It took five days, but United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon finally said he “rejects” United Nations Human Rights Council official Richard Falk’s comments that cited “the American global domination project: and US-Israeli relations as provocations for the bombings.

Falk, a Jewish American who has long history of accusing Israel of “war crimes” and “apartheid, wrote as “long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment, those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy.”

Israeli officials as well as the UN Watch organization protested his remarks, but Ban’s spokesman simply stated that Falk “speaks independently” and does not necessarily represent the United Nations.

Further condemnations of Falk appeared in the media, including The Wall Street Journal, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations tweeted, “Someone who spews such vitriol has no place at the UN.”

Ban‘s spokesman finally announced five days Falk’s article, “The Secretary-General rejects Mr. Falk’s comments [which] undermine the credibility and the work of the United Nations.”

Today’s New York Times‘ editorial, Israel Ducks on Human Rights, a day after providing a platform for an anti-Israel, factually wrong op-ed about taking Israel/is to the ICC (and which Julian Ku wrote: “If this is the Palestinian strategy to resolve their dispute with Israel, than the prospects for the settlement of this dispute are even more remote than I had previously believed.”), asserts that

Israel has increasingly isolated itself from the world with its hard-line policies on West Bank settlements, the Gaza embargo and other issues. This week, it unwisely set itself further apart with a decision to withhold cooperation from a United Nations Human Rights Council review of its human rights practices. If this paper, or any rational person, still considers the UNHRC objective, unstained,  impartial, considerate, reasonable, unbiased or somehow otherwise actually concerned with human rights and not an Israel-bashing forum whose members have ten times more problems with human rights than Israel while ignoring the human rights fiascoes in other places much worse, not to admit all the complaints against Israel are true, I stress, then the readership of the NYT as well as its editors is to be pitied.  By the way, the U.N. Human Rights Coordinator rep in Jerusalem has not yet replied or acknowledged my appeal.

The editorial even notes:

…The council…is clearly not without faults. More than half of the resolutions passed by the council since it started work in 2006 have focused on Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, and Israel is the only country that is a standing item on the agenda for the council’s biannual meetings.  The council hasn’t always been an effective human rights champion. But… Well, we don’t accept “buts” anymore.

The paper then contradicts itself, saying, “Israel shows not only an unwillingness to undergo the same scrutiny as all other countries.” But there is no “same scrutiny”! That’s the point.

The paper issue a threat or two and then adds that “Any new governing coalition that emerges from Israel’s recent elections should realize that there’s a cost to standing apart.”

Except that “Standing apart” is normative Jewishness. The anti-Semites stand us apart. Media bias stands us apart.Our uniqueness stands us apart. Our history and our achievements stand us apart. The Bible stands us apart. Numbers 23:9: “lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not take the nations into consideration” (my translation).

While it would be better if the nations treated us better, understood us better, aided us more, at the fundamental level, we have to take that “apartness” into consideration.

Visit My Right Word.

Another major confrontation is brewing between Israel and the United Nations. On January 29, Israel is scheduled for its quadrennial Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council (HRC). Following the March 2012 Council session, however, Israel’s foreign minister ceased all contacts with the HRC due to its obsessive bias and double standards targeting the Jewish state. As a result, Israel will not participate in UPR.

This has U.N. officials very worried and for good reason. If Israel fails to show up for UPR, this may force the HRC to end the stranglehold of abusive regimes over the institution and implement long overdue reforms.

UPR was instituted as the focal point of the newly-created HRC in 2006, which was established as a correction to its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights. The Commission was disbanded after being hijacked by dictatorships and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The huge embarrassment was compounded by a singular focus on Israel. According to U.N. Watch, approximately half of all country-specific resolutions condemned the Jewish state.

The Commission’s standing agenda included the notorious “Item 7,” meaning that Israel was the only country singled out at every session. Inevitably, this resulted in incessant discussion of alleged Israeli violations against Palestinians. By 2005, the situation had deteriorated to the point that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan remarked, “the Commission’s ability to perform its tasks has been . . . undermined by the politicization of its sessions and the selectivity of its work.”

UPR was created to ostensibly remedy the pervasive one-sidedness by implementing a peer review of the human rights records of every U.N. member state once every four years. It was heavily promoted by officials from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Europe, and the U.N. as the linchpin of the HRC and proof of its “reformed” and universally-concerned character, despite the perpetuation of Agenda Item 7 on Israel. Human Rights Watch (HRW) in particular lobbied extensively for UPR.

In spite of the promises, the new HRC differed little from the Commission. Dictatorships and Islamic regimes continued to dominate the council and its leadership. Resolutions against Israel outnumbered those issued against any other country by orders of magnitude, and 5 of the first 9 special sessions targeted Israel. Prompted by the Arab League and the OIC, coupled with intensive campaigning by HRW, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, and other NGOs, there have been at least four separate “fact-finding” missions aimed at Israel, most notably the Goldstone Mission. Follow-up committees, reports for Goldstone (ignoring the repudiation of the report by Judge Goldstone himself), and the other inquiries continue to be placed on the agenda at every HRC session – wasting precious time and resources.

