"The Apotheosis Of International Hypocrisy."

Aurel Braun in the Toronto Star:

With the world no longer able to avert its eyes from the mass bloodshed in Libya, and as Moammar Gadhafi’s deadly degradation of his people reaches a new peak, there is more than enough blame to go around.

Primary responsibility certainly goes to Gadhafi and his regime, but the international community that for four decades legitimized and propped up one of the worst abusers of human rights cannot evade responsibility. At the apotheosis of international hypocrisy in supporting Gadhafi stands the United Nations Human Rights Council (with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as its official secretariat). . .

Aurel points out that Libya, a member of the UN Human Rights Council, once served as chair of its predecessor, the disgraced UN Human Rights Commission. An amusing detail: Not long ago, Libya chaired the UN Security Council, if you please.

Ah, memory lane. Remember how the "Zionist" Canadian government got into such trouble for boycotting the UNHRC's "Durban II" conference? Remember how NDP leader Jack Layton originally mumbled support for Ottawa's decision but then reversed himself after NDP MPs openly revolted? Remember how Layton justified the about-face by saying he was confident Durban II would not turn into an antisemitic gong show? Remember how dozens of UN delegates stormed out of Durban II in protest while the holocaust-denying Iranian gasbag Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned Durban II into an antisemitic gong show?

You might not remember that Iranians were told by their censored press that Ahmadinejad "received an ovation" that day in Geneva. You might not remember that a similarly Pravda-worthy account was ubiquitous at the time in Canada's pseudo-left press. More importantly, you may be unaware that all along, Libya was running the UN Human Rights Council 's Durban II planning committee, and served as chair of the main Durban II conference committee. Here is the charming Libyan chair Najjat Al-Hajjaji, confronted in the UNHRC planning committee by the Palestinian doctor Ashraf El Hagog, one of several foreign doctors and nurses sentenced to death and held in a Libyan prison for nine years for revealing the extent of HIV infection among Libya infants: