WHERE IS THE SHAME? WHERE IS THE COMMENT?
By Joseph J. Honick
Without a blink, blush or the most modest sense of shame, the U.N.General Assembly has named seven nations with horrible human rights records to the Human Rights Council.
Missing also is any modest comment from the U.S. as countries like Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Uganda, Thailand, Mauritania and Qatarare named to this important body.
While human rights organizations around the world have voiced their challenges and criticism, such commentary has bounced off the virtually impenetrable sense of decency in this organization formed to protect the innocent.
This is the same organization that can manifest a long list of nasty resolutions against Israel but can find a fit for murderous states on the Human Rights Council.
The other seven nations named to the Council are Maldives, Ecuador,Guatemala, Spain, Switzerland, Moldova and Poland.In naming Libya, despite its shameless record over just the Pan Am disaster and the admitted involvement of the nation’s dictator, the U.N. also overlooked Gadaffi’s most recent “Little Green Book” which denounces representative government as worse than useless. I found a copy of this piece of expensively prepared piece of”literature” recently in the Library of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where I am a longtime member. In a curious twist, I am proud to see free speech even of this sort finding its way to such place.
The real points are how and why such nations can be accorded such standing and dignity so incongruously without much of anything coming from the United States, if only from a diplomat on station at the U.N.As the late and great Adalai Stevenson once intoned: “Where is the outrage?” in dealing with another piece of hypocrisy many years ago. It is not necessary to recite the human rights records of the seven nations mentioned here. The wonderful world of Google can supply the details. What remains, however, is the rapid fire ability of this body to create expensive investigations, resolutions and heavy media assaults should Israel commit an offense that may or may not have been justified.And this U.N. record of hypocrisy has a long life of evidence and events from the date of Israel’s admission and independence that brought massive assaults by U.N. members who claim they supported peaceful settlement of disputes. It has extended through a history of one-sided reviews of atrocities, some of even recent vintage and with only the most modest commentary from the United States administration.So now, as these seven nations of humanitarian ill repute are accorded the dignity of these new appointments, the U.S. President prepares new pressures on Israel to climb on board the unenforceable and fuzzy nuclear reduction agreement, forced to this position by nations like Saudi Arabia and its consortium of allies who have feasted on American lives and financial commitment in their defense without offering the slightest compensation of any kind.adly or worse, the United Nations has become little more than anti-U.S. and anti Israel operation with a massive budget for propaganda, with little commentary to the contrary from the White House.
Having worked hard for the election of President Obama, whose candidacy was in stark and hopeful contrast to the likes of Sara Palin and the unfortunate nice guy John McCain, disappointment begins to emerge along with confusion and the worry about how and what other swill make of these decisions. Indeed: Where is the shame? Where is the outrage?
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Joseph J. Honick is an international consultant to business and government and writes for many publications.. Honick can be reached at joehonick@gmail.com.
