{"id":629,"date":"2009-08-13T10:55:13","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T09:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/?p=629"},"modified":"2009-08-13T10:55:13","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T09:55:13","slug":"heres-to-you-mrs-robinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raymondcook.net\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/08\/13\/heres-to-you-mrs-robinson\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s to you Mrs Robinson"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In its wisdom the United States will, this week, present former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, (who was also the Secretary General of the infamous 2001 Durban conference and Irish President), with the U.S Presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p>\n

UN Watch <\/a> has published an open letter from its Executive Director, Hillel Neuer, to Mary Robinson which I take the liberty to reproduce in full as every word is worth reading and reproducing.<\/p>\n

This stinging attack on Mrs Robinson speaks for itself. Robinson is typical of a political class who see appeasement and reconciliation as counters to extremism, fascism and terrorism. Perhaps her experiences in Ireland gave Robinson the illusion that she was qualified to moderate on human rights issues and in particular Israel.<\/p>\n

Medal of Freedom? Freedom to terrorise and oppress. Freedom for racists and Fascists to accuse others of the crimes they are so demonstrably culpable. Freedom to scapegoat Israel and the Jews. I hope she wears her medal with pride.<\/p>\n

You may have seduced the US administration, Mrs Robinson, but you can’t seduce me.<\/p>\n

As in the new Obamaworld there has been a consensus that peace can be bought by attacking the victim and cheering on the aggressor. It’s the ‘even-handedness’ approach which is anything but. It stems from the new era of Political Correctness, evangelical appeasing, inverted morality or moral equivalence that appears to be particularly applied to the Middle-East. Meanwhile Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma, Syria, Iran and Sri Lanka (I could go on) get an almost free pass.<\/p>\n

Here’s the letter:<\/p>\n

Letter to Mrs. Mary Robinson<\/em><\/strong><\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Mrs. Robinson, \u00a0 Recent statements by you and your defenders, amid the growing opposition to your receipt this Wednesday of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, require a response. <\/em><\/p>\n

According to the organization Physicians for Human Rights\u2014for whom you recently worked on a report together with one of its board members, Richard Goldstone\u2014you are being \u201cvilified\u201d by \u201cfalse accusations.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In your own words, \u201ccertain elements\u201d of the Jewish community\u2014those opposed to your selection\u2014are subjecting you to \u201cbullying.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Mrs. Robinson, let\u2019s be honest: no one has bullied you, and you are not being vilified by false accusations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead, facts were presented and issues raised concerning your 1997-2002 tenure as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights\u2014by mainstream Jewish organizations as well as by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle\u2014which question the integrity of your actions on the Middle East, most famously during the lead-up to that dark moment in history known as the Durban conference.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hurling ad hominem epithets won\u2019t make these facts go away. Nor will misrepresenting your critics\u2019 arguments and then purporting to refute them, which is what both you and your defenders have been doing.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you are to receive this medal, the American people are entitled to know precisely what the issues are.<\/em><\/p>\n

I. <\/em>Your Role at Durban<\/em><\/span> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let us begin with Durban, the U.N.\u2019s 2001 world conference against racism, which you presided over as Secretary-General, and then consider your overall tenure as U.N. rights chief.<\/em><\/p>\n

As you know, the Durban conference degenerated into an unprecedented international platform for anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli hatred, with massive rallies in the streets of Durban organized by Palestinian and fundamentalist Arab groups. One widely distributed flyer showed a photograph of Hitler and the question \u201cWhat if I had won?\u201d The answer: \u201cThere would be no Israel.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The late Tom Lantos, founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and a respected defender of human rights for all, was a U.S. delegate to the conference. \u201cHaving experienced the horrors of the Holocaust first hand,\u201d he said, \u201cthis was the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Shortly after the conference, Lantos published an <\/em>essay<\/em><\/a> in the Fletcher Forum for World Affairs that amounts to a stinging indictment of your role in the events leading up to the conference, including at the fateful preparatory meetings in Tehran and Geneva, with your acts of omission and commission described as \u201ca major contributing factor to the debacle in Durban.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is the primary source cited by your critics. If its author had been a hawkish unilateralist, you could have easily dismissed him as just another \u201cbully.\u201d But Tom Lantos was a Democrat, a firm believer in vital multilateral institutions, and a true friend\u2014meaning never an uncritical one\u2014of the United Nations.<\/em><\/p>\n

And so you have no choice but to address his charges. Your main defense, as reported in the Irish Times, is that Lantos \u201cmisunderstood\u201d your role.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe conference was run by the member states, particularly by South Africa as the chair,\u201d you said. \u201cSo all key meetings and all decisions at the official level were made by governments and I wasn\u2019t present when they were arguing about whether anti-Semitic language which was in brackets should be included. I just wasn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

