Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson: When will the Jewish community get the picture?
I don't know why the Jewish community, which by and large voted Democrat in the last presidential election, hasn't begun to get the picture yet. President Obama for whatever reason (I think it's the influence of his mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) leans against Israel in Middle East issues. Time and time again we've seen hints of this bias, from nuke power for Iran to snubbing Israel on a recent Middle East trip. The Republican Jewish Coalition in the statement below makes another specific case in point. It's worth a thoughtful read.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Shari Hillman
Phone: 202-638-6688
E-mail: press@rjchq.org
RJC: Mary Robinson is not an appropriate recipient for the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Washington, D.C. (August 4, 2009) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) today spoke out strongly against President Obama's decision to award Mary Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The President will honor 16 people with the Medal of Freedom on August 12.
RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said, "Mary Robinson, who was one of the people responsible for the 2001 Durban conference against racism descending into an anti-Israel propaganda forum, is not an appropriate recipient for one of our nation's highest honors. In fact, awarding the Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson does great dishonor to the many outstanding men and women who have received it in the past."
RJC responded to the late Friday afternoon statement by the White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, who said, "Mary Robinson has dedicated her career to human rights... As with any public figure, we don't necessarily agree with every statement she has ever made, but it's clear that she has been an agent of change and a fighter for good."
Yet the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a member of the U.S. delegation to the Durban conference (later withdrawn when the U.S. boycotted the event), described Mary Robinson this way: "To many of us present at the events at Durban, it is clear that much of the responsibility for the debacle rests on the shoulders of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who, in her role as secretary-general of the conference, failed to provide the leadership needed to keep the conference on track."
Brooks said, "We're troubled that the White House chooses to minimize the very real controversy about Mary Robinson. It's wrong for the United States to honor someone who led a meeting that our nation boycotted. She had the opportunity to fight for good - by resisting the effort to turn the Durban conference into a swamp of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda. She not only failed to resist it, she facilitated it. That President Obama wishes to honor Mary Robinson in this way is profoundly disturbing."
Among the past recipients of the Medal of Freedom are people who personify some of America's greatest ideals. They include men and women who have fought for freedom, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Natan Sharansky, Rosa Parks, and Jeane Kirkpatrick; advocates of human rights such as Elie Wiesel, Mother Teresa, and Simon Wiesenthal; and foreign leaders whose courage and leadership have contributed to world peace and security, such as John Howard, Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, and Margaret Thatcher.
Brooks continued, "The choice of Mary Robinson for this award calls into serious question the White House vetting process, given Robinson's well-known record, particularly with regard to the 2001 Durban conference. The U.S. boycotted the conference and it was the subject of intense public discussion. If the White House staff passed on Robinson's name knowing how controversial and troubling the choice would be, that's wrong in and of itself. If Robinson's name made it onto the Medal of Freedom list because the White House staff was unaware of how controversial she was, that's even worse."
Background:
* Mary Robinson served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and was secretary-general of the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa.
* The late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) wrote an extensive article, an insider's view of the "Durban debacle," which appeared in the Winter/Spring 2002 issue of the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, published by the Fletcher School of international affairs at Tufts University. He wrote of Mary Robinson:
To many of us present at the events at Durban, it is clear that much of the responsibility for the debacle rests on the shoulders of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who, in her role as secretary-general of the conference, failed to provide the leadership needed to keep the conference on track.
Lantos describes how Robinson allowed the Asian Preparatory meeting for the WCAR to take place in Tehran. Israeli passport holders and Israeli NGOs were initially barred from the meeting, despite requests from the Simon Wiesenthal Center that the meeting be moved:
She rejected the request, however, maintaining that throughout the fall and winter that the Iranian government understood that all NGOs must be allowed to attend. Although Robinson did successfully negotiate to obtain the visas on the first day of the conference, Jewish NGOs were effectively excluded from participation, as there was no way to arrange transportation to Tehran until the closing of the meeting.
