UN-Sanctioned Committee Alleged To Be Biased Against Israel   By Sam Harari July 3, 2008 The Bulletin Original Source: – HYPERLINK https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19826235%26BRD=2737%26PAG=461%26dept_id=576361%26rfi=8 \t _blank http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19826235&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8   The United Nations' Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People marked six decades of the dispossession of the Palestinian people on June 20.   – HYPERLINK https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://oascentral.zwire.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.poweronemedia.com/ContextWeb300X250.html/1276802493/Top/default/empty.gif/47433571665568733175554144753354?x \t _blank https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/img/clear1x1.gif \* MERGEFORMATINET Of the many delegations and university professors that spoke, there was a view that nearly all of them shared: solidarity with the Palestinian people and that Israel was to blame for the plight of the Palestinian refugees. The Committee Chairman, Paul Badji of Senegal, also said not enough attention was being given to the Palestinian issue in the international community. The Question of Palestine refugees have become a central aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet the issue seemed to have moved somehow to the periphery of the attention span of the international community. Of all subsidiary bodies of the U.N. General Assembly, six focus on Palestinians, and none on any other specific people in any U.N.-member state. A representative from Syria, voicing the most extreme rhetoric against Israel, said, The U.N. should compel Israel to stop its flagrant persecution of the Palestinian people. The representative also said, Israeli policy in the occupied territories has reached the scale of terrorism. What Was Not Mentioned Besides the fact that no alternative opinions were offered, little or no mention was made of a number of the issues that Israel asserts has perpetuated the refugee issue. No mention was made of the four separate times, the most recent being in 2000, that the Palestinians had been offered a state of their own, only to reject the plan and resort to war, further deteriorating their situation. No mention was made of terrorism, which has killed thousands of Israelis. No mention was made of the ongoing daily Qassam rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. No mention was made of nearly a million Jewish refugees from Arab lands, which were compelled to leave their homes as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. No mention was made of the fact that between 1948 and 1967, Jordan and Egypt, which occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, respectively, did not allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state. UN Experts' Opinions Dr. Alex Grobman, author of Nations United: How the United Nations Undermines Israel and the West, told The Bulletin that the pro-Palestinian committee was set up to force Israel to make concessions and continue to bring to light Israeli injustices, whether or not they are actually true. When asked whether he thinks the committee is fair and balanced, Dr. Grobman answered, The name says it all. They have absolutely no shame. He added that the committee, along with much of the U.N., ignores that Palestinians are being indoctrinated to hate while the Israelis don't respond to the calls for annihilation because they so desperately, to the point of irrationality, want peace. According to Anne Bayefsky, human rights scholar and senior editor of the NGO watchdog Eye on the U.N., such biased views on Israel in the U.N. are not uncommon. She said that an extreme bias against Israel has actually reached the point of anti-Semitism. There are those who would still deny the existence of anti-Semitism at the U.N. by pointing to a range of motivations in U.N. corridors including commercial interests, regional politics, preventing scrutiny of human rights violations closer to home, or enhancement of individual careers, Ms. Bayefsky wrote in an article. U.N. actors and supporters remain almost uniformly in denial of the nature of the pathogen coursing through these halls. They ignore the infection and applaud the host, forgetting that the cancer which kills the organism will take with it both the good and the bad. Israel has been subject to human rights criticism twice as many times as its nearest competitor, Sudan. The U.S. and the Democratic Republic of Congo are tied for fourth place for being the countries to receive the most human rights criticism. All U.N.-member states are full members of a regional group except Israel. Israel is merely a temporary member of WEOG (Western European and Others Group). The exclusion of only Israel from full membership in a U.N.-regional group is a violation of the U.N. Charter, which promises the equal rights of nations large and small. Half of the countries on the committee are not considered to be free according to Freedom House, a U.S.-based NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights. Sam Harari can be reached at harari@thebulletin.us.