You weren\u2019t there, Mrs. Robinson? That\u2019s odd, because in the same breath, you proceeded to claim credit for the removal of these proposals: \u201cBut I did finally, after the United States and Israel had withdrawn, persuade South Africa to take this language out immediately and to continue with the conference.\u201d It sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it, too.<\/em><\/p>\n

In attempting to defend the final text, you say that Shimon Peres, Israel\u2019s foreign minister at the time, \u201cwelcomed\u201d it. This is a deliberately misleading half-truth, put to frequent use this year by the apologists for Durban II.<\/em><\/p>\n

The facts tell another story. On September 4, 2001, after he instructed his delegation to walk out of the conference, Peres <\/em>described<\/em><\/a> the gathering in Durban as \u201ca farce\u201d where \u201chuman rights were defeated,\u201d and as a \u201ccourt of mockery of justice.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

At the same briefing, Israel\u2019s Deputy Foreign Minister, Rabbi Michael Melchior\u2014a spiritual leader known for his advocacy of pluralism, liberalism and human rights protections for Israel’s minorities\u2014described the Durban draft as \u201cthe most anti-Semitic official document put on any table in any official conference since World War II.\u201d Yet you omit to mention any of this.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes, a few days later, when the final text emerged, Peres cheered the removal of the worst proposals, a direct result of the diplomatic pressure created by the joint U.S. and Israeli walkout that you continue to condemn. At the same time, his legal adviser, Alan Baker, <\/em>made clear<\/em><\/a> that Israel hardly gave its blessing to the outcome: \u201cThe fact that the Palestinians succeeded in inserting partisan and specific statements concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a declaration of a conference on racism is something that never should have happened.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Sure enough, when the declaration came before the U.N. General Assembly in March 2002, Peres instructed the Israeli representative to join the U.S. and <\/em>vote against it<\/em><\/a>. Some endorsement.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet even if your account were true, it is, in the end,\u00a0immaterial to Lantos\u2019 22-page indictment, only a small fraction of which discusses your role at the final conference. Most of it, as you know, addresses what you did\u2014and failed to do\u2014during the lead-up.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lantos never denied that at Durban you stood up to condemn anti-Semitic pamphlets distributed by the Arab Lawyers Union, or that you rejected the viciously anti-Israel\u00a0NGO declaration.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rather, citing one instance after another, he made a compelling case that throughout the year of lead-up meetings you continuously fanned the flames of anti-Israel prejudice, only to cry \u201cFire!\u201d once they rose up into a great conflagration.<\/em><\/p>\n

I urge you to respond to Lantos\u2019 detailed charges concerning your actions during three key moments, in Tehran, Geneva, and Durban:<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0 That You Condoned the Tehran Hatred of February 2001
\n<\/em> <\/strong>In February 2001, when the Tehran preparatory meeting of Asian states adopted a text condemning only one country\u2014demonizing Israel as a country guilty of a \u201cnew kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity,\u201d and calling Zionism a \u201cracist and violent movement based on racist and discriminatory ideas\u201d\u2014 your response was to congratulate the Tehran delegates for their \u201chigh degree of consensus.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked about the inflammatory rhetoric at a news conference, you <\/em> replied<\/em><\/a>: \u201cThe situation in the Palestinian occupied territories was brought up at the meeting and it is reflected in the final Declaration.\u201d You went on to add that a \u201cstriking feature\u201d of the meeting was the \u201cemphasis on dialogue between civilizations.\u201d That was it. No outrage. No criticism. No moral leadership.<\/p>\n

Your comments, wrote Lantos, \u201crepresented a pivotal moment in the evolution of the World Conference Against Racism. By appearing to condone the Asian conference\u2019s efforts to place the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the agenda of the World Conference, [Mary Robinson] betrayed its intentions and emboldened those intent on using the conference for their own political purposes. From that moment the conference began to take a dangerous trajectory that became ever more difficult to correct.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, at the moment when the Islamic states injected the toxic language that would eventually poison the entire Durban process, your actions encouraged it.<\/p>\n

