Analyst condemns UN 'double standard' on human rights

By Peter Kohn
July 8, 2008
The Australian Jewish News
Original Source: https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=5810 \t _blank http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=5810


AT the United Nations, human rights have become a weapon, not in the hands of the abused, but the abusers, according  to visiting New York-based activist Professor Anne Bayefsky.

Professor Bayefsky delivered this year's B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) Gandel Oration to more than 400 at Mount Scopus College's Besen Centre in Burwood on Sunday.

Professor Bayefsky, who was a delegate at the UN's 2001 racism conference in Durban, South Africa, told The AJN last month that Australia should join Canada, the US and Israel in boycotting next year's Durban review conference in Geneva because there is no chance of reversing anti-Israel resolutions by taking part in the event.

The international legal scholar and human rights monitor runs eyeontheun.com, a website that analyses abuse of the UN's human rights system.

In her Melbourne address, Professor Bayefsky said countries with abysmal records run the UN's human rights agenda and consistently condemn Israel in its struggle for survival, equating Zionism with Nazism and condemning western democracies, while ignoring abuses in Communist countries and much of the Islamic world.

At the same time, the UN has taken a few baby steps in facing up to Iran's nuclear program and the threat it poses to Israel and other countries, she said. 

Professor Bayefsky said the UN's voting record on Israel is a betrayal of the victims of the Holocaust and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, fostered by figures such as Australia's Herbert Evatt.

What has emerged instead, powered by a global $US20 billion a year megaphone, is the collective depravity of an immoral majority, she said.

The UN Human Rights Commission, which was abolished in 2006, passed more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country and adopted nothing ever on serial abusers such as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe.

The Human Rights Council, which succeeded the commission, has directed almost 60 per cent of its decisions condemning specific states at Israel alone.

The council has had eight regular sessions which cover human rights in all countries and four special sessions devoted only to human rights violations by Israel,” she said. 

“The council... has a limited agenda of less than a dozen subjects. One is reserved only for condemning Israel.

In the past 15 months, the council has refused to renew or continue investigations on four states with some of the worst records on the planet -- Belarus, Cuba, Iran and Uzbekistan.

China's call for the UN not to meddle in its internal affairs and the Islamic world's use of Islamic law as a shield against scrutiny are taken at face value, she said.

The council investigator on Israel has denied the possibility of finding any human rights violations by any party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but Israel.

There have been 10 emergency sessions of the UN General Assembly in its history of 50 years. Six have been about Israel ... A million dead in Rwanda and two million dead over two decades in Sudan never prompted one emergency session.

In UN circles, it is called 'protecting human rights' in reality it is discrimination, anti-Semitism, in which the Jewish state is subjected to different treatment and held to different standards than all other nations. 

“Given its reach and impact, the UN is therefore the largest global purveyor of anti-Semitism in the world today.

Professor Bayefsky said the UN falsely claims that Jews see any investigation into Israel's human rights as anti-Semitic, and that western democracies are the enemies of human rights.

Professor Bayefsky will also deliver the ADC Gandel Oration in Sydney on Tuesday (July 8) at the Great Synagogue at 7.30pm.