On December 5 a conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention will perfunctorily adopt, without debate, a declaration singling out Israel for condemnation for its security measures in the occupied territories. In the rush to condemn Israel, the parties will totally ignore the fact that Israel is the only country in the 50-plus year history of the Fourth Geneva Convention to apply its provisions relating to occupied territories. After the hijacking of the UN World Conference against Racism last September in Durban, this should not surprise anyone. In Durban, Israel was singled out for opprobrium on charges of racism, despite the fact that Israel since its creation has brought to its land persons of every race and color including close to 50,000 Ethiopian Jews and non-Jews. But facts are not what count in the stampede to blame Israel for the Muslim World’s ills.

The Fourth Geneva Convention Declaration is but the latest of a long list of anti-Israeli actions spewing forth from international bodies in Geneva that bear little or no resemblance to facts on the ground. The declaration invoking the Fourth Geneva Convention was first undertaken in 1999 when there was still movement toward a permanent peace under the Oslo Accords. This was before the Palestinian leadership rejected at Camp David an American-sponsored peace plan and proceeded to launch Intifada II, thus putting in motion the ever-spiraling escalation of violence in the region.
The irony is that by politicizing international bodies turning their agenda away from rightful concerns about racism, relief of hunger, refugees and human rights, the anti-Israel bashers detract from the vital work of those agencies, depriving the world’s most needy of assistance including tens of millions of Muslims. In Geneva where most of the UN’s humanitarian efforts are headquartered, the U.S.’s friends and allies, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are leading the charge to politicize these agencies, hoping thereby to placate their "street" and avoid a popular uprising. The first step is to introduce extreme language condemning Israel that the Muslim proponents know will not be adopted. European Union countries in close consultation with each other, in Durban and again in the lead-up to the current Fourth Geneva Convention Declaration, have softened the edges but left intact the central thrust of the language condemning Israel. As explained to me recently by the ambassador of an important EU country in Geneva, "We have to give something to the Muslim world; they have so little." What is being given, of course, rhetorically at least, is Israel, presumably a small price to pay by a country that attaches a high priority to its economic and political ties to the Arab world.

Unless reversed, these efforts are likely to erode further U.S. support for the UN itself. Standing on principle, the United States withdrew from the UN Durban Conference once it became clear that the focus had turned away from combating racism to an attack on Israel. This week the United States will be among the minority of signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention that will not attend the anti-Israeli conference. "We believe such a meeting would be counterproductive and has no legal basis under the convention, which we strongly support," a State Department official said. The declaration takes the Fourth Geneva Convention away from its intended humanitarian purpose turning it into a political tool to attack Israel, ignoring the fact that over 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the territories lives under Palestinian, not Israeli, administration. Regrettably, the adoption of the declaration will not bring humanitarian benefits to Palestinians or Israeli citizens caught up in the violence, nor will it advance prospects for peace in the region. It will only reward the Palestinian instigators of the violence including those directing wanton acts of terrorism aimed at killing innocent civilians as seen a few days ago when a terror attack on a bus in Northern Israel killed three Israelis and critically wounded two other passengers.

We are witnessing only the beginning of the anti-Israeli season in Geneva. Following on the heels of the December 5 conference will be a Special Session of the UN’s International Labor Organization, an annual ritual that under the guise of examining employer-employee relations routinely criticizes Israel even though its employment practices are exemplary by comparison to most countries, particularly those in the Muslim world where employee rights are all but unknown, and an independent judicial system to which workers have a right of appeal does not exist. If the past holds true, the United States will again boycott the Special Session.

In ___________ the UN Human Rights Commission will convene. This will be the first time since the founding of the UN that the United States will not have a seat on the commission. It was booted off last year, replaced by Sudan. One is hard pressed to find a government with a worse human rights record. For decades it has engaged in the wholesale slaughter of its Christian and Animist citizens in the southern part of the country. With the United States off the Commission, Israel will again be the target of unfounded charges of human rights violations.

Even the International Red Cross is not immune from anti-Israeli politicization. This UN agency refuses to recognize the Star of David on Israeli ambulances but fully protects ambulances bearing the Muslim crescent, according it equal status with the red cross. The American Red Cross opposes this discrimination but so far has been powerless to bring about change.

In 1980 the United States Secretary of State, Edmund S. Muskie, went before the UN Security Council announcing that the United States would exercise its veto and no longer negotiate the text of proposed anti-Israeli resolutions in the Security Council. This was after a series of Arab-sponsored anti-Israeli resolutions tied up the work of the Council.

Muskie’s intervention succeeded. For the remainder of the year no further anti-Israel resolutions were proposed. A year later equally strong action by U.S. Permanent Representative, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, had the same effect. Now is the time for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to put an end to the anti-Israel politicization of the UN’s specialized agencies in Geneva by calling on member countries to return these agencies to their humanitarian purpose as envisioned in the UN Charter.