Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
It
is impossible to read this latest UN report, or to listen to its
authors and its state sponsors, without knowing that the campaign to rid
the world of Israeli settlements is a campaign to rid the world of
Israel
On Monday, March 17 in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council will hold a
first-ever three-hour session devoted to the alleged human rights
abomination known as the “Israeli settlement.” In the moral wasteland of
the United Nations, a Jew living on Arab-claimed land is a violation of
Arab human rights. There were once an estimated 900,000 Jews
across the Arab world, but today there are less than a few thousand.
They were given a choice: die, convert or flee. Now the 22nd Judenrein Arab state is in-the-making: Apartheid Palestine. Meanwhile,
20 percent of Israel’s population is Arab, and free Arab citizens sit
on the highest courts of the land, represent Israel abroad, and hold
political office. An Arab living (and thriving) in the Jewish state is
fulfilling a human right. How does this obvious contradiction make it past the human rights geniuses at the UN?The answer is almost as old as humankind: intolerance, xenophobia, bigotry and lawyers. On the table in Geneva will be a report, produced by three lawyers carefully selected by the UN brass. The
first item of business brushed aside by these legal beagles was that
the conclusion of their so-called “fact-finding mission” was decided
before they ever got started. Their job description, laid out by the
Human Rights Council, was “to investigate the implications of the
Israeli settlements on the... rights of the Palestinian people.” But
the same resolution already says: “Affirming that the Israeli settlement
activities... constitute very serious violations... of the human rights
of the Palestinian people.” Then there was the irrelevant issue of the bias of the fact-finders. Pakistani
“expert” Asma Jahangir has already had numerous UN jobs (as has her
sister Hina Jilani, one of four authors of the UN’s infamous Goldstone
Report). In 2004, as UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, Jahangir took the extraordinary step of issuing a
special statement exclaiming she was “aghast at the planned and
deliberate extrajudicial execution of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin.” When Israel killed Yassin’s successor, Abdul Aziz
Rantissi – with zero civilian casualties – Jahangir “sent a
communication to the Government of Israel” worried that Israeli
helicopters had fired “into the civilian car of Dr. Abdul Aziz
al-Rantisi, a senior Hamas political leader.” No matter that their
terrible acts had led US authorities to name both men as “specially
designated global terrorists,” or that as combatants in a war they were
not entitled to judicial process. French “expert” Christine
Chanet is on record as having told a UN treaty body meeting in July 2010
that settlements impose “severe” impediments to Palestinian rights. Her
decisions as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee are also
revealing. In 2001 she dissented when the Committee decided that a
Jewish citizen of the Czech Republic had been denied equal protection of
the law after Czech authorities failed to provide restitution for
property plundered by the Nazis. Chanet reasoned that by deciding in
favor of the Jewish victim, the Committee was wrongly “involving itself
in the assessment of evidence by the domestic courts.” But in
2004, Chanet dissented when the Committee decided not to pursue the
complaint of a professor who alleged he was denied an academic promotion
because of his perceived anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views. In the
case of the alleged anti-Jewish victim, Chanet reasoned in the opposite
direction. She said the Committee erred in refusing to reassess the
professor’s record of performance because the right answer was to “be
determined not in the light of the complaint as made before a domestic
court.” The third judge, Unity Dow from Botswana, has been on the
Executive Committee of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)
since 2006, and was chairperson of the Executive Committee from June
2011 to June 2012. During that time, the ICJ played a leading role in
pressing for and supporting the Goldstone report and its libelous
accusation that Israeli defense forces deliberately targeted Palestinian
civilians. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that these legal
minds produced a report on settlements that looks like law but smells
like rubbish. The report objects to “Settlement Master Plans.”
The capitalized terminology is invented by the reports’ authors and is
an unmistakable allusion to the deportation “masterplan” of Nazi SS
chief Heinrich Himmler. The report has one annex. It begins: “Timeline – Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territory 1948.” Not 1967. The
report provides a “list of selected sources” upon which it relied, and
links to them are helpfully provided by the UN website. A submission by
the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists was
deliberately excluded. Included are sources that claim Israel is
deliberately dumping “waste” in the territories to increase cancer and
miscarriages among Palestinians, that object to Israel’s “Law of Return”
– the foundation of Zionism, and that place Israeli “security” in
quotation marks on the grounds that the issue deliberately “masks an
intent” to impose “a system of domination by one racial group over
another.” In short, the UN got exactly what it asked for. Just
as predictable is Monday’s so-called “interactive dialogue” between UN
states and these “fact-finders.” Only last November the General Assembly
Hall echoed with the hate speech of 120 members of political blocs like
the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation,
as well as individual states. The word “settler” was always
preceded by “extremist” or “racist.” And “inhuman” “racist” “cruel”
Israel was committing a “crime against humanity,” a “genocidal
blockade,” “a regime of closure without precedent anywhere on earth,”
and “indiscriminately killing civilians.” It is impossible to
read this latest UN report, or to listen to its authors and its state
sponsors, without knowing that the campaign to rid the world of Israeli
settlements is a campaign to rid the world of Israel. And yet, at the UN, apartheid Palestine is a human right. Jerusalem Post
The writer is Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, @AnneBayefsky
