Posted on 04/21/2002 7:08:03 PM PDT by eclectic
"The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, may have in the sworn twelve a thief or two guiltier than him that they try."
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, Sc. 1.
Even Shakespeare might have been at a loss to describe the irony of Israel's current situation, as what is quaintly known as the international community gathers in judgment. On Monday, the UN Human Rights Commission slammed Israel for "mass killings" of Palestinians. On Thursday, UN representative Terje Larsen described Israel's behavior as "shocking beyond belief." The next day, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to send a "fact-finding team" to Jenin.
In response, Israel has stated that it will cooperate with a UN team because it has nothing to hide, but that the team should not include Larsen, UN Human Rights Commission chief Mary Robinson, or UN Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Peter Hansen.
It should surprise no one that Israel singled out these three officials, because each has long ago given up any pretense of objectivity between Israel and the Palestinians. Larsen, though at one time a go-between between Binyamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat who reportedly was trusted by both men, has become a mouthpiece for the Palestinian side since becoming a UN official.
"I saw children, women, and fathers are digging through the ruins to find the bodies of their loved ones," Larsen exclaimed while touring Jenin. "What I saw is unbelievable. This is a sad, shameful chapter in Israel's history." He also described the scene as like "an earthquake." As one of the first prominent international officials to tour Jenin after the battle, one might have thought Larsen would feel compelled to impose some degree of blame on the Palestinian side, or at least to accurately describe what he saw.
Aerial photos of Jenin clearly show the "refugee camp" is a small part of the city, and the part of that camp that was destroyed was on the order of 100 meters square (see www.israel-mfa.gov.il/). While Larsen seems to admit the Palestinians' own designation of Jenin as their "suicide-bomber capital" was accurate, he did nothing to dispel the notion that Israel committed a wanton massacre that had almost nothing to do with fighting terrorism.
Robinson, arguably the chief human rights official in the world, has been no better. According to the April 15 statement issued by the UN commission she heads, "The international community cannot permit the indiscriminate killings of Israeli civilians or the wanton killings of Palestinian civilians... It cannot be right to wage war on civilian populations." What a tidy package of moral equivalence, wrapped neatly in a bow.
Palestinians massacre Israelis and Israelis "wage war on civilian populations." How eagerly, even before its fact-finding team has been named, do these UN officials conclude that Israel is second to none in slaughtering innocents.
Not to be out done by his colleagues, Hansen did not bother restraining himself, "It was hell in the camp, and we will not exaggerate if we say that a massacre was carried out there... Having seen the reality with my own eyes, I cannot call what happened there by any other name." Contrast this with the delicate admission of New York Times reporters: "Dozens of interviews with residents of the camp, hospital officials, Israeli soldiers and officials, and Palestinian fighters produced no solid evidence of large-scale, deliberate killing of civilians in the camp. Palestinian claims of hundreds of dead appear to be exaggerated."
Already, it is possible to discern a two-tiered division of labor in the rolling indictment of Israel - the Palestinian propaganda machine will blithely continue lying about hundreds of dead, while the more sophisticated charge will be reduced to "excessive use of force."
But most of the lesser charges should already be treated with a high degree of suspicion. Just who, for example, is responsible for what destruction there is in the cramped combat zone of Jenin? And why has Israel been so slow to let humanitarian aid workers in?
If someone would pay attention to Israeli reports, confirmed in the international press, that the terrorists had rigged dozens of houses, alleys, and even the street itself with explosives, this mystery would be solved. The New York Times reports Israel started using bulldozers when the Palestinians were exploding whole buildings on the soldiers. And even UNRWA itself is echoing Israeli warnings that the many booby-traps left by Palestinian forces endanger relief workers and returning residents alike.
There was no massacre in Jenin, but even the massacre Israel is baselessly accused of pales beside those with which its accusers are complicit. The Dutch government has just resigned over a report confirming that a Dutch UN battalion charged with protecting Bosnian civilians actually helped Serb forces separate men from their families before massacring over 6,000 of them. The UN, far from lifting a finger to stop the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans, actually reduced the size of the UN mission as the genocide proceeded.
This same UN bureaucracy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by a committee some members of which, logically enough, wish they could withdraw their award - not from Yasser Arafat - but from Shimon Peres. The miasma of international hypocrisy is running so thick that Israel should consider wearing its pariah status as a badge of honor.
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