Canadian tossed from UN over Israel remarks
Scholar critical of report alleging Gaza war crimes
By Steven Edwards, Canwest News Service
November 7, 2009
Guards at the United Nations whisked away a UN-accredited Canadian commentator this week after she denounced a controversial report that focuses heavily on alleged Israeli war crimes.
Anne Bayefsky, a York University political science professor, offered the only pro-Israel commentary at a microphone outside the UN General Assembly Hall on Thursday night following remarks by the assembly's Libyan president, Ali Treki, and the chief Palestinian official at the UN, Riyad Mansour.
Arab and Muslim countries had overcome western opposition in the adoption of a resolution endorsing the report by South African judge Richard Goldstone, which focuses on the Israeli assault last winter on Gaza.
Bayefsky said the guards confiscated two UN passes the organization had issued to her as director of Touro Law Center's Institute on Human Rights and The Holocaust, and ejected her from the building after questioning her.
UN-based blogger Matt Lee said that Mansour, after being told a "pro-Israel non-governmental organization" had spoken at the mike, asked: "Did we capture them?" Lee said he spoke with Mansour after the guards led Bayefsky away, and security officials were unable to confirm Friday night whether they had acted of their own accord, or in response to a complaint.
Treki's spokesman, Jean Victor Nkolo, said Bayefsky was "not authorized at all" to use the mike.
"This is a stakeout for member states and for the General Assembly," he said. "NGOs and private individuals have nothing to do there. Period." Nkolo dismissed the suggestion that Bayefsky would have felt free to approach the mike on the grounds other similarly accredited organizations have done so in the past.
Bayefsky had offered her assessment of the resolution, which gives both Israel and the Palestinians three months to launch "independent credible investigations" into alleged war crimes outlined in the Goldstone report.
Part of her focus was on Hamas, which controls Gaza, but which most western countries list as a terrorist organization.
"The idea that ... a terrorist organization is going to decide for itself whether or not it violates the rule of law is something that, I think, no serious democratic society will take seriously," she said.
"You just have to ask yourselves whether this process has done anything in terms of bolstering the credibility of the United Nations." About five uniformed UN guards surrounded Bayefsky several minutes after she had finished speaking, Bayefsky and witnesses said.
Bayefsky, who also heads the UN watchdog group Eye on the UN, said they took her to the security headquarters section of the building for questioning. Some 15 minutes later, two guards were tasked with escorting her outside the building.
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