The UN: Good news/bad news

The good news: Members of the Security Council walked out on Libya when the Libyan ambassador compared Gaza to a concentration camp, and accused the Israelis of genocide. The bad news: Well, Libya’s still on the UNSC.

It’s a most peculiar form of genocide that Israel is accused of. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza keeps increasing. I guess it must be some special form of Muslim genocide, where the word means “increasing the population” not “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group”. Although that is exactly what the Muslim world has done to its Jewish population, and could frankly also be applied to what the Palestinians are doing to their Christians, but Christians are a religious group, not a cultural group, so I guess it can’t apply.

France on Wednesday led a walkout of western envoys from a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East after Libya compared the situation in the besieged Gaza Strip to Nazi “concentration camps,” diplomats said.

One diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said France’s UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert took off his earpiece and walked out, followed by his Western colleagues, after his Libyan counterpart Giadalla Ettalhi made the remarks.

[… ]The incident occurred as the 15-member council was trying to agree on a compromise statement that would have highlighted the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza while also contributing positively to efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

South Africa’s UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, the council chairman this month, told reporters that members “could not agree” on the statement.

Meaning, of course, that the non-Western members are trying to slam Israel and when told to make a more balanced statement, refuse. But here’s the big laff-riot line:

Speaking to reporters after the debate, Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari told reporters: “Unfortunately those who complain of being victims of genocide (during World War II) are repeating the same kind of genocide against the Palestinians.”

I have one word for you, you lying hypocrite: Hama.

The assault began on February 2 with extensive shelling of the town of 350 000 inhabitants. Before the attack, the Syrian government called for the city’s surrender and warned that anyone remaining in the city would be considered as a rebel. Robert Fisk in his book Pity the Nation described how civilians were fleeing Hama while tanks and troops were moving towards the city’s outskirts to start the siege. He cites reports of mass death and shortages of food and water from fleeing civilians and from soldiers .[3]

According to Amnesty International, the Syrian military bombed the old streets of the city from the air to facilitate the introduction of military forces and tanks through the narrow streets, where homes were crushed by tanks during the first four days of fighting. They also claim that the Syrian military pumped poison gas into buildings where insurgents were said to be hiding.

The army was mobilized, and Hafez again sent Rifaat’s special forces and Mukhabarat agents to the city. After encountering fierce resistance, Rifaat’s forces ringed the city with artillery and shelled it for three weeks. Afterward, military and internal security personnel were dispatched to comb through the rubble for surviving Brothers and their sympathizers.[4] Then followed several weeks of torture and mass executions of suspected rebel sympathizers, killing many thousands, known as the Hama Massacre. Journalist Robert Fisk, who was in Hama shortly after the massacre, estimated fatalities as high as 10,000.[5] The New York Times estimated the death toll as up to 20,000.[2] According to Thomas Friedman[6] Rifaat later boasted of killing 38,000 people. The Syrian Human Rights Committee estimates 30,000 to 40,000 were killed. Most of the old city was completely destroyed, including its palaces, mosques, ancient ruins and the famous Azzem Palace mansion.

[….] Hama, which had some small tourist attractions like open parks and water wheels, turned into a poor city. After the massacre many of Hama’s inhabitants moved away, and in their place came people from nearby villages.

And then there is the case of Syria’s Jews, which numbered 30,000 in 1948, but now is less than 100. (They’re mostly in Israel now.)

The Arab and Muslim world are experts at ethnic cleansing and genocide. Just look at what they’ve done to the Jews. Can you say, “Projection”?

I knew you could.