To obedient Chomskyites and Occupiers, America is, the “greatest terrorist state” in the world and the “greatest threat to world peace”- outside of Israel, of course. “Don’t you see how much power the U.S. wields?” a colleague recently asked.
No matter that in states like Pakistan or Syria, said colleague would long be dead for a dozen reasons. If massive power is a legitimate fear, I wondered, why is no one afraid of the governing body with more power than the U.S.? The United Nations, as its name suggests, controls the whole world.
Once upon a time, I was also an Adbusters-toting idealist who had never left the freedom of North America, where my mates could call our prime minister an arse and live to laugh about it. I dutifully studied the colonial evils of the west over innocent, peaceful peoples who had never heard of slavery or rape or torture or misogyny until polluted by Christian corporate greed. Whenever I heard of war or violence amongst these unblemished angels, I did what every good little progressive does- I blamed America. I also thought the U.N. was a benign peacekeeping force, an omnipotent and caring presence, kind of like God. Given the considerable persuasions of its speakers and delegates, its obvious role was to keep the behemoth of America in check so all the other nice little countries could wriggle out from under her tentacles and resume the idyllic socialist systems that brought abundance and peace.
U.N. Watch entered my consciousness during an uneasy transition from a social justice type, who never actually voted and couldn’t tell you why I hated Reagan, to what my detractors see as archconservative, but I call truth-seeking realist. Though I would not have been able to see it then, my earlier suppositions went along the lines of, if the U.N. says so, it must be so. Thus, Castro and Ahmadinejad and the Sandinistas were good and America and the Jews were evil.
This logic was much easier than thinking for myself and having the whole world topple on my head. But topple it did, and with the help of U.N. Watch, I began to understand that nothing was what it appeared to be. I’d been able to swallow a lot of things, including antisemitic tripe that Israel is the world’s worst violator of human rights. But what was all this stuff about Saudi Arabia as a beacon of women’s rights? And in the 21st century, how could the adoption of worldwide anti-blasphemy laws even come to the table for serious discussion? The Organization of the Islamic Congress has continually tried to pass anti-defamation of Islam laws and the U.N. actually takes such nonsense seriously. Seriously?
While at first I maintained the mindset that American racism, which could not have existed longer than America itself, was nonetheless responsible for 1400 years of Islam’s brutal beheadings of blasphemers and infidels, I knew that parallel reinstating of Catholic anti-heresy was ludicrous. The only difference was in that death for religious dissent from Islam was still legally and popularly practiced, as opposed to something that had been abolished centuries ago. I sensed how dangerous it was to propose and consider such draconian laws for worldwide imposition. What the U.N. should have been discussing was bringing the freedom to dissent, criticize, and mock religion to the whole world, not removing it from the paltry few free arenas.
It was somewhere along here that I began to consider that the U.N. might be wrong about everything. Like all the other sheep, I’d been sold long ago on the idea that Castro was a hero of the poor and not a filthy rich killer, and on the zero sum fallacy that America’s prosperity was to blame for world poverty. But even so, the U.N. Human Rights Council seemed like a ridiculous hodge-podge of the most ardent torturers of humanity from the most repressive regimes. I mean, Libya? Really?
The U.N. Watch’s mandate as a Geneva-based non-governmental organization was to “monitor the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter,” which seemed a reasonable premise. So I decided to hear them out.
Today I laud U.N. Watch as one of the few human rights advocacy groups that has real balls. Standing up at U.N. conferences to question mass butchers on brutality and deception is far more courageous than holding up ‘He’s Not My President’ placards about Bush in a free country. More, U.N. Watch is sometimes the only outlet that bothers reporting or drawing attention to some of the most heinous failures of leadership around the globe. It’s a mystery to me why most of the issues they highlight do not end up in “TruthDig” or Now Magazine or other leftist outlets that purport to care about human rights. When so much ink is spilled on travesties like whether or not Toronto’s fat white mayor Rob Ford ate at KFC or axed funding to a poorly attended knitting circle for former meth addicts, one would assume that things like holocaust denial at the U.N. or a moment of silence for the psychopathic king of carnage, Kim Jong-il, would occasionally merit a small paragraph. You would assume there would be outrage that a megalomaniac named Ahmadinejad who hangs teen homosexuals is invited annually to speak on the red carpet of the U.N. But you’d be wrong.
