On the 31st August 2001, the BBC reported -
Opening the summit, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the fact that Jewish people had been victims of anti-Semitism and the "ultimate abomination" - the Holocaust - could not be used to justify present behaviour.
"We cannot expect Palestinians to accept this as a reason why the wrongs done to them - displacement, occupation, blockade, and now extra-judicial killings - should be ignored, whatever label one uses to describe them," he said.
Annan's remarks come after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution condemning Israeli reactions to the Palestinian violence, rather than condemning the Palestinian violence itself. It comes after UN soldiers accepted bribes to allow a Hizbullah abduction, on Israeli soil, of 3 Israeli soldiers to take place. It is only months after a video tape, the existence of which the UN denied for almost a year, of UN personnel and Hizbullah terrorists freely interacting after the kidnapping. When asked by Israel to view the unedited footage in an effort to locate the still missing servicemen, the UN reply was: "we can't show favoritism to either side". When asked to provide the results of the UN's DNA analysis of the blood present from the abduction, to allow the families of the victims to understand what shape their loved ones where taken into captivity - "No".
Annan failed to mention the Palestinian violations of their own signed agreements, in particular the release at the beginning of the Intifada of the Islamic terrorists, and their failure to rearrest them. This subject has come up in all the signed cease fire agreements since the start of the violence. For example:
After the Sbarro Pizzeria suicide bombing in August 2001, which murdered 15 and injured 120, the PA under the command of Toufik Tirawi apprehended Hussein Omar Abu Nafr. Islamic Jihad acknowledged he was planning to perpetrate another attack in Jerusalem. That weekend two people were arrested from the the list of 100 wanted terrorists that Israel had submitted to the PA. Within 24 hours, Abu Nafr was again a free man. This is known as the PA's spinning-door policy (previously known as the pre-Intifada revolving-door policy, when the incarceration period was measured in months).
Annan failed to mention the violence driven by the Palestinians, instead he choose to condemn the legitimate Israeli right to self-defense: military actions to use lethal force against the planners and perpetrators of suicide attacks, which continued throught the conference. Apparently the Israel public should just absorb the blows. No other country in the world is called upon to surrender their right to self-defense. Israeli responses in the conflict are regularly used to legitimise the original violence they were responses to: a breakdown of the logic and timing of cause and effect.
Annan is lending the UN's moral legitimacy to an authority that uses terrorism as a negotiating and foreign policy tool. The racism conference has failed to condemn or even mention the rampant anti-Semitism in the Arab press. The occupation is mentioned (even though 97% of Palestinians live under full PA civil and military control), but not the Arab initiated war that immediately preceded it. The Palestinian displacement (largely voluntary) is mentioned, but not the reciprocal Jewish one from Arab lands. And of course, Israel's untiring efforts to negotiate a viable compromise solution to these problems is not heard. This is hipocracy, moral topsy-turvy: the victim made out to be the aggressor. A complete surrender to Palestinian propaganda.
Here is the first draft prepared in Durban by the nearly 4000 non government organization's present. The concepts "racism", "human rights", "equality before law" have been hijacked, for use as quite sophisticated weapons against the Jewish people. This is ironic given their development under Jewish culture. And again, by not rejecting such attempts vocally, out of hand, the world has largely gone along for the ride...
The resolutions are divided into a declarative section and a section called a "plan of action." In the declarative section, Israel is referred to as a "racist, apartheid state" that is "colonial" and commits "racist crimes." The document also excoriates Israel for "inhumanity in denying food and water to the Palestinians," the "victimization of women and children," and "the discrimination of Palestinians in Israel."
The declarative section is "milder" than the section that deals with a plan of action.
For example:
- Article 160 calls for the enforcement of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which includes measures to be employed against apartheid, a "protection force," and the dismantling of "Jewish Israeli colonies."
- Article 161 calls for the right of return of all Palestinians.
- Article 162 calls for the reinstitution of UN Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism, the repeal of Israel's Law of Return granting citizenship to all Jewish immigrants, and the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to "try Israeli racists."
- Article 163 calls for the UN to prepare educational packets for schools and universities on the "Israeli racist apartheid system."
- Article 164 calls for the establishment of UN special committee on Israeli apartheid.
- Article 165 calls for UN programs and institutions to "combat the racist media distortion, stereotyping, and propaganda that demonizes and dehumanizes Palestinians as being violent terrorists."
- Article 166 calls for the launch of an international "anti-Israeli-apartheid" movement.
- Article 167 calls on the international community to impose a policy of "complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state, as was done in the case of South Africa... sanctions, embargoes, the full cessation of all links (diplomatic, economic, social, and military cooperation and training) between all states and Israel."
- Article 168 calls for "the condemnation of those states supporting, aiding, and abetting the Israeli apartheid state, and its perpetration of racist crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing, and acts of genocide."
Source: Jerusalem Post 3rd September 2001.
Postscript: After these events Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2001, for outstanding service contributing to world peace.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" -- Sir Edmund Burke.