http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/08/024191.php The Mary Robinson caper; who done it?
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August 3, 2009 Posted by Paul at 9:29 PM
I don't think we've commented on President Obama's decision to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Mary Robinson, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights who headed up the Durban Conference Against Racism that became an anti-Semitic hate-fest (the Unites States and Israel boycotted it, to Robinson's dismay). Robinson's history of consistent animosity towards Israel has caused Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, to criticize the selection. Foxman calls Robinson "a lead cheerleader for the Palestinian narrative" during her time as High Commissioner. He explains:
She issued distorted and detrimental reports on the conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and blamed Israel for the outbreak of Palestinian violence - the Second Intifada. As the convener of the 2001 U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, she allowed the process to be hijacked to promote the delegitimizing of Israel and pronouncements of hateful anti-Jewish canards, such as "Zionism is racism." She failed miserably in her leadership role, opting to join the anti-Israel forces rather than temper them.
Ms. Robinson has been quoted as saying, "On the Palestinian side, they are the victims, etc. On the Israeli side, they feel they are the victims, in some measure ("Democracy Now," Pacifica Radio, Feb. 25, 2009). Because she has not moved away from her anti-Israel bias, she is not an "agent of change" and is undeserving of America's highest civilian honor.
Robinson's anti-Israel bias has been further demonstrated by Jennifer Rubin and Melanie Phillips both of whom note how disgusted the late Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos became with Robinson's conduct at Durban.
How did Obama come to give our nation's highest civilian honor to an arch-enemy of Israel, a key American ally at least until quite recently? At one level the answer may seem straightforward -- Obama's perception of Israel is probably not much different than Robinson's.
But how did Robinson get on Obama's radar screen to begin with? Ed Lasky points out that it's far from obvious that, as a Senator focusing on domestic affairs and (above all) on running for the presidency, Obama would be familiar with Robinson and her work.
Tevi Troy has speculated that Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod might be responsible for the selection of Robinson. But Lasky argues that Axelrod, even more than Obama, is a political animal who would be unlikely to know much, if anything, about Robiinson. And Emanuel would likely have understood that her selection would be a red flag to the Jewish community, as it has turned out to be.
Lasky has another candidate -- Samatha ("Soft") Power. His case is circumstantial, but strong. Robinson is Irish; Power was born in Ireland. Both put great faith in the U.N. Powee wrote a worshipful book about Sergio de Mello, a former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Robinson was his predecessor in that position. In writing her book, Power would have learned all about Robinson and probably come into contact with her
Finally, Power, like Robinson, is clearly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel.
Power, you probably recall, is a friend of Obama's and was his top foreign policy advisor during the campaign until she called Hillary Clinton a monster. Power's conduct prevented her from landing a top job in the administration (currently she serves as the senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council), but there's no reason to doubt that she still has Obama's ear, especially on "soft," symbolic stuff like this.
In short, there's good reason to suspect that, as Lasky puts it, "the idea for nominating Robinson came from the woman who thinks very much like her and probably desires to emulate her: Samantha Power."
more on Mary
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/74991 How Bad Is She?
Jennifer Rubin - 07.31.2009 - 4:50 PM
Some might seek to minimize Mary Robinson’s role in the Durban debacle. The late Tom Lantos was intimately involved in the negotiations and attended the ill-fated conference. In the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs in the spring of 2002, he wrote:
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.
Indeed, she obstructed efforts to prevent the conference from devolving into an Israel-bashing event. Lantos explains:
Mrs. Robinson’s intervention with the assembled delegates later in the . . . 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.
(My, doesn’t that view sound eerily similar to Obama’s Cairo remarks.) Again and again, as Lantos documented, Robinson intervened to thwart efforts to curb the Palestinian propaganda show (”Robinson’s intervention broke all momentum that the U.S. had developed.”) He concludes: “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.”
Well, that’s the woman the president chose to honor. Apparently, she is a model for us all. It is, to say the least, a disturbing insight into the priorities and sympathies of our president.....
Obama's gesture to the Jews
Thursday, 30th July 2009
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5232026/obamas-gesture-to-the-jews.thtml%20%20,
Is Obama going out of his way to make an obscene gesture to the Jews ? On the Commentary blog Contentions, Jennifer Rubin is rightly astounded by the fact that Mary Robinson, UN Commissioner and former president of Ireland, is being awarded the Medal of Freedom by Obama.
Mary Robinson?
This is the same Mary Robinson who presided over the infamous and odious Durban anti-Israel and anti-Jew hate-fest a few days before 9/11. As Rubin points out:
Recently deceased congressman and human-rights champion Tom Lantos had this to say:
Mary Robinson’s lack of leadership was a major contributing factor to the debacle in Durban. Her yearning to have a ‘dialogue among civilizations’ blinded her to the reality that the noble goals of her conference had been usurped by some of the world’s least tolerant and most repressive states, wielding human rights claims as a weapon in a political dispute.
But Durban was not the only blot on her record. As Michael Rubin pointed out in this 2002 column, in her capacity as president of Ireland, she also happily provided millions of dollars of support to the PLO, which were used in terror attacks... Robinson’s post-Durban record is little better. 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’).
What precisely is the President of the United States giving Mary Robinson the Medal of Freedom for? Maybe someone might ask him
Topic: Vicious Israel hater Mary Robinson awarded medal of Fredom by osama husein (Read 1000 times)