.
At least two Canadians merit our attention. 
Stephen Toope is a respected scholar and former dean of McGill University's law faculty who also chairs the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances. 

(That group's July visit to Iran, set to inquire about murdered journalist Zahara Kazemi, was postponed by Iran; we hope they will persevere over Tehran's stalling.)
A Montreal Gazette article (June 11, 2003) described Professor Toope as a man of both intelligence and moral courage. 
We have no reason to doubt either. We only wish the professor has shown more of that moral courage before deciding to join the jackals in Geneva. 

By affixing his signature to the June 25 statement issued by 31 UN Special Rapporteurs, which singled out the United States and Israel alone for reproach, Professor Toope helped send a pernicious message. 
Victims of human rights violations in other countries, whose censure satisfy no agenda, need not apply. We have no reason to suspect Professor Toope initiated the move, but Canadians have a right to expect of their nominees the moral courage to dissent -- even if that means breaking the UN's much-vaunted consensus.
Then there is Louise Arbour, the UN's new High Commissioner for Human Rights. 
On July 26, she sat on the dais at the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. 
Next to her was Halima Warzazi, the outgoing chair, whose opening remarks likened Israelis to Nazis. Ms. Warzazi thought she was being clever by citing an Israeli who had implied the same, as if one remark of stupidity or self-hatred constituted licence for another's hate speech. 
One should fear where that logic could take us. Madame Arbour then proceeded to read her remarks as if nothing objectionable had occurred. We wish she would have spoken up. Canadians hope she will make us proud as a moral champion for human rights and in the world. Shouldn't she begin by opposing hate and intolerance within the UN's own halls?
c National Post 2004