UN Rights Panel Playing the Part Of the Joker

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Think Joaquin Phoenix was a bit wacky? Try the United Nations Human Rights Council. Mr. Phoenix, a vegan, was widely ridiculed for obsessing over cows during a rambling speech delivered Sunday after winning an Oscar as best actor. Among his recommendations: refrain from using cow’s milk in your cereal.

Michelle Bachelet, a former Chilean president serving as UNHCR chief, one-upped the Joker Wednesday by urging us to avoid cereal altogether. She specifies General Mills products, and only the ones produced by the Israeli branch of the cereal-making firm.

The idea is the same: obsession leads to unreasonable demands that we all refrain from normal activity. Such as booking trips online. Ms. Bechelet’s travel is booked through UN offices and financed by taxpayers in member states. Lesser travelers, she says, shouldn’t rely on the services of the American-based firms Expedia, Tripadvisor, and Airbnb Inc. Also, avoid, the Netherlands-based Booking.com.

Why would the UN, which claims to be of a higher morality and sounder judgment than that expected of Hollywood celebrities, recommend against using such modern-day convenience? After all, online booking is no more harmful to, say, climate change than other trip-planning methods.

It turns out that Ms. Bachelet was ordered by members of the Geneva-based council to issue a blacklist, and on Wednesday she obeyed, releasing a database of 112 Israeli and global firms that conduct business beyond the green line. That line was drawn in 1949 as part of a ceasefire agreement that ended a war between Israel and Jordan. The line is widely known in UN circles as “occupied territory” to be replaced by a Palestinian state.

Human RIghts Council cheerleaders were elated. “The long-awaited release of the UN settlement business database should put all companies on notice: to do business with illegal settlements is to aid in the commission of war crimes,” Bruno Stagno of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Mainstream Israeli leaders — and of all stripes, — were outraged. “Those who boycott us will be boycotted themselves,” tweeted Prime Minister Netanyahu. He cited the new decree from Geneva as the latest justification for Israel’s — and America’s — decision to leave the UNHCR. “The Human Rights Council has lost touch with reality,” tweeted Benny Gantz of the main opposition Blue-White Party.

“The Jewish people have a long history of being targeted by discriminatory blacklists,” read a statement by William Daroff and Malcolm Hoenline, leaders of the New York-based Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. They referred to past boycotts of businesses associated with Jews in Europe and the Arab world.

Earlier, a Washington-based think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, issued a study titled “Occupied Elsewhere,” which detailed the selective nature of international bodies approach to Israel’s-held areas. They contrasted those with disputed territories like Crimea, Donbas, Northern Cyprus, Kashmir, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria and Western Sahara.

“The states that fully acknowledge their presence and take responsibility for the security of the territories and their residents – Israel in the West Bank and Russia in Crimea – have received the harshest condemnations, sanctions, and other penalties,” the report notes. “By contrast, those that establish ostensibly independent proxy regimes can occupy other territories with little consequence.”

As UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights organization notes, Ms. Bachelet’s blacklist resulted from a 2016 UNHCR resolution sponsored by Kuwait on behalf of the 22-member Arab Group and Pakistan on behalf of the 56-nation Islamic group. Other sponsors included Sudan, Venezuela, Algeria, Bahrain, Bolivia, Chad, Cuba, Djibouti, Ecuador, Egypt, and Libya.

“Dictatorships initiated this blacklist not because they care about human rights, but to divert attention from serial rights abuses committed by council members like Venezuela, Libya, and DR Congo, by scapegoating the Jewish state,” said Hillel Neuer, UN Watch’s executive Director.

Ms. Bechelet acknowledged that issuing the database was “controversial.” In fact it was due to Geneva’s obsession with Israel, which is no more profound or valid than that of a stoner urging all to stop stirring milk into their morning cup of coffee.

________

Mr. Avni, who covers the United Nations, is a contributing editor of the Sun. Twitter: @bennyavni.


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