Reposted from the original with permission from UN Watch
GENEVA, May 20, 2015 – As Israeli hospitals continue their life-saving treatment for escalating numbers of wounded Syrians fleeing to the Golan from the Assad regime’s barbaric attacks, the U.N. reached new heights of absurdity today by accusing Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan.
By a vote of 104 to 4, with 6 abstentions and 65 absent, the Jewish state was singled out as the world’s top violator of health rights by the annual assembly of the U.N.’s World Health Organization.
The resolution, which adopted two reports heaping blame upon Israel for allegedly violating the health rights of both the Palestinians and Druze residents of the Golan, was the 2015 assembly’s only treatment of a specific country situation.
There was no debate on the health of the Yemeni people now under indiscriminate Saudi bombardment, no mention at all of the 1,850 Yemenis killed, the 7,394 wounded, and the 545,000 displaced, many of whom are desperate to find food.
On the contrary, the representative of Saudi Arabia’s theocracy took the floor today, without any sense of shame, to denounce “Israeli intransigence,” and to beseech “all peace loving states” to adopt the distorted and politicized resolution.
The despotic regime must have felt especially emboldened as the gathering took place adjacent to the Human Rights Council, where Saudi Arabia is not only a full member—elected in 2013 by more than two-thirds of the UN General Assembly—but, according to the Tribune de Genève, is actively lobbying to become president next year. If Qaddafi’s Libya won the post in 2003, why shouldn’t King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud get his turn?
All of this while the Wahhabist regime advertises the hiring of eight more executioners to carry out beheadings, which have spiraled this year to more than double the amount in 2014. ISIS can only be jealous of what this UNHRC presidential candidate has achieved.
Nor is this year’s UN health assembly holding a single debate on the health rights of Ukranian civilians caught in a war with Russian-backed militias. The 6,000 people killed, and the one million displaced, are simply of no interest.
Preoccupied by the alleged sins of Israelis, the UN turned a blind eye to the latest warning by health experts, reported in Newsweek, that Ukraine is in imminent danger of experiencing the first polio epidemic Europe has seen for decades. “Millions of children are at risk from a range of crippling or fatal infectious diseases, including measles, diphtheria and rubella,” said the report. Yet the UN couldn’t be bothered—and Russia gleefully voted today for the PLO-drafted condemnation of Israel.
Most absurd of all, though, was that today’s text falsely claimed a dire need for “health-related technical assistance” for “the Syrian population in the occupied Syrian Golan” — who in fact have excellent treatment — and said nothing about the Syrian population being slaughtered in Syria.
Instead, the scapegoating of Israel—in the form of a special debate, two lopsided reports, the resolution, and the publication of country submissions—provided a UN platform for Assad’s murderous regime.
“The Israeli occupation authorities continue to experiment on Syrian and Arab prisoners with medicines and drugs and to inject them with pathogenic viruses,” wrote Syria, in a submission laced with anti-Semitic conspiracy tropes, yet circulated as an official UN document on today’s agenda.
Unable to deny Israel’s medical treatment of wounded Syrians, the regime concocted another plot: Israel deliberately heals regime opponents so that they can “resume their subversive terrorist activities directed against the country’s peaceful citizens and its infrastructure.”
If the European Union—all of whose member states disgracefully joined the jackals by voting for today’s resolution—had wanted, they could have set the record straight, and taken a stand against such base demonization of the Jewish state.
The EU states could have introduced their own resolution about how Syria has killed more than 200,000 of their own people, including 20,000 children, caused three million to flee as refugees, and displaced another six million within Syria itself, amounting to the utter destruction of the health rights of the Syrian people.
Yet the EU was silent. Instead, it justified its vote by claiming that the resolution was “technical.” It’s the old Brussels-Ramallah wink-and-nod game : the PLO drafts a harsher text at the beginning, knowing it will revise it later to allow the Europeans to pretend that they achieved a “balanced” text. Israel is then expected to celebrate that it has been lynched with a lighter rope.
The truth is, the UN health assembly should single out Israel—as a beacon of humanity.
The UN should single out Israel because if you walk into any Israeli hospital or clinic, you will see it replete with Palestinians receiving world-class medical treatment.