And although every country participated in the first round of the UPR process, which concluded in 2011, the meetings usually consisted of dictators patting each other on the back for their stellar human rights records. Bashing Israel and Canada stood in for “constructive dialogue.”

Based on this sorry history, the March 2012 HRC session was the last straw for Israel. While thousands were being butchered by the Assad regime in Syria, the HRC outrageously passed a resolution condemning Israel for the “suffering of Syrian citizens in the occupied Syrian Golan.” Due to intense lobbying by several European-government funded NGOs, including Al Haq and Badil, seeking to lay the groundwork for a new campaign against Israelis at the International Criminal Court, the HRC also initiated another fact-finding mission against Israel. This time, Israel decided to disengage entirely from the farce.

Once HRC officials realized that Israel’s decision would also affect UPR, they panicked. UPR can only work if there is 100% state participation. Without UPR, the façade of a reformed HRC is now in jeopardy. On November 28, 2012, the HRC President sent a desperate letter to Israel trying to guilt it into participation by ironically promoting the “universality” of the process. When Israel didn’t bite, the HRC met this week and openly chastised Israel for refusing to participate in the discredited framework.

In concert with the U.N., NGOs predictably began issuing condemnations. The NGO WILPF, in Orwellian fashion, lamented that, “Letting the non-cooperation of a state produce a double standard in the UPR process and setting such a precedent would undermine its object and purpose,” while ignoring the decades of double standards aimed at Israel. No doubt, similarly self-righteous statements will soon appear from HRW and others.

After a bus carrying Israeli tourists at Bulgaria’s Burgas airport exploded on Wednesday, killing seven and wounding at least 30 more, a U.N. spokesperson said that secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms.”

In fact, the U.N. chief’s choice of terms was weak in comparison to his statement two weeks ago on the bombing of churches in Kenya. In that case, Mr. Ban rightly spoke of “terrorist” attacks, “reprehensible and criminal,” saying the perpetrators “must be held to account.”

Today he referred only to the deadly “bombing” of Israelis – noticeably declining to describe it as an act of terrorism – and he made no call for holding the perpetrators to account. UN Watch today urged Mr. Ban to clarify his position and to truly use the strongest possible terms to condemn today’s terrorist attack.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has remained silent on today’s attack. By contrast, hours after the Gaza Flotilla incident of 2010, Ms. Pillay expresed her “shock” and condemned Israel. The top story on her office website instead criticizes Western states for how they combat terrorism, with America accused of having “dangerous” laws that violate due process.

Supported by a Facebook campaign now going viral, UN Watch called on the High Commissioner to speak out for victims of terrorism, condemn today’s gruesome murders in Bulgaria, and instruct her staff to investigate the perpetrators and hold them fully accountable for the crimes.

The U.N.’s 47-nation Human Rights Council has also stayed silent. By contrast, in 2004 it wasted no time in convening an emergency session to eulogize Hamas terrorist leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and to condemn Israel. Currently, the council is busy with yet another “fact-finding mission” into alleged Israeli human rights violations. The council has never mandated an inquiry into terrorism or rocket attacks targeting Israelis.

The Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported today that senior Hamas official Ismail al-Ashqar is set to speak before the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday.

Al-Ashqar arrived in Switzerland on Sunday, ahead of a talk which will address the issue of Hamas members being held in Israeli jails.

Are you one of those people who were outraged at the bias, the libel and the naked hatred evidenced in the Goldstone Report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland? Were you stunned by the blatant lies? Were you left shocked and speechless at the sad realization that the author of this venomous report was Goldstone – yes, a Jew!

Are you among those who can still recall how Israel uprooted its own citizens, rendering them refugees in their own land? Yes, incredibly, Israel gave away the villages of its citizens, their homes, their farms, and their settlements to accommodate an enemy that swore to obliterate every trace of Jewish life from the Holy Land.

Indeed, lethal missiles began to rain down on Sderot and its environs. Day and night, fire fell from the skies, terrorizing, wounding and killing, men, women, children and babies. The nations of the world never even took notice. Not one of them raised a voice, not one of them cared.

After eight torturous years of living in terror, Israel finally acted, but even as she did so, her army exercised unparalleled compassion such as the world had never before witnessed.

Israeli soldiers alerted Gazan citizens so that they might protect themselves. They dropped more than two million leaflets and made over 100,000 phone calls to safeguard the civilian population. But Hamas was not interested in giving them this protection. They took these very same civilians and used them as human shields!

And more… much more…the I.D.F. allowed vast amounts of humanitarian aid to be delivered to the enemy, and aborted many battle plans which placed its own soldiers in jeopardy, once again to protect the civilian population.

But no matter what Israel did, it has all been to no avail. The nations are seething with venomous anti-Semitism and there are always self-hating Jews who are anxious to join their ranks. So, once again Israel stands alone. Once again, she is “one lamb among 70 wolves.”

