IHEU and the Association for World Education, in association with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, hosted a seminar at the UN in Geneva on 18 September 2006. Held in conjunction with the second session of the new Human Rights Council, the seminar was entitled: “Hezbollah versus Human Rights: Redressing the Balance”.
On 7 April 2005, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded the death knell for the old Human Rights Commission when he said: “…the Commission’s ability to perform its tasks has been… undermined by the politicization of its sessions and the selectivity of its work… the Commission’s declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole… piecemeal reforms will not be enough.” He proposed a new beginning for Human Rights at the United Nations. The Human Rights Council was to be that new beginning yet, sadly, it shows every sign of falling at the first hurdle.
Our purpose in hosting the seminar was not to justify any violations of human rights that may have been committed by Israel, but to expose the one-sided nature of the actions taken by the Human Rights Council meeting in emergency session on 11 August 2006 in which it condemned Israel alone while failing even to mention, let alone condemn, any violations of human rights committed by Hezbollah.
By insisting on this one-sided condemnation, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League, sponsors of resolution S-2/Res.1, “The grave situation of human rights in Lebanon caused by Israeli military operations”, left many States no alternative but to vote against the resolution, while others abstained. Peter Splinter, Amnesty International representative at the Council, said: “It is deeply regrettable that the resolution failed to meet the principles of impartiality and objectivity expected of the Human Rights Council”.
The purpose of the seminar, therefore, was to provide a platform for a more balanced consideration of the problems raised by the recent conflict by drawing attention to many issues that were left unexamined in the Council debate.
Kamal el Batal has been active in the field of human rights and non-violence since 1981. He is one of the co-founders of MIRSAD, the Campaign for Judicial Integrity, and Liberty House. He is a long-time, fierce opponent of corruption in Lebanon and staunch defender of human rights. He is currently Director of the Human Rights Desk at the World Council of the Cedars Revolution (WCCR), the Lebanese pro-democracy movement.
Mr el Batal explained at the outset that he had no dealings with Israel, did not favour Israel and stressed that all, including Israel, should be held accountable for their actions. He then spoke about the nature of Hezbollah, its teaching, and its violations of human rights in Lebanon before, during and since the recent conflict.
Hezbollah presents itself as a resistance organisation, but resistance to whom? For the past ten years there have been no foreign forces on Lebanese soil, yet in this time Hezbollah has built up a formidable army of young militants, supported by military equipment and missiles, with massive financing from Iran. The Israelis had great difficulty in penetrating Hezbollah communications during the recent conflict because Hezbollah has its own parallel network independent of the Lebanese system. Yet the organisation has no address. You can’t communicate with it. You can’t even apply to join. It recruits and grows its own adherents from childhood, teaching the Hezbollah philosophy from the age of five.
We saw examples of some of their teaching materials used by the Boy Scouts of Lebanon (controlled by Hezbollah) “We do not teach appreciation for nature, for music or the arts. We teach fighting and the glory of death in the cause of Allah”.
Hezbollah is able to exert control over the media in Lebanon by threats and intimidation. There is no possibility that any material which casts Hezbollah in a negative light will be published or broadcast. According to Kamal el Batal however, a significant part of the Lebanese population, government and military were delighted to see Hezbollah under attack and suffer a major setback in the July war – although how extensive that setback was may never be known.
It is clear that the Israelis were taken by surprise regarding the strength and sophistication of the enemy. Hezbollah has been described as a state within a state but the reality is that Lebanon is now a state within Hezbollah, part of the Khomenist empire. Hezbollah permeates every level of government in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has been guilty of innumerable violations of human rights in Lebanon as well as in Israel. During the July war they prevented many villagers from leaving villages they controlled and which were facing imminent attack by Israel, thereby maximising civilian casualties. They positioned rocket launch pads in residential areas and in the grounds of hospitals using innocent Lebanese as human shields – itself a war crime. Since the war they have reportedly carried out many summary executions of people suspected of spying for Israel. In one field trial alone 18 persons were executed.
