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February 28, 2003/Adar1 26 5763, Vol. 55, No. 27
Israeli counsel addresses frustrations at U.N.
BARRY COHEN
Editor
A legal counsel of the Israeli United Nations delegation described the U.N.'s typical response to a Palestinian terrorist attack, during a recent Anti-Defamation League dis-cussion in Phoenix.
After an attack takes place in Israel, no resolutions are presented in response to the attack and the Security Council does not meet, said Tal Becker, who spoke Feb. 20 to about 12 people at the regional ADL chapter in a Phoenix law office.
Israel then reacts to the attack two days later by targeting the terrorist infrastructure of a Palestinian town; civilians are killed and "then, the U.N. Security Council meets," he said. Delegates from the 15 nations then discuss a resolution condemning Israel - presented by the Palestinian delegation - but the res-olution ignores the terrorist attack that led to the Palestinian civilian deaths.
"My job then becomes ... working with the (United States) as closely as we can, to either prevent that resolution from being adopted or ... to add some kind of obligation on the Palestinian side," Becker explained.
The U.N. Security Council does not focus on terrorism, but upon the response to terrorism, he said.
"This annoys me parti-cularly because I am a lawyer, with expertise in inter-national law and in the laws of war," said Becker, inter-national law expert in the Military Advocate General Corps of the Israel Defense Force.
With the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the U.N. does not address even the most fundamental international law of war - "the need to distinguish combatants from civilians ... to minimize harm against civilians," he said.
Terrorists violate this law in three ways, he noted. Terrorists look like civilians, they target civilians and they hide among civilians, he explained.
"How can Israel combat that?"
Becker also said he is frustrated when the U.N. metes out "selective justice," unfairly singling out Israel for its actions against the Palestinians.
Thirty percent of the resolutions passed by the U.N. Human Rights Commission condemn Israel, he noted. Yet, the commission has not passed one resolution against Syria or China for human rights violations; and the president of the commission is Libya, well known for human rights infractions, Becker said.
"When you have a system that is hijacked by the worst violators of human rights ... it's not something that Israel can take seriously," he said. "It's not credible. It destroys the U.N.'s reputation."
Since the start of the recent Intifada two and a half years ago, Israel has had few successes at the U.N., he noted.
However, one victory took place in the aftermath of the November 2002 terrorist bombing in Kenya that took the lives of three Israelis and 10 Kenyans.
The Israeli delegation negotiated for two weeks for the U.N. to pass a resolution acknowledging that Israelis died in the hotel bombing and Al Qaida targeted an Israeli plane, he recalled, and for the U.N. to send condolences to the families of the victims.
"For the Syrians, this was too much," said Becker, because the resolution mentioned "the word, 'Israel.' "
Israel worked with the United States to gather support for the original resolution, and the Security Council passed it 14-1. Only Syria rejected it.
"The real victory was how Syria voted," said Becker.
The Syrian delegation could not condemn the attack - even though they knew Al Qaida was involved - simply because Israel was the target, he noted.
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