Sudan?!

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
19 November 09

When last we left the UN clown show, Richard Goldstone’s report had been roundly applauded and approved, and Anne Bayefsky (who has spent a quarter century bird-dogging the UN, a task which few of us could endure for an afternoon, let alone an entire career) had been carted off and her credentials taken for speaking up with righteous indignation about the UN’s latest round of Israel-bashing. The kicker, as reported by Fox News:

Bayefsky is now waiting for the U.N. to return her credentials or to refer her case to the Committee on NGOs, which will meet during January and February and could decide whether to renew her NGO pass — a prospect that has her deeply worried.

“The chances of my getting through that committee are basically nil,” she said.

The nation that chairs the committee, Sudan, is currently engaged in a murderous war on its own citizens and expelled 13 major aid NGOs from the country in March — meaning that a human rights violator that rejects NGOs within its own borders will be overseeing the approval of NGOs at the U.N.

Asked about this apparent inconsistency, a spokeswoman for the U.N. body overseeing the NGO committee said in an e-mail that “the Departments concerned are investigating this matter on the basis of established practice, jurisprudence and thorough review of the facts.”

Well isn’t that par for the course. It’s all there: the high-minded double-talk (what “jurisprudence” justifies roughing up a critic and snatching her badge?) and the inmates running the asylum, and all of it in service of the UN’s one great and constant mission — vilifying Israel. The timing here is far from coincidental:

“The next three weeks are the heart of the entire year at the U.N. General Assembly. The frenzy of anti-Israel activity is going on right now,” she said. “There’s a reason they’re keeping me away — this is no accident.”

This hypocrisy circus is the “international community” whose approbation Obama seeks. The Obami treat the UN with decorum and respect, as if it were a serious organization rather than a gang of thugs that devotes its time to silencing critics, providing cover to terrorists, and averting its gaze from its member states’ own appalling human-rights records. Obama tells us that the world community is one that enjoys shared values. Really. Which goals and values in particular do we share with this crowd?

Bayefsky may miss the “heart of the entire year,” but she’s gotten to the nub of the problem. Unfortunately, the Obami show no sign of taking this or any other incident to heart, nor of reconsidering their role in enabling the UN miscreants.

Related: Banished at Turtle Bay
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