August 2, 2010 Contact: Anne Bayefsky
info@EYEontheUN.org
President Obama Blackmails Israel at the UN
This article by Anne Bayefsky appears today on FOXNews.com.
President Obama has now blackmailed the government of Israel into
submitting its defense forces to the toxic oversight of the United
Nations. Today U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon created, with
Israel’s approval, a UN investigation of last June’s flotilla incident
in which Turkish-backed extremists sought to shatter Israel’s lawful
naval blockade of Hamas-run Gaza.
Despite the fact that Israel has already launched an inquiry with
international participants, the Obama administration insists that the
Israel Defense Forces, and the Israeli legal and political
establishment governing their actions, must be subject to UN
supervision. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice welcomed Ban’s
announcement.
Obama’s move is a far cry from claims of a recent rapprochement with
Israel. Instead of pressuring Israel in front of the cameras, the
administration is now using the U.N. as its foil. The sword of
Damocles that hung over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s head was withdrawal
of American veto protection in the Security Council, a United States
sitting on the sidelines in the General Assembly and the other U.N.
bodies where new forms of anti-Israel censure are always percolating,
and a firm U.S. no to any Israeli military effort to stop an Iranian
nuclear weapon.
Even Ban Ki-moon today called the development “unprecedented”. The
U.N. team will be second-guessing the actions taken in self-defense by
a democratic state, governed by the rule of law and at war with a
terrorist entity committed to its destruction -- on account of an
undisputed figure of nine deaths. In the course of war, hundreds of
civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq have been killed by American and
coalition forces, while undemocratic regimes regularly and
deliberately murder thousands, without a peep from the U.N.
If the president tried the same stunt in America, ordering U.S.
generals to report to Ban Ki-moon and company and to seek their seal
of approval, the uproar would be deafening. But this president has
evidently embraced the defining attribute of the U.N. approach to
Israel -- double-standards.
Obama’s support for the U.N. investigation is part of a major
realignment of U.S. foreign policy to synchronize it with an
organization dominated by Islamic interests. Within 24 hours of the
flotilla incident, the U.S. agreed to a hasty Security Council
presidential statement on May 31 that called for "a prompt, impartial,
credible and transparent investigation conforming to international
standards." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other State
Department officials let it be known that “credible” to this
administration meant credible in the eyes of the U.N. In the Israeli
case, the United States is prepared to make the requisites of
self-defense subservient to the U.N. mob.
In today’s U.N. announcement, Ban Ki-moon named former New Zealand
Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer to head his inquiry. Palmer is closely
associated with one of the U.N.’s top officials, Helen Clark, who is
currently chief of the U.N. Development Program and chair of the U.N.
Development Group. Clark was Palmer’s deputy during his time in office
and, after becoming prime minister herself, named him to a number of
important posts. U.N. officials clearly believe that Palmer shares, or
will be influenced by, the biases of those who appointed him. In the
midst of the Gaza war in January 2009, Clark blamed Israel for the
conflict saying the impact of Hamas rocket attacks “has been but a
tiny fraction of that of the Israeli strikes on Gaza.” In August 2006
during the Lebanon war, Clark said she found it “hard to believe” that
the accidental Israeli bombing of a U.N. observation post in Lebanon
was anything but deliberate.
Today’s announcement does nothing to stop the concurrent U.N. Human
Rights Council’s investigation of exactly the same flotilla incident.
In June the Council launched an allegedly “independent international
fact-finding mission” with a mandate to report on what it had already
decided was Israel’s “outrageous attack.” Rice disingenuously claimed
today that “The United States expects that the Panel[‘s]…work will be
the primary method for the international community to review the
incident, obviating the need for any overlapping international
inquiries.”
The secretary-general’s announcement says nothing of the kind and she
knows full well that the secretary has no power to stop the Council
from proceeding, since it is run by states and not the bureaucracy.
Rice also said that the secretary general’s inquiry “will receive and
review the reports” of Israeli and Turkish national investigations.
For all intents and purposes, therefore, the Israeli investigation has
been rendered irrelevant. The international figures who took risks by
agreeing to participate on the Israeli inquiry could hardly be blamed
for believing they have been double-crossed.
The details of the Ban investigation, including its mandate, have yet
to be ironed out. But Ban’s announcement sets a mid-September deadline
for an interim report, obviously intending to minimize any further
Israeli negotiating room. Regardless of whatever piece of paper
materializes, in practice Israel will not be able to retain control
over the scope of the inquiry, or who might be forced to testify, or
what information will need to be submitted to satisfy the U.N.
There will be four members of the inquiry including a Turkish and
Israeli representative. Should the Turkish member or any of the others
at any time believe that they want something that Israel has not
provided, or that their mandate is insufficient, all they need to do
is to threaten to go public. At that point, either the inquiry will be
diminished in U.N. eyes, giving further impetus to actions by the
Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, or Israel will
immediately come under further U.S. pressure to make even more
concessions.
Netanyahu apparently believes that falling on the sword erected by the
Obama administration and his U.N. cohorts will buy him American
goodwill. But this legal and political battle over what counts as
legitimate self-defense needs to be fought like any other real war --
to win. Removing the fundamentals of self-defense from Israeli hands
is at odds with the very raison d’etre of the Jewish state. This was
one demand of a hostile American administration too many.
