Yesterday, the UN Human Rights Council voted to condemn Israel (yet again) for defending itself and to set up another so-called "fact-finding" mission to search for (or trump up) evidence of Israeli war crimes. There was no corresponding mission to document the widely visible evidence of HAMAS war crimes, which include everything from use of human shields to deliberate attacks on civilians, and many others besides.
One thing that bugs me is that my initial response upon hearing this was to shrug. This body is supposed to carry considerable moral authority, not to mention legal weight, but the fact is that it it has turned itself into a travesty. It has condemned Israel numerous times and never once taken action against any other country in the world - and in particular, it has never condemned Sudan, which has killed 300,000 civilians in Darfur.
But I shrugged, because nothing Israel will ever do will prevent these guys from attacking it.
The reason for this blog post is not to defend Israel. It is to defend the rest of the world.
The danger is that we will eventually stop expecting these organizations to be fair. We will eventually stop expecting them to use legal terms such as genocide and disproportionate force properly. We will eventually come to see them as mere sources of propaganda. And that's wrong.
It's wrong because these groups were created for a purpose. They were created to improve human rights around the world, not to serve as attack dogs for a bunch of dictators.
The UNHRC should be immediately disbanded and not replaced. Dictatorships have no place on a human rights body, and there is no way within the UN framework to prevent dictatorships from dominating a body like the UNHRC. And the extreme hypocrisy of the UNHRC actively undermines human rights around the world.
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