The American Spectator

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Mary Robinson's Disgraceful Medal

By Robert M. Goldberg on 8.4.09 @ 5:39PM

The Obama Adminstration -- is it just President Obama -- seems to delight in provoking the Jewish people by either honoring or appointing individuals who have done one or more of the following:

1. Sided with Israel's enemies in diplomatic or military theaters, thereby giving them both political and strategic support.

2. Provided Israel's enemies with a forum for advancing anti-Semitic or anti-Israel propaganda or have willfully engaged in propagandizing themselves.

3. Singled out Jews and Israel as the primary obstacle peace in the Middle East and have advanced the argument that a Jewish or Israel lobby has created that obstacle and should be eliminated.

Here's a short list of these individuals. Feel free to add others in the comment section:

Reverend Wright.
Rashid Khalidi
Chas Freeman
Merrill McPeak (See my Spectator article.)
Robert Malley (See my other Spectator article.)

But now that Obama has awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom, add Mary Robinson to the top of the list. She, by virtue of being the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, was able to advance the agenda of the enemies of Jews and Israel everywhere. By turns she's been a Neville Chamberlain in a petticoat or the principal organizer in what has become a world-wide indulgence of radical Islam, which consists of excusing human rights abuses in places such as Iran and abetting anti-Israel and Jewish sentiments.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "There are statements that obviously that she has made that the president doesn't agree with, and that's probably true for a number of the people that the president is recognizing for their lifetime contributions."

Statements? We are talking about actions, which speak a lot louder than words.

First, she gave aid and comfort to Israel's enemies in time of war. In 2003, weighing in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, UNWatch notes:

In a speech to the Special Session last week, Mary Robinson endorsed Palestinian propaganda that accusations of using Palestinian ambulances to convey explosives were baseless Israeli lies. In doing so, she chose to place greater trust in the Palestinian statement than in that of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which witnessed the unloading of an explosive "suicide belt" from an ambulance and its controlled detonation.

Second, she effectively sided with those who believed that silencing Israel and Jewish voices would advance "peace." Hence, she organized the 2001 Durban UN Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia, etc. to reflect the interests and views of Arab states. Colin Powell walked out. The late Tom Lantos blamed Robinson for handing the conference over to the Organization of Islamic States and Iran in particular. He noted that Israelis were not allowed to be delegates at this conference because Iran and other countries objected. Meanwhile, discussion of human rights abuses, religious oppression and other issues in Islamic countries were never raised because Mary never batted an eye.

Third, and most importantly, she provided a world platform for Jewish hatred.

As High Commissioner, Robinson was scorned by no less than another Medal of Freedom recipient, Eli Wiesel. Here is what Wiesel wrote about her handling of the Durban conference :

The conference in Durban will go down in history as an enterprise of disgrace. Instead of being an important international conference that expresses goodwill, the conference has been turned into a circus of calumny.

What began as an idea for a world gathering against hatred has turned into a meeting of hatred characterized by wickedness. I was supposed to have been there. Both Kofi Annan and Mary Robinson did their utmost to persuade me, particularly in light of my membership on the small board of "very important persons" that the UN established to help with the preparations. But after I read the work papers, I quit.

Mary Robinson phoned me a number of times. I had lunch with the UN secretary general, whom I have known for years. I explained to both of them why I could not take part in this event, which is so infuriatingly anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish.

They said they would make changes in the phrasing, but the problem was with the content. I warned the UN secretary general that the conference and the manner in which it had been prepared would go down in history as a moral catastrophe of the political and social behavior of the world's nations.

Anti-Semitism, the oldest form of racism against a certain group in the world, did not appear in the program. What did appear was something about "holocausts such as the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the Israelis."

By means of the disgraceful conference in Durban, history has given us, the Jews, a sign. And we had better learn how to decipher it.

Here's one sign: The Obama administration is no friend to the Jewish people.