The Human Rights Council, 29 September 2009, Geneva, Switzerland
Joint statement delivered by Anne Bayefsky on behalf of The Touro
Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and the Hudson Institute The Goldstone mission will go down in history as the 21st century’s equivalent to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – a notorious work of fiction which spun a conspiratorial web of deceit and distortion that has fueled hatred of Jews ever since.
At its core, the Goldstone report repeats the ancient blood libel against the Jewish people – the allegation of bloodthirsty Jews intent on butchering the innocent. Or as the Goldstone mission casts this abomination for a modern audience: Israel “deliberately…terrorize[d] a civilian population;” Israeli “violence against civilians w[as] part of a deliberate policy.” (paras. 1211, 1690)
With this report the UN has come full circle. Rising from the Jewish ashes of crimes against humanity, it now purports to render the Jewish people’s exercise of the right of self-defence as itself a crime against humanity.
Like all vehicles of hate it relies on many cogs in the wheel. Terrorists whose ambition is to annihilate the Jewish people. States which invented an instrument to affect that end by political means when armed attack repeatedly failed. And the lawyers whose prejudices and predispositions meant that they willingly carried out orders,
…by writing a report disguised as a human rights document that never mentions the racist genocidal intent of the enemy which Israel finally confronted after years of restraint,
…by inventing laws of war which never mention the “right of self-defence”,
…by relying on testimonies from witnesses under circumstances – in its own words – that gave rise to “a fear of reprisals” should they have dared to tell the truth. (para 438)
In this so-called interactive dialogue, there is, therefore, only one question to put to you, Richard. How does it feel to have used your Jewishness to jeopardize the safety and security of the people Israel and to find yourself in the company of human rights abusers everywhere?