South Lebanon has also been witness to ethnic cleansing. Between 1975 and 2005 the Christian population of southern Lebanon declined from 150,000 to 25,000. Many who left during the July war are unlikely to be permitted to return.
The following speaker was Dr. Norman Loberant.
During the four-week conflict Hezbollah launched over 4,000 katushya rockets against Israeli targets, each carrying an anti-personnel charge of 40,000 ball-bearings and capable of killing between 10 and 100 people if falling in a crowded area. The damage inflicted by these rockets was shown in film footage and slides by two other participants in the seminar. Shlomo Bahbot, mayor of the twin Jewish-Arab town of Ma’alot-Tarshiba where over 20,000 Jews and Arabs live in harmony, told the seminar that his town was hit by over 600 katyusha rockets during the conflict. Because of the extensive provision of shelters, casualties were mercifully relatively light, although several women and children had been killed and over 50 injured. But the sight of steel panels riddled with holes showed just how appalling these anti-personnel devices could be.
Dr. Loberant was born in Wetzlar, a refugee camp for Holocaust survivors in Germany. He is Director of Radiology at the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. His hospital received many hits from katyusha rockets and was badly damaged. Fortunately, the new wing completed in 2002 was equipped with an underground shelter for 450 people and there were few injuries.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles presented data on the scale of the Hezbollah onslaught on Israel. That the casualties on the Israeli side were not far higher was not due to the sensitivity of Hezbollah targeting, in fact quite the opposite, but to the evacuation of over 600,000 residents from the border area and to the provision of deep shelters by the Israelis. It was clear that the purpose of the rocket attacks was to inflict maximum injury on the civilian population. Neither Nahariya nor Ma’alot-Tarshiba had any military installations or military personnel based there.
Dr Shimon Samuels, main representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center at the UN in Geneva and the Council of Europe, spent the July war period at a village for handicapped children in northern Israel. He gave a heart-warming account of seeing a young Arab boy sprinting 200 yards to grab a disabled Jewish girl and bring her to safety as the sirens sounded warning of an imminent katushya attack.
The presentations were followed by a lively discussion that enabled the speakers to expand and clarify points made earlier. A representative of the AWE mentioned that he had been impressed by seeing in the main centre for handicapped children in Jerusalem, Arab and Jewish workers from both parts of this divided city working together to help both Jewish and Arab children.
In response to another question, Kamal el Batal noted that five special rapporteurs were sent to Lebanon by the Human Rights Council following the resolution of 11 August. “We never before saw such a level of interest in Lebanon.” He had met all five, but few had shown any apparent interest in hearing or seeing evidence from witnesses other than the official Lebanese spokesmen or from NGOs known to support Hezbollah. It remains to be seen how even-handed the final reports will be when presented to the Council later this month.
One Arab member of the audience stressed the need to abide by international law, whilst another questioned the proportionality of the Israeli response to the kidnapping of two soldiers. “Was no other option available?” Two speakers responded with the view that the war was inevitable and the attack on Israel and kidnapping of the soldiers was only the proximate cause; the war was long planned by Hezbollah. Another speaker said that he had evidence that the attack on Israeli territory was ordered from Teheran.
For your reporter (who chaired the seminar) the most chilling thing we heard was of the young boy scouts being taught hatred of the Jews from the age of five. What we teach our children stays with them for the rest of their lives. We can teach them about our common humanity or we can teach them hatred. The depraved and evil minds that teach children to hate cannot be allowed to win.
International Humanist and Ethical Union
Association for World Education
in association with
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Human Rights Council – Parallel NGO Meeting
Palais des Nations, Room XXII – 18 September 2006, 13:00 to 15:00
Hezbollah vs Human Rights: Redressing the Balance
Introduction
The purpose of this seminar is to draw attention to a crisis that threatens to damage the credibility of the Human Rights Council from the very moment of its birth.
On 7 April 2005 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded the death knell for the old Human Rights Commission when he said: “… the Commission’s ability to perform its tasks has been … undermined by the politicization of its sessions and the selectivity of its work … the Commission’s declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole … piecemeal reforms will not be enough.” He proposed a new beginning for Human Rights at the United Nations. The Human Rights Council was to be that new beginning yet, sadly, it shows every sign of falling at the first hurdle.
