Pat Condell: Human Rights Travesty

Pat Condell's no-nonsense commentaries are not broadcast on the mainstream media.

Can you imagine how the world would change if all the major news networks in the West would broadcast Pat Condell's political commentaries?

BRITISH ARMY COLONEL DEFENDS IDF

UN Watch presents the testimony of a British army official, Richard Kemp, who testified at the UN Human Rights Council that Israel's army is one of the most moral in warfare history:

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

I'm very glad to find a voice of sanity from the UK. It's not often you can, and I'm guessing that some of those who serve in the British military today have the most understanding.

Meanwhile, it's to be wondered whether Obama's administration will veto or abstain on this case. A UN "rights" official is backing the Gaza report. A few days ago, the Israeli daily Yisrael HaYom said that Obama may be willing to let this farce of an investigation be tolerated. Will he?

TO UNDERSTAND THE EVIL OF THE GOLDSTONE REPORT...

There is a new website now called Understanding the Goldstone Report specially dedicated to pointing out the flaws in the biased committee formed by the corrupt South African judge, and how it violates international standards for inquiries. I strongly recommend checking it out.

SWEDEN SUPPORTS THE BIASED GOLDSTONE REPORT

And if anything else that makes this bad news, they're currently holding the rotating 6 month role as head of the EU council. From the Jerusalem Post:

Sweden supports the Goldstone Commission's report into Operation Cast Lead, the country's foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said Thursday.

Bildt told reporters in Stockholm that South African judge Richard Goldstone was a person with "high credibility" and "high integrity" and that his report carries weight. He said the probe, which alleged that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during last winter's Israel offensive against Gaza, is worthy of consideration.

He added the right place for deliberations about the report was the UN Human Rights Council.

Earlier Thursday, Bildt told Swedish Radio that Israel made "a mistake" by not cooperating with the probe, which he called "independent" and "serious."

Sweden currently holds the rotating 6-month presidency of the European Union.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman called Bildt's remarks "disappointing," and said they demonstrated his "lack of reading comprehension skills," since anyone who read the report would know that it was biased.

The UN Security Council on Wednesday rejected Libya's request to hold a special session on the Goldstone report, but agreed to advance its periodical meeting on the Middle East to October 14 and focus on the war crimes allegations. The meeting was originally scheduled for October 20.

Most of the council's members were against discussing the report until the UN Human Rights Council reached a joint agreement on its recommendations on the topic.

In a surprise move earlier Wednesday, the UN Security Council met behind closed doors at the behest of Libyan diplomats, who requested an emergency session to discuss the report. The request - supported by Palestinian officials - upsets a fragile agreement achieved less than a week ago at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which delayed action on the Goldstone Report until at least March.

Absolutely disgusting. "High integrity"? Something Bildt definitely doesn't have. And neither of these two disgraceful thugs have credibility either. Disappointing is what describes those UN thugs all.

Lesson of this: don't buy any Volvos, Saabs or Scanias!

VICTIM OF ROCKET ATTACK CONFRONTS THE CORRUPT GOLDSTONE

The New Republic's Spine blog and UN Watch (via Commentary's Contentions) provide some news of an Israeli doctor who was facially disfigured in a rocket attack the Hamas fired on Ashkelon who confronted the sick Richard Goldstone:

In a surprise appearance arranged by the Geneva human rights organization UN Watch, Dr. Mirela Siderer — an Israeli doctor who was brutally disfigured in 2008 by a rocket attack fired from Gaza into her Ashkelon medical clinic — pointedly accused Goldstone of ignoring her July oral testimony in his report, and of failing to disclose material information concerning the prior statements of the Human Rights Council and panel members declaring Israel guilty in advance. Sitting on the dais, Goldstone was visibly shaken by Dr. Siderer’s challenge and scrambled for a copy of her speech. His response to the plenary ignored 7 of her questions, and inadequately responded to the 8th.

Goldstone is clearly a cold-blooded man who should be shunned by sensible society. Unfortunately, if we were to bring up Obama's administration, they have done nothing more than to play the moral equivalence game in all this mess.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Benjamin Netanyahu had a very stern response to the Goldstone report in the cabinet:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had some harsh words for the world during the government meeting on Thursday, saying that if the international community endorses the Goldstone Report on Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter, the peace process with the Palestinians, as well as the global war on terror, would be dealt a fatal blow.

"In the next 24 hours a vote will be cast in Geneva within the UN Human Rights Council," Netanyahu told the ministers.

"I remind you that this very council has adopted more resolutions targeting Israel than resolutions targeting all other 180 countries in the world put together," he said.

