And everyone thought it couldn’t be worse than having Richard Falk as the official tattletale to the United Nations about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian Arabs.
But Falk’s replacement is quitting after he completes only two years of his six year term. The reason he gave for quitting is Israel’s refusal to grant him access to the “occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Not realizing the irony of his resignation statement, the latest UN special tattletale explained that “my efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way.” Sound impartial?
Falk served for six years in the position officially known as the “UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” No joke. That is the full title.
There are no other such “special rapporteurs” who are appointed permanent positions to look into the dire human rights conditions in which a particular people live anywhere else in the world. Not in Saudi Arabia, not in South Sudan, not in China, not in Eritrea. The position was created to catalogue abuses described by the Palestinian Arabs to demonize Israel. Falk was the fifth such Special Rapporteur.
Falk fulfilled his job perfectly – never missing an opportunity to disparage Israel, whether or not the facts fit the situation. Falk, a Princteon professor, favored a boycott of Israelis living and breathing in the disputed territories, claimed Israel had “genocidal tendencies” towards the Paelstinians, and embraced 9/11 conspiracy theories.
In May of 2014, Makarim Wibisono, a diplomat from Indonesia with a long public history of anti-Israel animus, replaced Falk.
Indonesia has no diplomatic relations with Israel.
Wibisono has spent nearly all of his professional life working for the U.N., in various positions.
How biased is the UN Special (and Permanent) Tattletale on Israel?
This past fall there were nearly daily rammings, stabbings and shootings of Israelis by Palestinian- or Israeli-Arabs. So how did the special UN snoop report this? An 11 paragraph report issued on Nov. 16 treated the several months period of virtual open warfare on Israeli Jews as a completely equal uptick in “continuing violence.”
It pointed out that in the preceding six weeks, “over 80 Palestinians and around 15 Israelis have reportedly been killed. In addition, thousands of Palestinians and more than 100 Israelis have been injured.”
So far, it sounds like the Arabs had the worst of it. But then the report focuses in on a specific case. Ah, but it’s the case of an Arab killed by Israeli forces “during an undercover arrest operation in a Hebron hospital on Thursday last week. Further fatalities, Israeli and Palestinian, were reported last Friday and over the weekend.” Now it is clear which side the Special Rapporteur sees as the clear victim.
No mention of drug-addled Arabs deliberately ramming their cars into groups of Israeli civilians, then jumping out of their cars and knifing old men to death with machetes. That happened, but that didn’t make it into the report. Nor did any of the other Arab-on-Israeli attacks.
Instead, what Wibisono did include in his report was a focus on cases of “excessive use of force by Israeli forces against Palestinians, including some which appear to amount to summary executions.” Yes, summary executions is U.N. speak for killing a terrorist who refuses to stop trying to stab or shoot or use their cars to ram Israelis to death.
THIS SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR WAS A LAST-MINUTE REPLACEMENT FOR AN IMPARTIAL NOMINEE
Wibisono was a last minute and surprise successor to Falk. The original choice, an American lawyer from Georgetown who received a unanimous recommendation from the UN Human Rights Council’s vetting committee, Christina Cerna, was nixed at the last minute by a show of force from the Arab League.