Human Rights, UN-style
By James S. Tisch
Apr. 14, 2005
The Jerusalem Post
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Today and Friday the United Nations Commission on Human Rights will pass resolutions on human rights situations around the world. This body of 53 states will not reproach Iran, Saudi Arabia, China or many other notorious violators of human rights. Genocidal Sudan may get slapped on the wrist. It is certain, though, that Israel will be condemned in five separate resolutions, four more than any other country. 
The United States and other democratic members of the commission object to the disproportionate and distorted treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but are out-voted by a coalition that includes Sudan, Saudi Arabia and two of the six outposts of tyranny, Cuba and Zimbabwe. Like the witches of Macbeth, the majority will declare: Fair is foul, and foul is fair. 
As in years past, the commission's Middle East resolutions will address Palestinian rights and Israeli responsibilities, but neglect Israeli rights and Palestinian responsibilities. Some safe predictions, based on previous resolutions: One of the measures will proclaim the Palestinian right to live without Israeli interference but omit the Israeli right to life. Another will decry the delay of Palestinian school buses at Israeli checkpoints and forget the Israeli children who never arrived at school because their bus was blown up. 
The commission will commiserate with Palestinian refugees of the Arab-Israeli wars and overlook the greater number of Jewish refugees who fled Arab persecution. It will condemn Israel's security fence without mentioning the terrorism that made it necessary. Nor will the commission recognize Israeli adjustments in the fence's route to accommodate Palestinian needs. 
Politics drives the commission, not concern for Palestinian civilians. It appointed a special investigator, John Dugard, to scrutinize Israeli actions, but not Palestinian lynchings of Palestinian men, so-called honor killings of Palestinian women or the exploitation of Palestinian children by terrorists to smuggle bombs through Israeli checkpoints. 
And they picked the right man for the job. Dugard lauds as one of the important improvements in the human rights situation the return to the West Bank of 45 deported Palestinians, wanted terrorists who had entered the Church of the Nativity with guns to avoid capture by the Israeli military. He also reports that the continued incarceration of over 7,000 Palestinians to be one of Israel's main human rights violations, even though he recognizes that some were involved in the killing of Israelis. 
For Dugard, freedom for Palestinian prisoners with Israeli blood on their hands has become a human right. 
At the commission, the act is not important, only the actor. The majority's desire to denigrate and delegitimize Israel is the most obvious symptom of what plagues this once important human rights body. In recent years, the commission has stopped criticizing Iran and Zimbabwe. It has never reprimanded China, Saudi Arabia or Syria. Instead of fearing censure by the UN's human rights commission, these dictatorships seek to join it. 
As a UN-appointed, independent panel reported in December, The commission cannot be credible if it is seen to be maintaining double standards in addressing human rights concerns. 
Last month Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed to disband the commission entirely and replace it with a Human Rights Council of states that abide by the highest human rights standards. 
Without substantive reform of its composition and practices, the commission's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict will recall Macbeth's lament: a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, its resolutions full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. 
The writer is the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.