NP Rank:
Is The UN Biased Against Israel?
Mona Charen's article "Camera-Ready Victims" appearing in the January 16, 2009 National Review cites these statistics regarding UN resolutions for human rights violations. In 2008:
==> 68% targeted Israel
==> 4% targeted Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the United States, and a few others.
==> 0% targeted Russia, Sudan, China, and Saudi Arabia which is interesting because Russia is home to Chechnya and Sudan is home to Darfur.
Ms. Charen also cites the number of refugees killed around the world which places the above in context:
"Since the start of 2007, 16,000 civilians have been killed in fighting. Not in Gaza, so you may have missed it. It was in Somalia, where an Islamist movement is fighting Ethiopian troops. This is the 18th year of civil strife in that country."
"In Sri Lanka, some 70,000 people have perished in a civil war that has flared on and off since 1983. The regime in Burma has killed thousands and forced an estimated 800,000 into involuntary servitude."
"In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), 45,000 people are dying every month. Nearly 5.5 million have died since 1998 in a conflict that grew out of the violence in Rwanda and spread. Half of those deaths were of children under the age of five, according to the International Rescue Committee. The violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has caused more human devastation than any conflict since World War II."
"In Darfur, Sudan, more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless by violence."
As Ms Charen points out the world is indeed strange in the tragedies it selects and responds to.
The complete article:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmU0ZjM4NmQyYTZlZjk4NTQ2ZTYzNGI0NWFhM2M4ZGQ=
Recommendations (9)
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158
St. Louis, Missouri, United States -
René
New Orleans, Louisiana, United States -
Barry Artiste
Vancouver, Canada


Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (7)
at 08:53 on February 1st, 2009
In my Opinion, the UN is a waste of space and a self serving World "Money Pit" of incompetence.
at 09:17 on February 1st, 2009
Pointing a finger at other atrocities will not make the fact go away that Israel just committed genocide. I am concerned about all the above mentioned and so is the UN. I hope that the UN has more say with the new administration and that they recover the respect and authority due to them.
at 11:59 on February 1st, 2009
I agree.
at 09:26 on February 1st, 2009
Obvious slant, not that any anti-Israel people will see it as such.
at 11:32 on February 1st, 2009
I think the heading of the article should be.."Does Israel give a toss about UN?"
at 13:11 on February 1st, 2009
I remember being an enthusiastic student of all things about the UN when I was a child. Then I grew up.
The place is rife with corruption. How do I know? Well, when you teach ESL in Rome and Milan for a number of years and your students are really highly-placed professionals with extensive contacts, stories to tell and the like, then you come to know that the statement, "The UN is corrupt" is true.
Kickback schemes, you name it. There is a lot of projection going on in the UN as elite narcissists compete with restitution of a personal kind for what is perceived as a world slanted in the West's and the US's favor.
In other words, they steal and cry "Thief!" while pointing at the US and other first-world countries.
Freewind, pointing out selective rage on the part of the UN may not change objectively made judgments about Israel's defects, but I have found that whenever selective rage rules the day, there are almost no objective judgments.
What we already see in the Obama administration is a press that had no objection to an inauguration that quadrupled Bush's in terms of expense, and that his promise of "no pork" will probably be meaningless. He has already provided glaring exceptions to his promises about lobbyists, and will float budgets that will cause inflation.
The lack of response by the press allows this to continue unabated.
The UN is a decades-long version of this same phenomenon of the double standard, and the result is less change and more of the same.
So, the attitude does count. And where is your own outrage at Darfur? What no Jews involved? Just Christians being killed by Muslims, something that has gone on for a couple of millennia, and nothing even to write about in the local dying mainstream media of a newspaper.
at 12:53 on February 11th, 2009
Roy C
Of course I am outraged at Darfur, and of course I can't believe the world stood and watched. But there is no oil or other interests in Darfur. However, I am equally outraged at what the Israeli government just did, and it has nothing to do with jews. It's got to do with killing innocent people in cold blood. Most of my information on the subject I have from jews. They are outraged too, I admire Chomsky for example. I'm still hoping on the new administration for Darfur, Zimbabe, Gaza & West Bank.