Segacs’s World I Know

Terrorists blow up a mosque in Afghanistan to prevent people from registering to vote, and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) blames the United States:

Arguing that aid groups were now being specifically targeted, MSF issued a stinging rebuke to U.S. forces in Afghanistan, saying they used aid to help win a “hearts and minds” campaign and garner support from Afghans skeptical of their intentions.

“MSF denounces this attempt to co-opt humanitarian aid, to use humanitarian aid to win hearts and minds,” MSF secretary general Marine Buissonniere told a briefing, adding that in doing so it had endangered the lives of humanitarian workers.

In other words, MSF is mad at U.S. forces for treading on what they see as their turf.

Their argument – that the blurring of the line between traditionally-objective humanitarian work and non-objective military work has led to the targeting of humanitarian aid workers – is not without foundation. But the prevailing culture of some of these aid organizations is neutrality without a moral compass; in other words, they’re so conditioned to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses wherever they work, that they’ve bought into the US-is-evil rhetoric of most of those countries.

Do you think MSF has noticed that, in striving to be as apolitical as possible, it has actually become a darling of left-wing politicos and America-bashers everywhere?

The suspects in the UTT firebombing last Passover will not be charged with a hate crime:

Both Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and B’nai Brith Canada say they will not press for hate crime charges to be added to the counts of arson and conspiracy against two young men in connection with the firebombing of the St. Laurent United Talmud Torahs library in April.

Both organizations agree that the hate provisions in the Criminal Code of Canada do not appear to apply in this case. They do, however, expect that if there is a conviction, hate motivation will result in a stiffer sentence, as the law provides.

“It’s ironic because this was a deeply hateful act targeting a Jewish school, but we are stuck with a Criminal Code that has less than perfect wording,” said David Birnbaum, executive director of CJC, Quebec region.

I’m no lawyer, but to me this seems ridiculous. What point is there in having hate crime legislation if it can’t be used in an obvious case like this one?

European nations claim to be shocked:

Arab states at the United Nations are trying to foil a proposal to raise a vote condemning anti-Semitism in the General Assembly this September.

At a closed meeting held recently in New York, UN ambassadors from Arab and EU countries met and the Arabs made clear that they do not accept the initiative for the UN General Assembly to condemn anti-Semitism.

The blunt language used by the Arabs describing their opposition, and their plans to use diplomatic means to prevent the resolution from reaching a vote, shocked the Europeans, said a UN source.

Allison’s not shocked. Neither am I. Neither should anyone who’s been even semi-conscious in the last decade or so.

The lame reasons? They hardly even bear repeating, but for what it’s worth, here are some of the excuses:

Jordanian Ambassador to the UN Prince Ziad Hussein argued that the resolution would reinforce the tendency to call any criticism of Israel, anti-Semitic. Moroccan Ambassador Mohammed Banone, said that the seminar against anti-Semitism was a terrible idea and a decision would only divide the world body. Arab League Ambassador Mahamas Hani warned that a UN resolution condemning anti-Semitism would have a negative impact on the Middle East.

The Arab states are so blatant about their hatred of Jews that one would almost assume that they are making themselves look bad and doing their causes a disservice with how obvious they are being. But they know as well as we do that they can get away with it. After all, they’ve been getting away with it all along.

Israel has repeatedly tried to get the United Nations to pass even seemingly obvious resolutions condemning terrorism, suicide bombings, or even the targeting of civilian children. In each case, the Arab countries have blocked them from even coming to a vote. This time, the resolution is one that there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate argument against, and yet the Arab countries are again insisting that there is no place for a condemnation of antisemitism in the United Nations.

Why do we even bother? Why haven’t we written off the UN by now?

Kofi Annan has issued an urgent appeal for relief funding for Darfur:

Frustrated by a chronic funding gap for the U.N. relief effort in the Darfur region of Sudan, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will issue an urgent appeal Wednesday to wealthy European, Asian and Middle Eastern governments that he believes have been too stingy in addressing the humanitarian crisis, senior U.N. officials said Tuesday.

It only took 30 thousand deaths, 180 thousand refugees fleeing into Chad, over 1 million people displaced from their homes, and more than 2 million in desperate need of food and medical treatment before Annan intervened.

It makes me think – not for the first time – that Mark Steyn said it best: “The problem is, by the time you’ve gone through the UN, everyone’s dead.”

The politically-correct will continue to rant and rave about the only “legitimate” action being that taken through the United Nations. But I bet if the 30,000 people who have already been ethnically cleansed in Sudan while the world stood idly by got a vote, they would have a few choice words about waiting for the UN to take action.

The Zahra Kazemi story continues to get media attention, as her son pressures the Canadian government to keep fighting for justice:

The son of Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi is “totally unhappy” about the way Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew has responded to his call for a government commitment to get to the bottom of his mother’s murder case.

Stephan Hachemi had been calling on Pettigrew to impose diplomatic sanctions against Iran for failing to find the person responsible for his mother’s murder.

