Business unusual
The caduceus is medicine’s insignia. If human rights had one it would be the halo. The pursuit of it is a complex endeavour. Humanitarian work is not the be all and end all. By the time politics, diplomacy and the profit motive have weighed in, the protection of human rights is more an excuse than the chief consideration.
They could be bull terriers, how watchdogs scrap and scrape to dig up crimes against humanity, their stock in trade and living. Reports that Iran committed crime X, China committed Y and Israel, worst of all, committed crimes WXWZ keep the money taps open. Reports, and payments, are buttressed by a reverence for the vocations of ‘Human Rights’ and ‘Expert’, and the impressions they impart of purity and infallibility.
Mammoths like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch earn the right to solicit hundreds of millions in dollars or Euros. Without this free money, from Nordic countries, the EU, the Ford and George Soros foundations, the pursuit of human rights would soon revert to old fashioned diplomacy.
Benefactors certainly are mesmerized. Mammoths like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch earn the right to solicit hundreds of millions in dollars or Euros. Without this free money, from Nordic countries, the EU, the Ford and George Soros foundations, the pursuit of human rights would soon revert to old fashioned diplomacy.
And who’s to say that humanity would notice the difference.
The chances of it all collapsing seem remote – the watchdog business model is fail proof. It gives them immunity to the up and down economic cycle; a zero cost of capital; a near inexhaustible demand for their products; mass media coverage – ‘on the house.’ Trade is brisk, the money big, the players earnest and the game dirty as hell.
The empire has an ugly double face - its manifest bigotry. Human rights watchdogs tend to be openly and violently anti-Israel – their give-away trading preferences, we’re about to learn, make denial fruitless.
‘Trading’ is the right word. A real life physical market exists where atrocities are traded.
The UN Human Rights Council acts like the international bank, effectively being the international co-op for wildly popular and respected collectors of abuse. Their reports invariably feed the Council’s voracious appetite for passing demented resolutions to make Israel enemy number one. Member states chaired by paragons of humanism like Iran or the Peoples Republic of China, adhere to Council protocols to never condemn ‘Palestine’ and always condemn Israel.
Prize cases of alleged abuse shift the Council into top gear. After a mini war between Israel and Gaza a commission will be set up, filled with a clutch of reptilian lawyers, and packed off to ‘Palestine’ with the mandate to bring Israel to book for crimes to lay before the International Criminal Court. The 2009 Goldstone Commission was packed with toxic legal brains to wield the hatchet that way. Professor Christine Chinkin, expert in humanitarian law, felt so driven to do it that she could not wait to pack her bags for 'Palestine'.
“Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not self-defense - it’s a war crime. The rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas …do not, in terms of scale and effect amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defense. Israel’s actions amount to aggression, not self-defen se.”
Here’s the tell-tale love-hate divide – one jihadist killed is one victim of Israel too many.
Self-defense? For Israel? You must be joking.
The imperative to prosecute it is past my amateur explaining. The mind warp however is transparent, a poke in the ribs. The expert hater brandishes the vinegar-dipped tools of her trade, fixing a sourball gaze on Jews with Kalashnikovs playing Goliath attacking a young David, the poor Arab Muslim reliant on a pebble in a sling.
Hence the tacky yardstick used by watchdogs to make Israel guilty of inhumanity: ‘Disproportionate force.’
And the Human Rights Council can attack Israel with a second weapon in a perky arsenal, kept on permanent standby. It can dispatch a resident expert on international law and humanitarian law to ‘Palestine’ on a whim and a fancy. His baggage is permanently packed to go there, make judgment calls, do a twenty page analysis, and come to the verdict he was sent to deliver – guilty as charged.
Not many job titles tell a story. The title of the resident expert tells one.
“Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”. And that’s truncated compared to what the title was before my book alerted the Council to a dead give-away – making the expert Israel hater into a parrot:
‘Special Rapporteur on violation of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.’
“On violation” is the dead give-away. Before the Rapporteur touches down on holy 'Palestinian' ground his job title told him that violations occurred, that Israel did them, that he must look out for them, and that ‘occupied territory’ means that Israel is ipso facto the violator of choice. All that remains is for the Rapporteur to fit his evidence to the crime; the job mandates him to find Israel guilty. (See chapter, “The Lawman of Leiden” in my book at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007PIVM6G
So the Human Rights Council, atop a moral pyramid, takes records of Israel’s 'misdeeds' from satellite watchdogs and in-house tale-bearers.
At ground zero the ravenous watchdogs employ their own warped operational model. Dirty play commences the moment they tread over the cutting line between human rights and political advocacy. And the line is trod over not by accident; for the watchdogs revere and succor Palestinian Arabs like a Jesus on the cross.
Israel is the heartless persecutor of 'hapless Arabs' who suffer deprivations no people on earth would tolerate for one day.
But we’ve arrived – given access to the oddest trading floor on climate-hit earth. The traded commodities are different inhumane violations. There is petty stuff like child labor in China; there are demonic acts like Israel erecting a barrier to halt suicide attacks on shoppers.
Our shopping list contains horrific inhumane items from different countries of origin. But here the trading floor disappoints. True, a good range of items are stocked. But there is a glut from a single origin, microscopic in area, no larger than some ranchland in Idaho. Inhumanity would appear to flourish mainly in a strip of land accommodating Israel, the 'West Bank' and Gaza. On the floor frantic traders swarm around alleged abuse products from this tract of hell; premium prices are fetched.
The flimsiest alleged 'crimes' are traded to secure watchdogs their income. Among Israeli traders we come upon Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem. Both overwhelmed by the demand for journalist killings, for 'Apartheid', for 'war crimes', house demolitions of terrorist murderers, uprooting olive trees, delays at check points and evictions. Massacres of Jews at prayer? Terrorists cutting the throats of Jewish children in their beds? Not interesting. Hacked olive trees (proven to be pruning done by the owners 90% of the time)? That’s high end stuff, for big traders. Nordic countries, the EU, Soros foundations, Amnesty – that level of buyer.
The famed Jewish conscience, politicized and commercialized in the cause of blood libel, redirects buyers to Israel. The sky’s the limit for Israeli watchdogs watching Israel. Jewish ‘brutality’ is the goose that lays golden eggs.
And abuses in countries in the neighborhood? Next to nothing on the floor: some insipid items from Qatar, Lebanon and Syria. A smattering of ugly crimes from chaotic north Africa. The supply and demand is wafer thin for commodity from the fertile killing fields of N. Korea and Afghanistan. Altogether the moral market place is a derelict merchandiser.
It is not all about greed and hatred. Fear of violent death is a skewing factor. Watchdog hunters head to countries where the rule of law allows safe and easy abuse pickings. Autocrats in Syria or Iran or Libya have no time for foreigners – infidels poking and prodding around for inhumanity. They sometimes kill them.
Israel on the other hand allows watchdogs to poke and prod to their hearts content. Israel is a watchdog paradise, Muslim countries are a watchdog hell. B’Tselem the home-grown Israeli outfit gives away cameras to help agents on the ground poke and prod. The recipients are Palestinian Arabs who try to catch Jews on video doing evil things.
In a hit song of the 70’s Joe South waxes lyrical in “Games People Play.”
“Giving up your sanity
for your pride and humanity
then turn your back on humanity….”
The artist could be singing about the vainglorious traders in 'human rights'.
“Giving up your sanity
for your purse and your bigotry
then turn your back on humanity…”
Steve Apfel is an authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. His blog, ‘Balaam’s curse,’ is followed in 15 countries on 5 continents