Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
11/18/2011
The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported yesterday that the UNESCO committee on human rights had accepted Syria as a member:
A short time after UNESCO, the UN’s organization for education and science, accepted the Palestinian Authority as a full member despite strong U.S. and Israeli opposition, it is now Syria’s turn to receive a present from the organization.
On Wednesday, the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad was chosen to be the Arab representative on the UNESCO committee the deals with issues relating to the implementation of human rights.
UNESCO’s decision comes after Assad’s regime managed to kill 3,500 demonstrators and arrest tens of thousands, without any due process whatsoever.
Israel has now responded, according to the news website Israeltoday.co.il:
“We are talking about an outrageous absurdity,” one Israeli official told Israel Radio. “UNESCO is legitimizing Syria [as a human rights champion] even as it is slaughtering its own people.”
H/T The Astute Bloggers who write, “If this doesn’t convince you that the UN is a cesspool of evil, than [sic] nothing will…”
Update: Melanie Phillips writes, Syria heads for civil war
Despite – or perhaps because of – the barbaric repression perpetrated by President Assad of Syria upon his people, with an estimated 3,500 having been killed since the popular uprising there began some eight months ago, the opposition to the regime is getting stronger.
On Wednesday, a group of army defectors called the Free Syrian Army reportedly fired machine-guns and rockets at an air force intelligence base outside Damascus. Clearly, the fact that the army seems to be splitting in this way is a significant development and suggests that Syria – where Assad remains backed by Russia and China — is now heading inexorably for a civil war and an appalling bloodbath.
Why is the army peeling off like this? Maybe, as has been suggested, because it simply cannot stomach the unspeakable atrocities being inflicted upon the population, including upon women and children…
Yes. This UNESCO gig is going to work out really, really well for the people of Syria and the state of Israel.
