My last post before Shabbat was video of Nikki Haley’s wonderful offensive against the UN, in the wake of a UN agency report concluding Israel is an apartheid regime.
Now that I have come back online after Shabbat, this is the news greeting me.
A senior U.N. official resigned on Friday over the withdrawal of a report accusing Israel of imposing an “apartheid regime” on Palestinians, saying “powerful member states” pressured the world body and its chief with “vicious attacks and threats.”
United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary for the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Rima Khalaf, announced her resignation at a news conference in Beirut after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked for the report to be taken off the ESCWA website.
ESCWA, which comprises 18 Arab states, published the report on Wednesday and said it was the first time a U.N. body had clearly charged that Israel “has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”
Israel fiercely rejects the allegation and likened the report to Der Sturmer – a Nazi propaganda publication that was strongly anti-Semitic. The United States, an ally of Israel, had said it was outraged and demanded the report be withdrawn.
“I do not find it surprising that such member states, who now have governments with little regard for international norms and values of human rights, will resort to intimidation when they find it hard to defend their unlawful policies and practices,” Khalaf, of Jordan, wrote to Guterres.
“It is only normal for criminals to pressure and attack those who advocate the cause of their victims,” Khalaf wrote in the resignation letter, seen by Reuters, adding that she stands by the ESCWA report.
The Onion called to condemn Khalaf for stealing their quote.
These are the member states of ESCWA. It reads like a who’s-who of human rights abusers. I have provided links to their human rights records, as well as their International Human Rights Rank Indicators (IHRRI). As you can see, almost all of them fail miserably.
- Bahrain – 47.03%
- Egypt – 42.67%
- Iraq – 30.42%
- Jordan – 45.83%
- Kuwait – 48.25%
- Lebanon – 42.53%
- Libya – 36.95%
- Morocco – 50.92%
- Mauritania – 40.01%
- Oman – 45.73%
- Palestine – 44.93%
- Qatar – 47.80%
- Saudi Arabia – 27.08%
- The Sudan – 30.21%
- The Syrian Arab Republic – 23.82%
- Tunisia – 50.47%
- The United Arab Emirates – 61.49%
- Yemen – 41.91%
And it is no coincidence these are the types of countries putting out reports bashing Israel. Israel serves as a way to distract from their own terrible human rights records.
