UNHRC should be re-named UN Israel-bashing Conference.  Will it make any difference that Nigeria is the current president?  How many children in Darfur died yesterday?  Zimbabwe?  Congo?

How many members of UNHRC read Finkelstein today in the London Times?

"...So when Israel is urged to respect world opinion and put its faith in the international community the point is rather being missed. The very idea of Israel is a rejection of this option. Israel only exists because Jews do not feel safe as the wards of world opinion. Zionism, that word that is so abused, so reviled, is founded on a determination that, at the end of the day, somehow the Jews will defend themselves and their fellow Jews from destruction. If world opinion was enough, there would be no Israel.

The poverty and the death and the despair among the Palestinians in Gaza moves me to tears. How can it not? Who can see pictures of children in a war zone or a slum street and not be angry and bewildered and driven to protest? And what is so appalling is that it is so unnecessary. For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.

Yet they will not say it. And they will not mean it. For they do not want the Jews. Again and again - again and again - the Palestinians have been offered a nation state in a divided Palestine. And again and again they have turned the offer down, for it has always been more important to drive out the Jews than to have a Palestinian state. It is difficult sometimes to avoid the feeling that Hamas and Hezbollah don't want to kill Jews because they hate Israel. They hate Israel because they want to kill Jews.

There cannot be peace until this changes. For Israel will not rely on airy guarantees and international gestures to defend it. At its very core, it will not. It will lay down its arms when the Jews are safe, but it will not do it until they are.

...But you know what? As Iran gets a nuclear weapon and so the potential for another Holocaust against the Jews and world opinion does nothing, I am not so sure that the errors of world opinion are so much to be preferred to the errors of Israel. "

www.timesonline.co.uk/.../article5461544.ece

I give up, Mr. Peretz. Wait, is the answer "Israeli atrocities"?

Marty, I'd be curious on your take of Andrew Sullivan's...ambivalent writings about Israel and Gaza.  

"How the U.N. Perpetuates the 'Refugee' Problem "

"Nowhere on earth do terrorists get so much help from the Free World."

By NATAN SHARANSKY

online.wsj.com/.../SB123120586642556073.html

Lymon: Interesting query. Andrew is clearly squeamish about Operation Cast Lead. I am horrified by the civilian casualties but Israel launched this war in its own defense and the theocrats of Hamastan are complicit in those casualties.

How many rogue states in the UN?  How many of these hypocrites concerned  with human rights chose to address these issues at the UN when  Grozny was being pounded back to the stone-age, or when news came out of the  mass murder by African Nazis in the Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Uganda, Darfur and ad-obscene-infinitum.

The UN is a disgrace and their "human rights" sanctions human rights violations except when committed by the Jewish State.

The only country they are concerned about is Israel:

"Human Rights Nightmare at the UN"

www.unwatch.org/.../content2.asp

Jacksondyer: You are dead on in your assessment of the UN. Your post caused me to recall a MacNelly cartoon of some 30-odd years ago in which he depicted the two-bit representatives of Third World autocratic states at the UN, including the diplomat from Bangthedish. As I recall, some of the representatives wore beanie hats, replete with little rotors on top. Not much has changed, has it jackson?

Yes, LR. since then the UN has gotten even more hypocritical about human rights.

Marty,

first, and sorry to have to employ this... LOL!

second, my dad sent me this link to a wonderful arguement at timesonline.co.uk: www.timesonline.co.uk/.../article5461544.ece

The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.

Contrast with this: Samira Shakoura, 40, lives in the neighborhood. She was defiant about the presence of Hamas. “Listen, I will always open my house to protect the fighters,” she said. “We have to be patient. We are dead anyway like this. And when Hamas runs in the elections, I’ll vote for them; they have Islam.”

From their homes the fighters engage in street fighting, and then the world is aghast when Israel fires back. I am sorry about what happened at the school but in war terrible things happen. I was in China when the US accidently bombed the Chinese embassy in Serbia. The Chinese ranted and raved about it and were convinced it was intentional, that somehow America could not make such a mistake, well we certainly did but it would probably have been far more prudent if the Chinese sent their diplomats home. If Hamas uses civlians as shield, they are the ones responsible for the civilian deaths.

As to the UN, does anybody really care? I have long tuned that song out.

dylanposer, I have heard and read so much about the Holocaust that I am seldom moved anymore by what I read.

The article in The Times to which you linked offered me one of those seldom moments.

It was an accurate and moving summary of the situation finds themselves today 63 years after the Holocaust.

