Wednesday, June 24, 2015

A dangerous document - Smadar Bat Adam



by Smadar Bat Adam

The report determined that any piece of information Israel provided was "unverifiable," while the material presented by Palestinian or pro-Palestinian organizations were facts set in stone.

There is no easy way to say this, but the U.N. Human Rights Council report on Operation Protective Edge, composed by a fact-finding mission headed by Judge Mary McGowan Davis, was a childish endeavor.

The report determined that any piece of information Israel provided was "unverifiable," while the material presented by Palestinian or pro-Palestinian organizations were facts set in stone. Honestly, It does not take a genius to understand that one needs just a tad more common sense to at least try to conceal the bias against Israel in this inquiry. 

The problem begins with the framework. The basic assumption, that Israel still occupies the Gaza Strip, completely ignores the truth: Israel disengaged from Gaza a decade ago, providing its residents with complete autonomy that afforded them the ability, under the right leadership, to prosper. 

The same basic bias extends to defining Hamas only as an "alleged" terror organization, which completely ignores a decade of rocket fire and terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis. Further, the mission completely disregarded the governmental corruption and the terror Hamas has been inflicting on its own people.

The report, for all its conclusions, could have been a truly amusing document, if not for the fact that it poses a danger to the free world, as it allows terrorist organizations the use of democratic instruments and rules to which they do not subscribe.

Juxtaposing a terrorist organization and a democratic state calls into question the views of some of the world's most renowned intellectuals and philosophers who have shaped ethics and the principles of justice throughout human history. 

The 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, best known for his book "Leviathan," presented human history as a struggle for survival and accumulation of power, and argued that civil peace and social unity are best achieved by committing to a social contract or a treaty.

To what kind of human rights treaty, valid in times of war or peace, has Hamas ever subscribed? Does this report truly suggest that the Western world adopt values such as martyrdom as a way to realize the essence of man?

In his book "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals," written in the 18th century, Immanuel Kant, one of the most important philosophers in modern times, claimed that when trying to determine the nature of one's actions, the moral individual must first ask himself whether his standards are universal or can be applied universally. 

Clearly, the forces driving the U.N. to ignore fatal blows to human rights, especially in the Muslim world, and present Israel as a top human rights violator, are not interested in ethics and morals any more than they are interested in Kant's philosophy.

This is unequivocally expressed in the document calling for an International Criminal Court investigation of Israel and Hamas, knowing that issuing arrest warrants or applying political pressure on the terrorist organization, which already conducts itself in secret, would be meaningless, while on the other hand, accusing Israel and its leaders of war crimes would have far-reaching ramifications. 

The prominence given to terrorism-sponsoring countries and terrorist organizations in the U.N. and its various institutions is tantamount to extinguishing the great light of democracy.


Smadar Bat Adam

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=12977

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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