Against Moral Inversion:

Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, psychoanalyses the bully mentality of "UN Human Rights" Council, here:

The nations assembled in this special session on the Gaza Strip, convened by the Arab and Islamic states, face an immediate question. On the proposal to condemn Israel, for the alleged crime of targeting civilians, should they vote for, or against?

Let us consider the proposed resolution. To understand its purpose we are guided best not by the science that studies the conduct of governments, but that which studies the mind.In psychology, attributing one’s own malicious impulses to others is known as projection. Mr. President, the resolution before us constitutes a classic case of such projection.

It is, after all, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations, who deliberately fire rockets—over 200 in the past week alone—at innocent civilians in Sderot and other Israeli towns. It is they who attack from populated areas, using their fellow Palestinians as human shields. It is they who reject the very notion of a distinction between combatants and civilians.

Israel, like the rest of the civilized world, does the opposite. In exercising its right and obligation under international law to defend its citizens from such attacks, Israel risks the lives of its own soldiers to avoid harming civilians. To Israel, causing a civilian casualty is an unintended tragedy; to Hamas, it is a cause for celebration. The world knows this. (Read the rest)

And here is one of the responses, by the delegate from Cuba:

Human... UN Watch is a lucrative organization amply funded by the CIA and Mossad, which is devoted to denigrating certain member states and this Council. He told us, that Israel and his own organization are within the so-called “civilized world”… This implied that this special session is in the world of the barbarians.

But I don’t know anything greater than the acts of barbarians than are taking place in Gaza — dark hospitals, people without water, and other things that UN Watch and his executive director haven’t talked about. I won’t take any more time talking about this false organization, whose voice I have never heard criticizing the concentration camps in Guantanamo. I will simply wait for them calmly in New York, where in the NGOs meeting where they will have to render accounts. And we will see what to do with their consultative status.

Well, such are the positions of the nations that are allowed to participate fully in such organizations as the UN sponsors, and this is the kind of international justice and order that we can expect from it.

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The above should be seen in the context of the preparation for Durban II:

The second UN World Conference Against Racism (Durban II), to take place in 2009, is currently in the planning stage. Despite being organised under the auspices of the reassuringly-titled UN Human Rights Council (which just kicked off the new year with another special session on Israel), the planning committee instils doubt - Iran somehow has a seat and Libya is Chair. Both are members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference which has been telling its members to suspend ties with Israel for several years. It was in this climate of heightening opposition to Israel that the NGO Forum at Durban I, which dragged itself to a close on September 8th 2001, nearly succeeded in writing racism against Jews out of its official anti-racist statement.

With these things in mind Canada has decided not to attend Durban II, Khabrein reports:

Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity Jason Kenny Wednesday said Canada would have nothing to do with such a conference that last time ended up promoting racism and intolerance. "We'll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance," he told the Canadian press. Calling the 2001 gathering "a circus of intolerance", Kenney said: "Our considered judgement, having participated in the preparatory meetings, was that we were set for a replay of Durban I. And Canada has no intention of lending its good name and resources to such a systematic promotion of hatred and bigotry."

Indeed, Durban I marks the intensification of anti-Israel activity in Britain. It was hijacked by activists who attempted to use the occupation of Palestinian land as a pretext for excluding antisemitism from recognition as a form of racism. They pressed for a statement that Israel was a 'racist apartheid' state while simultaneously references to antisemitism - anti-Jewish racism - were removed from the statement. Salon reported at the time that the anti-Israel activity was planned and concerted. Predictably, those activists attracted, or included, the kind of people who distribute leaflets saying that 'Hitler should have finished the job' and shout things like "Kill Jews".

Indeed, Durban I marks the intensification of anti-Israel activity in Britain. It was hijacked by activists who attempted to use the occupation of Palestinian land as a pretext for excluding antisemitism from recognition as a form of racism. They pressed for a statement that Israel was a 'racist apartheid' state while simultaneously references to antisemitism - anti-Jewish racism - were removed from the statement. Salon reported at the time that the anti-Israel activity was planned and concerted. Predictably, those activists attracted, or included, the kind of people who distribute leaflets saying that 'Hitler should have finished the job' and shout things like "Kill Jews".

Israel has been called a racist state by the UN before, for 16 years in 1975. The General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, sponsored by 25 states who stated that “the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being” and “determin[ing] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. It was revoked in 1991 with miniscule motion 46/86.

Above all Zionism is a response by people of different ethnicities and religions to anti-Jewish racism. Defining Zionism as racism in a so-called anti-racist statement which simultaneously denies reference to antisemitism was ludicrous, appalling and impossible to misunderstand. Nothing has changed in the intervening period.

This is why Canada has made an early assessment that Durban II is probably not going to be worth attending. The question is whether anti-Israel activists are really prepared to squander an opportunity to unite member states in opposition to racism everywhere - Darfur, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Israel and many other countries where racism needs urgent attention - for the sake of trying to destroy the world's only Jewish country.

Background in the Jerusalem Post; more from the Associated Press

(H/T: Engage)

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Update:

In New York, Anne Bayefsky, senior editor of the watchdog Eye on the UN, said in a news release on the organization’s website that in one of its first moves, “the UN committee did not have any trouble agreeing to a procedural move with discriminatory overtones. The first substantive session of the preparatory committee will be April 21-May 2, 2008. Why those dates? The Jewish holiday of Passover is April 20-27, 2008, and Jews the world over will now be inhibited from participating in a meeting supposedly dedicated to combating discrimination and xenophobia.”

I also wonder how much this:

Even at the planning stage, Islamic countries through the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) are attempting to steer the Durban II conference toward “the issue of religious discrimination and defamation of Islam.”

Will impact on cases like Mark Steyn's and Ezra Levant's troubles with Canada's own Human Rights Commission.