If more proof was needed (some of us think it isn’t) that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu lives in a fantasy world that exists only in his own deluded mind, his latest verbal assault on the UN Human Rights Council for its decision to appoint and despatch an independent international fact-finding mission “to investigate the implications of the (illegal) Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” is it.
The Council, Netanyahu said in his fury, has “an automatic majority against Israel”, is “hypocritical” and “out of touch with reality“. He added that “It should be ashamed of itself.”
There is, in fact, some substance to the charge that the UN Human Rights Council is hypocritical. There are many abuses of human rights in many countries which it does not investigate because the African, Asian and Latin American majority on the 47-member Council say “No”. So there is most certainly a case for saying that this particular UN body is hypocritical, even out of touch with some realities and, in that context, appears to be obsessed with Israel-Palestine.
But does that mean the decision of the UN Human Rights Council to set up an independent investigation of the implications of Israel’s on-going colonization of the West Bank including East Jerusalem should be treated with contempt and not taken seriously?
Netanyahu claims that it does.
In my opinion that Netanyahu claim deserves the judgement delivered about a different matter in a recent article by economist Paul Krugman for the New York Times. He was commenting on the claim by the Republican leadership in general and frontrunner Mitt Romney in particular that the high and rising price of gasoline in America is “thanks to an Obama administration plot.” Krugman wrote:
“This claim isn’t just nuts; it’s a sort of craziness triple play – a lie wrapped in an absurdity swaddled in paranoia.”
Netanyahu’s purpose was, of course, to encourage other powers led by America to use their influence to kill the UN Human Rights Council’s initiative before it takes on real life. And the early signs are in his favour. The U.S. ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Betty King, said the Council’s decision “harmed efforts to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.”
That has to be a joke given that there is no prospect of re-starting real and serious negotiations as long as Israel continues to consolidate its occupation of the West Bank, and as long as Netanyahu’s position is, in effect, that negotiations must end with the Palestinians surrendering on Israel’s terms.
I think it’s reasonable to imagine that when Ambassador King made her statement, she was aware that the Obama administration would be required by the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress to bully and intimidate the Human Rights Council into aborting its investigation.
While Netanyahu waits to see if the Obama administration will do his dirty work on this occasion, his government has cut all contact with the UN Human Rights Council and announced that it will prevent the Council’s team of independent investigators entering Israel or the occupied West Bank from Jordan.
Whichever way you look at it, the signs are that this particular mission of the UN Human Rights Council will be more than D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival). It will most likely be D.B.A (Dead Before Arrival)
In that event one of the questions in my mind will be this.
Will any mainstream Western media institution have the balls to offend Zionism by giving space or airtime to voices expressing outrage at Israel’s continuing immunity from what honest investigation would describe as crimes against humanity?
Contrary to what Netanyahu seems to think, the Palestinians are human and do have rights. And they, not Jews, are the victims in the true story of the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. (As I have written previously, Israeli and many other Jews need to feel they are the victims because victimhood is, it seems, what gives them meaning).
As for the answer to my headline question… Nobody is more out of touch with reality on the ground in the occupied West Bank than Netanyahu.
Footnote
Of the 47 rotating member states of the UN Human Rights Council, 36 voted in favour of the decision to investigate Israel’s illegal settlement activities and 10, including the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Costa Rica, Italy and Spain abstained. The United States was the only country to vote against it. (As golfers say, par for the course).
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It's not just Bibi - in fact, a 2010 study conducted by Professor Daniel Bar-Tal (Tel Aviv University) found that an average Israeli prefer to live in ‘self-denial’ as he/she is not interested to know the facts about the Israel-Palestine conflict. They’re brainwashed with Zionist narrative of the conflict and hatred toward Arabs and Muslims from an early age.....
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/study-israelis-prefer-to-live-in-self-denial/
One would think that the UN Human Rights Council would be well versed on the situation in Palestine and had come to damning conclusions against zion long ago. Isn't it stating the obvious, to say that Apartheid israel; by ethnic cleansing and building on Palestine, has broken international law; and isn't it once more stating the obvious, to have expected charges to have been brought against erzats israel, not last week but six decades ago?
Regarding your question Alan; yes Netinyahoo is out of touch (with sanity). But no more so than those zionists who though pious contemplation and religious sanctity, felt compelled to live a deeper more spiritual life by moving to the "holy land;" where upon landing, they committed genocide against the native people.
The US is in the pocket of Israel and its offensive Zionism. Zionism is a loathesome devilish racism like Nazism. If it is an acdeptable doctrine, then Jews were aliens in Germany after all and Hitler was justified in isolating them. If Zionism is an acceptable state doctrine, then Nazism is also: Germany for the Germans, Israel for the Jews, etc. The doctrines and some of the legal foundations are very similar. And Palestinians are relagated to reservations, walled off from Israel, like the ghettos.