"If the council decides to endorse the Goldstone report it will deal a fatal blow to three major issues: Firstly, it will harm the war on terror, because it will legitimize terrorists who hide behind civilians and fire from their midst." Netanyahu stressed that in such cases, the one who ultimately takes the blame is "generally the victim, acting in legitimate self defense."

"The second devastating blow will be to the UN's status and its prestige. It will take it back to its darkest days when absurd decisions were passed within its assembly and empty it of all meaning," Netanyahu added, referring to the 1970s, when the UN adopted a resolution comparing Zionism with racism. He warned that the UN will become irrelevant if it adopts the conclusions of the report.

They've been irrelevant for decades now, as they were never truly interested in making this a better world to begin with.

The Prime Minister stated that the third and most pressing issue was the Goldstone Report's potentially "devastating effect on the peace process," and warned the world that "Israel will not be willing to take risks for peace if stripped of its right to self-defense."

Does this mean that Israel will leave the UN? If only, but I have my doubts.

TZIPI LIVNI CRITICIZES NETANYAHU FOR BRINGING UP THE HOLOCAUST AT UN SPEECH

I would've posted this sooner, but because of Yom Kippur it took some time. Who would've thought that, if there's any Israeli politician who could slam Netanyahu for his excellent speech last week, that it would be none other than Tzipi Livni:

Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni became the first Israeli politician to criticize Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's landmark speech to the United Nations, in an interview she gave to Channel 2 on Saturday afternoon.

Netanyahu made a mistake when he invoked the horrors of the Holocaust in his criticism of Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Livni said. The comparison could harm Israel's diplomatic efforts and make Israelis question their security, she said.

"We have to be careful not to encourage the world to think that Israel was established because of the Holocaust," Livni said. "When Obama said so in Egypt [at Cairo University in June], there was a justified uproar. It is wrong to compare any event in history to the Holocaust, because it minimizes the most horrible historic event that happened to the Jewish people. It also makes Israeli citizens feel less secure. The Jews of Israel in 2009 are not the Jews of Europe in 1939, and I've said this to Netanyahu."

Livni also attacked the prime minister on the diplomatic issue, saying that he is "neither ready nor interested in making the tough decisions."

"He is merely trying to survive, and this stalling might be good for Netanyahu, but it is not good for Israel," she said.

I don't think that disgraceful woman understood anything he said. He was not trying to compare anything, he was condemning Ahmedinejad for committing Holocaust-denial while threatening to commit mass murder with nuclear warfare. He was also expressing his disgust at the UN for allowing the monster a platform on which to spew his hatred.

I think Livni is the one who's going to frighten Israelis with her approach to the subject.

She even attempts moral equations - or something like that - in an attempt to offset the damage she's doing:

Livni also criticized her party's former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, for the far-reaching offer he made to the Palestinians that he revealed an interview to the BBC last week. She said that she, unlike Olmert, would not allow the influx of more than a thousand Palestinian refugees to within Israel's final borders.

"I had differences of opinion with [Olmert] on how to manage the diplomatic process and on its content," she said. "For me, there is no right of return, not symbolic and not partial. I would not even accept the entrance to Israel of a single refugee, and the Palestinians and the Arab world know this."

Sorry, but it's just weak, when she was lending herself at the time they were running the government to the damage Olmert was doing. I don't buy a word of what's she saying.

Likud MKs slammed Livni for criticizing Netanyahu's General Assembly speech despite the rave reviews it received in Israel and around the world. Party officials criticized Livni for vacationing in Hawaii during the proceedings at the UN and over the Rosh Hashana holiday.

"Livni should have stayed abroad instead of harming the diplomatic efforts of the state," coalition chairman Ze'ev Elkin said.

"It is very unfortunate that instead of supporting the prime minister in his struggle against Iran and international terror and welcoming his successful speech at the UN that was universally praised, the head of the opposition is allowing politics to interfere is issues that are part of the Israeli consensus."

I fully agree on that. Now is not the time for pathetic and needless criticism of a speech that's meant to protest evil. Livni is only showing why she really has no talent to be a prime minister, let alone a politician.

ISRAEL WAS RIGHT NOT TO BE "GOLDSTONED"

IDF Brig-Gen. Avichai Mandelblit told the Jerusalem Post that the Israeli government was right not to cooperate with the awful Richard Goldstone in his Israel-bashing report for the UN that was clearly intended as such from the start:

The distorted and one-sided content in the United Nations report on Operation Cast Lead proves that Israel had been right not to cooperate with the fact-finding mission led by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, IDF Judge-Advocate General Brig.-Gen. Avichai Mandelblit told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

"From an initial review of the report it is clear that it is biased, astonishingly extreme, lacks any basis in reality and is a sharp deviation from the mandate given to the mission," Mandelblit told the Post in an exclusive Rosh Hashana interview that will appear in Friday's newspaper.