Thanks to Israel on Campus and Hillel U of T, U.N. Watch’s executive director Hillel Neuer came to the University of Toronto this past Wednesday, September 19th to speak about Democracy and Human Rights in the United Nations. Flying in straight from a Human Rights Council session in Geneva, Mr. Neuer showed no signs of exhaustion or of battle fatigue, launching into a passionate and patient discussion with 100 or so inquisitive young people studying politics and international relations. I’m not a student, but Israel on Campus welcomed me and invited me to future events.
Neuer proved even more engaging in person than in his writings: he is a fount of information and an articulate speaker. Unlike yours truly, he is able to express his ideas without resorting to sarcasm or belittling the abject stupidity he is up against. Certainly if he takes on international master manipulators who dupe intelligent world bodies into complicity with their evil, he can handle a few predictable questions from an inexperienced audience.
When one student raised his hand and annoyingly pointed out that Neuer had failed to criticize Israel along with savage states like Sudan, Libya, China and Cuba, Neuer said, “If you want to see criticism of Israel, open up an Israeli paper.”
This drove home the fact that in a free country like Israel, residents do not disappear or end up being fed to Doberman pincers when they discuss state policies. Neuer patiently explained that while even his home, Quebec, must be called out for numerous imperfections, neither Canada nor Israel rank as top human rights abusers.
This incident brought to mind some recent reading about Israel, about how “apartheid Israel” was violating human rights by turning back floods of African refugees for which they have no resources at this time. The article failed to mention that Israel has provided sanctuary to countless blacks and Muslims and other non-Jews; that indeed, it is an oasis in the desert, a safer country for Muslims than Muslim countries! It did mention that the refugees could not be sent home because their home countries were cesspools of torture, but it condemned tiny Israel for not having limitless resources to take then on, rather than blaming the evil from which the refugees were trying to escape. Israel could not possibly take on the billions of neighbours suffering from horrific torture and neglect, and that, too, is their fault as the only safe country in the region? How about enforcing change in oppressive hells like Egypt and Eritrea? How about making African countries safe for African citizens and Muslim countries safe for Muslim persons? The very fact that the refugees are attempting to get into Israel suggests that the critique might best be aimed from whence they came. My friends, the world is upside down.
Neuer began his lecture by highlighting how in 1946, it was Eleanor Roosevelt who sat as human rights chair; by 2003, it was the representative of Muammar Gaddafi. He spoke about the brilliance of the Declaration of Human Rights, and about how ludicrous it was to engage with nations who weren’t even pretending to have read the document, never mind adhere to it. He talked about the hypocrisy of alleging to uphold human rights when coddling delegates of the world’s most oppressive regimes like China, Cuba, or Mauritania, “where 800, 000 black Africans still suffer from slavery.” He points out that Sudan’s genocidal warlord, who has committed crimes against humanity, was running for a seat on the HRC; U.N. Watch helped shame him into withdrawing.
“One thing we keep hearing at the U.N.,” Neuer said, “is how human rights may be ‘for you in the west’ but elsewhere, we do things different, we in Iran, we in China, we do things differently than you do.’” Neuer shows how delegates point to basic rights like food and water, to economic issues “misused as a dodge to evade scrutiny.” The fact that economic issues cannot be resolved under tyrannical or communist rule and require freedom of people and freedom of market is swept under the rug. Of course, “if you speak to the victims in Zimbabwe and China,” Neuer points at the obvious, “they want human rights.” It is the regime that dodges the issue to avoid the hot seat and direct it back to America. But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is supposed to be universal, no?
U.N. Watch believes “that even with its shortcomings, the UN remains an indispensable tool in bringing together diverse nations and cultures.” Personally, I’m not so hopeful; I will come right out and call the U.N. evil.
The level of the corruption, and the fact that its own Declaration of Human Rights is something that it treats like a joke gives me pause to say the least. The fact that it sucks up its money from the west and uses that money against the west is highway robbery. Nor is its peacekeeping work very effective. The UN has the power to override laws in free nations with the desires of dictators from the most oppressive regimes in the world; we should be a little more worried when those states attempt to pass laws through the United Nations that will make criticism of Islamist tyranny an international crime. Pulling out all financial dues and withdrawing aid from all countries engaged in tyranny and child marriage and censored media and slavery etc. until they meet the basics of the Declaration seems obvious. As it stands, our economic support funds barbarism of the worst stripes.
But U.N. Watch understands that regardless of all this, someone has to stand up and start pointing out these hypocrisies and injustices, and to do so, they will have to stand up to the U.N. itself.
“The HRC is a microcosm of the United Nations as a whole,” Neuer said, “the United Nations reflected as the world is, not as we want it to be.”
