The Jerusalem Post  |  August 8, 2006

Kofi Annan To Hizbullah's Rescue?

By Anne Bayefsky

American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on the brink of handing President George W. Bush the worst diplomatic disaster of his presidency. She is poised to agree to UN resolutions that will tie the hands of both Israel and the United States in the war on terrorism and, in particular, inhibit future action on its number one state sponsor - Iran.

The catastrophe is the brainchild of Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has effectively turned the United Nations into the political wing of Hizbullah. Rice and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns are working furiously to satisfy a timetable dictated by Annan, not by the interests of the United States.

How did the United Nations become the forum for producing peace between Israel and its neighbors, which have rejected the Jewish state's existence for the past six decades? In the past three weeks, a multi-headed hydra of UN actors has risen to defeat Israel on the political battlefield in an unprecedented disregard of the UN Charter's central tenet: the right of self-defense.

Existing Security Council resolutions have for years required "the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south, [and] ensure a calm environment throughout the area, including along the Blue Line, and to exert control over the use of force on its territory and from it."

A combination of Iranian aggression, Syrian support, and Lebanese impotence and malfeasance, has actively prevented the implementation of the existing resolutions.

But how did the UN respond to the aggression against the UN member state of Israel, which was launched once again from Lebanese territory and which continues to the present hour? By accusing Israel of murder, mass genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, the deliberate attack of children, and racism. UN actors have even denied that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization and analogized it to anti-Nazi resistance movements. In the last three weeks, we have heard:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan:

· Israel's "excessive use of force is to be condemned;" Israel has "torn the country to shreds... Israel's disproportionate use of force and collective punishment of the Lebanese people must stop."

· Israel is "apparently" guilty of the murder of UN soldiers. The UNIFIL soldiers were killed by Israel after it responded to Hizbullah attacks on Israeli civilians. One of the soldiers had reported only days before he died that Hizbullah's nearby actions meant Israel's response "has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity." Yet without any investigation Annan immediately called it an "apparently deliberate targeting" - an accusation he has yet to retract.

· Israel has "committed grave breaches of international humanitarian law" and "has caused, and is causing, death and suffering on a wholly unacceptable scale."

Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown:

· Hizbullah, the Iranian-proxy currently fighting Israel, is not a terrorist organization. "It is not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism," said Malloch Brown, claiming Hizbullah is "completely separate and different from al-Qaida."

Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator:

· "The excessive and disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces...must stop."

Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:

· In comments Arbour directed at Israel, she said: "the bombardment of sites with alleged military significance, but resulting invariably in the killing of innocent civilians, is unjustifiable," suggesting that Israel was perpetrating "war crimes and crimes against humanity" for violating the "obligation to protect civilians during hostilities."

Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict:

· In comments directed "even-handedly" to Israel and Hizbullah, Coomaraswamy "strongly condemned the repeated attacks on civilians, and especially on children, noting that callous disregard for the lives of children has permeated this conflict from its start."

Ann Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF:

· Veneman claimed Israel is engaged in "the continued targeting of civilians, particularly children."

Agha Shahi, Pakistani member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination:

· "Would Israel have resorted to the bombing of civilian infrastructure if it were fighting a non-Arab force? It was a war between different ethnic groups, the Arabs and the Jews."

Jose Fransisco Calitzay, Guatemalan member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination:

· Commenting on events in Lebanon, Calitzay said "mass genocide was the highest level of racism that could exist, and they had to prevent that from happening in the present case."

Mahmoud Aboul-Nasr, Egyptian member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination:

· Aboul-Nasr "objected to the designation of Hizbullah as a terrorist organization. Hizbullah was not a terrorist organization; it was a resistance movement that was fighting foreign occupation, just as there had been during the Second World War."

IN SHORT, the UN - which to this day cannot define terrorism - did not come to the aid of a UN member under fire from one of the world's leading terrorist organizations. It came to the aid of the terrorist by attempting to prevent the member state from exercising its right to hit back. More here...