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Ayoon wa Azan (The Scandal of Oil for Food)
Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/08/19
Once again, I will link the scandal of the Oil for Food Program, to the stance of the United Nations vis-à-vis Israel; as what has become an issue against the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the international organization, could not be isolated from the situation of the organization in general. Israel is always in the chair of accusation, or the doghouse as they say.
If there is a scandal, it is certainly not new; but raising it now is the revenge of the neo-conservative cabal, especially its horns in media and research institutes, or an attempt to tame as well as to cover-up the scandals of commissions and corruption within the program of rebuilding Iraq.
I visited Northern Iraq in November 2002, and spent days there in the company of Massoud Barzani; I also visited Jalal Talabani in his residence near Doukan Lake, and spoke to both Kurd leaders them separately about Saddam Hussein as well as other issues, including the Oil for Food Program.
I am writing this memory, and I have a good memory. What both leaders told me was very similar, and rather identical, as they both spoke about corruption in carrying out the program, and spoke of commissions, along with leeks and laxities. They estimated that around half of the share of Iraq's Kurdistan, which is around 13%, was stolen; but the remaining half made of Kurdistan a paradise in the eyes of its people, which they have never witnessed before. The amount was sufficient in order to build real institutions on all levels; this situation left me thinking that had Saddam Hussein governed Iraq well during the last two decades, he might have raised his country to a European level.
Around two years after my visit to Iraq's Kurdistan, I find that the Oil for Food Program has become a scandal. There are investigations about it in the Congress and outside it, which I talked about on August 7.
We could quickly cancel half of the "scandal," as Saddam Hussein has stolen, according to the claims of Israel's supporters, around $10 billion. But $5.7 billion came from selling clandestine oil, and the UN has nothing to do with it; what remains is the second half.
Half of this scandal is related to Israel, not to searching for the lost billions; my proof today is the interest of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the home of the worst neo-cons who support Israel, in the United Nations, its past, present, and future.
The AEI has been organizing, since the beginning of the year, quasi-monthly panels about the UN; thus, we read about a series that includes:
February (Series Launch): What Are We to Think about the U.N.?
March: The U.N. and Human Rights. "This session will coincide with the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Last year, Libya, one of the world's most repressive dictatorships, chaired the commission. Every year numerous tyrannical states angle for seats on the commission, sitting in hypocritical judgment while shielding their own unsavory practices from scrutiny." I agree that the chairing of Libya contradicts the work of the UNHRC, and that there are hideous dictatorships that have no place in such a commission, but I would like to add that Israel is violating the Palestinians' Human Rights on a daily basis, and that it is more of an "outlaw" than North Korea is.
May: Whither Nation-Building? The issue here is about the cooperation between the United Nations and the United States.
August: The United Nations and Israel. I will talk about this in a moment.
September: The Institutional Culture of the U.N. Which will discuss the reform of the UN institutions
October: Can the U.N.'s Record Be Improved and How? Which is quite self-explanatory.
I had written on August 7, about the campaign of the supporters of Israel against the UN; and I received a few days ago the text of the session on the United Nations and Israel, which deserves I will discuss quickly.
The session was filled with lies, from the first paragraph and until the very last word; the AEI claimed that Israeli is the only democracy in the Middle East, forgetting Turkey, which also was a democracy, until it elected a reform government with an Islamist background.
Joshua Muravchik, a Likudnik neo-con, moderated the panel. I did not care about the statement of Tal Becker, Israel's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, as he is an employee who is supposed to lie on the behalf of his country. But I was very surprised with the talk of U.S. State Department representative Mark Lagon, as he talked as an Israeli more than as an American; the reason for this might be that he was trained by Jane Kirkpatrick, as he said.
Lagon said that Israel is a democracy, but did not say that it was the only democracy; he only said that it was more democratic than the other states of the region. This is true. Then he started talking with something I would call one perspective, which is Israel's; other people might accuse him of dodges and lies, and even dodging the public stances of his government.
This American diplomat, with an Israeli loyalty, said that there are countries that participate in fighting terror, but that they stop fighting it when the matter comes to Israel. He did not say that there is a terrorist Prime Minister in Israel, a Nazi level, who undertakes terrorist crimes against Palestinians on a daily basis, with American weapons and money, and an American political protection.
Lagon might be seeing things from one perspective, as he described the decisions of the UN concerning Israel, as imbalanced, instead of saying that the U.S. is adopting an imbalanced policy, by supporting the crimes of the Sharon government, to the extent of becoming a partner in them. He added that the imbalance is clear in the talk about the responsibility of Israel, without mentioning the responsibility of the Palestinian National Authority…This means that this man, who is one-eyed politically, wants Israel to destroy the authority and its institutions, and wants this latter to remain capable of protecting Israel.
The entire statement of Lagon is of this type; as he even complained about the voting of a sweeping majority in the General Assembly, in support of the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which means that he is objecting on the democratic action. He also found the stance of the European Union to be disappointing, which means disappointing for Israel of course.
He concluded by saying that Israel is a "state like all other states." But this is not the case, as it is a state headed by a criminal extreme rightist wing, which has violated its right for self-defense, as the ICJ announced. Should we believe the judges of the world, or another American diplomat, who cares more about Israel's interest than he cares about his own country?
I do not want an answer to this question, or to the question of whether the UN would have been a scandal in Iraq or elsewhere, had it remained silent about the crimes of Israel and did not give it half of its decisions? I have an answer to this, which could all fill the pages of the newspaper; but I will stop here today.
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