On Tuesday, President Bush will host Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the White House at the same time that former President Jimmy Carter will host U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour in Atlanta. The difference between the two envoys, both traveling under the banner of rights and freedoms, could not be starker.
On May 12, Arbour issued a stupefying press release. In the context of a message, about the “deteriorating situation in occupied Palestinian territory,” Arbour stressed: “The rising number of lives lost, whether as a result of targeted killings or suicide attacks, home-made missiles or artillery fire, is unacceptable.” The United Nations highest-ranking human-rights officer cannot distinguish between suicide bombing and targeting the would-be bombers or their masters. She cannot discern a difference between the missiles directed at Israeli homes and schools from Gaza, and the artillery fire from Israel directed at the launching pads or the launchers.
In fact, not once in her lengthy remarks did Arbour mention terrorism or self-defense. On the contrary, she explicitly described her goal as “making the parties to the conflict stop this new cycle of violence.”
