The UN kangaroo "investigation" of Israeli "war crimes"

Just as Spain's national Court decided to shelve a phony war crime investigation of a 2002 Israeli air strike in Gaza, a group of lawyers and military experts assigned by the United Nations Human Rights Council continued its phony investigation of "the grave violations of human rights in the occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip."  

The UN Human Rights Council is a scandal. It's a successor to the defunct UN Human Rights Commission. Both organizations have a long history of singling out Israel for condemnation and of ignoring real human rights abusers by the world's worst offenders, several of which dominate the Human Rights Council and it predecessor.

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Taking a stand against Iran

Irwin Cotler, the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, member of Canadian parliament and co-author of this piece, is introducing legislation in Canadian parliament today called the "Iran Accountability Act." While it expressly holds Iran to account - for its genocidal threats, nuclear ambitions and domestic repressions - it can also function to hold any signatory to the Genocide Convention to account. All signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention (including the United States) have a responsibility to prevent genocide - and to punish incitement to genocide-  that they have largely ignored in the case of the world’s greatest threat. The IAA, while a Canadian initiative, is a template model as to how to fulfill these responsibilities and take a stand against Iranian criminal actions.

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Obama's got it exactly backwards

Although President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu got along quite well at their White House meeting last week, each has made demands that the other seems unwilling or unable to meet. Peace seems no closer, even after the warm encounter.

The 800 pound gorilla at the Oval Office meeting was Iran's nuclear program. That became self-evidently clear when, within days of the meeting, Iran deliberately fired a solid fuel rocket and challenged the United States and Israel to do something about it. Ahmadinejad linked the rocket-launching to Iran's nuclear program, as if to allay any doubts that Iran intends to place nuclear payloads on these hard-to-detect rockets.

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No linkage between Iran and Palestinians

Rahm Emanuel is a good man and a good friend of Israel, but in a highly publicized recent statement he linked American efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons to Israeli efforts toward establishing a Palestinian state. This is a dangerous linkage.

I have long favored the two-state solution, as do most Israelis and American supporters of Israel. I have also long opposed civilian settlements deep into the West Bank. I hope that Israel does make efforts, as it has in the past, to establish a Palestinian state as part of an overall peace between the Jewish state and its Arab and Muslim neighbors.

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The Vatican's continuing Jewish problem

As Pope Benedict makes his historic visit to Israel, several Cardinals, Bishops and priests continue to perpetuate the Church's long history of anti-Semitism. Photographs recently surfaced of Father Angelo Idi wearing a swastika. He belongs to the same group of Fascists that include Bishop Richard Williamson - who persists in denying the Holocaust. But the Church's Jewish problem is not limited to marginal priests or ex-communicated Bishops. At least two of the Church's most influential Cardinals, including one who was in the running for Pope Benedict's job and who remains a leading candidate to replace him, are overt anti-Semites and proud of it. 

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Confronting evil at Durban II

Last week I came face to face with evil, as I stood just a few feet away from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We were both staying in the same hotel in Geneva. He was there to be the opening speaker at Durban II, a review and reprise of Durban I, the United Nations sponsored conference on racism that had turned into a racist hate fest against the Jewish people and the Jewish state. I was there - along with Elie Wiesel, Irwin Cotler and others who have devoted their lives to combating bigotry - to try to prevent a recurrence of Durban I.

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Bishop Tutu, the UN and 'Alice in Wonderland' justice

On March 16, 2009, a group of 16 self-described experts on "international justice and reconciliation of conflict" - including Bishop Desmond Tutu, who has characterized Israeli self-defense actions as "unchristian" - called for the establishment of "a United Nations Commission" to conduct an "independent and impartial investigation" of war crime allegations stemming from the Gaza conflict. There is of course no need to conduct any investigation into whether Hamas has committed war crimes: they readily admit - indeed they boast - that they are trying to kill as many Jewish Israeli citizens as their anti-personnel rockets are capable of killing. They also acknowledge, as a Hamas legislator did on television, that they use women and children as "human shields." 

The only real target of this investigation is Israel.

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Defeating Freeman: A Patriotic Duty

Those who successfully challenged the nomination of Charles W. Freeman, Jr. to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council should be praised for an act of high patriotism. It would have been disastrous for the United States to have, as the person responsible for overseeing "policy-neutral intelligence assessments" for the president, a zealot who is anything but policy-neutral when it comes to two of the most important areas of international conflict.

Freeman not only has extremist views regarding the Middle East and China, but has been beholden to lobby groups anxious to influence US intelligence assessments regarding Saudi Arabia and China. Freeman bowed out when it became clear his highly questionable financial ties to the Saudi and Chinese lobbies would be deeply probed by inspectors-general, congressional staffers and the media. He couldn't handle the truth about his financial ties to these lobbies, which do not serve the interests of the United States.

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The Hampshire administration does the right thing

A substantial majority of students at Hampshire College, as well as a majority of the vocal faculty, apparently still believe that Israel is the only country in the world from which Hampshire and other universities should divest. They seem not to care about the great abuses of human rights that are occurring in Iran, which routinely hangs children and dissidents; in North Korea which tolerates no dissent; in Zimbabwe which imprisons opposition candidates; in China which occupies Tibet; in Russia which engages in brutality against Chechnya; in Venezuela and Cuba which are ruled by dictators; in Belarus which is a throwback to Stalin’s time; in Saudi Arabia which practices gender apartheid; in Egypt, Jordan and the Philippines which routinely practiced torture against dissidents, and in so many other countries around the world. 

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Hampshire has now done the right thing

Hampshire has now done the right thing. It has made it unequivocally clear that it did not and will not divest from Israel.

Indeed, it will continue to hold stock in companies that do business with Israel as well as with Israeli companies, so long as these companies meet the general standards that Hampshire applies to all of its holdings. 

As I previously wrote to President Hexter, if Hampshire did the right thing and made its position crystal clear I would urge contributors to continue to contribute to this fine school. I now do so. 

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