“The Iranian ambassador has nothing to do in Canada right now,” Hachemi told a news conference Tuesday. “He should be expelled. The embassy should be closed.”

It’s understandable that the son of a murdered woman is grieving and lashing out. And the government seems to be paying attention.

But what really bothers me about this whole affair is not so much that Canadians are angry about the lack of justice in this case, but that nobody is nearly angry enough about the lack of justice in every other case in Iran. Canada spends years appeasing a brutal dictatorship that has suppressed virtually every human right we take for granted. Those Iranians don’t count. But when an Iranian who happens to have Canadian citizenship is the victim, she counts. We shrug off thousands of unexplained murders, but when Zahra Kazemi is the victim, suddenly everyone is expecting the kind of fair and transparent justice system that lives up to Canadian standards.

It’s not unusual for countries to react much more strongly when their own citizens are victimized. But the hypocrisy gets to me. Iran is not a democracy. It’s not a very nice place to live, especially if you happen to be, say, female, or non-Muslim. And it’s in danger of acquiring nuclear weapons, in which case it might be too late to curb the threat.

And while Canadians continue to issue a “tsk tsk” about the Zahra Kazemi case, we are simultaneously following the Europeans, not the Americans, in softpedalling this new nuclear threat and refusing to take a hard line. This is but one of a long list of the things that the Canadian government just doesn’t get.

Israel gets it, however:

Iran’s ability for nuclear armament should not worry just us but the entire free world and moderate Arabic countries as well, according to Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen Moshe Ya’alon.

And of course, if and when Israel takes matters into its own hands, and the United Nations issues a routine condemnation of Israel for having the courage to do so, Canada will likely be right there on the General Assembly floor, loudly… abstaining.

It’s easy for Arafat to deny any crisis when journalists receive death threats for reporting it:

Palestinian journalists covering the ongoing crisis in the Palestinian Authority complained over the weekend that they had received death threats from the various feuding parties.

As a result, many of them said they have stopped covering the internecine fighting. Others said they were continuing to report on the power struggle, but without having their names mentioned for fear of reprisal.

“Many Palestinians working with the foreign media in the Gaza Strip are being threatened,” a journalist in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post. He said the threats were coming from all the parties involved in the internal strife

[ . . . ]

The Gaza City rally was either downplayed or completely ignored by the Palestinian media. Al-Quds, the largest daily newspaper, instead carried a story in which it said Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip continued to express their support for Yasser Arafat by staging marches and issuing statements.

So much of the world continues to stubbornly insist that the Palestinian government is democratic. Freedom of the press would seem to be a basic requirement for that to hold true, and yet, here’s just further evidence that journalists are only allowed to report one thing: anti-Israel news stories. Anything else could get them shot.

The agent on trial for the death of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi has been acquitted:

The trial ended abruptly last Sunday after three court sessions. Only for one day, on Saturday, were foreign diplomats were allowed into the courtroom.

By Sunday, however, all foreign observers were barred from the trial, prompting Canada to recall the ambassador to Iran for a second time.

Kazemi’s family has long suspected that the wrong man was on trial.

Ebadi has said there was no strong evidence against Ahmadi. She believes those responsible for Kazemi’s death have been set free.

She says the Iranian court wouldn’t allow her to present witnesses that would prove another prison official was behind Kazemi’s death.

It frequently surprised me, when following the trial and the Canadian reaction, how many people assumed that the Iranian justice system would be like the Canadian one. They assumed for some reason that the same transparent justice that murder victims expect here would be carried out in a theocratic dictatorship. Which is especially surprising, considering how much Canada loves to engage in moral relativism. I guess we shouldn’t impose our standards on other countries… except when it’s convenient. Or something.

Whether or not the right person was on trial, and whatever the truth was, we’ll probably never know. Anyone expecting true justice one way or the other was either incredibly naive or incredibly stupid.

Bad weather = cancelled flight = segacs stuck out of town. Posting will resume when I get home.

Business as usual for the UN General Assembly, as they passed a resolution yesterday demanding that Israel tear down the security fence which has managed to reduce terrorist attacks on civilians by 90%. This a week after the IJC ruled against Israel, as expected.

Israel, of course, will be ignoring the resolution, as it well should. After all, if Israel listened to the GA, all its citizens would long be dead:

Israeli UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman called the resolution “one-sided and totally counter-productive” and said construction of the wall will continue to keep out Palestinian attackers.

“It is simply outrageous to respond with such vigour to a measure that saves lives and responds with such casual indifference and apathy to the ongoing campaign of Palestinian terrorism that takes lives. This is not justice but a perversion of justice,” he said.

I’ve long maintained that they ought to just rename the GA the “body of the UN responsible for passing resolutions against Israel”. That’s all they ever do, anyway. So this, I suppose, was just business as usual.

Canada, in typical spineless fashion, abstained from the vote. Why does this even bother me anymore?