GENEVA, March 17- Tomorrow is Hate Israel Day at the UN. In the dystopian universe of George Orwell’s 1984, everyone was forced to undergo a daily “Two Minute of Hate.” In the the dystopian universe of the UN Human Rights Council — where slave-holding Mauritania chaired the debates last week, where Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Venezuela are newly elected members, and where a Cuban-led declaration says war is peace — the built-in schedule of every session includes one day dedicated solely to spewing hate against the Jewish state.
Headlining the program this time will be the presentation of a report by a “Fact Finding Mission” on how Israeli settlements are the direct cause of all Palestinian ills. As we explained here, the probe was a sham, its verdict having been declared in advance.
Also on the program will be three additional UN reports condemning Israel, including one that devotes several pages to accusations by Cuba and Syria that Israel is grossly violating human rights in the Golan Heights. The world’s worst abusers will then take the floor and emit vitriol.
Israel will be absent, as it has been for the past year. The creation of the settlements probe — the seventh one-sided inquiry on Israel since the council’s supposed reform in 2006, during which time it generated but five probes on the rest of the world combined, and none ever on Iran, China, or Sri Lanka — was the last straw for then foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, who decided Israel would no longer participate in, or with, the council.
UN Watch will be present in full force, and has invited an international figure to address the plenary.
According to circulated drafts obtained by UN Watch, the month-long session will conclude this Friday with six resolutions against Israel, and roughly the same amount of texts — most of them far thinner and crafted in softer language — for the rest of the world combined.
Scapegoating Israel in this chamber has a long pedigree. UN Watch founder Morris Abram, U.S. representative to the Human Rights Commission under the Johnson Administration, shared this anecdote in a 1969 Foreign Affairs essay:
“One representative of a ‘non-aligned nation’ told me candidly: ‘We’d like to condemn the Soviet Union for its repression of intellectuals; we’d like to condemn the United States because of Viet Nam. We cannot afford to do either, so we’ll support a condemnation of Israel for reprisals against Arab sabotage.'”
Sadly, more than four decades later, little has changed.
