Claudia Rosett- UN-disproportionate

"The issue here is not, in fact, what yardsticks these people are using — though that is quite problematic enough — but that they are abusing their U.N. positions by making these selective, ad hoc accusations against Israel in the first place. These folks are not presidents, or prime ministers. They are U.N. civil servants. Even Kofi Annan, who fancies himself, by his own description, to be “perhaps chief diplomat of the world,” is actually under the U.N. charter mandated to be nothing more than the organization’s “chief administrative officer.” (When trying to duck the blame for the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, Annan was quick enough to deny not only any policy role, but even his clear administrative responsibilities).

In the case of Arbour, and her threats aimed at Israelis, Ambassador John Bolton had a very good point when he offered a reminder last weekend to the U.N. High Commissioner, as “one lawyer to another,” that “In America, prosecutors are not supposed to threaten people in public based on press accounts.”

In the case of Jan Egeland, his job is to coordinate aid, not make selective pronouncements on the fly about humanitarian law. (This is the same Jan Egeland who immediately after the 2004 tsunami took it upon himself to publicly insult U.N. member states, including the U.S. — mainstay of the bloated U.N. budget — for being “stingy”). Among other things, it was apparently lost on Egeland, when he toured the bomb damage in south Beirut last weekend, that his convoy was waved past a road block by “a Hezbollah guard dressed in black and armed with an assault rifle,” according to a Reuters report. That scene right there was a violation of everything in the U.N. book, and not by Israel — but apparently it didn’t fit his script."

[Rosett UN]