UN agrees to delay Jenin investigations.

April 24, 2002 6:39 AM

UN agrees to delay Jenin investigations. What's going on here? At the risk at causing more uproar to YAIPP (Yet Another Israel/Palistine Post)....why the delay? Everyone should be held accountable to Human Rights standards.
posted by bkdelong (19 comments total)

bkdelong, counting bodies can be a very subjective thing. the synapses the human brain requires to even begin such a process can result in varied hallucinations throwing the entire assessment off. counting bodies is... it's just wrong. everybody knows this and i'm glad the Israelis are pointing it out. and we certainly can't allow international human rights organizations to enter the west bank cuz they're um anti-semitic! yeah! let's avoid the whole thing and pretend we never heard of Jenin ok? ok......
posted by aLienated at 6:55 AM on April 24, 2002

No no no. Holding Israel to the same human rights standards as everyone else (besides China) is totally anti-semitic. I can't believe you'd suggest such a thing. You must be a racist.

(/sarcasm)
posted by fnord_prefect at 7:04 AM on April 24, 2002

It's counting the pieces of bodies, aLienated. That's the rub. I mean, these UN investigators, jew-hating bastards that they are, would probably look at two dismembered hands and conclude they came from two separate individuals, when in fact they belonged to the same little girl.

In my view, which admittedly matters not a whit, the two or three square feet of moral highground that Israel clung to crumbled when Jenin did. That's the last of it. Fuck Israel. And fuck the US's support of it.
posted by jpoulos at 7:21 AM on April 24, 2002

Hm. Jenin is still standing. Israel crushed down about a city block. There's lots of it without any problems at all. With the Egyptian press touting the bombers that set up traps and explosives all through the section that was crushed, I'm not quite sure I can say who's wrong, now.
posted by dwivian at 7:32 AM on April 24, 2002

jpoulos:

Indeed. I used to be an Israel supporter. Then I became pro-Palestine (after reading about the USS Liberty.) Now, though, I've decided that neither side is worth anyone's time. They've been fighting down there for decades, and there's no end in sight.

Now, this isn't a decision I arrived at lightly. I really do care what happens down there. There are thousands of innocent people on both sides who don't want this war. Unfortunately, the leadership of either side is full of hard-line warmongering homicidally insane assholes. If they really wanted peace, they would have had some kind of lasting cease-fire down there.

But no. Either it's a suicide bomber - brainwashed by Hizbollah to believe that their death will make a difference - or an Israeli helicopter pilot, or a settler with a machinegun, or an IDF soldier firing into a crowd, or Arafat, or Sharon, or any number of other antagonistic maniacs. They will NEVER stop killing eachother. They obviously just don't want to.

And if anyone tries to say that one side or the other is in the right, I'll just cry. What's right? "We were here first, so we get this land," or "We had the land when you came back, finders keepers..." Please. It's DIRT. A pile of dirt with special religious signifigance, but dirt, nonetheless. It's not worth killing ANYONE over.
posted by fnord_prefect at 7:56 AM on April 24, 2002

Pretty much.
posted by donkeyschlong at 8:10 AM on April 24, 2002

The whole point of first Cheney, and then Powell travelling there was to show that "engagement", Europe's presrcibed cure to the conflict, simply won't work until both sides want it to.

But add to the list of those hopelessly embroiled in the partisan passion: Mr. Koffi Anan. Funny how everyone seems to have overlooked the curious fact that Jenin is a UN-administered refuge camp.