Our purpose today is not to justify any violations of human rights that may have been committed by Israel, but to expose the one-sided nature of the actions taken by the Human Rights Council meeting in emergency session on 11 August 2006 in condemning Israel alone while failing even to mention, let alone condemn, violations of human rights that can be attributed to Hezbollah.
By insisting on this one-sided condemnation, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League, sponsors of resolution S-2/Res.1, “The grave situation of human rights in Lebanon caused by Israeli military operations”, left many States no alternative but to vote against the resolution, while others abstained. Peter Splinter, Amnesty International representative at the Council, said: “It is deeply regrettable that the resolution failed to meet the principles of impartiality and objectivity expected of the Human Rights Council”.
The purpose of this seminar is to provide a platform for a more balanced consideration of the problems raised by the recent conflict by drawing attention to the issues that were left unexamined in that debate.
We have three speakers who will give personal accounts from both Lebanon and Israel of human rights violations committed by Hezbollah. The International Humanist and Ethical Union and the Association for World Education have been assisted in the preparation of this seminar by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a well-known and respected international Jewish organization.
The views expressed at the seminar are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of IHEU, AWE or SWC.
At the start of this Second Session of the Human Rights Council we can only hope that the selectivity and politicisation that plagued the Human Rights Commission will not continue to infect the Council, and that it will begin to live up to its mandate of exposing and condemning violations of human rights whoever commits them, and wherever they are committed.
The Speakers
Kamal el Batal has been active in the field of human rights and non-violence since 1981. He is one of the co-founders of MIRSAD, the Campaign for Judicial Integrity, and Liberty House. He is a long-time, fierce opponent of corruption in Lebanon and staunch defender of human rights. His commitment to non-violence has been translated into projects including the Lebanese Palestinian Youth Dialogue on Conflict Resolution. He is currently Director of the Human Rights Desk at the World Council of the Cedars Revolution (WCCR), the Lebanese pro-democracy movement. Mr Batal will speak about the nature of Hezbollah, its teaching, and its human rights violations in Lebanon before, during and after the recent conflict.
Born in Morocco in 1944, Shlomo Bohbot was educated in Israel. Between 1992 and 1996 he served as a Member of the Knesset for the Labour Party. He is the mayor of the twin city of Ma’alot Tarshiha in the northern district in Israel, created from the merger of the Israeli Arab town of Tarshiha and the Jewish town of Ma’alot where 16.000 Jews and 4.600 Arabs live in harmony. Ma’alot Tarshiha absorbed over 600 hits from katyusha rockets during this summer’s conflict. Mr. Bohbot is also head of the Association of Frontline Communities, a group of towns in proximity to the Lebanese border.
Dr. Norman Loberant was born in Wetzlar, a refugee camp for Holocaust survivors in Germany. He received his MD in Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and specialized in radiology at Rambam Hospital in Haifa. He is currently Director of Radiology at the Western Galilea Hospital in Nahariya. His hospital was clearly targeted during the recent conflict, received many hits from katyusha rockets and was badly damaged. Dr Loberant will give an eye-witness account of the injuries and damage suffered at the hospital.
Abraham Cooper is the Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and is an international authority on issues raised by digital terrorism and hate on the Internet. Born in New York in 1950, Abraham Cooper has been an activist for Jewish and human rights causes on five continents. He supervises the Wiesenthal Center’s global tracking of problematic websites and supervises the Center’s annual CD-ROM Digital Terrorism and Hate report, as well as overseeing the Center’s International Task Force Against Terrorism and Hate.
Dr Shimon Samuels was born in the UK. He is Director of International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Center based in Paris with responsibility for combating anti-semitism and racism in Europe and South America. He is also main representative of the SWC at the UN in Geneva, the Council of Europe and the Organisation of American States.
Roy W. Brown is main representative of IHEU at the UN, Geneva, and immediate past-president of the organisation. A Swiss resident of British descent, he has been active in human rights and women’s rights issues for over twenty years.