Comments by David G. Littman: NGO Representative to the UN, Geneva: Association for World Education / World Union for Progressive Judaism
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Returning on 11 June from the Big Apple after a Canadian lecture tour, we were again caught in the final week of the Human Rights Council’s 14th Session, delivering two
NGO 2 minute statements during a mind-boggling ‘Disneyland Debate’ under item 7:
“Human Rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories” .
UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk excelled as a senior Princeton Humpty Dumpty. Wiki reminds us that “On February 16, 1979, two weeks after the return of Ruhollah Khomeini to Iran, Falk wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, “Trusting Khomeini”. He criticized President Jimmy Carter’s accusations of “religious fanaticism” and media descriptions of Khomeini as being backward, antisemitic, and guilty of ” theocratic fascism.” Arguing Khomeini was being judged unfairly, he concluded “the depiction of Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false … To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. … Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.”
UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer noted that Falk is also an ‘expert’ on “…the work of David Ray Griffin whose notorious books argue that the World Trade Center was not attacked by terrorists, but was rather ‘an inside job’. Falk has played a key role in promoting Griffin’s conspiracy tracts.”
When asked a question by the dynamic Hillel Neuer on this and that in his Report, Falk rang loudly that ‘dreadful bell’ of silence…on both his 9/11 lunacy and his ‘boycott Israel’ scheme. It reminded me of that 19th century nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty, portrayed as an egg:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Indeed, all the UN horses and all its horsemen cannot put Falk together again. And, faced with his Princeton-like UN ‘glory’, the opinion of Alice (in Wonderland), from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, might help us unravel the riddle:
I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.
“Of course you don’t–till I tell you. I meant
‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,”
Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said,
in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it
to mean–neither more nor less.” “The question is,”
said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many
different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty,
“which is to be master — that’s all. [ch. 6:6]
The OIC-dominated Council is now the ‘master’, with “a nice knock-down argument.” Below are our two verbatim statements as delivered under item 7 (UN webcast above)
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We shall return with our oral statements under item 8 (‘violence against women’), item 9 (racism and Syrian blood-libel revival) and item 10 (Haiti, Israel & humanitarian aid)
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WORLD UNION FOR PROGRESSIVE JUDAISM
UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL – 14th session (31 May – 18 June 2010)
Statement by Representative David G. LITTMAN – Monday (3:10pm, 14 June 2010
“Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories” (item 7)
[The words in square brackets not pronounced in the two minutes time limitation]
Sir, we are just back from the Big Apple and Broadway and are once again gazing Through the Looking-Glass here, with Lewis Carroll’s words in our mind’s eye: ‘The Time has come’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things [Of shoes – and ships – and sealing wax – Of cabbages – and kings – and why the sea is boiling hot – and whether pigs have wings.’ [Ch. 4. The Walrus & the Carpenter]
The Falk Report [A/HRC/13/53/Rev.1] indeed, is an eye-opener that requires no Looking Glass, especially his recommendations for a “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign [against Israel]… and guidelines should be provided for such a campaign.” Folly flows faithfully until it is flayed and feathered by those who open their eyes and ears to the hard truth, some of which was presented earlier by Israel’s ambassador and more truth will soon emerge.
We have pointed out since 1989 – and will continue to do so until ‘Kingdom come’ or perhaps Armageddon – that the root cause of today’s Philistine tragedy is its genocidal Hamas Charter. Just as Hitler’s struggle against the Jews (Mein Kampf means: ‘My Struggle’) was pooh-poohed in the 1930s, so is the Jihad “struggle” by Hamas, a wing of the Islamist Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. This ongoing incitement, which flies in the face of the genocide Convention’s articles 3 and 4 was and is knowingly ignored by UN human rights bodies, by Goldstone’s Fault-Finding Report [A/HRC/12/48] and in Falk’s follow-up.
[Cf. “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people. ‘Let the cowards never sleep.'” (Article 28); Article 7 quotes a ‘saying’ (hadith) still widely preached in talks and sermons worldwide by clerics that call on Muslims to fight and kill all Jews; 3 and article 8, the Hamas ‘slogan’, is taken from the Muslim Brotherhood Charter, inspiring ‘Jihadist Martyrdom Bombers’ worldwide, and including U.S. convert ‘Jihad Jane’; 4 and that the preface quotes its founder Hassan al-Banna’s politicidal call: “Israel will exist & continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (see our written statements).] 5
Let it never be forgotten in this “Alliance of Civilization” Room, with its symbolic dripping, colourful stalactites, that the Hamas Charter calls for Jews to be killed and Israel eliminated, and refers in great detail, as in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, to a century-old forgery [The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion] to inspire a Jihadist regime – with links to Hezbollah and its well-known warmongering, dictatorial backers – to teach a systematic culture of hate and death to its children and adults in schools, the media and on TV. [At the 13th session we recommended MEMRI’s irrefutable documentation ,1 which provides scores of links to Hamas-controlled Al-Aqsa TV clips, showing Gaza children taught to become ‘Jihad martyrs’ while killing Jews.]
