Gaddafi threatened, but will his downfall bring stability?

From Reuters, Sun Aug 21, 2011, by Ulf Laessing and Missy Ryan:

AL-MAYA/TRIPOLI

Rebel fighters streamed into the outskirts of Tripoli on Sunday with little sign of resistance, despite a call by Muammar Gaddafi for citizens to take up arms and save his 41-year-old regime from annihilation.

A convoy of rebels entered a western neighborhood of the city firing their weapons into the air, a witness said. Sky television said some fighters were only 8 km (five miles) from the center and were being welcomed by civilians pouring into the streets.

Thousands of rebel fighters were seen earlier in the day 20 km (12 miles) west of the city center, aiming to join fighters inside who began an uprising late on Saturday, a Reuters correspondent said.

"I am afraid if we don't act, they will burn Tripoli," Gaddafi said in an audio address broadcast on state television. "There will be no more water, food, electricity or freedom."

Bursts of gunfire and blasts from rocket-propelled grenades rang out near a hotel in Tripoli where foreign media are staying, a Reuters correspondent in the hotel said.

In a coordinated revolt that rebels have been secretly planning for months to end Gaddafi's 41-year rule, shooting started on Saturday night across Tripoli moments after Muslim clerics, using the loudspeakers of mosque minarets, called people on to the streets.

The fighting inside Tripoli, combined with rebel advances into the outskirts of the city, appeared to signal the decisive phase in a six-month conflict that has become the bloodiest of the "Arab Spring" uprisings and embroiled NATO powers.

...A Libyan government official told Reuters that 376 people on both sides of the conflict were killed in fighting overnight on Saturday in Tripoli, with about 1,000 others wounded.

"Gaddafi's chances for a safe exit are diminishing by the hour," said Ashour Shamis, a Libyan opposition activist and editor based in Britain.

But Gaddafi's fall, after four decades in power, is far from certain. His security forces did not buckle, and the city is much bigger than anything the mostly amateur anti-Gaddafi fighters, with their scavenged weapons and mismatched uniforms, have ever tackled.

If the Libyan leader is forced from power, there are question marks over whether the opposition can restore stability in this oil exporting country. The rebels' own ranks have been racked by disputes and rivalry...

A nuclear armed Iran could be the price of the Libya campaign

From The Commentator, 7 June 2011, by Emanuele Ottolenghi*:

Iran is emerging as the great beneficiary of a bombing campaign over Libya with little strategic benefit to the West...

Say what you will about the wisdom of NATO’s Libya bombing campaign but nearly three months since it started, its unintended consequences have seriously damaged American-led efforts to stymie Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

It has done so in three ways:

• the Libya operation has distracted Western diplomacy from the Iran file, despite the fact that Iran’s nuclear program continues to advance unimpeded by external pressure or internal threats to regime survival;
• it has driven up Iranian oil sales and revenues; and, crucially,
• it has driven down incentives for Iran to negotiate.

...Regardless of its outcome, Libya’s regional impact will be negligible for Arab democratisation. But Western intervention has already doomed Western policy vis-à-vis Iran to failure.

At the simplest level, the diplomatic energy and political attention devoted to Libya by NATO, the EU and the United States mean there is less time available to discuss and think about Iran.

Yet, Iran’s nuclear program has not stalled because of mass protests in Cairo or F-16’s over Tripoli. As the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report shows, Iran has now accumulated over four tonnes of Low Enriched Uranium (enough for four small nuclear devices), it has successfully tested military components of nuclear weapons, and it continues to reduce the ability of IAEA inspectors to monitor its nuclear activities.

Recently enacted sanctions were meant to slow down Iran’s nuclear clock because of the strain they would put on Iran’s economy and the added impediments to the country’s procurement efforts.

Though the impediments remain, the Libya crisis has eased up economic pressure by making oil prices soar due to the removal of Libyan oil from the market and the attendant supply uncertainty.

For Iran, this is a blessing – Iran’s budget is pegged to an $81.50 a barrel price tag. Anything above that benchmark is a bonus for Iran and a setback in the U.S. sanctions architecture since, quite simply, Tehran is able to dilute the financial damage caused by sanctions thanks to increased oil revenues. (At the time of writing Brent Crude was hovering around $114 a barrel.)

The disruption of supply from Libya has had another unintended consequence: increased European oil dependence on Iranian crude and stronger Iranian-Turkish bilateral relations at a time when Turkey’s government is already hesitant to comply with the international sanctions’ regime.

Several European consumers of Libyan oil are now buying more Iranian crude in order to offset sudden shortages caused by the Libya operation. So is Turkey – whose national oil company was hugely invested in Libya’s energy sector. More sales and higher prices, then, mean more revenue for Tehran, less political leverage for Iran’s customers and less bite for sanctions.

Beyond disruption to the oil markets, the Libya crisis has had another unwanted effect on the current nuclear standoff with Iran. Until March 17, 2011, when NATO strikes began, Libya offered conclusive evidence that even an erratic dictator like Gaddafi, who in 2004 was on the brink of nuclear weapons’ capability, could perform a sound cost-benefit analysis on his predicament and renounce nuclear weapons in exchange for international rehabilitation.

For those unwilling to recognise that the ouster of Saddam Hussein played a significant part in Gaddafi’s calculus to renounce his sponsorship of terrorism and turn over his nuclear program to the West in exchange for political and economic rehabilitation, Libya was proof of the greatest non-proliferation coup that diplomacy could envision.

Moreover, the Libya precedent vindicated policy on Iran. If Gaddafi, who appeared even more erratic and irrational than Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, or his puppet president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could do cost-benefit analysis, so could Iranian leaders.

Now, Libya can only serve as a precedent to bury that notion since Gaddafi’s calculus rested on the assumption that renouncing his nukes would save his regime. By turning on Gaddafi as soon as Gaddafi turned against his people, the West is now giving Iran an incentive to keep its nuclear programme, and not to trade it in for unreliable guarantees.

By looking at Gaddafi’s fate they will surely conclude that keeping the programme alive might offer a better shield than the kind of nuclear quid-pro-quo that, as in Gaddafi’s case, might ultimately be undone.

Why would Iran think its own fate would be different?

None of this means that Gaddafi should stay. But it does mean that the West now has no option but to go after Iran’s rulers.

As with Libya, Western policy towards Iran’s ruthless dictators has been a futile quest for compromise.