...At the end of the Tehran Meeting, Commissioner Robinson made no visible effort to confront the breakdown that had occurred in the global dialogue on race that she had done so much to nurture. In fact, in a baffling statement to the press after the conclusion of the conference, she congratulated the Tehran delegates on their degree of "consensus" and urged them to carry on in the fight against racism. She characterized the meeting as a productive dialogue between civilizations. When asked about the inflammatory rhetoric directed at Israel, she stated, "The situation in the Palestinian occupied territories was brought up at the meeting and it is reflected in the final declaration." These comments represented a pivotal moment in the evolution of the WCAR. By appearing to condone the Asian conference's efforts to place the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the agenda of the World Conference, she betrayed its intentions and emboldened those intent on using the conference for their own political purposes. From that moment the conference began to take a dangerous trajectory that became ever more difficult to correct.
As a member of the U.S. delegation, Lantos participated in efforts to keep the Durban conference focused on human rights around the world, rather than on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He described Robinson as undermining those efforts:
Secretary Powell's plan to save the conference was elegant and powerful in its simplicity: make clear that U.S. participation at Durban would depend upon removal of the text attacking Israel, and mount an intensive diplomatic offensive to isolate the hardline OICs states as the obstacle to success.
... Mrs. Robinson's intervention with the assembled delegates later in the same day left our delegation deeply shocked and saddened. In her remarks, she advocated precisely the opposite course to the one Secretary Powell and I had urged her to take. Namely, she refused to reject the twisted notion that the wrong done to the Jews in the Holocaust was equivalent to the pain suffered by the Palestinians in the Middle East. Instead, she discussed "the historical wounds of anti-Semitism and of the Holocaust on the one hand, and...the accumulated wounds of displacement and military occupation on the other."
Thus, instead of condemning the attempt to usurp the conference, she legitimized it. Instead of insisting that it was inappropriate to discuss a specific political conflict in the context of a World Conference on Racism, she spoke of the "need to resolve protracted conflict and occupation, claims of inequality, violence and terrorism, and a deteriorating situation on the ground." Robinson was prepared to delve into the arcana of a single territorial conflict at the exclusion of all others and at the expense of the conference's greater goals.
Robinson's intervention broke all momentum that the U.S. had developed.
...It was clear to me that Mrs. Robinson's intervention during the Geneva talks represented the coup d'grace on efforts to save the conference from disaster. If the conference was knocked off track in Tehran, it was completely derailed in Geneva.
...As the U.S. pressed its case, Robinson seemed to be working to stymie our efforts. In her public and private statements, as was the case in Geneva, she insisted that the conference had to recognize the suffering of the Palestinian people.
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/forum/archives/pdfs/26-1pdfs/Lantos9.pdf
In the end, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Durban conference, noting:
I know that you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of 'Zionism equals racism'; or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust; or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel; or that singles out only one country in the world, Israel, for censure and abuse.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34754.pdf, page 12, footnote 37.
* Michael Rubin, writing in National Review in 2002, notes that Robinson's record after the Durban conference is equally troubling:
On April 15, Robinson's commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood (six European Union members voted in favor including, not surprisingly, France and Belgium). The vote came after Robinson initiated a drive to become a fact finder to investigate the now-famous massacre in Jenin (also known as "the massacre that never happened"). Curiously, in the months preceding Israel 's incursion into the U.N. refugee camp in Jenin, suicide bombers launched from the camp wearing explosives likely bought with European money killed more than 100 Israeli civilians. However, for Robinson, a massacre is the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians in a war zone (47 Palestinian militants and 23 Israel soldiers also died). The deaths of more than 100 Jewish civilians by suicide bombers is worthy of little more than deafening silence interrupted by an occasional pithy statement of moral equivalence.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-rubin052002.asp
* When Robinson was appointed to the faculty of Columbia University in 2004, the head of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organization, James Tisch, expressed concern:
Under Mary Robinson's leadership the Human Rights Commission was one-sided and extremist. In her tenure at the HRC, she lacked fairness in her approach to the Israeli/Palestinian issue... I am hopeful - for the sake of her students and the reputation of Columbia - that as she enters the world of academia she will demonstrate more balance in her views.
