Speaking Truth To Impotence

Got this exchange from American Future (it's not long so I'm putting the whole thing up):

Established in 1993, UN Watch is a Geneva-based NGO whose mandate is to monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its Charter. Its board of directors includes Alfred H. Moses (former US Ambassador to Romania and Presidential Emissary for the Cyprus Conflict), Per Ahlmark (former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden), Professor Irwin Cotler (former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Canada), David Harris (American Jewish Committee Executive Director), Max Jakobson (former Permanent Representative of Finland to the UN in New York), and Ruth Wedgwood (professor of international law and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University). Until her recent death, Jeane Kirkpatrick (former US Permanent Representative to the UN) was on the board.

On March 23, Hillel Neuer, the organization's Executive Director, delivered the following speech to the UN Human Rights Council:

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?
In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman's words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.

So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights—Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard—they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh's troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the dictators who run this Council couldn't care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders' dream? With terrible lies, it is being turned into a nightmare.

This is how Mexico's Luis Alfonso de Alba, the Human Rights Council's President, reacted:

For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you'd kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I'm not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council. The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. In the memory of the persons that you referred to, founders of the Human Rights Commission, and for the good of human rights, I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language. Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records [emphasis added].

Positively Stalinesque, but hardly a surprise.

For more you can go here.

Sometimes it's all I can do to shake my head and wonder, "How did we get here?"