This is not to say that NATO should immediately initiate a bombing campaign over Iranian skies too. But, in President Obama’s words, that “cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right”.

Simply expecting the Iranian regime to change its behaviour is doomed to fail. Western leaders should now be looking to change the regime itself.

*Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of Iran: The Looming Crisis (Profile Books, 2010)

US: Assad is no peace partner but Gaddafi is worse

From JPost 27 April 2011, by HILARY LEILA KRIEGER:

Top US State Department official says it's difficult to pursue other diplomatic missions while Syrian regime violently puts down protests.


WASHINGTON – After two years of pushing Israel to reach a peace agreement with Syria, a top US State Department official indicated Tuesday the Obama administration is no longer looking at the current regime as a partner for such a deal.

... Sullivan said the US is also looking at the possibility of imposing sanctions on Syrian leaders and is consulting with international partners on this and other potential steps to halt the bloody crackdown Assad has ordered on opposition protesters.

“President Assad is on the wrong track,” Sullivan said, condemning the civilian deaths. He added, though, that the US is focused on “diplomatic and financial” initiatives aimed at the Syrian regime rather than military intervention as has taken place in Libya.

He also repeatedly declined to label Assad an illegitimate ruler or call for him to go, as the US did in Libya with Muammar Gaddafi once the Libyan leader began to shoot at protesters rather than accede to their demands for reform.

“Ultimately, the future of Syria is up to the people of Syria,” Sullivan said.

“It’s hard for us to stand by and see [President Bashar] Assad and his government engage in the kind of things they’re doing against their own people and to then think easily about how to pursue other diplomatic missions,” Jacob Sullivan, director of policy planning at the State Department, told reporters.

U.S. leaders should not excuse the brutality of Syria’s dictator

From NRO, March 30, 2011, by Claudia Rosett, journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and heads of its Investigative Reporting Project:

If Pres. Barack Obama prefers not to intervene on behalf of the protesters being slaughtered in Syria, the least his administration could do is refrain from endorsing their tyrant.

In Obama’s speech Monday night about America’s interest in defending Libyans and standing alongside other freedom-seekers of the Arab world, Syria didn’t even rate a mention. That discussion was handled Sunday in remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation. Not only did Clinton nix any thoughts of action on Syria, she ran interference for Syria’s murderous president, Bashar Assad, saying: “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.”

Such deference to U.S. lawmakers was absent from Obama’s decision to go to war in Libya; the president sought a resolution from the United Nations, but not from Congress. But if Congress is now back in the loop, with some members singing the praises of Assad, clearly the State Department needs to do a much better job of briefing them on the realities.

Clinton could start by highlighting the findings of her own department’s annual reports on human rights in Syria. These reports go far to explain why, after 40 years of the Assad family’s totalitarian rule, Syrians are so unhappy with this regime that tens of thousands of them have been risking prison, torture, and death in order to burn offices of the ruling Baath party, topple a statue of the late Hafez Assad, and march through the streets of cities across Syria, demanding freedom from the current Assad. The most recent State Department report, dated 2009, does not include the current season of shooting protesters. But it covers more than enough to convey the general idea.

The report begins with the observation that during 2009, the government and members of its security forces “committed numerous serious human rights abuses, and the human rights situation worsened.” Then come accounts of “arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life” and “enforced disappearances” that go back to the vanishing of “an estimated 17,000 persons in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” Those numbers, which look like a conservative estimate, presumably include the regime’s 1982 massacre in the city of Hama, which was how the elder Assad dispatched an uprising of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hillary Clinton, in her remarks Sunday, dismissed that mass murder with the comment, “There is a different leader in Syria now.”

Yes, but since the younger Assad took over in 2000, the reign of terror, reinforced by the echoes of Hama, has carried on. The State Department report lists a slew of “suspicious” deaths, disappearances, and arrests in 2009 alone, for offenses such as “degrading speech” or “insulting the president and the judicial system.” The Syrian government, with its long record of allegedly “disappearing” individuals, offered no legal redress and “did not investigate or punish any security force members for their role in disappearances.”

There is a description of the methods of torture and abuse inflicted on the inmates of Syria’s filthy and crowded prisons. Among these are: “electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; burning genitalia; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the victim was suspended from the ceiling; other times on the soles of the feet.” (I heard a first-person account of this technique some years ago from a survivor of Syria’s prisons, who showed me the horrible scars.) In a 21st-century reprise of the medieval rack and wheel, other methods include “hyperextending the spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; . . . [and] using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the victim’s spine.”

This report goes on to enumerate other forms of agony, insult, theft, and repression inflicted by the Assad regime on the 21 million people of Syria. Corruption is rampant. Assad’s Baath Party keeps its monopoly on power by prohibiting criticism of the government and violating its own constitution in order to severely restrict such rights as freedom of assembly. A permit can be required for a gathering of more than three people. There is brutal censorship. Among the cases cited in this report is that of a blogger who was sentenced to three years in prison for “publishing information aimed at weakening national morale.”

For a source other than the State Department, consult the Washington-based Freedom House. The organization puts out a handy report on “The World’s Most Repressive Societies”; in 2010, Syria ranked, as usual, among these “Worst of the Worst.” Freedom House also puts out a country report on Syria. The 2010 version includes an illuminating note about the regime’s practice of rewarding or coercing Syrians into informing on their own relatives, friends, and associates.

This is the regime that Syrians, with incredible courage, are now daring to defy. Assad is shuffling his cabinet and promising concessions he says will “please all the Syrian people.” But it’s a sure bet his security forces will be standing by, just in case the people aren’t pleased enough to stop protesting. One can see what Assad means by “please all the Syrian people” by looking at Syria’s 2007 elections, in which Assad officially produced a voter turnout of 96 percent and won 98 percent of the vote.

Along with all this, Assad’s Syria is a threat to the U.S. and its democratic allies — notably Israel. Its officials welcome terrorists and sanctions-busting weapons traffic, and Syria has amassed its own considerable arsenal of missiles and chemical weapons. It is one of four countries currently on the State Department’s list of terror-sponsoring states, a list it has helped populate since 1979. Under Assad, Syria hosts an array of terrorist groups, including leaders of Hamas, which controls Gaza.

Syria’s regime is a bedfellow of the terror-sponsoring, nuclear-bomb-seeking mullocracy in neighboring Iran. The country supports and abets the flow of weapons to the terrorists of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist group that now controls the government of neighboring Lebanon — which Syria occupied from 1976 to 2005. Not only is Syria a longtime missile client of North Korea’s, but under Bashar Assad, Syria became an enterprising nuclear client as well, building a secret reactor with North Korean help (it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike in 2007) and displaying a continuing and alarming interest in nuclear development to this day.