"The baseless claim in the report that Cast Lead was planned and launched to intentionally harm the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and to punish it, effectively illustrates the radical distortion and one-sided character of the report and proves, in my opinion, that the decision not to cooperate with the mission was the right one," he said.

The IDF, Mandelblit said, was currently reviewing over 100 complaints that it had received regarding IDF activity during the operation - some of them from human rights groups - and he had already ordered the Military Police to launch 24 criminal investigations.

In the extensive interview, Mandelblit spoke of a new "legal front" that the IDF was facing and warned of attempts by numerous NGOs - and possibly European countries which support them - to deter Israel from launching future military operations by threatening its officers with legal action.

"There is definitely a strategic decision that was made by different organizations and even above them to attack Israel on the legal front," he said.

Meanwhile Wednesday, Prof. Asa Kasher, the author of the IDF's code of ethics, told the Post that the harsh and extreme criticism in the report was partially motivated by anti-Semitic views of Israel.

"Part of this criticism is an instinctive reaction that people have for Israel without really thinking," said Kasher, a professor of professional ethics at Tel Aviv University, academic adviser for the National Defense College and an Israel Prize laureate.

"Politics also play a significant role here, since this report was commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva that unfairly deals mostly with Israel. These are anti-Israel politics that contain a level of anti-Semitism in them," he added.

Despite his sharp criticism of the Goldstone fact-finding mission, Kasher said that Israel needed to take the report seriously and prepare for the possibility that the charges will be brought before the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

"The mission was established by the UN and therefore we cannot ignore it," he said.

Kasher called the content of the report "unacceptable" and extremely "hostile" towards Israel. "While the report is critical of Hamas it is far more extreme with its criticism of Israel," he said.

One example, he said, was how the report opened with a detailed description of the Israeli blockade on Gaza.

"It is as if this is how it all started," he said. "They did not bother to ask why there was a siege which was done out of self-defense because of things Hamas was planning at sea, above ground and underground."

As the author of the IDF Code of Ethics, Kasher said he was not concerned with a possible moral breakdown in the military as portrayed in the Goldstone fact-finding report - and countless other NGO reports that have been published since Operation Cast Lead.

"I do not see in any of the reports a reason to change the values or ethics of the IDF or the military's doctrine, which places an emphasis on the value of life," he said.

"I also have no doubt that the claims of deliberate and disproportional killing are baseless. If they weren't, and IDF troops shot deliberately at innocent Palestinians, then there there should have been thousands of dead Palestinians. If the IDF killed freely then the dead should be half women and half men like the population in Gaza. The fact is that the IDF did not do this."

According to this blog entry by INN's David Wilder:

Goldstone reportedly slept during accounts of rocket attacks on Sderot, in south Israel. So related Sderot resident and media expert Noam Bedein on Israel radio this morning. However such accounts are totally irrelevant. When it comes to Jews, only one truth is viable. Jews may be attacked in any manner as the attacker deems fit; however, Jews may not dare to defend themselves, be it preemptive, during or post attack. Why? Because that's why Jews exist; for the world to blame for all problems, and later to take their frustrations out on them.

An alleged politician like Goldstone who deliberately turns a deaf ear and blind eye at the real victims should not even be welcomed into Israel, or any other country/society with common sense.

HRW SUSPENDS NAZI WORSHIPER MARK GARLASCO

Well I guess there's some progress now regarding the phony, awful Human Rights Watch. Honest Reporting tells that Mark Garlasco, collector of nazi memorabilia spoken about earlier over here, has been suspended following an outburst:

Initially, HRW used every means available to defend Garlasco, including, as revealed by Harry's Place blog, resorting to creating a fake "activist" with a Middle Eastern sounding name to post comments defending Garlasco on various blog sites.

Mark Gardner of the CST blog addresses HRW's response, which involved attacking Jewish and pro-Israel organizations rather than the very legitimate concerns arising from Garlasco's collecting of Nazi memorabilia.

[...]

HRW has finally succumbed to pressure by suspending Garlasco (pictured here wearing a Nazi-themed sweatshirt) with pay "pending an investigation," according to HRW's associate director Caroll Bogert. "We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to know," she said.

I'm not sure they have. They still need to consider their own anti-Israel bias, and how it draws in people of Garlasco's repulsive standing. For now, I think they stand revealed as the hypocrites they are.