Mrs. Robinson, will you respond to this charge?<\/em><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0 That You Opposed the U.S. at the Geneva Pre-Conference of August 2001<\/em><\/strong>
\nLantos detailed your actions during the emergency Geneva meeting of August 2001, a last-minute attempt to stave off the impending disaster. \u201cMrs. Robinson\u2019s intervention with the assembled delegates later in the same day left our delegation deeply shocked and saddened. In her remarks, she advocated precisely the opposite course to the one Secretary [Colin] Powell and I had urged her to take. Namely, she refused to reject the twisted notion that the wrong done to the Jews in the Holocaust was equivalent to the pain suffered by the Palestinians in the Middle East. Instead, she discussed \u2018the historical wounds of anti-Semitism and of the Holocaust on the one hand, and\u2026the accumulated wounds of displacement and military occupation on the other.\u2019 Thus, instead of condemning the attempt to usurp the conference, she legitimized it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of insisting that it was inappropriate to discuss a specific political conflict in the context of a World Conference on Racism, she spoke of the \u2018need to resolve protracted conflict and occupation, claims of inequality, violence and terrorism, and a deteriorating situation on the ground.\u2019 Robinson was prepared to delve into the arcana of a single territorial conflict at the exclusion of all others and at the expense of the conference\u2019s greater goals. Robinson\u2019s intervention broke all momentum that the U.S. had developed. The Arab countries immediately seized on these statements as a clear indication that the tide had turned again in their favor, dropped all talk of compromise, and began pressing for the continuation of the Middle East discussion in Durban.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mrs. Robinson, will you respond to this charge?<\/em><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0 That You Opposed the U.S. at the Durban Endgame in September 2001
\n<\/em> <\/strong>Finally, at the endgame in Durban, Lantos documents your counter-productive role: \u201cAs the U.S. pressed its case, Robinson seemed to be working to stymie our efforts. In her public and private statements, as was the case in Geneva, she insisted that the conference had to recognize the suffering of the Palestinian people. In a meeting on Sunday, September 2, with [U.S.] Ambassador Southwick, she lashed out at him, characterizing the U.S. threat to pull out if the Norwegian language was not accepted as \u2018warped, strange and undemocratic.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a meeting I had with Commissioner Robinson later that same day\u2026 [I] told her that the U.S.\u00a0government was extremely displeased with the way she had handled the conference, and we indicated that we held her responsible for her actions that contributed to its failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mrs. Robinson, will you respond to this charge?<\/em><\/p>\n

The American people are entitled to answers to the specific allegations, not to straw man arguments.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it: Tom Lantos never \u201cmisunderstood\u201d your role. Known as \u201cMr. Human Rights,\u201d he was a veteran lawmaker on U.N. affairs who directly engaged with you on the issues in Washington, Geneva, and Durban. He knew exactly what measures of influence and responsibility you exercised over the process as Secretary-General, and it was on that nuanced basis that he denounced your record.<\/em><\/p>\n

Leadership means taking responsibility. During the march to Durban you could have confronted the purveyors of anti-Israel hatred from the start. Instead, you chose to egg them on, only to have it explode in your face\u2014by which time your protestations were simply too little and too late. You may not have been the chief culprit of the Durban debacle, but you will always be its preeminent symbol.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

II. <\/em>Your Role as High Commissioner<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the concerns about your actions on the Middle East are not limited to Durban. They extend to your entire 5-year tenure as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here again, you invoke the same defense: Your critics \u201cmisunderstand\u201d what your role was, failing to appreciate the difference between the former Commission on Human Rights, a body of 53 U.N. member states, and your own role as the U.N.\u2019s top human rights official.<\/em><\/p>\n

To be sure, some of your critics, while getting the big picture right, have helped you make this case by <\/em>conflating<\/em><\/a> your former office with that of the Commission and its resolutions condoning Palestinian terrorism.<\/em><\/p>\n

I will be the first to defend you on this point: you cannot be held responsible for texts that you neither initiated nor voted upon.<\/em><\/p>\n

The errors of a few, however, do not detract from the numerous, genuine and well-grounded concerns cited over the years by UN Watch and others.<\/em><\/p>\n

When the Arab and Islamic blocs, supported by an automatic majority of countries like China, Russia, and Cuba, diverted the world\u2019s highest human rights body from its mission\u2014ignoring millions of human rights victims in 191 countries in order to target Israel\u2014you could have taken them on.<\/em><\/p>\n

Unlike the U.S. president\u2019s powers vis-\u00e0-vis Congress, you had no power to veto the Commission\u2019s enactments. But you held the moral pulpit of the U.N. human rights system and could have set a different tone for Geneva. Unlike the political body, you were required to be impartial, objective, and non-selective.<\/em><\/p>\n

Regrettably, however, when it came to Israel, you effectively encouraged the Commission\u2019s anti-Israel obsession\u2014an obsession that epitomized the politicization and selectivity that ultimately doomed the now-defunct body.<\/em><\/p>\n

Examples abound. To name but a small portion:<\/em><\/p>\n