Calling Bashar Assad a “reformer” might satisfy the likes of the United Nations Human Rights Council, where — with Libya only recently suspended — Syria has now brazenly entered the running for a seat. For the U.S. State Department, which, along with those giddy congressional delegations, has been trying to “engage” Assad, it may look like reform when Assad grants them an audience, or Assad’s wife trots out her French designer handbag for an interview with Vogue. Or perhaps Obama and Clinton consider it simplest to try to dismiss Syria’s protests in whatever way might most seem to favor continuing attempts at “engagement” with the Damascus regime.

If it was right for America to intervene in Libya to protect people trying to rid themselves of a bloody tyrant, there can be no excuse for American officials’ doing anything that might help or encourage Assad in his efforts to hold on to power. The long and ugly record of Assad’s regime suggests that he will try to crush this uprising by jailing, torturing, and killing as many protesters as he needs to. Obama may be chiefly concerned with trying to avoid another military intervention in the Middle East. But with his administration praising Assad and signaling that Syria’s regime is exempt from the kind of punishment now descending on Qaddafi, Obama risks ending up with a lot of blood on his hands.

Iran deserves what Libya got

From WSJ, MARCH 3, 2011, by Emanuele Ottolenghi, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the author of "Iran: The Looming Crisis" (Profile Books, 2010):

The West should show the same moral clarity against Tehran's human-rights abuses as it has against Gadhafi's.

While the world focuses on Libya's popular uprising and Moammar Gadhafi's murderous response, Iran has also—far from the international spotlight—been ratcheting up its repression.

In the last few days, Tehran has moved to arrest the two leading figures of Iran's opposition, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and has reportedly transferred them from house arrest to a political prison run by the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Mass protests have erupted again, in open defiance of the regime, and are spreading far beyond Tehran.
But Iran's rulers already showed in 2009 that they take no chances and no prisoners when it comes to shielding themselves from their people's wrath. Another bloodbath now is not hard to imagine.

Western democracies have been quick to condemn Gadhafi, and have passed a number of measures against him and his regime since Tripoli's crackdown began. By contrast, Iran's violent political repression is only part of the latest, gory wave that has been ongoing for more than a year and a half, and yet there appears no urgency in the West to adopt human-rights sanctions against Tehran.

There are compelling reasons to rectify this policy discrepancy.
Like Libya, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a place where dissent has been put down, with varying degrees of brutality, for decades—since the early days of the 1979 Revolution. There, torture is rife and the family members of dissidents are intimidated, kidnapped and sometimes raped; hundreds of political prisoners, minorities, homosexuals and women die at the hangman's hands every year, following hasty trials held in utter disregard for the most elementary rules of fairness and justice; and cruelty is dispensed regularly for the sole purpose of instilling fear in the population.

Until Iranians openly challenged their regime following the June 2009 fraudulent elections, Western democracies did little to question Iran's treatment of its own people. But then, Iran erupted. Its people, chanting "death to the dictator," made it clear even to the most obtuse observers that their rulers kept power by force, not consent. Western leaders offered words of condemnation, but little else. Now is their second chance to show they're not indifferent to Iranian people's suffering, by hitting Tehran with similar measures to the ones they're imposing on Gadhafi.

Last week U.S. Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, gave a decent start, sponsoring a resolution calling for human rights to become a key tool of U.S. foreign policy toward Iran—a call the Obama Administration should now heed.

The European Union, meanwhile, still has Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on its travel-ban list, on account of his recent role as the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Since his appointment as Iranian Foreign Minister, there has been talk of lifting the travel ban to allow Salehi to fulfill his stately functions. But at a time when Iran's entire state apparatus is intent on silencing the opposition and crushing peaceful street protests, Salehi should not be given the gift of travel.

The same travel ban, along with asset freezes, should immediately be slapped on other Iranian officials, starting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and all the other figures who bear command responsibility for human-rights violations. Obvious candidates include Iranian "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council; and their gaggle of policy advisors.

The EU should not stop at the top brass—for every order given at the top to fire on protesters, torture prisoners, coerce confessions, issue harsh sentences and otherwise intimidate, violate and abuse innocents, an army of enforcers carries out the deed. So the EU should next name hundreds of Iranian officials at various levels of authority: Basij and Revolutionary Guards local commanders, judges in political trials, prison wardens, and their mid-level bosses in Iran's ministries of Intelligence, Interior and Justice, for a start. These officials should also be barred from travelling, and their assets frozen. International arrest warrants should be contemplated against them for crimes against their own people. And diplomatic immunity—which the U.K. has now lifted for Gadhafi—should be similarly denied to all top Iranian officials.

The EU should immediately recall all its member states' ambassadors who are still in Tehran, and refuse to return them until Messrs. Mousavi and Karroubi are released. The same applies to other Western countries, such as Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, South Korea and Switzerland, who enjoy full diplomatic relations with Iran.

The EU, along with other Western democracies, should also move to undermine Iran's standing in international forums. The farce of Libya sitting as a full member of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council finally came to an end this week, but an equally absurd spectacle continues with Iran's membership in the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. May it come to an abrupt end.

Beyond that, the West needs to invest in helping the Iranian opposition. The country's battered democrats desperately need free information, which the West can provide through boosting its Farsi-language radio and television broadcasts inside Iran. They also need the communication technology to bypass government strictures and keep them safe from Tehran's digital monitors, which the West could help provide with licenses to export the relevant machinery and transfer it to the right people inside Iran. Finally, Iran's dissidents need a safety net in the West for those who manage to escape; political asylum should be offered to those who flee Iran.

International sanctions are no substitute for the courage the Iranian people need to confront their tyrants. But sanctions would offer them some succor, and would finally extract a price for the drunken orgy of violence that has gone on in Iran for far too long.

In a rare moment of moral clarity, last week Western policy makers adopted punitive measures against Gadhafi. Here's hoping that same clarity now informs their policy with the Iranian regime.

Europe's absurd obsession with Israel is laid bare

From The Observer, Sunday 27 February 2011, by Nick Cohen:

The Middle East meant only Israel to many.
Now the lives of millions of Arabs have been brought to Europe's attention.

The Arab revolution is consigning skip-loads of articles, books and speeches about the Middle East to the dustbin of history. In a few months, readers will go through libraries or newspaper archives and wonder how so many who claimed expert knowledge could have turned their eyes from tyranny and its consequences.

To a generation of politically active if not morally consistent campaigners, the Middle East has meant Israel and only Israel. ...the lives of hundreds of millions of Arabs, Berbers and Kurds who were not involved in the conflict could be forgotten.

If you doubt me, consider the stories that the Middle Eastern bureau chiefs missed until revolutions that had nothing to do with Palestine forced them to take notice.

...Far from being a cause of the revolution, antagonism to Israel everywhere served the interests of oppressors.

Europeans have no right to be surprised. Of all people, we ought to know from our experience of Nazism that antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about power...

Fascistic regimes reached for it when they sought to deny their own people liberty. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forgery the far-right wing of the decaying tsarist regime issued in 1903 to convince Russians they should continue to obey the tsar's every command, denounces human rights and democracy as facades behind which the secret Jewish rulers of the world manipulated gullible gentiles.

Syrian Ba'athists, Hamas, the Saudi monarchy and Gaddafi eagerly promoted the Protocols, for why wouldn't vicious elites welcome a fantasy that dismissed democracy as a fraud and justified their domination? Just before the Libyan revolt, Gaddafi tried a desperate move his European predecessors would have understood. He tried to deflect Libyan anger by calling for a popular Palestinian revolution against Israel.

....Europe's amnesia about how tyranny operated in our continent explains why the Libyan revolution is embarrassing a rich collection of dupes and scoundrels who were willing to laugh along with Gaddafi. His contacts in Britain were once confined to the truly lunatic fringe.

• He supplied arms to the IRA,
• funded the Workers' Revolutionary Party,
• Vanessa Redgrave's nasty Trotskyist sect, and
• entertained Nick Griffin and other neo-Nazis.

We should not forget them when the time comes to settle accounts. But when Tony Blair, who was so eloquent in denouncing the genocides of Saddam, staged a reconciliation with Gaddafi after 9/11, his friendship opened the way for the British establishment to embrace the dictatorship.

It was not only BP and other oil companies, but British academics who were happy to accept his largesse.

The London School of Economics took £1.5m from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, money which by definition had to have been stolen from the Libyan people, despite being warned to back away by Professor Fred Halliday, the LSE's late and much-missed authority on the Middle East, who never flinched from looking dictators in the eye.

"I've come to know Saif as someone who looks to democracy, civil society and deep liberal values for the core of his inspiration,"

Human Rights Watch, once a reliable opponent of tyranny, went further and described a foundation Saif ran in Libya as a force for freedom, willing to take on the interior ministry in the fight for civil liberties. Meanwhile, and to the surprise of no one, Peter Mandelson, New Labour's butterfly, fluttered round Saif at the country house parties of the plutocracy.

Last week, Saif, the "liberal" promoter of human rights and dining companion of Mandelson, appeared on Libyan television to say that his father's gunmen would fight to the last bullet to keep the Gaddafi crime family in business, a promise he is keeping.

The thinking behind so many who flattered him was that the only issue in the Middle East worth taking a stand on was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the oppression of Arabs by Arabs was a minor concern.

The longevity of the regimes presided over by the Gaddafi, Assad and Mubarak families and the House of Saud ought to be a reason for denouncing them more vigorously, but their apparent permanence added to the feeling that somehow Libyans, Syrians, Egyptians and Saudis want to live under dictatorships.

The European Union, which did so much to export democracy and the rule of law to former communist dictatorships of eastern Europe, has played a miserable role in the Middle East. It pours in aid but never demands democratisation or restrictions on police powers in return.

That will have to change if the promise of the past month is to be realised.

If it is to help with democracy-building, Europe will need to remind itself as much as the recipients of its money that you can never build free societies on the racist conspiracy theories of the Nazis and the tsars. They are and always have been the tunes that tyrants sing.purred the [London School of Economics'] David Held as he accepted the cheque.

Libyan regime's crimes against humanity

From JPOST.COM STAFF AND ASSOCIATED PRESS, 26 Feb 2011: 

...A UN Security Council draft resolution circulated council members on Friday says attacks against Libyan civilians may be "crimes against humanity."

The draft resolution, penned by France and Britain said that crimes committed in Libya may warrant prosecution by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The draft also called for an arms embargo against Tripoli, for 23 of its top leaders to have their assets frozen and for travel bans placed against them. ...an annex to it listed Gaddafi, his children, inner circle and top security and military officials.

...[UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon] said he plans to travel to Washington on Monday to discuss the Libyan crisis with US President Barack Obama.

...The unanimous decision at the end of a daylong emergency meeting of the UN Human Rights Council was dramatically preceded by the public defection of all Libyan diplomats in Geneva to the opposition — swelling the rebellion of Libyan officials around the globe. Within hours Friday, senior Libyan diplomats in Portugal, France, Sweden and at the UN's cultural and education organization UNESCO announced their rejection of Gaddafi's regime.

..."The crackdown in Libya of peaceful demonstrations is escalating alarmingly with reported mass killings, arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of protesters," UN rights chief Navi Pillay told the 47-nation council. "Tanks, helicopters and military aircraft have reportedly been used indiscriminately to attack the protesters. According to some sources, thousands may have been killed or injured."

...In an unprecedented move against one of its own members, they also called for Libya's ouster from the council. That decision has to be approved by a two-thirds majority in the 192-nation UN General Assembly, which is expected to meet on the matter next week...

Sweeping the eccentric, nasty, and repressive tyrant Qadhdhāfi into the dustbin of history

From The National Review Online, February 24, 2011, by Daniel Pipes:


The violent demise of the Middle East's longest-ruling leader – who came to office in September 1969, just a few months after Richard Nixon ...[is welcome].

Moammer Gaddafi in regalia.

Gaddafi (for the record, the correct spelling of his name is Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhāfi) began his rule at the tender age of 27, just as Pan-Arabist ideology was dying down; undeterred, long after others had given up on this fantasy, he remained a proponent of the notion of turning all Arabic countries into one gigantic whole. Eventually frustrated with Arabic-speakers, where the small population of Libya limited his influence, he turned south, where his outsized energy income bestowed real clout in Africa.

Fortunately for the world, every one of his hare-brained schemes came to naught. What I observed in 1981 still holds true: "For all Qadhdhafi's hyperactivity, he rarely gets his way; empty promises and fanaticism on his part have repeatedly undermined his ceaseless efforts to project power. … Qadhdhafi has won many battles but not a single war."

