UN Special Representative Puts Israel on List of Serious Violators of Children's Rights - Ban Ki-moon takes them off

UN’s Ban Ki-moon caves in, takes Israel off list of serious child abusers

The cowardice of the UN General Secretary, when his own officials place Israel on a list of child abusers, is breathtaking.  A concerted e-mail bombardment of the UN would be a start.  No doubt Israel and the USA put Banki Moon under pressure and once again he has taken the coward's way. This is why all those who believe that the UN has any serious role in ending the oppression of the Palestinians are living a lie.  The UN is a gang of thieves from top to bottom.

Tony Greenstein 

A Palestinian medic cares for a wounded child after a 19 August 2014 Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City killed a young girl, a woman and injured 16 other people.Ashraf Amra APA images

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has caved in to pressure from Israel and the United States and taken the Israeli military off an official list of serious violators of children’s rights, in this year’s report on children in armed conflict.

In doing so, Ban rejected an official recommendation from his own Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Leila Zerrougui and numerous human rights organizations and child rights defenders.

Ban’s act is particularly egregious since the report found that the number of children killed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2014, at 557, was the third highest only after Iraq and Afghanistan and ahead of Syria.

“The revelation that Israel’s armed forces were removed from the annex of the annual report by Ban Ki-moon is deplorable,” Brad Parker, attorney and international advocacy officer at Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI-Palestine), told The Electronic Intifada.

“The annual report and its annex, or children’s ‘list of shame,’ has been a strong evidence-based accountability tool proven to help increase protections for children in armed conflict situations. There is ample evidence on persistent grave violations committed by Israeli forces since at least 2006 that should have triggered listing,” Parker added.

“The secretary-general’s decision to place politics above justice and accountability for Palestinian children has provided Israeli forces with tacit approval to continue committing grave violations against children with impunity,” Parker said. 

The top UN official’s decision will be greeted with relief by the Obama administration, Israel and others concerned with ensuring such Israeli impunity.

Obama pressure

“The draft 2015 report prepared by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, recommended adding Israel and Hamas to the annexed list of parties – the so-called ‘list of shame’ – due to their repeated violations against children,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on 4 June.

Human Rights Watch called on Ban to “list all countries and armed groups that have repeatedly committed these violations, and resist reported pressure from Israel and the United States to remove Israel from the draft list.”

But that pressure proved irresistible to Ban. Foreign Policy reported last week that the Obama administration had made a concerted effort to pressure him to drop Israel from the list for cynical political reasons.

According to an unnamed UN official quoted by Foreign Policy, the Obama administration was concerned about false accusations that “the White House is anti-Israel,” as the US completes sensitive negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program.

False balance

Human Rights Watch supported calls on Ban to list Hamas as well as Israel, but this appears to have been a maneuver to look “balanced” and avoid baseless accusations of anti-Israel bias frequently leveled at the organization.

Sources familiar with the final report have told The Electronic Intifada that Hamas is not on the list either.

But the violations attributed to Palestinian armed groups, including the death of one Israeli child last summer due to a rocket fired from Gaza, can hardly be compared in scope to the systematic mass killings with impunity of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip and West Bank by Israeli occupation forces.

Since Hamas and other Palestinian armed resistance groups are already under international sanctions and arms embargoes and listed by various countries as “terrorist organizations,” adding Hamas to the list would have meant little.

It is Israel whose violations continue not only with impunity but with assistance from the predominantly European and North American governments that arm it.

DCI-Palestine documented the killings of at least 547 Palestinian children during last summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza.

Human Rights Watch cites as part of Israel’s record the “unlawful killing of children” in the occupied West Bank, including Nadim Nuwara and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir, both 17, shot dead by snipers on 15 May 2014.

In April, a board of inquiry set up by Ban found that Israel killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians in seven attacks on United Nations-run schools in the Gaza Strip last summer.

Sabotage

In March, there was an outcry among Palestinian and international human rights advocates when it was revealed that UN officials appeared to be trying to sabotage the evidence-based process that leads to a recommendation of listing, after threats from Israel.

Palestinian organizations called on the mid-level UN officials accused of interfering with the process to resign.

This led to assurances from Special Representative Zerrougui that the decision-making process was still underway and indeed, after gathering all the evidence, Zerrougui did recommend that Israel be listed.

Such a recommendation comes after UN bodies collect evidence in collaboration with human rights organizations, according to specific criteria mandated in UN Security Council Resolution 1612.

But despite the months-long nonpolitical and evidence-based process, the final decision was always in Ban’s hands.

Partner in Israel’s crimes

There was much at stake for Israel and indeed for Ban if he had gone with the evidence instead of submitting to political pressure.

“Inclusion of a party on the secretary general’s list triggers increased response from the UN and potential Security Council sanctions, such as arms embargoes, travel bans, and asset freezes,” Human Rights Watch notes.

“For a country or armed group to be removed from the list, the UN must verify that the party has ended the abuses after carrying out an action plan negotiated with the UN.”

Ban has a long history of using his office to ensure that Israel escapes accountability except for the mildest verbal censures that are almost always “balanced” with criticism of those who live under Israeli occupation.

At the height of last summer’s Israeli attack on Gaza, 129 organizations and distinguished individuals wrote to the secretary-general, condemning him for “your biased statements, your failure to act, and the inappropriate justification of Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law, which amount to war crimes.”