Thank you for posting it here.

Blackton -- they need only say they want peace, and mean it? After 60 years, why would Israel believe them? What would make it possible to believe them?

LISAH, stopping the rockets would be a good start. I don't give a damn about the Palestinians and I would be content with them having an independent state. But they should stopp shooting. Otherwise, I am content with bombing them when they shoot at Israel.

The only problem I have with the Israeli government is that it doesn't try hard enough to assassinate the Hamas guys. Every single one of them. I don't want Mahmoud Zahar or Khaled Mashaal arrested. I want them dead. I want them sent where Yassin and Rantissi went.

Bob Dylan's answer to the UN "human Rights" so called council:

"Neighborhood Bully"

www.youtube.com/watch

LISAH, I was quoting Finklestein hoping to point out the vast difference in language the Jews and the Palestinians use. Can you, for a moment imagine a single Palestininian say this: The Israelis need only say that they will allow Palestine to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.

Israel has been trying to give the Palestinians a state for how long now?

Sleepy, I hate to say it but I agree with you. Hamas wants to be treated like a government, treat it as one and when you are at war with another country you try to take out its leadership.

I don't know if anyone has seen the NY opinion pieces from kristof and Roger Cohen and the wonderful piece from our most successful president, after Bush II, Jimmy Carter in the WP. So much hand ringing, so much pious nauseating sophomoric dribble. As my mother would see about herself but suitable to Israel - "Pardon me for living" Like Amos Oz said the world wants Israel to be the only Christian nation in the world.

Blackton...yes; I think we're both making the same point....and Sleepyavl, I don't disagree with on what to do with Hamas or any terror hotshots, but what's going to stop the rockets?  

To whoever posted the link to the Finkelstein piece, thank you - that was quite moving.

LISAH, you need to understand something - there is nothing in this world, or any other, that will stop Hamas (or Hezbollah, or Al Quaeda, etc.) from bombing, especially Israel.  They want Israel "pushed into the sea," as they've said on numerous occasions, and will not stop until they reach that goal.  That is why Arafat did not accept Barak's ludicrous offer back in Camp David, and that is why, several years after Israel unilaterally left Gaza, the rockets still fly.

Think about it - Israel gave Gaza what it wanted - a land of their own with a border (even if it is not officially recognized as a state.)  Now, if someone shoots a weapon over the border of a country, is that not considered an act of aggression?  And when the weapon is a rocket that has the power to maim/kill/destroy, is that not an act of war?  Operation Cast Lead is an act of self-defense that has been too long in coming.  I can only hope that Israel will be able to handle a war on two fronts, now that Hezbollah has gotten into the act.

And as for the UN - I think NYC needs some more new condos.  Perhaps Trump should take over the building.  It would certainly be put to better use.  Honestly, if a more blind and corrupt organization exists in this world, please tell me what it is.  I'd love to know.

UUUMMM, slitman --  it was a rhetorical question...and we here in NY have had more than enough of Donald TrAmp --please don't wish more on us....

Hey, I'm a New Yorker, so I'm with you on that!

I know it was rhetorical.  But - and this is not AT ALL directed at you - I am tired of the rhetoric.  Just in general.  It doesn't get anyone anywhere, and while everyone here seems to be pretty intelligent and see things for what they are, most of the media does not, and it's quite frustrating, in particular given how dire the situation really is at this point.  But I digress.

Happy Thursday, everyone . . .

echo...echo...echo...

(news.bbc.co.uk/.../7818577.stm)

(news.bbc.co.uk/.../7817926.stm)

Blackton, where do you get the idea that Israel has been trying to force a state upon the Palestinians? That's such a ridiculous and perverse understanding of history that I doubt if I could even muster the will to argue with you over it but it is a sign of the...of the...of the...

Talk about chutzpah! Khartoum demonstrating on behalf of human rights in Gaza. These are the folks who torch villages in Darfur and enslave those they don't kill.

From today's Jerusalem Post:

www.jpost.com/.../Satellite

"Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched peacefully through Khartoum on Thursday denouncing Israel's invasion of Gaza and the international community for alleged "complicity with the Zionist regime."

The miles-long march started with fiery speeches and chanting of Islamic slogans in support of Gaza's Hamas rulers.

When a speaker said the name of the US president, the crowd waved their shoes - a gesture evoking an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George W. Bush during a recent Baghdad visit.

The protesters also denounced Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak as a "hireling and cowardly" and <b>handed in a protest note at the UN offices</b>. Some carried green metal models of Kassam rockets."