How deeply satisfying will it be to watch as a brave and desperate people sweep this eccentric, nasty, and repressive tyrant into the dustbin of history. How gratifying that he has alienated nearly the entire world, even the U.N. Security Council. May his ugly example serve as a permanent warning to other dictators who make war on their populations..

Praise for Libyan Human Rights achievements in the UN

Civil War in Libya

From Canada Post, 24 Feb 2011, by Paul Schemm:

Libya's east celebrates freedom from Gadhafi and braces for his assault

TOBRUK, Libya — Thousands in the coastal town of Tobruk celebrated their freedom from Moammar Gadhafi on Wednesday by waving flags of the old monarchy, honking horns and firing guns in the air around a city square where he once executed people.

Officers in the army units that had defected to the rebellion against Libya's leader for the past four decades pledged to defend this "liberated territory" with their lives, despite Gadhafi's threats Tuesday to retake it.
"The army in the east is with all the people," declared Maj. Salma Faraj Issa, a top aide to the general commanding the army units from Tobruk. Those units rebelled against Gadhafi after being ordered to open fire on people.

"We're ready for him if he does attack. We have rocket launchers and other weapons. We know there will be deaths, but we are prepared," said Issa, a robust woman wearing fatigues, with dyed blond hair and gold eye shadow.

Gadhafi's hold on the rest of the country slipped further amid an uprising spreading across the Arab world, inspired by the toppling of leaders in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia. Cities and towns closer to the capital of Tripoli reportedly fell into the hands of the rebellion against his rule. Two air force pilots ejected from their fighter jet and let it crash in the desert rather than follow orders to bomb and opposition-held city.
In Tripoli, a force of militia roamed the streets to keep demonstrators from gathering.

Issa and her commanding officer arrived in Tobruk with several cars and trucks bursting with uniformed soldiers that came to join the demonstration in the main square. Some fired assault rifles in the air. In the distance could be heard the heavy staccato of a belt-fed machine-gun.

The various military units in the east have now unified their command into a single operations room, said Lt. Col. Omar Hamza of an air defence brigade as he watched the demonstrations from the street.
"They are trying to convince the others (army units in the west) to join them," he said, and were looking for ways to help the people of Tripoli, which many in the town said they had heard were being killed in large numbers.

Residents echoed the soldiers' defiance, saying they would die before accepting Gadhafi's rule again as each stepped forward to express their hatred for their longtime leader.

The raucous celebration just five days after Gadhafi lost control of this port town may have stemmed in part from the presence of journalists, just now trickling across the nearby Egyptian border.

Libyans were eager to make sure the world knew about their struggle against Gadhafi and the many crimes he committed, whether it was imprisoning their relatives or squandering the country's oil wealth on adventures in Africa instead of spending it at home.

"You see this town," said resident Ali Mohammed, gesturing to the ramshackle main square and modest buildings. "It is small. There have been no changes over the years because our petrol money goes to African mercenaries and nuclear weapons to protect Gadhafi."

Spray-painted anti-Gadhafi graffiti covered many of the buildings around the square, which was overlooked by a burned-out police station and a small, single story building that had also been gutted by fire.
"This is the place where they gathered information about people who didn't like Moammar," said Mohammed, pointing to the local branch of the Revolutionary Committees.

According to Gadhafi's ideas of permanent revolution, the country was governed by a decentralized system of local committees that would see to the people's needs. Most described them now as corrupt and oppressive, and their headquarters were torched around the country when the demonstrations began.
People just wanting to apply for advanced degrees would have to go to the committee headquarters and prove their support for the leader, a process that could take months, Mohammed said.

Residents described arbitrary cuts in water or electricity but were unable to appeal to any kind of local government, as lodging complaints with the Revolutionary Committees could result in imprisonment.
Unlike most in this town filled with young people, Hossein Hossi has grey hair and can remember the days before Gadhafi's 1969 overthrow of King Idris — the monarch whose flag has become the new emblem of the revolution.

Tobruk, which was the site of a famous World War II battle for control of North Africa and houses a cemetery for the Allied dead, once hosted regular visitors from Britain and other countries, he recalled. Since Gadhafi came to power, they were cut off.

He also described in horror how during one Ramadan in 1986 Gadhafi ordered nightly hangings in the main square.

"In 42 years, he turned Libya upside-down," said Hossi. "Here the leader is a devil. There is no one in the world like him."

It was on Feb. 17 that Tobruk started to shake itself free of Gadhafi's long rule, as young people demonstrated in the main square and then threw rocks and stones at the police station when they were fired at.
"After seeing what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, people thought that if they stayed together they could have an effect," said Matog Saleh, 22, trying to explain why the people finally rose up after so long.
"There is not one person down there that doesn't have a bad story from him," he said while standing on the roof of the mosque watching the demonstrators wave flags and anti-Gadhafi signs in the square below. "Everyone has a relative that they don't know where they are."

Other than the burned-out symbols of the old regime, Tobruk seems intact and residents say that, at least for now, everything seems to be running fine in the total absence of central authority.

People banded together to form public defence committees to provide security and they have opened up welfare organizations to ensure people have enough to eat.

On the roads outside of town, near the new security checkpoints, residents handed out bottled water and juice to passing motorists, while flashing the V-for-victory sign to celebrate the uprising.

"I'm actually proud to be a Libyan now. My people have put themselves in front of tanks and airstrikes to get rid of dictator," Saleh said.

Libya disowns Gaza "aid ship" - preventing Gaddafi Jr. from joining

From Ynet News, 12 July 2010, by Roi Kais:

...Libyan authorities decided Sunday to restrict the takeoff of private flights from the country for fear that [Libyan leader's son] Saif al-Islam Gaddafi would try to join an aid ship attempting to reach the Gaza Strip, the London-based Arabic-language al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Monday.

The vessel, "Amal," which set sail from the Lavrio port in Greece, docked in Crete on Sunday afternoon. Saif Gaddafi, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and head of the organization which initiated the sail, is interested in joining the ship and has begun preparing to do so.

A Libyan official told the London-based paper that the Libyan authorities were trying to prevent Gaddafi Jr. from reaching the ship. ..."Libya does not wish to intervene and believes the aid sail to Gaza conceals an adventure and a risk," he said. "Therefore, it has been decided to ban private flights. The decision is aimed at preventing Saif al-Islam and other Libyan figures from joining the ship.

