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Gerald Steinberg is the director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University and the editor of NGO Monitor. He serves on the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
How should Israel and the Jewish community respond to former international officials who joined the political attacks against Israel and are now trying to rehabilitate themselves? Mary Robinson is a case in point, as are Chris Patten and Terje Roed Larsen. All three played key roles in the demonization campaign between 2000 and 2004, but after changing jobs they have sought to repair the damage with Jewish groups.
Should we now agree to work with these powerful former opponents, or continue to hold them accountable for past enmity?
Robinson was the first to take this road, moving from president of Ireland to become high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations. In 2004, she went to New York to join the Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute, and received honorary degrees at Emory University and elsewhere. This activity is reported to be part of an effort to be elected as the first female secretary-general of the U.N., which will require the United States to overlook her deep involvement in anti-Israel politics.
Her dubious contributions began during her tenure in Ireland and included Dublin’s turn at the head of the European Union, when the EU provided massive political and financial support to Yasir Arafat. Later she was appointed to head the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and promoted the slogans of Palestinian victimization, including the fiction that the conflict and violence were entirely the result of “occupation.” The UNHRC sanctioned “all available means” (meaning terror) in attacks against Israel, and as Israeli victims of mass killings were buried, she condemned efforts to save their lives as “excessive and disproportionate force,” falsely accusing the Israeli army of shooting at her car (the evidence showed the attack was from Palestinians). At the same time, the real crimes against humanity in Sudan, Libya, China and Rwanda were ignored.
In this spirit, Robinson led the UNHRC and allied nongovernmental organizations into the infamous Durban conference on racism and xenophobia in September 2001. The resolutions again labeling Zionism as racism and absurdly trying to include Arabs as victims of anti- Semitism were drawn up in a preparatory meeting in Tehran from which Israelis and Jews were predictably excluded. Ignoring the warnings, Robinson led this farce forward, and the damage both to Israel and to the universality of human rights remains huge.
But now Robinson is trying to revise her image. She has not gone as far as apologizing for Durban, but she admits to some excesses and has been quite vocal in condemning classical anti-Semitism. The question is whether this is enough, and rather than refusing this partial atonement, we should embrace her as a future ally.
Similar questions arise in the case of Patten, Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong and the European Union’s commissioner for external relations during the same period of the terror campaign. Under Patten, the EU also issued numerous statements highlighting the myths of Palestinian victimization and falsely accusing Israel of war crimes. In this environment, Europeans adopted the absurd view of Israel as the major threat to world peace. Patten also presided directly over the transfer of huge sums to the Palestinian Authority, much of which went directly into Arafat’s pocket (the “Presidential fund”), and to pay for terror.
Patten later used his authority to block an open investigation by the European Parliament.
Like Robinson, Patten also is trying to rehabilitate his reputation after his EU term. Upon his appointment as chancellor of Oxford University he appeared before Jewish audiences, condemned the anti-Israel academic boycott and decried anti-Semitism. The standard denunciations of “Israeli occupation” that were part of his tenure in the EU have stopped.
Finally, there is the complicated case of Larsen, the Norwegian official who served for many years as the UN’s special envoy for Middle East peace. In this position he was one of Arafat’s most frequent visitors during the terror campaign, visibly providing support in contrast to the isolation imposed by Israel and the U.S. And Larsen helped promote the myth of the “Jenin massacre,” repeatedly referring to “horrifying and shocking” scenes in media interviews.
But before Arafat died, Larsen belatedly began to criticize the Palestinian leadership and was declared persona non grata. After being appointed as the UN’s special envoy on Lebanon, Larsen has played an important role in seeking to end Syria’s control of Lebanon and in focusing attention on Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups.
Larsen, like Robinson and Patten, also has been appearing before Jewish groups, which face the dilemma of whether to focus on the sins of the past or on the potential for cooperation in the future. Forgiveness requires unambiguous public admission of error, and these requirements are absent in all three cases. To deter similarly immoral behavior in the future, it is important to demand a full accounting for past behavior while moving cautiously ahead. n
Gerald Steinberg is the director of the Program on Conflict Management at Bar-Ilan University and the editor of NGO Monitor.
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