Posted on 04/16/2002 2:04:11 PM PDT by Clive
UNITED NATIONS - Six European Union countries yesterday endorsed a United Nations document that condones violence as a way to achieve Palestinian statehood.
They were voting as members of the UN Human Rights Commission on a resolution that accuses Israel of a long list of human rights violations, but makes no mention of suicide bombings of Israeli civilians.
Canada and two EU countries -- Britain and Germany -- opposed the measure, which supports the use of "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Guatemala and the Czech Republic joined the opposing voices, but with 40 countries of the 53-member commission voting yes and seven abstaining, the resolution is now part of the international record.
"The text contains formulations that might be interpreted as an endorsement of violence," said Walter Lewalter, the German ambassador to the commission. "There is no condemnation whatsoever of terrorism."
Alfred Moses, a former United States ambassador to the commission and now chairman of UN Watch, a monitoring group, was more blunt.
"A vote in favour of this resolution is a vote for Palestinian terrorism," he said. "An abstention suggests ambivalence toward terror. Any country that condones -- or is indifferent to -- the murder of Israeli civilians in markets, on buses and in cafés has lost any moral standing to criticize Israel's human rights record."
Canada said the resolution did nothing to further peace.
"The failure of the resolution to condemn all acts of terrorism, particularly in the context of recent suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians, is a serious oversight which renders the resolution fundamentally unacceptable," said Marie Gervais-Vidricaire, Canada's ambassador to the commission.
"There can be no justification whatsoever for terrorist acts."
EU members Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden approved the resolution, and Italy abstained.
Belgium and Spain have been pushing for tough EU measures against the Jewish state, with Belgium calling for sanctions based on a human rights clause in the EU-Israeli Free Association agreement, which grants Israel preferential trading terms.
But Britain, Germany and the Netherlands say such measures would end the EU's chance of playing a greater diplomatic role in the search for peace.
EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg yesterday buried talk of imposing sanctions while Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State, is in the region trying to arrange a ceasefire.
"We cannot decide on a peace plan while Powell is going back and forth between [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon and [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat," one EU diplomat said.
The 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) drew up the Human Rights Commission resolution, backed by co-sponsors China, Cuba and Vietnam. Of the 14 OIC members on the commission, one -- Cameroon -- abstained from voting on the resolution, while the rest approved it.
Rulings by the commission and other leading UN bodies such as the Security Council and the General Assembly are significant because they enable causes to claim international legitimacy.
The resolution yesterday reaffirms support for a Palestinian armed struggle by "recalling" a 1982 General Assembly resolution that slammed both Israel and the white-run government of South Africa.
Restating past goals by referring to former documents is common diplomatic practice.
Insanity.
it's no oversight! the UN is now packed with islamic countries and islamic appeasers. the appeasers will be stabbed in the back by their so-called friends (i.e., France and Belgium.)
the UN has become yet another front that the free and democractic nations will have to overcome.
Will these clowns also approve of terror attacks by PLO backed Hamas against the US too as part of "their struggle" against Israel?? Will they say the 9/11 attaclks by Saudis and BIn Laden types is justified because the attacks were in suppport of the PLO "struggle"? People need to realize that some of these EU nations are actually mortal enemies of the US. Clinton signed the ICC treaty but Bush has the power to unsign it. Bush has not done anything yet. If he does not unsign it I do not just believe it would be stupid or unwise, I believe it would be evil on his part. We need to closely watch which way Bush goes on this one.
I really hope and pray that GW Bush is really a good guy and will not fall into the EU and Arab countries traps and will unsign the presence of the US on the ICC. But if he is not, then in my opinion Bush would need to be replaced by all legal means available and immediately.
The real struggle is of good against evil against evil. And the problem is that there are those in the EU and in Arab countries (Saudis, Iran, Iraq, etc) who call evil good- a hallmark of the Biblical "Last Days" before the return of Jesus Christ. Will Bush take the right course or will he also call evil good? Lets watch closely and pray very hard.
It comes by the refusal to call things by their right names. The "suicide bombers" do more than kill themselves; the point of the exercise is murder. And the means of the murder is precisely to practice on the trust of the target. You add that all up and it fits perfectly the definition of one word: assassin.And indeed the refusal to call the assassins by their rightful name is of a piece with the determination to call captured ssassins by the wrong one--"prisoners of war." The Geneva Convention is not defended or extended but subverted when a power which seeks to abide by Geneva is criticized arbitrarily. If there is no way of avoiding criticism, the logical thing to do is then to avoid unnecessary trouble taking prisoners in the first instance.
We see the refusal to judge evil precisely because evil is dangerous. We see the refusal to judge "good" (there is none good but God) precisely because it is safe and because self-righteousness is natual.
We see cynicism.
The Constitution replaced the inadequate Articles of Confederation just as the UN replaced the inadequate League of Nations. The Constitution created a continental nation, the Charter did NOT create a global one.The dirty little secret is that the Constitution of the United States is the best model of a union of nations. Given the unpleasantness of the early 1860s, of course, the issue is: better than what?
If you were serious about growing a world government, the first thing you would do would be to resore the Constitution's design by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. This would stop and ultimately reverse the subversion of State's rights which has proceeded apace ever since the senators stopped representing their States and started representing the people living in their states. Others would call other Amendments into question, with reason--but I think repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment is the minimum.
From that basis it would then be practical to speak of recruiting additional States, some of them outside the Western Hemisphere, into the Union. First candidates would be the members of the British Commonwealth; Canada, Australia, and Britain itself. There are of course details such as the monarchy to be handled, tho if the Constitutional restrictions be rightly understood to apply in nearly all cases strictly to the Federal Government itself--and not to the States--there would be much more room within the structure than now seems to be the case.
The practicalities would seem to dictate that large nations (e.g. Canada) could, before joining the Union, first break themselves down into their individual provinces to have reasonably proportionate representation in the Senate. But that would call into question Statehood's actual purpose. Already, California is comparable in population to a great many nations, and in economic terms to all but a few.
While I'm indulging in fantasy, I'd better propose that Governors of States be made into e-Senators. Certainly we need to have some reform to show for the wrongful acquittal of x42! Would we really want union with a country willing to be led by such? Governors are far more nearly peers to the president than senators, certainly than popularly elected ones. They would, we could hope, be unwilling to vote to acquit for fear of the logical implication that their constituents could expect no better character in themselves than x42 in fact exhibited.
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