POLITICAL winds have been intensifying. The UN is scheduled to host its “human rights” conference later this month, the so-called Durban III.
Remember the debacle of the Durban conference in 2000? Remember Durban II with Ahmadinejad as a keynote speaker? OK, so now the UN is on to its not too funny joke of Durban III. The organization UN Watch is organizing a counterconference the real human rights conference.
I am curious how it will all play out, especially in the shadows of the desire for a non-negotiated, UN-recognized Palestinian state and especially in light of the violation of Gilad Shalit’s human rights.
Just recently it was was Gilad Shalit’s 25th birthday and the sixth anniversary of his capture (and, we pray, the final one). These milestones stopped many of us in out tracks and made us pay extra attention. We all pray for the release of Gilad Shalit (Gilad ben Aviva). We are all incensed by the blatant human rights violations against Gilad, and the world’s unconscionable silence and indifference.
The UN and International Red Cross, in their typical double standard, seem to have no scruples when it comes to the violation of Shalit’s human rights, which they supposedly stand for and are symbols of.
Had the IRC put the appropriate pressure on Hamas and made it accountable to the IRC or, at the very least, visited Shalit to see his condition for themselves, who knows how the course of his life could have been different by now?
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