But not to panic – Truth be told, there is nothing new about this infamous Goldstone report. Jew baiting – libelous accusations are as old as the Jewish people themselves, and we triumphed over all of them.

Even as I was pondering all this, one of my students at Hineni reminded me of an essay that testifies to this reality, written by Eric Hoffer (non-Jewish) author in 1968 and titled, “Israel’s Peculiar Position.” Chances are that readers have come across this before as it was written over 40 years ago. However, it bears yet another look as it could have been written today.

Israel’s Peculiar Position
By Eric Hoffer

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese – and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.

Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.

Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.

No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him.

The Swedes, who are ready to break of diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

Postscript: Mr. Hoffer was a non-Jewish American social philosopher who died in 1982. He was the author of nine books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His first book, “The True Believer” was recognized as a classic.

While the essay that I shared with you is most powerful, if I may, I would like to make an addition: Israel’s survival is not dependant upon its own efforts, but upon the Almighty G-d who sealed a Covenant with the Jewish people that guarantees their survival for all eternity, and that Covenant is the secret behind the supernatural endurance of the Jew.

Throughout history, empires, nations, have risen only to fall, but the Jewish people are here! They are here to testify to the existence of G-d and bear witness to His holy Name…That Covenant, the voice of Torah rings today as it rang out throughout the centuries, and please G-d, it will usher in soon, in our own day, the coming of Moshiach.

So far, the UN fact-finding mission into last January’s war in Gaza has spawned a 574-page report faulting Israel for war crimes, op-eds calling on foreign governments to hold Israel accountable – including one by the report’s author – and strident denunciations of the findings by Israeli officials.

This may be just the beginning of the battle.

At the end of the month the former South African judge who headed the inquiry, Richard Goldstone, formally presents his findings to the UN body that commissioned the post-mortem, the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The council could vote to refer the matter to the UN Security Council.

In the end, however, the Goldstone recommendations are unlikely ever to acquire the force of law. The International Criminal Court cannot even consider war crimes prosecutions without the say-so of the Security Council – and that’s unlikely to happen given the veto power the United States exercises there.

But the political and public relations challenges for Israel presented by the Goldstone report are unlikely to go away soon.

“When one makes the charges that there were indiscriminate attacks on civilians, it’s not just a dry UN document that gets discussed in Turtle Bay; this is a document that reverberates throughout the Muslim world,” said Dan Mariaschin, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith.

“It ultimately makes its way into rhetoric – by public officials, the media, extremist groups. It’s not an academic exercise; it comes back to bite us.”

The report chronicles allegations of Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed Palestinians in Gaza without provocation and accuses Israel of possible commission of crimes against humanity. It demands that Israel launch an internal investigation into the allegations and that Hamas investigate its rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

In addition to posing various challenges to Israel, the report also produces a test of sorts for the United States, which recently joined the Human Rights Council in Geneva as part of the Obama administration’s effort to promote change in the much-criticized body.

Since its founding in 2006, the Human Rights Council has made the condemnation of Israel its central focus, with 26 of the 32 resolutions adopted by the body focused on the Jewish state.

The council’s debate on the Goldstone report at the end of this month doubtless will produce another resolution – plus opportunities for member states to condemn or defend Israel.

“That’ll be Sept. 29, the day after Yom Kippur, so people who care about Israel had better pray hard,” quipped Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, which is based in Geneva and is an accredited NGO at the Human Rights Council.

“Israel will be vilified,” Neuer said. “Israel will be compared to Nazi Germany. This is fuel for extremist elements.”

If the council adopts a resolution that refers the matter to the Security Council, that will further perpetuate talk of Israeli war crimes and represent yet another setback for Israel.

For Israel, the debate over the Gaza conflict is a distraction and an impediment to building a coalition for further sanctions or support for an eventual military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. It also hampers Israel in potential negotiations with the Palestinians.

Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigation from the start, claiming its mandate was inherently biased, and Israeli officials immediately sought to discredit the report after its release, noting that Israel already has serious investigations of its wartime conduct under way.

With the report’s call for the Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court if Israel does not act upon its recommendations within six months, the battle over the Gaza conflict has the potential to be a repeat of the public relations war over the West Bank security fence.

The subject of numerous condemnations in the UN General Assembly, the fence issue eventually was referred to the International Court of Justice at The Hague, which ruled in an advisory opinion in July 2004 that the fence was illegal and infringed upon the rights of Palestinians. As with the Goldstone inquiry, Israel boycotted the process, arguing that the international court had no jurisdiction in the matter and that the proceedings were inherently biased.

This time, the issue is unlikely to reach an international court.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said it is the “strong view” of the United States that the report be considered only by the Human Rights Council, not the Security Council.

If it came to the Security Council, other veto-wielding members, such as Britain, also might vote against referring the matter to the International Criminal Court. Tasking the court with scrutinizing Israel’s wartime conduct in Gaza would set a problematic precedent for international scrutiny of other wars, such as those involving British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.