Anne Bayefsky's Response to the UN Special Session
The U.N. gets a p.r. boost.
source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Widening the lens, we notice that last month the U.N. adopted 22 resolutions condemning the state of Israel, and four country-specific resolutions criticizing the human-rights records of the other 190 U.N. member states.And more...
On exactly the same day that the secretary-general announced the holding of the commemorative session, January 11, 2005, he also pushed forward the U.N. plan to create a register of the Palestinian victims of Israel's non-violent security fence. (There are no plans to create a register of Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism.)Victims of the fence!? Monty Python would have a field day. Over 97% of its length, the fence is chain link and looks something like this:
source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- sheikh X at 9:23 AM
5 Comments:
Hi Harry,
My wife says that its not whether the fence is made of chain links or not that is the critical issue. Its the way in which the erection of the fence was implemented. Eg The destruction of olive trees that were the paranasah for their owners. The fence itself is not any way a bad idea; but that its implementation was not done in a moral way.
The implementation of the fence wasn't done in an *ideal* way. At the time it was started, Arafat was still ordering regular suicide bombings against Israelis. When you build barracades under fire, things may not be perfect, that is a long way from being immoral.
Its a shame to cut down olive trees that provide support for their owners. Its a greater shame to watch husbands and wives being killed.
If the UN wants a registry of 'victims' - surely Israeli deaths are more heinous that Palestinians who lost jobs/trees/fields.
No argument that there may have been a very good reason to erect the fence in a hasty way. And I have no argument that the fence serves a good cause. But it did have unfortunate consequences and victims which should not be ignored.
I do not like the way that the U.N. is often used as a weapon to attack Israel. The way it has been used is quite often so unfairly biased in its criticism of Israel that it is definitely anti-semitic. But nevertheless that does not mean that because the U.N. is hiding the atrocitities of the Arab world, we should not also look at our own actions.
Yes, using criticism as a scalpel to understand our own actions and motivations better is desirable. In this case now that Arafat is six feet under, and security cooperation with Abbas looks promising (did you see that Sharon is likely to hand over WB cities to PA forces!) it might be time to reconsider a lot of things. The unilateral pullout from Gaza is a good idea, but also was conceived when Arafat was at the helm and negotiations were frustrated.
Ilan - you should read the piece 'Judt and Juditism' linked in one of the first entries here. He does the self-analysis through criticism thing immaculately.
I found your post about Judt with the link. Its quite a long article; so I will print it out and read it this evening with a whiskey.
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