A trapped bluebottle circled the conference room,
flying lazily towards the tall windows through which
New York's East River could be seen. It flew over the
chair where the representative for the International
Organization for Migration sat fiddling with his UN,
Japanese-made, ergonomically designed earpiece,
passed over the African Union and Commonwealth
Secretariat and settled somewhere by the Holy
See's seat.
Outside, it was a cold New York day. Inside, where
these members of the UN's Third Committee (Social,
Humanitarian and Cultural matters) gathered, the
room was bathed in a comfy buzz of well-being,
engendered when like-minded people gather
together.
The topic last week in Conference Room 1 of the UN
was human rights in Burundi and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo — a part of the world where
human rights are fulfilled by simply waking up alive
and where democratic republics are anything but.
The UN Special Rapporteur found no improvement in
Burundi. Children were still being recruited as
soldiers; mass rape had increased and now was
aimed at young boys as well as girls. The latter was
"a new phenomenon", said Rapporteur Ms
Keita-Bocoum.
In neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo,
where three million people have died in the past five
years of fighting, another UN Special Rapporteur
described it as the "worst human rights situation in
the world". She footnoted a special concern for the
unlucky children named as "sorcerers", who were
maimed or killed for their witchcraft.
It was business as usual. Before the early break for
Ramadan, Burkina Faso, the Congo and Zimbabwe
co-sponsored human rights resolutions. Sudan
introduced one. The atmosphere remained clubby
and cordial as the Ambassador of Israel came to the
microphone to present a resolution on behalf of
Israeli children.
Ambassadors don't normally present resolutions at
committee level, but since Israel had not presented
one since 1978 (and that was withdrawn after the
Syrians tied its future to negotiations with the PLO),
it was a bit of a first. The Israeli resolution was a
mirror copy of one sponsored by Egypt and passed
(88-4, 58 abstentions) in the General Assembly
three weeks earlier, underlining the need to protect
the rights of Palestinian children.
That resolution was a bit of a first, too: no other
group of children had been singled out for protection
by the UN — not the child soldiers in Burundi, not the
raped and mutilated girls and boys of the Congo,
nor children in any other of the world's impoverished
or warring nations. By tacit agreement, children
have always been considered universally at the UN.
The delegates were polite as Ambassador Dan
Gillerman spoke. He asked for security for Israeli,
Palestinian and all children of the world. He spoke of
a "false reality" that pretends one side has a
monopoly on victim status. He wished, he said, to
prevent the blatant exercise of a double-standard in
the UN.
He mentioned the deliberate bombing of discos,
pizza parlors and school buses, almost exclusively
used by children. When he finished, the session
chairman did not ask the names of co-sponsors for
the Israeli resolution. Because there were none.
A discussion followed. The Syrian delegate
strenuously opposed assistance of Israeli children
and said the resolution was procedurally wrong. The
Palestinian Authority's lady complained that the
Israelis had "copied" their resolution. The situation
of Palestinian children was "unique" she said — which
it may well be, since most children of the world are
not used as human shields for terrorist camps or
encouraged to be suicide bombers so their pictures
can be put up in grocery stores as "martyrs".
It is as if British children in the Second World War
had not been evacuated to the countryside but
rather placed around the War Office and anti-aircraft
embankments. Afterwards, the PA lady conference
earnestly for 20 minutes with a French delegate
over procedurally thwarting the Israeli resolution so
it would not come to a vote. The bluebottle returned
to the most heated part of the committee room.
The session ended with a report by the Special
Reporter of the Commission on Human Rights,
John Dugard, on "human rights in the Palestinian
territories since 1967". Mr Dugard, who had been a
courageous campaigner against apartheid, missed
out when jobs were given away in the new South
Africa and lost election to the International Criminal
Court. Without apartheid to fight, he has demonized
Israel to fill the gap. This transference of all ills to
Israel's doorstep is a psychiatric condition common
in, though not confined to, members of the UN.
Down the hall, in Conference Room 2, the Second
Committee (Economics and Finance) was discussing
"the permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian
people over their natural resources", or how to stop
thuggish Israel looting them. The Fourth Committee
(special Political and Decolonization committee)
regularly considers the atrocities of Israelis in their
role as imperialist running dogs.
Unesco, Unicef and UNRWA spend much of their time
visiting Israel and condemning it. The General
Assembly, unable to pass a single resolution
condemning Palestinian terrorism, routinely
condemns Israel and calls emergency sessions
especially for the purpose.
The reality of the Middle East is that the very
existence of Israel is considered a nakba — a
catastrophe. This being so, the Israeli Ambassador
could present a resolution recommending all people
be encouraged to breathe — and it would be
unacceptable to that part of the world. Does the UN
matter? Only insofar as the record matters. Certain
things must be done not because they will make a
difference but to set the record straight. This week,
Third Committee delegates will consider deleting
anti-Semitism from the new UNHCR resolution on
racial and religious intolerance, thus giving new life
to old canards.
The UN is not furnished luxuriously, but it is a
congenial place. Sitting in one of its lounges, sipping
an iced chai latte, one could see the irony of the
situation. If the Arab world has any legitimate case
against Israel, it is not the occupied territories,
which are in Israeli hands only because of wars the
Arabs launched. It is what they see as the initial
injustice behind the Jewish state's founding.
The world's response to the Nazi holocaust and
centuries of European persecution of Jews —
including Tsarist-inspired pogroms and, indeed,
French anti-Semitism, whose Dreyfus Affair inspired
Theodor Herzl's Zionism - was to give away a slice of
Arab Muslim land to the Jews. While one fully
appreciates the Jews' historical and religious
connection to the land of Zion, it must be said that
insofar as the Arab case has any persuasive merit, it
is on this initial point.
But the Arabs have had a great revenge. They have
taken over the very body that was responsible for
this — the United Nations — with the hope that the
organization that created the injustice may well be
the instrument of its undoing. And that, as the
bluebottle on the wall could tell you, is a story that
has not unfolded yet.