For more United Nations coverage see http://www.eyeontheun.org/
info@EYEontheUN.org
President Obama Blackmails Israel at the UN
This article by Anne Bayefsky appears today on FOXNews.com.
President Obama has now blackmailed the government of Israel into
submitting its defense forces to the toxic oversight of the United
Nations. Today U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon created, with
Israel’s approval, a UN investigation of last June’s flotilla incident
in which Turkish-backed extremists sought to shatter Israel’s lawful
naval blockade of Hamas-run Gaza.
Despite the fact that Israel has already launched an inquiry with
international participants, the Obama administration insists that the
Israel Defense Forces, and the Israeli legal and political
establishment governing their actions, must be subject to UN
supervision. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice welcomed Ban’s
announcement.
Obama’s move is a far cry from claims of a recent rapprochement with
Israel. Instead of pressuring Israel in front of the cameras, the
administration is now using the U.N. as its foil. The sword of
Damocles that hung over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s head was withdrawal
of American veto protection in the Security Council, a United States
sitting on the sidelines in the General Assembly and the other U.N.
bodies where new forms of anti-Israel censure are always percolating,
and a firm U.S. no to any Israeli military effort to stop an Iranian
nuclear weapon.
Even Ban Ki-moon today called the development “unprecedented”. The
U.N. team will be second-guessing the actions taken in self-defense by
a democratic state, governed by the rule of law and at war with a
terrorist entity committed to its destruction -- on account of an
undisputed figure of nine deaths. In the course of war, hundreds of
civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq have been killed by American and
coalition forces, while undemocratic regimes regularly and
deliberately murder thousands, without a peep from the U.N.
If the president tried the same stunt in America, ordering U.S.
generals to report to Ban Ki-moon and company and to seek their seal
of approval, the uproar would be deafening. But this president has
evidently embraced the defining attribute of the U.N. approach to
Israel -- double-standards.
Obama’s support for the U.N. investigation is part of a major
realignment of U.S. foreign policy to synchronize it with an
organization dominated by Islamic interests. Within 24 hours of the
flotilla incident, the U.S. agreed to a hasty Security Council
presidential statement on May 31 that called for "a prompt, impartial,
credible and transparent investigation conforming to international
standards." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other State
Department officials let it be known that “credible” to this
administration meant credible in the eyes of the U.N. In the Israeli
case, the United States is prepared to make the requisites of
self-defense subservient to the U.N. mob.
In today’s U.N. announcement, Ban Ki-moon named former New Zealand
Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer to head his inquiry. Palmer is closely
associated with one of the U.N.’s top officials, Helen Clark, who is
currently chief of the U.N. Development Program and chair of the U.N.
Development Group. Clark was Palmer’s deputy during his time in office
and, after becoming prime minister herself, named him to a number of
important posts. U.N. officials clearly believe that Palmer shares, or
will be influenced by, the biases of those who appointed him. In the
midst of the Gaza war in January 2009, Clark blamed Israel for the
conflict saying the impact of Hamas rocket attacks “has been but a
tiny fraction of that of the Israeli strikes on Gaza.” In August 2006
during the Lebanon war, Clark said she found it “hard to believe” that
the accidental Israeli bombing of a U.N. observation post in Lebanon
was anything but deliberate.
Today’s announcement does nothing to stop the concurrent U.N. Human
Rights Council’s investigation of exactly the same flotilla incident.
In June the Council launched an allegedly “independent international
fact-finding mission” with a mandate to report on what it had already
decided was Israel’s “outrageous attack.” Rice disingenuously claimed
today that “The United States expects that the Panel[‘s]…work will be
the primary method for the international community to review the
incident, obviating the need for any overlapping international
inquiries.”
The secretary-general’s announcement says nothing of the kind and she
knows full well that the secretary has no power to stop the Council
from proceeding, since it is run by states and not the bureaucracy.
Rice also said that the secretary general’s inquiry “will receive and
review the reports” of Israeli and Turkish national investigations.
For all intents and purposes, therefore, the Israeli investigation has
been rendered irrelevant. The international figures who took risks by
agreeing to participate on the Israeli inquiry could hardly be blamed
for believing they have been double-crossed.
The details of the Ban investigation, including its mandate, have yet
to be ironed out. But Ban’s announcement sets a mid-September deadline
for an interim report, obviously intending to minimize any further
Israeli negotiating room. Regardless of whatever piece of paper
materializes, in practice Israel will not be able to retain control
over the scope of the inquiry, or who might be forced to testify, or
what information will need to be submitted to satisfy the U.N.
There will be four members of the inquiry including a Turkish and
Israeli representative. Should the Turkish member or any of the others
at any time believe that they want something that Israel has not
provided, or that their mandate is insufficient, all they need to do
is to threaten to go public. At that point, either the inquiry will be
diminished in U.N. eyes, giving further impetus to actions by the
Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, or Israel will
immediately come under further U.S. pressure to make even more
concessions.
Netanyahu apparently believes that falling on the sword erected by the
Obama administration and his U.N. cohorts will buy him American
goodwill. But this legal and political battle over what counts as
legitimate self-defense needs to be fought like any other real war --
to win. Removing the fundamentals of self-defense from Israeli hands
is at odds with the very raison d’etre of the Jewish state. This was
one demand of a hostile American administration too many.
For more United Nations coverage see http://www.eyeontheun.org/
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