In the unending blizzard of anti-Israeli hypocrisy that characterizes proceedings in the United Nations, the latest blood libelous farce of the United Nations Human Rights Council has been under-recognized and largely ignored. To reduce the ignominy of having elected Muamar Qadaffi's Libya chair of the UN Human Rights Commission ten years ago, the United Nations created the Human Rights Council, in which all 193 member-states are frog-marched through a human rights hearing called the Universal Periodic Review. The friends of the Queen-for-a-day state appear, mewing and nodding, and commend them on their performance; unctuous exhortations to make a good record even better are uttered. Thus when Syria appeared, in October 2011, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, (genocidal) Sudan, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zambia, Algeria, Lebanon, China, Zimbabwe, and pre-reform Myanmar, flocked forth to praise the (quoting Hillary Clinton) "reformer" Bashir Assad and his benign government, already immersed in a bloodbath of its own making. Four days later, in accord with the script of these imbecilic mockeries, Mexico reported on behalf of a tri-power recording secretariat, that 179 recommendations had been made to Syria, and "I have the pleasure of telling you that 98 have been accepted and 26 will be considered." Among those that did not make the cut with the Syrian co-operators were tentative suggestions that it would be in order to "bring attacks on peaceful protesters to an immediate end...to end secret and indefinite-term detention of suspects...and allow journalists freedom of expression." Mexico, on behalf of a grateful world, thanked Syria for its co-operation. The final session on Syria, in March 2012, confirmed the previous resolutions and the bonhomous reception of Syria's compliance, though by that time the number of people who had died in the Syrian national melee had quadrupled to about 11,000. Since this fine send-off from its UPR, the total number of dead in the debacle of human rights-compliant Syria has more than quintupled, to about 60,000.
If they were not such whitewashes, they would be reminiscent of the 1960s "self-criticism" sessions on American campuses, when the professorial sympathizers with the unruly students who shut down and even burned down campuses, submitted and admitted their failings, like the victims of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in their dunce-caps. Syria, and similar lawless states, made no confession and was congratulated for going through this unspeakable charade, whose chief function is the harassment and defamation of countries that do pay attention to human rights, Israel in particular. Beseeched by the United States to undergo this burlesque, Israel was scheduled to appear on January 29 of this year. Israel commendably declined to appear and dignify this outrage. Forty per cent of all United Nations resolutions are condemnations of Israel. There is a standard pro forma resolution demanding the "return" to the "Zionist entity" (created by the United Nations itself -- not just recognized by it -- as a Jewish state in 1948), of five million alleged displaced Palestinians. The number is unverifiable, and once in hand it would undoubtedly swell to seven or ten million, whatever was necessary to assure the expulsion or subjugation of the Jews in what the United Nations, with the unanimous concurrence of the permanent Security Council members created as a homeland of the Jews, just three years after the liberation of the death camps in which half the world's Jewish population, six million souls (and an equal number of non-Jews) had been liquidated.
The human rights activities of the United Nations are designed and intended to support and uphold the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, largely written by Eleanor Roosevelt, in which activity, as the (Australian) session chairman said at the time, she achieved the remarkable feat of "adding lustre to the great name that is hers by right of birth and of marriage." (She was Theodore Roosevelt's niece and god-daughter as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt's wife.) The Universal Declaration, inter alia, requires equal respect for all nations, great and small. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the region accepts the fact of the founding of Israel as a Jewish state, as the United Nations explicitly created it. And there will be no movement from the game of piling blood libels on Israel and the Jews by the majority of the world's failed countries until the world's successful countries cease to be pawns in this shameful and hypocritical ostracization, and they end the effort, begun by the British in the Balfour Declaration in 1917, of selling the same real estate to two different parties. There was never any solution except to divide the twice-promised territory in two. The Great Powers, through the United Nations, created the Jewish State; Israel has been the success story of the region. For the United Nations and its leading members to have any moral credibility, this contemptible farce must end; Israel must be affirmed, and the Palestinians must have a viable state of their own and the right to return to it. The West must learn from the Canadians and the Czechs and retrieve its courage. And the Iranians, North Koreans, Zimbabwe, and other outlaw states must be denied their over-used ability to distract the world with this red herring of racist malice.