"Officially, Libya has nothing to do with the ship, and if any problem occurs it will cause an embarrassment on the international level," the official added. ...

UN Watch Turns Tables on Libyan Chair, Exposes Durban 2 Hypocrisy

From UN Watch (Geneva) Briefing No. 190, April 18, 2009:

Qaddafi rep panics and cuts off torture victim testimony

...top story on Swiss TV news last night was the surpise "coup d'eclat" by UN Watch, when it turned the tables on the Libyan chair of the Durban II planning committee, in a showdown yesterday that exposed the U.N. hypocrisy whereby the chief organizers of a world "anti-racism" conference are themselves the worst perpetrators of racism and discrimination.

See the full exchange below, and watch out for for the YouTube video of the full debate.
___________________

United Nations Durban Review Conference
Preparatory Committee, Third Substantive Session
17 April 2009, Geneva

Statement by United Nations Watch
Delivered by Ashraf Ahmed El-Hojouj

Thank you, Madame Chair.

I don’t know if you recognize me. I am the Palestinian medical intern who was scapegoated by your country, Libya, in the HIV case in the Benghazi hospital, together with the five Bulgarian nurses.

LIBYAN CHAIR NAJJAT AL-HAJJAJI, BANGING ON GAVEL: Stop... stop.... I ask you to stop. You are, you are not addressing the agenda item... I will allow you to resume only if you address the agenda item we are discussing.

[Victim resumes testimony]

Section 1 of the draft declaration for this conference speaks about victims of racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance. Based on my own suffering, I wish to offer some proposals.

Starting in 1999, as you know, the five nurses and I were falsely arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, brutally tortured, convicted, and sentenced to death.

LIBYAN CHAIR NAJJAT AL-HAJJAJI, AGAIN BANGING ON GAVEL: Stop... You are again not addressing the agenda item. I urge you to address the agenda item.

[Victim resumes testimony]

All of this, which lasted for nearly a decade, was for only one reason: because the Libyan government was looking to scapegoat foreigners. Madame Chair, if that is not discrimination, then what is?

On the basis of my personal experience, I would like to propose the following amendments regarding remedies, redress and compensatory measures:

One: The United Nations should condemn countries that scapegoat, falsely arrest, and torture vulnerable minorities.

Two: Countries that have committed such crimes must recognize their past, and issue an official, public, and unequivocal apology to the victims.

Three: In accordance with Article 2, paragraph 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, such countries must provide victims of discrimination with an appropriate remedy, including adequate compensation for material and immaterial damage.

Madame Chair, Libya told this conference that it practices no inequality or discrimination.

But then how do you account for what was done to me, to my colleagues, and to my family, who gave over thirty years serving your country, only to be kicked out from their home, threatened with death, and subjected to state terrorism?

LIBYAN CHAIR NAJJAT AL-HAJJAJI, AGAIN BANGING ON GAVEL: There is a request for a point of order. I give Libya the floor for a point of order.

LIBYAN DIPLOMAT: Madame Chair, I object to the testimony by UN Watch. This is not the correct agenda item. Thank you, Madame Chair.

LIBYAN CHAIR NAJJAT AL-HAJJAJI: We shall now move on to the next speaker...

[Due to the unjustified cut-off by the Chair, the following portions were unable to be read.]

How can your government chair the planning committee for a world conference on discrimination, when it is on the list of the world’s worst of the worst, when it comes to discrimination and human rights violations?

When will your government recognize their crimes, apologize to me, to my colleagues, and to our families?

This week, at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, the five nurses and I will present our complaint and compensation claim against Libya, filed with the UN Human Rights Committee, the highest international tribunal for individual petitions.

The slogan for this Conference is “Dignity and justice for all.” Does this include your own country’s victims of discrimination?

Thank you, Madame Chair.

_________________

Bulgarian Nurses Sue Libya in International Tribunal; UN Watch as Co-Counsel

Related to the above testimony, click here for the new 100-page legal complaint filed by the Bulgarian nurses against Libya with the UN Human Rights Committee, the highest international tribunal for individual human rights complaints.

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, an international lawyer formerly with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, is serving as co-counsel in the action together with Dr. Liesbeth Zegveld, an international law professor and attorney in the Netherlands. The complaint is released here for the first time to the public. (Click here for the related complaint filed by Dr. El-Hojouj last year.)

Both Dr. Dr. El-Hojouj and Bulagrian nurse Kristiyna Valcheva will speak tomorrow at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, on Sunday, 19 April 2009. Watch live webcast at www.genevasummit.org This time Dr. El-Hojouj will be able to deliver his full speech — without interruptions...

Our World: From Tel Aviv to Teheran, with love

This article from JPost, Nov 10, 2008, by CAROLINE GLICK, is posted in full, because its worth reading every word:

Two weeks ago, the Palestinians and their anti-Zionist Israeli and international partners finally produced a smoking gun. They had a videotape of evil settlers brutally attacking poor, defenseless Palestinians as they innocently picked olives with their enlightened supporters in a grove by the Tel Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron.

The local media went into a feeding frenzy. The footage led the television news broadcasts. Photos taken from the video were plastered across the front pages of the newspapers. Radio talk show hosts denounced the criminal settlers and celebrated the guileless Palestinians and their heroic Israeli supporters. The Olmert-Livni-Barak government was quick to weigh in, promising stiff punishment for the Jewish fascists involved and a curtailment of their supporters' civil rights.

In the weeks that have followed, and with elections looming, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have stepped up their attacks on the evil right-wing extremists. At Saturday night's memorial ceremony/political rally for slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv, Barak called right-wing activists "cancers." He claimed that they are a "threat to democracy." And he pledged, "We will uproot this evil from within us."

The crowd loved Barak's statement. The few audience members who might have booed him had already been beaten and arrested by police for disturbing the peace. A handful of anti-leftist activists from the student group Im Tirtzu came to Kikar Rabin carrying signs decrying leftist demonization of the Right. The police beat them and carted them off before the rally began.

If it were true that settlers are marauding around Judea and Samaria beating innocent Palestinians, perhaps it would be possible to understand this assault against the Right. But as it works out, the videotape that was supposed to be the definitive proof that settlers are violent criminals was a fabrication. It was simply the latest anti-Israel snuff film brought to us by our friends at Pallywood Productions. These are the same creative filmmakers whose previous credits include the fabricated IDF shooting of Muhammad al-Dura, the Jenin massacre that wasn't, the Kafr Kana massacre that wasn't and a host of other notable blood libels.

