Great news; yesterday the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted the Goldstone report. Is it any wonder that human rights rhetoric isn't taken serious by Arabs? Here's France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in action, defending Israel against Goldstone:
France called on Friday to delay the UN Human Rights Council vote in Geneva regarding the adoption of the Goldstone Gaza Report by half an hour in a last-minute attempt to lobby allies to reject the report's findings.
But a few days back, here is Kouchner arguing for human rights when Israel isn't in the neighbourhood. He wants an investigation of the Guinean massacre of 150 demonstrators last month.
By the way, Kouchner and Bernard-Henri Levy considered Tariq Ramadan to be a craven anti-semite because Ramadan argued years ago that French Jewish intellectuals like Kouchner and Bernard-Henri Levy pretended to be secular in outlook but supported Israel. Kouchner and BHL were outraged and accused tariq of anti-semitism. Outraged. Look here.
In the article he criticizes a number of French Jewish intellectuals and figures such as Alexandre Adler, Alain Finkielkraut, Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Glucksmann and Bernard Kouchner, for allegedly abandoning universal human rights, and giving special status to the defence of Israel. Per Wikipedia, he also criticized Paul Wolfowitz whom he called "a notable Zionist." Ramadan was accused, in return, of anti-semitism and having used inflammatory language.
The backlash was instant and it was intense. Bernard Kouchner and Bernard-Henri Levy were ruthless in their attack on Tariq for this embarrassing charge upon their integrity and a public vilification followed. Kouchner, otherwise a humanitarian, called Tariq “the most dangerous man in Europe.”
UN vote sends Gaza war report to Security Council
GENEVA — The U.N. Human Rights Council has voted to refer a Gaza war crimes report to the Security Council, possibly setting up international prosecution of Israelis and Palestinians accused of war crimes.
The vote was 25 to 6 in favor of the resolution. Eleven countries abstained in the 47-nation body Friday.
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. Human Rights Council is heading for a showdown vote on a report accusing Israeli forces and Palestinian militants of war crimes during their conflict in Gaza last winter.
Diplomats in Geneva say there appears little willingness on either side to seek compromise on the Goldstone report.
The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because of the sensitivity of the issue.
The Palestinian Authority and its allies in the 47-nation council want the report endorsed and forwarded to the more powerful U.N. Security Council.
The move could ultimately lead to international proceedings against suspected war criminals for abuses of international law during the Dec. 27-Jan. 18 in which almost 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
link to google.com
Here’s another article on the same subject–Israel’s N was really pissed England abstained, as did France if memory serves:
link to independent.co.uk
I admittedly don’t know that much about Tariq Ramadan but from what I’ve heard there’s been an orchestrated smear campaign against the guy in France. A friend of mine has a book that was put out about the guy.
From what I’ve read, the vicious attacks against him stem mostly from the fact that he’s a living, breathing example that Islamic philosophy and Western liberalism are not mutually exclusive.
The amusing thing is that people like Kuchner and Levy only make their bigotry and hypocrisy glaringly obvious the more the speak about their positions, because those positions don’t exist unless they attack people like Ramadan. Hey, we’ve got a living, breathing example of that at work right here — Senor Richard “The only problem with Operation Cast Lead is it was just a tiny bit too strong” Witty.
One of the great ironies, or perhaps hypocrisies, is the accusation from Zionists that Ramadan “…is slippery. He says one thing to his faithful Muslim followers and something else entirely to his Western audience. His choice of words, the formulations he uses – even his tone of voice – vary, chameleon-like, according to his audience.”
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Ramadan has been excluded from the US. He was offered a professorship at Notre Dame but his visa was revoked.
Bernard-Henry Levy has no integrity and is nothing but a faux-intellectual stuffed shirt — a thing of which the French have far too many. He makes Jean Baudrillard look like a real thinker.
Both Sarkozy and Kouchner are Zionists. Sarkozy is a Crypto-Jew (his mother was a Sanish Jewess and father a Christian) and former Mossad informer. Kouchner is a Zionist Jew.
