Rethinking Mary Robinson

I am, as readers of this blog know, not a fan of Mary Robinson. Here is an extra data point. It was appallingly obvious that the mandate the Goldstone committee got from the Human Rights Council was explicitly one sided. There is no mandate to report on any violations of human rights except by the Israelis. It is very explicit on that. Although Goldstone says he changed the terms of the mandate in “informal discussions”, it speaks badly of Goldstone that he would take the job without an explicit and formal change in the mandate. It turns out that Mary Robinson was offered the job before Goldstone, and she turned it down. Why? Her explanation was in a French language Swiss paper, and I do not read French, but it appears in a letter from Israel’s UN ambassador to Goldstone.

“I am afraid the resolution is not balanced because it focuses on what Israel did, without calling for an investigation on the launch of the rockets by Hamas. This is unfortunately a practice by the Council: adopting resolutions guided not by human rights but by politics. This is very regrettable.” (Le Temps, 4 February 2009).

Um, this data point does not really fit my profile, does it. Robinson is explicitly condemning the Human Rights Council for one sided bigotry against Israel. I am going to have to do some rethinking about her.