'Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah its most sublime belief.'

from Jihad Watch

"The root cause of the Gaza tragedy is not mentioned in the Goldstone/Gaza Report to the UN Human Rights Council: the genocidal Hamas Charter that teaches children hatred and death."

Comments by David G. Littman, NGO Representative to the United Nations in Geneva for the Association for World Education (AWE) and the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ):

This is the promised follow-up to my last article.

Two weeks ago, I delivered three oral statements to the 12th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva (all reproduced below): on the Gaza/Goldstone Report and Hamas Charter (item 7); violence against women (item 8); Defamation of Judaism and Jews (item 9). After I had finished speaking for the WUPJ the 1st time, the HRC president declared (not on webcast):

Before moving to the next speaker, may I call upon everyone to stick to the agreed practice and link their statement to the item under discussion; clearly, part of the previous statement are extraneous to the item under discussion and out of order; this should not be repeated.

After I spoke for AWE the same morning under item 8, the president made similar remarks, but without saying, "out of order." This concerned 'violence against women' - it seems that I should have referred also to the ' Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action', not only to: Integrating the human rights of women throughout the UN system - so I was informed! Toward the end of the day, I was told by the NGO liaison officer that one of the statements would be removed from the official report of the meeting because the president had used the expression "out of order"- later, I learned that it was the statement on Gaza. As this 'decision' seemed discriminatory, I prepared a 10 point letter to the president, Belgian Ambassador Alex Van Meeuwen - also reproduced below - to which there has been no response after twelve days. At an NGO meeting after the plenum, in reply to a question, the president stated that he had heard me refer to Iran, which was not related to the subject of item 7; I replied that I had only referred to Iran in the Hamas-Gaza context that was the subject of WUPJ's statement.

I was informed yesterday that the Secretary of the Human Rights Council [Eric Tistounet] has agreed to maintain the webcast of our oral intervention on the UN website and the verbatim version of this intervention on the HRC extranet, but with an asterisk* indicating that the statement was ruled partially out of order: "consequently, your statement will not be included in the report of the 12th session of the Human Rights Council."

In a rapid reply, I asked whether, because the President used the expression "out of order", in relation to "parts of the previous statement", signified that his 'ruling' was correct. I asked:

We maintain that an NGO, like any other representative, is entitled to an explanation on such a serious matter and my 10 point letter to the President, dated 2 October (by fax, email, and post), is very comprehensive (...) Do the 'rules and regulations' imply that should the President make a 'slip of the tongue' when speaking he cannot retract the words "out of order" which must automatically be implemented by the Secretariat?

Hopefully, I shall obtain a reply to this question from the friendly president at the 12th Special Session of the HRC- requested by the Palestinian Authority with the usual 'sponsors' - and scheduled for October 15-16. Israel's Foreign Minister Abba Eban had this to say forty years ago: "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." (The Times, London, 17 December 1970) It will be interesting to see what NGOs will be forbidden to say at the Special Session - and what will be ruled 'out of order' as a result of pressures from OIC countries .....