Soccer Dad

A friend indeed

In "The frequent abstainers club," Evelyn Gordon makes the case that the Bush administration's handling of the UN has actually made the Security Council slightly less hostile to Israel's existence.

Bush achieved this shift by setting a clear, consistent standard for what constitutes bias: Condemnations of Israel are biased unless the resolution also condemns anti-Israel terror.

And, more importantly, vague condemnations of "all violence against civilians" do not qualify. The resolution must explicitly condemn Palestinian perpetrators such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades.

That is such a simple and reasonable demand that some countries have found it impossible to ignore. Yet the Palestinians, and hence the Arab countries that sponsor Security Council resolutions on their behalf, have never once been willing to agree.

The result is that a handful of nations that once voted consistently against Israel - England, Germany, Norway, Romania, Bulgaria and Cameroon - turned into frequent abstainers.

John Danforth, Washington's current ambassador to the UN, provided an eloquent example of how the new system works during last week's debate on the latest anti-Israel resolution, which would have condemned Israel's current military operation in Gaza and demanded that it cease immediately.

Danforth did not say that the US was unwilling in principle to condemn the operation, which began after Hamas killed two Israeli children in Sderot with a Kassam rocket launched from Gaza on September 29. That would have been unacceptable to every other Security Council member, and therefore counterproductive. Instead he explained in detail why the resolution was unbalanced as it stood and what would have to be added to make it acceptable to the US.

The resolution, he said in addresses to the council on Monday and Tuesday, "tends to put the blame on Israel and absolves terrorists in the Middle East - people who shoot rockets into civilian areas, people who are responsible for killing children, Hamas. Nothing was said in this resolution about that problem."

Specifically, he said, "it does not mention even one of the 450 Kassam rocket attacks launched against Israel over the past two years It does not mention the two Israeli children who were outside playing last week when a rocket suddenly crashed into their young bodies.

On a parallel note Khaled Abu Toameh reports "Bombings and Kassams hurt support for Palestinians":

A senior Palestinian official told me that when he contacted different governments to complain about the Israeli “massacres” against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, he was surprised to hear that there was almost full understanding for Israel’s motives for the operation, which began two weeks ago after two infants were killed by Kassam rockets in the Israeli town of Sderot.

“Before you call us to complain about Israeli atrocities, why don’t you tell [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Yasser Arafat and Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israeli cities,” a senior European diplomat reportedly told the Palestinian representative.

On the other hand Reuters reports "Israel, Europe Could Be on Collision Course -Report"

Israel could end up on a collision course with the European Union (news - web sites) and face sanctions like apartheid-era South Africa unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved, a confidential government report warns.

Reuters Photo

The document, a 10-year forecast prepared by Israel's Foreign Ministry, predicts that the Jewish state could become increasingly isolated internationally as the EU grows more influential, political sources said.

The report says that if the recently expanded 25-nation bloc can set aside internal differences and forge a unified foreign policy, it could "harm Israeli interests" by cutting into the clout wielded by the United States, Israel's chief ally.

Of course reading the story it seems that this report is probably one of those "worst case scenarios" that is then conflated into fact by media that wishes to paint Israel in the worst possible light.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 15, 2004 02:03 PM | TrackBack