Getting Away With It

The resignation of  the Indonesian diplomat Makarim Wibisono as UN special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in occupied Palestine seems to be due to one of the many flaws of the UN body.  Mr. Wibisono announced that he was resigning at the end of March,  because Israel refuses to give him access to the Palestinians living under a military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.  If the UN appoints any position like that of the Rapporteur it should be able to guarantee that he or she can function, and should urge Israel to facilitate the mission of the Rapporteur, and not the other way round.  Why is it that everybody caves in when Israel is concerned and accommodates for its demands, to an extent that it often makes the UN look like a redundant body?  I should think Mr. Wibisono as a UN representative should not have resigned but used some of the UN tools to pressure Israel to facilitate his job.  

Another incident on caving in on a different level took place on January 3,  when Jewish-Israeli passengers of an Aegean flight demanded the removal of two passengers from the flight heading from Athens  to Tel Aviv simply because they were Palestinians.  One of them was a citizen of Israel, and the other had an Israeli residency and had already passed the security checks and boarded the plane.  But the passengers accused them of being “terrorists” and  insisted that they should be removed from the plane.  Although the pilot had said that anyone who does not feel safe to fly should disembark, yet he did not protect those two passengers who were eventually so harassed that they got off the plane.  

Once again Israel acts as if it is above the law.  In fact nothing it does is surprising any more, but what is surprising and disappointing is that they are allowed to get away with it with impunity.