[“Dispatch those sons of apes and pigs to the hellfire on the wings of Qassem rockets” / “The Jihad against the Jews will continue until their annihilation / A Palestinian who kills one Jew will be rewarded as if he killed 30 million / Killing all Jews will not be satisfactory compensation for the ‘Real Holocaust’ in Gaza. On this visual irrefutable evidence, the U.S Treasury Department last week imposed sanctions on Al-Aqsa TV. Officials from the UK, France, Germany, Italy… have been briefed on all this. (MEMRI, also PMW;Intelligence & Terrorism Information Center: ‘Response to Goldstone Report: ‘Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip.2]
These bloodthirsty incitements to hate and kill continue unabated, and last week the French Broadcasting Regulator CSA [Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel] banned Hamas Al-Aqsa TV, following the U.S. decision. [Executive Order 13224, 03/18/10.6 All human rights defenders – any decent person – watching last week’s TV culture of a hate preacher on Al-Aqsa should not remain silent in the face of such outpourings of hate.]
Once again, we call on the UN Secretary-General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Directors of UNESCO, UNICEF, the new Swiss President of the General Assembly, the President of this Council, Member and Observer States, Judge Goldstone and Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, and the OIC – to condemn the clear genocidal Hamas Charter and the teaching of [president gavels speaker here on over time] heinous defamations of both Jews and Judaism, as well as non-stop calls to kill in the name of Allah and of Islam, while the Council adopts resolutions on “Combating Defamation of Religions” [2nd gavel; speaker cut]
[Allow me, sir, to conclude with the words of Shakespeare, pronounced by Lady Macbeth: “Here’s the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” (v. i. 56-57) Thank you, Mr President.]
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1. http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4045.htm / MEMRI: Hamas. Special Announcements N° 107 (18 March 2010)
2. http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/site/content/t1.asp?Sid=13&Pid=334
3. “HAMAS aspires to implement Allah’s promise, whatever time it may take. The Prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: ‘The Hour [Day of Judgment] will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim O Abdallah [slave of Allah], there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. This will not apply to the Gharqad tree which is a Jewish tree.’
4. “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its Constitution; Jihad is its path, and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” (Article 8).This ‘saying’ – from the 1928 Charter of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a wing, according to its 1988 Charter, article 2 – is recorded from al-Bukhari and Muslim, both considered by serious Islamic scholars as highly reliable sources for the hadith or ‘sayings’ of the Prophet Muhammad.]
5. See detailed written statement E/CN.4/2003/NGO/226: The 1988 Genocidal Charter of HAMAS: an evil legacy for ‘Jihadist- Martyrdom’ bombers. A/HRC/S-1/NGO/4 (2006); A/HRC/S-9/NGO/3 (2009)
6. http://www.memri.org/content/en/main.htm . The TV clip is ‘beyond belief’.
ASSOCIATION FOR WORLD EDUCATION
UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL: 14th Session (31 May – 18 June 2010)
STATEMENT by Representative David G. LITTMAN – Monday (3:30pm), 14 June 2010
“Human Rights Situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories” (item 7)
[The words in square brackets were not pronounced in the 2 minute time limit for NGOs]
As the final NGO speaker [under item 7], we wish to remind the Council and the current Special Rapporteur of the remarks made by his predecessor John Dugard in his final 2008 Report, where he strongly advised the UN to withdraw from the Quartet. He rejected the Quartet’s Road Map [“the road map is an inappropriate and unhelpful framework for negotiations.”(A/HRC/7/17 of 21 January 2008, §56); adding: “the seizure of power in Gaza by Hamas in June 2007”;] and referred to “the internecine conflict resulting in the deaths of several hundred Palestinians, mostly belonging to Fatah.” He predicted: “there is no immediate prospect of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.” [§49] That situation has not changed since.
As we have already suggested, Gaza under the administration of Hamas since the coup d’état three years ago, elections notwithstanding, is a classic example of a divided society: the division between Gaza and the ‘West Bank’; Gaza and Israel; Gaza and Egypt; and Gaza and the wider world. Two years ago, we suggested that it might perhaps become an independent State with certain security safeguards and economic ties to the ‘West Bank’ – and eventually to Israel and Egypt. This idea might become the only possible solution to such an explosive situation, with more and more external interference by those whose aims are clear and if not checked will lead to grave confrontations endangering the peace and security of the world.
Gaza’s future status is a key issue of any Arab-Israel negotiations. Why not a separate entity? Why should there not be four independent States within the former 1922 geographical area of Greater Palestine as designated by the League of Nations then: Israel, Jordan, a mutually agreed ‘West Bank’ of the Jordan river area and Gaza. This is not so unrealistic, as the original [Palestine] area comprised about 120,000% km2, of which roughly 78% was earmarked by Great Britain for the deposed Arabian Abdullah, who became Emir in 1922 and then the Hashemite King of Jordan in 1946; and the remnant 22% became the UK administered “Mandate of Palestine” for 25 years, when it was then again divided by the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which referred to the establishment of an “Arab and a Jewish State”. But this international legitimacy… [Speaker cut after 2 m. 25 secs.]
[was refused by the Arab League, which resulting in a collective Arab war to exterminate any “Jewish State”, greatly encouraged by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler’s ally in Berlin throughout the war. It should be noted that the 1947 Partition Plan only refers to an “Arab State” and a “Jewish State” – there is no mention of a State of Palestine.]
Thank you, Mr. President.