Ban’s record, they said, made him a “partner” in Israel’s crimes. His latest craven decision will only cement that well-earned reputation.

While Israel will celebrate victory in the short-term, the long-term impact will likely be to further discredit the UN as a mechanism for accountability and convince more people of the need for direct popular pressure on Israel in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

1266 Palestinian children under 15 were detained in occupied territorieslast year

13-year-old detained by Israeli forces in East Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 10 June – Israeli forces detained a 13-year-old Palestinian from his home in the al-Issawiya neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem overnight Tuesday, lawyer says. Lawyer Muhammad Mahmoud of the Addameer prisoners’ rights group identified the youth as Tariq Mustafa, adding that he was detained along with Ahmad Jamal Atiyah, 19 … Mustafa’s detention comes as Israeli watchdog Military Court Watch (MCW) submitted a report to the UN Special Rapportuer regarding common mistreatment of children held in Israeli military detention … Israel detained 1,266 Palestinian children below the age of 15 in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2014, according to a PLO report

See 

40% of Palestinian Children Detained by Israel Are Sexually Abused; Virtually All Are Tortured

Who was responsible for the chemical attack at Ghouta, Damascus

The Lies the West Tells regarding Chemical Weapons

Evidence given by Kerry of murder by chemical.  In fact these were civilian victims of US bombing in Iraq! 

I make no apologies for returning to the question of the justification given for the attack or explosion in the Ghouta suburbs, Damascus.

Victim of rebel use of  chemical weapons in Damascus

I have already covered in the previous post the strong suggestion by Dale Gavlak of the Michigan Mint Press that the explosion was an accident caused by hamfisted rebels.  Below is an article suggestion that far from not having the capability to deliver chemical weapons, the rebels have already been supplied, by the United States via Saudi Arabia, with just such weapons.

Just as the horrors of the Vietnam War were justified on the basis of a non-existent incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, and just as Blair & Bush lied about WMD, we are now seeing Kerry, Hollande and Cameron also lie about what is really motivating these humanitarians.  Geo-political strategy aimed at the control of the Middle East and the elimination of any independent regimes.

Child  Victim

What should the reaction of socialists and anti-imperialists be?  In my opinion when the Syrian regime under Assad, however brutal and reactionary it is, is under attack by imperialism then it should receive critical support.  Likewise the non-fascist element of the rebels, ie. not the Nusi Al Queda group which would engage in a bloodbath of Shi'ites, Alawaites and Christians, should be supported on condition there is a clear break with the fascists.

One thing is above all ironical.  In no European state or even the USA is there a majority for bombing Syria.  Only Israel supports such an action!   That shows just how skin deep democracy really is in the heart of the beast.

Tony Greenstein

Russia Releases Key Findings on Chemical Attack Near Aleppo Indicating Similarity With Rebel-made Weapons

By RT

September 05, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "RT" -  Probes from Khan al-Assal show chemicals used in the March 19 attack did not belong to standard Syrian army ammunition, and that the shell carrying the substance was similar to those made by a rebel fighter group, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated

Horrific injuries caused by US/Saudi chemical weapons in Iraq

A statement released by the ministry on Wednesday particularly drew attention to the “massive stove-piping of various information aimed at placing the responsibility for the alleged chemical weapons use in Syria on Damascus, even though the results of the UN investigation have not yet been revealed.”  

   

By such means “the way is being paved for military action” against Damascus, the ministry pointed out. 

But the samples taken at the site of the March 19 attack and analyzed by Russian experts indicate that a projectile carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin was most likely fired at Khan al-Assal by the rebels, the ministry statement suggests, outlining the 100-page report handed over to the UN by Russia. 

The key points of the report have been given as follows: 

• the shell used in the incident “does not belong to the standard ammunition of the Syrian army and was crudely according to type and parameters of the rocket-propelled unguided missiles manufactured in the north of Syria by the so-called Bashair al-Nasr brigade”;

• RDX, which is also known as hexogen or cyclonite, was used as the bursting charge for the shell, and it is “not used in standard chemical munitions”;

• soil and shell samples contain “the non-industrially synthesized nerve agent sarin and diisopropylfluorophosphate,” which was “used by Western states for producing chemical weapons during World War II.”
 

The findings of the report are “extremely specific,” as they mostly consist of scientific and technical data from probes’ analysis, the ministry stressed, adding that this data can “substantially aid” the UN investigation of the incident.

While focusing on the Khan al-Assal attack on March 19, in which at least 26 civilians and Syrian army soldiers were killed, and 86 more were injured, the Russian Foreign Ministry also criticized the “flawed selective approach” of certain states in reporting the recent incidents of alleged chemical weapons use in August.

The hype around the alleged attack on the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta showed “apparent attempts to cast a veil over the incidents of gas poisoning of Syrian army soldiers on August 22, 24 and 25,” the ministry said, adding that all the respective evidence was handed to the UN by Syria.

The condition of the soldiers who, according to Damascus, suffered poisoning after discovering tanks with traces of sarin, has been examined and documented by the UN inspectors, the ministry pointed out, adding that “any objective investigation of the August 21 incident in eastern Ghouta is impossible without the consideration of all these facts.” 

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said the UN investigators are set to return to Syria to investigate several other cases of alleged chemical weapons use, including the March 19 incident in Khan al-Assal.