"Peace simply can't be artificially inseminated" -Thomas Friedman
posted by BentPenguin at 8:27 AM on April 24, 2002

No no no. Holding Israel to the same human rights standards as everyone else (besides China) is totally anti-semitic. I can't believe you'd suggest such a thing. You must be a racist. (/sarcasm)

fnord_prefect: I wonder what "same human rights standard" you're referring to? Who are the "everyone else" you're thinking of? The French in Algeria? Europe and the UN in Bosnia? The Russians in Chechna and Chechnans in Russia? The Iraquis in Kurdistan? The list is endless and the violence is not limited to hundreds in a war zone, but single cases of thousands who are simply massacred in cold blood. You do sound racist to me.
posted by semmi at 8:35 AM on April 24, 2002

How you find racism in any of fnord_prefect's comments is beyond me semmi. And if you want to tally bodies, it is well established which side has lost more. Does it matter who's lost more? No. But you don't want to start talking about numbers.
posted by jpoulos at 8:43 AM on April 24, 2002

fnord_prefect: I wonder what "same human rights standard" you're referring to? Who are the "everyone else" you're thinking of? The French in Algeria? Europe and the UN in Bosnia? The Russians in Chechna and Chechnans in Russia? The Iraquis in Kurdistan? The list is endless and the violence is not limited to hundreds in a war zone, but single cases of thousands who are simply massacred in cold blood. You do sound racist to me.

semmi, so you want to ignore israel's actions? whatever happened to "two wrongs don't make a right" (besides abercrombie and fitch)?
posted by moz at 8:50 AM on April 24, 2002

jpoulos and moz: what I'm saying is that about 3000 years late and about 2000 years behind the Catholics it's high time for the Jews to get off the high moral grounds that NOBODY actually practices, and learn to run with the wolfs. What history teaches is to defend yourself by all means, and apologize later. I'm also saying that the wrong Israel may have commited by destroying a block of booby trapped houses filled with enemy fighters, risking civilian casulty rather than the lives of its own soldiers is common practice and we are doing it in Afghanistan. Whether or not two wrongs don't make a right is arguable, but to be hypocritically focusing on a small and possibly justifiable wrong, while blindly disregarding huger wrongs points to questionable motives.
posted by semmi at 9:46 AM on April 24, 2002

i thought they were going to add that american military guy and make it a 4 person team?
posted by rhyax at 9:59 AM on April 24, 2002

Barring UN inspectors from doing their job. . . Why is it OK for Israel to do it, but cause for a new war when Iraq does the same thing?
posted by busbyism at 11:13 AM on April 24, 2002

That's a nifty little rationalization you've got there, semmi. So, basically, you're saying it's Pharoah's fault.
posted by jpoulos at 11:29 AM on April 24, 2002

semmi: The same human rights standard that says that the French, the Iraqis, Russia and the UN/US are actually called on their human rights abuses, while Israel gets to call everyone who questions them an anti-semite.
posted by fnord_prefect at 12:42 PM on April 24, 2002

Same Shit, Different Foot...
posted by Mack Twain at 12:43 PM on April 24, 2002

semmi: The same human rights standard that says that the French, the Iraqis, Russia and the UN/US are actually called on their human rights abuses, while Israel gets to call everyone who questions them an anti-semite.

Various other UN actions from the last two weeks, passed on without comment:

UN Backs Palestinian violence
Iran Unlisted As Rights Offender
UN Rights Body Ducks Zimbabwe, Readies for Russia
Russia escapes censure on Chechnya at UN

posted by boaz at 2:44 PM on April 24, 2002

Boaz,
Good on you; thank you for beating me to it!
How a bright crowd of people can ignore the galling hypocrisy of the UN and then profess to be perplexed by Israel's hesitation to invite them into Jenin... Unfeckingreal.
posted by Tiger_Lily at 4:59 PM on April 24, 2002

The presence on the U.N. team of Cornelio Sommaruga, former head of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, is another reason that the Israelis might doubt its impartiality. 176 national organizations are members of Sommaruga's society, and just one has been refused membership: the Israeli Red Shield of David ("Mogen David Adom"). The excuse? the star of david is not a legitimate symbol.

Four symbols have been proposed by would-be members of the IRC: the red cross, the red crescent, the lion and sun (from Iran), and the star of david (from Israel). Three have been accepted.

When Dr. Bernadine Healy, the head of the American Red Cross, criticized the IRC, Sommaruga's response was "if we're going to have the shield of david, why would we not have to accept the swastika?"

Whatever happened in Jenin, does anyone really think that the Israelis can expect fair treatment from this man?
posted by myl at 5:41 PM on April 24, 2002