Algeria says Israelis are like Nazis
march 22, 2002
Canada sits and listens: Invective unleashed at UN rights meeting
Steven Edwards
National Post
UNITED NATIONS - Repeated comparisons to Nazi Germany punctuated a vicious verbal attack on Israel yesterday at the annual meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Algeria's ambassador compared every night in a Palestinian town to a new Kristallnacht, wondered when Israel will open its own concentration camps and spoke in German to cite a Nazi death decree he said the Israelis invoke against Palestinians.
The commission is the UN's principal human rights organ. Its 53 members include countries with poor human rights records, although the United States found itself ejected last May.
Year after year, the commission has approved Arab-sponsored resolutions slamming Israel, but the United States had until now demanded ballots on the measures, thereby preventing them from appearing to be universally endorsed. As yesterday's assault unfolded, Canada remained uncommitted to using its seat on the commission to demanding such a vote on a series of expected anti-Israel resolutions being prepared by Arab states.
But the ambassador for the small Central American state of Guatemala told the National Post his country will call for a ballot if Canada does not step in.
"We hope that a bigger country like Canada will ask for a vote, but we will call for a vote if necessary," said Antonio Arenales, Guatemala's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, where the commission meets. "We have seen drafts of [the anti-Israel] resolutions, and they are unacceptable. They represent an unfair politicization of the commission."
A former member of Guatemala's constitutional assembly, Mr. Arenales, 51, barely speaks above a whisper, the result of an attack by political opponents who kidnapped him in 1985, shot him in the head and left him for dead.
He told the commission yesterday it must recognize Israel's right to exist as much as the Palestinians' right to statehood.
"The Palestinian Authority has to guarantee and respect the right of self-determination of the Jewish people in addition to their own rights," Mr. Arenales told the Post.
"There are United Nations Security Council resolutions that call on Israel to withdraw from the territories while also saying that Arab countries must recognize Israel's right to exist. Many Arab countries refer to the first part but forget the second part."
Guatemala joined the United States in opposing three measures criticizing Israel last year, while Canada abstained. Israel has never been a member of the commission.
"We will vote the same again this year even if no other country joins us," said Mr. Arenales.
Ottawa had no comment yesterday on the day's speeches.
"We will be making a statement to the commission about the Middle East next week," said Nancy Bergeron, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Bill Graham, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said after addressing the commission on Tuesday that Canada will consult with Israel before deciding how to react to the resolutions.
"We have never had to face this before because the U.S. has always been there," said an official. "It is a file from Hell ... you are damned if you do and damned if you don't."
Yesterday's debate centred on territories under occupation, with Mohamed Salah Denbri, ambassador for Algeria, acknowledging Israel should have "secure and recognized frontiers" after withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza.
But Jews will be outraged by his comparisons between Israel's administration of the territories and the Nazi occupation.
He referred to a "daily repetition of the Night of the Broken Glass and Masadas." The former, also known as Kristallnacht, occurred on Nov. 9, 1938, when the Nazis encouraged window-smashing of synagogues and Jewish businesses, and the beating of Jews. The latter was the stand of Jewish zealots who committed mass suicide rather than fall into the hands of the Romans in the 1st century AD.
Mr. Denbri said Israel had inflicted a new "nacht und nebel" on the Palestinians, a reference to the Nazis' "night and fog" decree that generally spelled death for people who committed crimes against Germans in occupied lands.
He called Israeli soldiers who recently wrote numbers on Palestinian prisoners for identification "disciples of Goebbels and Himmler." The Israeli army said the marking was not military policy.
In a reference to the Holocaust, Mr. Denbri asked, "Should we wait in silence for the establishment of new extermination camps, or new massacres like Babi Yar?" He was referring to the ravine near Kiev where German troops shot 30,000 Jews over two days in September, 1941.
Andrew Srulevitch, executive director of UN Watch, a monitoring group, responded by saying: "With his demonization of Israel and trivialization of the Holocaust, the Algerian ambassador proved that Arab anti-Semitism, so prevalent in the Arab media, continues to plague the United Nations."
At yesterday's meetings in Geneva, the Palestinian delegate blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza, which Palestinians claim as a homeland.
Nabil Ramlawi, ambassador for the Palestinians, who do not sit on the rights commission, said the war against terrorism was rooted in neglect of the Palestinian plight.
"The right of self-determination and the right to free their land ... are the root causes of those wars, the scope of which expanded lately to include regions of the world that have never thought before that they would be menaced," he said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks.
But Islamic extremists themselves cite many other reasons for the attacks, including the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, home to Muslim holy sites, and UN sanctions against Iraq.
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