Terrorism is where you find it
Australia and the US are the only two nations to vote against a strong resolution that condemns "liquidations" and "extra-judicial killings...in particular the tragic assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin" at the UN's top human rights body. "It is precisely this sort of politicisation which discredits this body" according to the US, as if support for Human Rights is not a political issue. Several speakers at the Commission called the killing "state terrorism".
Warning: Graphic Violence! This is what a wheelchair-bound cleric looks like after an extrajudicial execution with an American-supplied missile. This tragedy is meant to reflect "credit" for "state-sponsored terrorism". In what is probably another attempt to sideline the UN, the Americans described the investigation as "unnecessary".
Stifling criticism of its Human Rights record has been seen as a major international effort for the Israelis, and the American Government appears to willingly assist, even at the expense of it's own integrity, (already severely threatened by their conduct of the Irak invasion.)
American academics, as one example, have been severely criticised for presenting facts that are on record with the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Red Cross and hundreds of other agencies. Israel is the only country lobbying the US Congress over the Bill known as HR 3077: this disingenuous 'law' basically provides for a 'Foreign Power' to have sway over the substance of American university studies, where studies are percieved as critical of the "Foriegn Power". It allows an "unprecedented degree of partisan political intrusion" into Academic matters, according to many. There is serious concern that a "foreign power" will dicate what is taught about that country, and even what can be written and debated about that country, inside the US.
[ Imagine, in the Australian context, that the Japanese government for example was able to insist that our universities taught their controversial 'textbook' version of the history of the World War 2 conflict. ]
The bottom line in this "debate" is blood on the streets. Between September 28, 2000 & January 27 2004, (according to the lowest estimate found), Israeli forces killed 2,796 Palestinians. Of these, 638 were children, 352 of which were under the age of 15. Palestinians, of course, also killed Israelis, 858 of them according to Al-jazeera, (the highest estimate found).
The U.S. State Department reported that in 2003 Israel's Human Rights record "remained poor and worsened in the treatment of foreign human rights activists as it continued to commit numerous, serious human rights abuses", but also levelled similar criticism at the PA.
Despite the many Human Rights Treaties to which Australia is a party, and our election to chair the current U.N. Commission on Human Rights, our former tradition of support for human rights has been replaced by hostility to the U.N. human rights system since the election of the Howard "Government", and our standing undermined.
The adoption of a partisan position over Israel's conduct will again bring negative attention, possibly even be seen as inviting an Islamist terrorist response. The government has used "the rhetoric of counter-terrorism" to justify its hard line on refugees, and has legislated extended powers for security agencies and police, while consistently sidelining human rights issues. The partisan silence over human rights can be seen as overtly tolerating, if not encouraging, human rights abuses in the name of fighting terrorism.
Item posted by AutoEditor at 12:05 pm ::