Tariq Ramadan used to be favorite of Bernard Lewis-Daniel Pipes-Bernard-Henry Levy-etc., the so-called “Orientalists” and “experts” on Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. He was even called “Muslim Martin Luther”. His downfall came when speaking on a French Muslim radio – he questioned some of his fellow Jewish “Orientalists” for not condeming Israel for its treatment of native Palestinians. For this of his “politically incorrect statement”, he was declared a “threat to the US security” and was not allowed to join his post at Notre Dam University. Last month he was expelled from his country’s University for hosting a religious show at Iranian TV.
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
“his mother was a Sanish Jewess”
Mine was just totally nuts!
Oh, give me a break, did you think I could leave it alone? I could have pointed out that “Jewess” is considered an anti-Semitic locution. But that would be tiresome.
But it is, by the way.
I won’t even get started on “Crypto-Jew”, the quality of that expression should be self-evident.
But what the hell, I know how these things work, and if the end result is laudable…
Be careful, Moose. Soon you will have mentioned “antisemitism” more times than you have mentioned Palestine.
If Rehmat really loved the Jews he would’ve used the terms “female descendent of the Hebrews” in place of Jewess, and “secret admirer of the Chosen” in place of crypto-Jew.
The solution is simple, people: if you don’t want to be an anti-Semite, don’t abbreviate and don’t use the letter J.
Professor Robert Jensen, a strong critic of Israel but whose efforts are diminished because he has swallowed and regurgitates Chomsky’s mindboggling dismissal of the power of the Zionist lobby, told a predominantly Muslim audience in Houston several years ago that they should never use the word Jew or Jewish in criticizing Israeli policies because of its potential “anti-semitic” implications, a comment which caused more than several listeners to roll their eyes.
Presumably, that would either bind them to silence, or require them to call the American Jewish Committee the American Zionist Committee, refer to the Conference of Major Jewish American Organizations as Major Zionist American Organizations, etc. Hmmm. That might, actually be closer to the truth, since support for Israel remains their only raison d’etre.
They do not have to worry just about Tariq Ramadan because there is a growing consensus in academia that we are not going to put up with this intimidation any longer. So proverbial asses like Kouchner and Levy can bloviate all they like, what is happening is a hardening consensus among the academics, so that there will no longer be fearful submission to the status quo.
In fact there will an alternate gathering if this attempted process of intimidation continues, to the point of building alternate academic institutions that have no fear of telling the truth. That is because real truth has exited many academic institutions and they have become nothing but havens for “officially” harboring wanton lies both foreign and domestic. Honest academics will no longer be the fat around the midsection of a voracious elite and the fairy tales they espouse, so the powers that be that are so concerned about what they perceive to be the insignificant few will find this the least of their worries when their policies have given birth to institutions which eat them alive. This, so that what Noam Chomsky has so correctly identified about “intellectuals” will no longer be the case –
END GAME
Yes, the UNHRC has adopted the Resolution wherein the vote on the Goldstone Report has been passed, much to the consternation of Obama (the guy who got the Nobel . . . some award–Obama should give it to Goldstone), as well as the Netanyahu’s & the Gordon Brown’s & the Sarkaozy’s.
Those who voted for the resolution included China, Russia, Egypt, India (a pleasant surprise & unexpected), Jordan, Pakistan, South Africa, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ghana, Indonesia, Djibouti, Liberia, Qatar, Senegal, Brazil, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria and Palestine.
Six countries voted against the report, including US, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Ukraine.
Among those that abstained were Bosnia, Burkina-Faso, Cameron, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway (!), Belgium, South Korea, Slovenia and Uruguay. Madagascar and Kyrgyzstan were not present during the vote.
Netanyahu is on a rampage against the UN and the Goldstone Report, declaring that no Israeli war ciminal will ever face trial, etc. All the tsouris seems to have distracted him from Iran.
“tsouris”
It is my policy to regularize the spelling of Yiddish words by using an online Yiddish dictionary. I know few enough, I might as well spell them right. (I kick myself when I think of the opportunity to become fluent in Yiddish I wasted, but that’s another story) I like: link to pass.to
, but there are others.
Of course, Yiddish words I make up I spell anyway I like.