The inconvenient truth that these activists remain liars was exposed at the remand hearings of the settlers accused of beating the Palestinian olive harvesters. As the NFC news Web site reported exclusively on Sunday, the Palestinians showed their film as evidence against the arrested offenders in two separate hearings before two different judges at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court. And at each hearing, after viewing the film the judges concluded that through heavy editing, the video had inverted reality. Both stated that it was impossible to know who began the fight - the Palestinians and their Israeli and foreign supporters who beat the settlers, or the settlers who walked to the grove on Shabbat carrying nothing but their prayer shawls and hit them back.

The judges also noted that one of the Palestinians threw a large rock at the back of one of the settlers after he and his friends had disengaged from the fight. The judges expressed anger and amazement at the police for failing to arrest the Palestinian who had clearly attacked the Jewish defendant without provocation.

IT GOES without saying that the local media have chosen to ignore the court's exposure of the latest hoax. The truth doesn't fit their anti-right-wing narrative and so it isn't being covered.
What the local media and politicians such as Barak and Livni who seek to criminalize the Right for political gain refuse to acknowledge is that their embrace of these lies not only harms the settlers, it harms the country as a whole.

Although from the rap they've gotten from the political Left and its supporters in the media, it seems like right-wing extremists are both numerous and powerful, the fact of the matter is that the number of right-wingers who reject the authority of the state or would take the law into their own hands is tiny. And they are politically isolated both at home and abroad and have no money.

In stark contrast, the anti-Zionist, Israeli Left is an integral part of a well-funded international movement actively engaged in waging political warfare not against the settlers, but against Israel as a whole. The end of this political war is Israel's destruction. The anti-Zionist Israeli Left advances this destruction both by directly assisting terror groups and by indirectly assisting terror groups through activities aimed at delegitimizing Israel's right to defend itself.

The clear collusion between both Israeli and international anti-Israel leftist activists with terrorist groups like Hamas is nowhere more evident than in the terror-supporting International Solidarity Movement's newest spin-off, the Free Gaza campaign. On Saturday, this group broke the IDF's sea blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gazan coast for the third time in recent months by sailing a ship filled with rabidly pro-jihadist and anti-Israel European politicians from Cyprus to Gaza.

According to a credible source with close ties to the operation, the Free Gaza campaign works closely with Israeli far-left groups including Anarchists against the Wall, Gush Shalom, Gisha, Machsom Watch, New Profile and Women in Black. These organizations are generously funded by the US-based New Israel Fund, by European governments and by anti-Israel church groups like the Quakers. The Free Gaza campaign's first ship, which arrived in Gaza in late August, was led by Israeli anti-Zionist activist and former lecturer at Ben-Gurion University Jeff Halper.

The Free Gaza campaign is a clear assault on Israel's national security. Under the banner of "human rights," this new ferry service between Cyprus and Gaza is meant to compromise the country's ability to combat terror operations and to provide political support for Hamas. Crew members and passengers on board these boats meet with Hamas terror commanders in Gaza and coordinate future missions.

Their newest campaign is to prevent the navy from interdicting fishing boats. Hamas and other terror groups make wide use of fishing boats to import weapons and transport terror personnel from abroad into Gaza. By demonizing the navy for interdicting fishing boats, and in open collusion with Hamas, the activists provide political cover for weapons transfers and jihadist maritime traffic into and out of Gaza.

To date, Israel has chosen not to intercept the Free Gaza campaign's boats out of concern that taking such necessary action will prove a public relations disaster both at home and abroad. And this concern is reasonable. But by taking no diplomatic or military steps to prevent this terror-supporting traffic from continuing and expanding, the government allows these Israeli and European terror supporters to strengthen Hamas's war machine and legitimize Hamas's objective of destroying Israel.

Official Israel's failure to act against this breach of its security is directly related to its support of Israeli anti-Zionist groups when they direct their guns at the Israeli Right - rather than Israel as a whole. As a practical matter, it is difficult for the government to show that the Free Gaza campaign actively supports the war against Israel when it willingly embraces the bona fides of the Free Gaza campaign's supporters when they attack settlers, or when the government adopts these organizations' false assertion that the Right is the greatest threat to the country.

By the same token, it is difficult for the government to discredit films purporting to demonstrate the human rights plight of Gazans as Pallywood propaganda flicks when the government accepts these films as accurate when their culprits are right-wing activists.

BUT WHILE the domestic Left sees a distinction between its right-wing opponents and the country as a whole, the international community sees no distinction between the two. Indeed, the international community has used the cover that official Israel provides anti-Zionist activists for their settler vilifying activities in order to advance the cause of criminalizing Israel as a whole.

Case in point is what has become known as the Durban II conference in Geneva. Durban I, it will be recalled, was the UN's 2001 "anti-racism" conference in Durban, South Africa. The conference, which took place the week before the jihadist attacks on the US, was an anti-Semitic hate-fest. The American and Israeli delegations walked out as Israel and the Jewish people were castigated as the greatest human rights abusers, genocide committers, apartheid propagators and general all purpose bad guys in the entire world.

The Nazi-like propaganda emanating from the conference led to violent attacks against Jews all over the world. Durban I's resolutions also provided the policy blueprint for much of political warfare that has been waged against Israel by so-called human rights groups ever since. These include the violent demonstrations against the security fence organized by anti-Zionist Israeli groups, the Free Gaza campaign they support and the international boycotts against Israeli exports and academics they advocate.

Today, the UN is busily organizing its follow-up conference that will be held next year in Geneva. As the watchdog group Eye on the UN reported over the weekend, the conference's organizing committee just met and approved most of the resolutions it is set to adopt at Geneva. These resolutions again castigate Israel as the chief violator of human rights in the world. Israel is accused of committing genocide, crimes against humanity and being an apartheid state. It is also condemned as the most serious threat to international peace and security.

But of course, what starts with Israel doesn't end with Israel. The conference organizers have used the basic unanimity about Israel's criminal nature to launch an assault against the foundations of Western civilization. In addition to the numerous and repetitious attacks against Israel and Jews, the conference organizers passed multiple resolutions calling for the abrogation of freedom of expression and the criminalization of political speech in order to outlaw discussion of Islamic terrorism and block counterterror efforts in the West.