Israel is delusional and Netanyahooyahoo is a liar and cheat, just like you-know-who. And like the crimes of Germany, the crimes of Israel will not be forgiven or forgotten. And neither will America for supporting these crimes.
The US is the biggest abuser of the human rights of the Palestinians by repeatedly blocking any move to condemn
Israeli atrocities in Palestine.To mention a few of the
instances, Israel prevented the UN from investigating the
Jenin Camp massacre by the Israeli army in 2002; it also
prevented Dr Richard Falk from investigating its crimes in
Gaza in 2008-09. He was humiliated by being searched and locked
in a filthy room for hours, interrogated and deported. This is
how much Israel cares about human rights and the UN and its
missions, so long as it is shielded by the only country that
has matched Israel in abusing human rights during the last five decades or so.Try the US before Israel can be tried.The UN has been made so impotent as to be able to indict only lone human right breakers in Africa and Asia-albeit on flimsy lies in some instances.If the UN or any of its agencies is to have any meaningful role, the big dinausor has to be made to be accountable.
Indeed true what everyone says. But don't be so naive as to think that Netanyahu is "deluded." He knows what he's doing. Israel has hated the UN from the beginning, and all those resolutions passed against Israel over the years are pointed to as "attacks on the Jewish state," blah blah.
The US has effectively pulled the teeth of the UN by dominating the Security Council, anyway. Not only would Palestine be a state by now, but Israel would have been harshly sanctioned for its many violations of international law if the US were to stand down.
The UN is cross with Netanyahu (though nowhere near robust enough about it) because the latter blocks the Palestinian rapporteur from even entering Israel, let alone the West Bank or Gaza.
We know what it means when people block observers, we've seen it before in Syria and in China. Even Russia is not as ashamed about what they're doing as Israe.
Netanyahu relies on the "Jewish pass"--no matter how dominant we become in a region we are always victims because of the "Holocaust". No matter that we commit what would be war crimes for any other people--we are special. And it has worked pretty well.
Before the last Lebanon invasion I wrote a piece called "Appeasement Fails in the Mid East" in which I said the appeasement of Israel in its reckless action was the equivalent of Chamberlain's appeasement. It would only encourage them to new antics (like Lebanon, which I predicted) UNTIL them met real concerted resistance from the world community. Well, they haven't met that resistance.
So Netanyahu will play his hand until "luck" turns against him--which could prove unhealthy for most Israelis, as Alan points out.
I don't really care if Jews don't like me and want to live among themselves. Good for them. Just as long as they don't do it on my dime and on somebody else's land. In America the Indians had different concepts of land use and ownership. No such excuse exists for the Palestinians, who maintained and lived on property for as far back as anyone can recount.
The "holocaust card" is being played by Netanyahu and by Israel constantly. Oops, I forgot to capitalize "Holocaust." Whenever he gives a speech he floridly describes the plight of Jews without a homeland, blah blah, and what is so reprehensible is that he presumes to speak for all the world's Jewry.
I have asked zionists (I refuse to capitalize that word, also) why Israel wasn't content with its original mandate and insisted on conquering more land, and they have claimed that the original Israel was "indefensible" militarily, meaning they needed to take over the other territories for some mystical reason having to do with "defense." How ironic this is - by stealing Palestinian land and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, they have rightfully earned the hatred of all the people in the middle east. They have created the situation they live in. All they have to do to make themselves safe is stop being the greedy, thieving and murdering liars they are, and the neighbors would welcome them.
Good news.
The feckless zionists have delayed any attack on Iran.
The whole charade is at an end. zion never intended to attack; as the consequences have been known for at least 4 years. Those consequences were significant losses for the US and Apartheid israel.
Now who is next inline to harry?
Personally, I tends to agree with Dr. Norman Finkelstein mother’s interpretation of Holocaust: “Jews or anyone else doesn’t has the monopoly over Holocaust.”
Jewish religious text mention two Jewish Holocausts carried out by Romans. According to Jewish holy book Talmud (Gittin 57b): “Four billion Jews were killed by the Romans in the city of Bethar – While Gittin 58a claims that sixteen million Jewish children were wrapped in scrolls and burned alive by the Romans. The Book of Esther tells the story behind Jewish festive holiday of Purim, which is based on the slaughter of 75,000 non-Jewish Persians on the order of King Ahasueros (Xerxes) on the advice of his Jewish Queen Esther and Jewish prime minister Mordecai......
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/holocausts-too-many-to-remember/
Maryam says that Israel hated the UN from the beginning. The UN is the source of the only slim claim to legitimacy that Israel has! The irony is that, no sooner did Israel join the UN than it began breaking every vow of membership, most especially territorial aggrandizement through warfare!
The US can save itself from the condemnation of history only by breaking with Israel. I think that time is coming.
The UN investigation is a good show. If it goes through, it will be attended by the media and this is great publicity about the crimes of Israel. It doesn't matter that it's hypocritical because Israel is a major manufacturer of hypocrisy and, well, fight fire with fire.