The UN’s Economic and Social Council today adopted a resolution on human rights and humanitarian law that mentioned Syria 15 times. Except that Syria’s government was nowhere mentioned or criticized. The resolution was against Israel.
A review of the resolutions list of ECOSOC’s current 2013 annual session shows that Israel was the only country in the world to be the object of a condemnatory resolution — gross abusers like Syria, North Korea, Iran, Egypt, China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia were all given a free pass . (The only other resolution focused on a specific country concerned Haiti, but this was a non-critical text about foreign aid co-sponsored by Haiti itself.)
Only the US and Canada opposed the resolution, which was adopted 43 to 2, with 1 abstention (Haiti).
In his speech before the vote, the Palestinian delegate alleged “racism and colonization,” saying that “occupation is the ugliest form of racism and terrorism,” and “the State of Israel is a state of terror, settlers are terror, military are terror.”
Syria for its part accused Israel of “stealing historical artifacts to lie about [the] history” of the Golan, and “imposing Hebrew on students.”
Sadly, ECOSOC’s session was once again counter-productive, pushing the parties further apart instead of bridging their differences, damaging the UN’s credibility, and making it party to the conflict instead of a neutral mediator.