Among the conference's chief organizers are Iran, Libya, Egypt and Cuba. Iran is the vice-chairman of the executive committee responsible for planning Durban II. Much of the language in the proposed resolutions is taken directly from resolutions passed at a planning session last year in Teheran.

Israel had no hand in organizing this conference, which, following Canada, it announced it will boycott. But over the years, it could have taken actions that might have tempered or weakened the international coalition arrayed against it.

If the government had outlawed anti-Israel groups like Machsom Watch, New Profile, Gisha, Gush Shalom, Women in Black and Anarchists against the Wall, rather than tolerate them on account of their activities against settlers, it could at least have weakened their efforts. Had they been disbanded, they would have had less capacity to legitimize and assist Palestinians and Europeans who engage in political warfare against Israel on the ground.

By refusing to recognize the international consequences of their domestic battle against their political opponents on the Right, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government and the local media have strengthened Israel's enemies in their battle to destroy the country.

Britain watches for more UN anti-Semitism

From the UK House of Commons Hansard, Tuesday 13 May 2008 (my own emphasis added - SL):

The Secretary of State was asked—
Durban II
1. John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab): What assessment he has made of the progress made at the April preparatory meeting for Durban II on racism.

The Minister for Europe (Mr. Jim Murphy): The United Kingdom wants the Durban review conference to contribute to the global fight against racism. The preparatory work is ongoing, but there should be no repeat of the disgraceful anti-Semitism that blighted events surrounding the 2001 world conference against racism.

John Mann: With Libya chairing the preparatory committee and Cuba and Iran supporting it as officers, the signs are not too good. Can the Minister assure us that if there is even the slightest whiff of anything comparable to the disgrace of the first Durban conference, the United Kingdom will not participate?

Mr. Murphy: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and to other hon. Members in all parts of the House who played such an important part in the all-party inquiry into anti-Semitism. My hon. Friend is right that there have been dreadful comments and behaviour of an anti-Semitic nature in previous gatherings of that type. I wish to be clear that the UK Government will play no part in a gathering that displays such behaviour. We will continue to work to make sure that the conference is a success, but we will play no part in an international conference that exhibits the degree of anti-Semitism that was disgracefully on view on the previous occasion.

Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): Although the Minister’s comments are welcome, and his remarks about the anti-Semitism group are equally welcome, does he agree that it is interesting that Canada, whose Government are one of the most responsible and friendly with whom we ever have dealings, has already decided not to attend the conference? Is he in touch with the Canadian Government about their reasons for doing so?

Mr. Murphy: The hon. Gentleman was another important contributor to the all-party inquiry and it is right to put that on record. We are in touch with international partners on this serious issue. One of the reasons why the Canadian Government withdrew, as I understand it, is that unacceptable conditions were placed on a Jewish non-governmental organisation from Canada, initiated by the Iranian authorities. We continue to discuss that with Canada and other international partners and that dialogue will continue. If it gets to a point that we come to the view that the conference cannot be a success, the option of withdrawal from the conference remains available to us.

UN Watch Statement on the "Forgotten Refugees"

From The UN Watch Web site:

UN Watch Oral Statement
Agenda Item 9: Interactive Dialogue with Special Rapporteur on Racism Doudou Diène

UN Human Rights Council, 7th Session, March 19, 2008
Delivered by Regina Bublil Waldman

Thank you, Mr. President.We thank the Special Rapporteur for his work against racism, and address two areas of his report.

Dr. Diene, in Addendum 1 you mention Libya’s treatment of ethnic minorities. In Addenda 3 and 4, you envision a multicultural society based on two principles: respect for historical truth and non-discrimination against minorities. As a victim of Libyan discrimination, I agree: only with historical truth can we build a better future.

Today I wear my traditional ethnic dress to celebrate my heritage, but also to mourn its destruction. One million Jews lived in the Middle East at the turn of the century. Today, less than five thousand remain.

Their plight has been ignored by the international community. Their story is my story.

In 1948, there were thirty-six thousand Jews living in Libya. Today, there are none.
During the 1967 war between Israel and her Arab neighbors, mobs took to the streets and shouted, “Edbah el Yehud!” — “Slaughter the Jews!”

They burned my father’s warehouse and came to burn our home.
An honorable Muslim neighbor stopped them, and saved our lives.

The government ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Libya, where my family had lived for hundreds of years. They confiscated our homes and all our assets.

We were given this one-way travel document — never allowed to return.
My family was put on a bus to the airport. The bus driver got out, and tried to burn the bus with us in it. We were rescued from death by two Christian friends.

I come here today bearing no hatred -- only these historical truths:

• Jews have been an indigenous people of the Middle East for over 2,500 years.
• On the basis of race and religion, Arab regimes subjected Jews to arbitrary arrest, confiscation of property and expulsions. This is fully documented in this report by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries.
• The UNHCR has ruled that Jews fleeing from Arab countries were ‘bona fide’ refugees, victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Dr. Diene, your report envisions a future of tolerance and equality. Applying the principles you set forth, we trust you will examine the actions of Libya and other Middle Eastern countries that forced out their Jewish minorities.

Like in South Africa, only the acknowledgment of truth and history will lead to reconciliation.
Thank you, Mr. President.

Libya blocks UN council from condemning terrorism

From The China Post, Friday, March 7, 2008:

UNITED NATIONS -- For the second time in two months, Libya has blocked the U.N. Security Council from condemning violence and unrest in the Middle East. The United States had proposed a press statement...condemning a day of violence Thursday that included a gunman's attack on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem in which eight people were killed and a deadly ambush of an army patrol near Israel's border with Gaza. But the statement fell short of gaining the unanimous support it needed to be approved.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said such obstruction undermines the council's effectiveness in the region.

"What happened today was clearly a terrorist act," Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters after the council's almost two-hour emergency session Thursday. "We regret that this makes it difficult for the council to contribute positively to developments in this region, but those who blocked this possibility bear responsibility for that."

In closed-door discussion among the 15-nation council's diplomats, Libya insisted that the statement should be "balanced" by including condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza, a Libyan U.N. representative said after the meeting. Three other nations agreed, but most of the council's members wanted to keep the issues separate, according to council diplomats involved in the negotiations.

Russia's U.N. ambassador, the council's president this month, suggested a compromise by including an expression of deep regret at the loss of civilian life in the conflicts so far, and said he regretted that Libya would not go along.

In late January, Libya blocked the council from expressing concern about the safety of people living along the chaotic Gaza-Egypt border....