And this was true even this past summer while Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, and placed their terrorist command center under the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, a despicable abuse of health rights unmentioned by the world health assembly.
The UN should single out Israel because its doctors have created the amazing “Save A Child’s Heart” program, which has provided life-saving cardiac surgery to more than 3,400 children from 48 different countries, training doctors and nurses from China to Zanzibar. About half the patients are Muslims from the West Bank, Gaza and other Arab countries.
The UN should single out Israel because it was a world leader in responding to the deadly earthquake in Nepal, sending a 260-member army team of medics and search and rescue experts who treated 1,600 victims, including 85 surgeries and eight infant deliveries.
And the UN should single out Israel because its Nobel Prize-winning scientists and innovative biotech companies have become global innovators who create therapeutic products, diagnostic tools and revolutionary drug-delivery techniques benefiting people all over the world.
Yet so long as the UN instead descends into irrationalism, scapegoating the Jewish state for all the world’s health problems just as medieval Europe accused the Jews of poisoning the wells, the organization betrays the cause of humanity and the noble principles upon which it was founded.
Hillel Neuer is executive director of UN Watch.
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Vote Count
From the official UN summary for May 20, 2015, 68th World Health Assembly
Item 20. Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan
The Chairman opened the item and invited the Committee to consider the draft decision contained in document A68/B/Conf./2 Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan. Palestine also made a statement after which the Director of Health of UNRWA gave his report.
In accordance with Rule 72 of the Rules of Procedure, a roll-call vote was taken. The vote resulted in 104 votes in favour to four votes against, with six abstentions and 65 Member States absent, as follows:
Votes in favour: Afghanistan; Albania; Algeria; Angola; Argentina; Austria; Azerbaijan; Bahrain; Bangladesh; Belarus; Belgium; Benin; Bhutan; Bolivia (Plurinational State of); Bosnia and Herzegovina; Brazil; Brunei Darussalam; Bulgaria; Chile; China; Congo; Costa Rica; Croatia; Cuba; Cyprus; Czech Republic; Denmark; Dominican Republic; Ecuador; Egypt; El Salvador; Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Guatemala; Hungary; Iceland; India; Indonesia; Iran (Islamic Republic of); Iraq; Ireland; Italy; Japan; Jordan; Kazakhstan; Kuwait; Latvia; Lebanon; Liberia; Libya; Lithuania; Luxembourg; Malaysia; Maldives; Malta; Mauritania; Mauritius; Mexico; Monaco; Mongolia; Montenegro; Morocco; Namibia; Netherlands; Nicaragua; Nigeria; Norway; Oman; Pakistan; Panama; Peru; Philippines; Poland; Portugal; Qatar; Republic of Korea; Republic of Moldova; Romania; Russian Federation; Saudi Arabia; Senegal; Serbia; Singapore; Slovakia; Slovenia; South Africa; Spain; Sri Lanka; Sudan; Sweden; Switzerland; Syrian Arab Republic; Thailand; the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; Tunisia; Turkey; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Uruguay; Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of); Yemen.
Votes against: Australia; Canada; Israel; United States of America.
Abstentions: Armenia; Colombia; Fiji; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea;
Paraguay.
Absent: Andorra; Antigua and Barbuda; Bahamas; Barbados; Botswana; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cabo Verde; Cambodia; Cameroon; Chad; Cook Islands; Côte d’Ivoire; Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Djibouti; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Gabon; Gambia; Georgia; Ghana; Grenada; Guinea; Haiti; Honduras; Jamaica; Kenya; Kiribati; Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Lesotho; Madagascar; Malawi; Mali; Mozambique; Myanmar; Nauru; Nepal; Niger; Rwanda; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Samoa; San Marino; Sao Tome and Principe; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; Solomon Islands; South Sudan; Suriname; Swaziland; Tajikistan; Timor-Leste; Togo; Tonga; Trinidad and Tobago; Turkmenistan; Tuvalu; Uganda; United Republic of Tanzania; Uzbekistan; Vanuatu; Viet Nam; Zambia; Zimbabwe.
One delegate gave an explanation of vote under Rule 75 of the Rules of Procedure.
The draft decision was approved and the item was closed. The meeting was adjourned.