Go, Canada!

Our neighbors to the North continue to impress on the world stage under the sharp and effective governance of Stephen Harper.  Alone among the 47-member UN Human Rights Council, Canada voted against a resolution condemning Israel for attacking Hamas in Gaza.  A dozen other nations abstained from the motion, which passed 33-1:

Yesterday, Canada was the sole member of the UN Human Rights Council to vote against a resolution, which passed in a 33-1 vote, condemning Israel over its actions in Gaza.

The vote crystallized Canada’s emergence under Stephen Harper’s government as one of Israel’s firmest supporters.

At a meeting in Geneva, Canada asked for a recorded vote to emphasize its complaint that the resolution drafted by Arab, Asian and African countries did not recognize that Israel acted to stop Hamas rocket attacks.

European countries abstained, along with Japan and South Korea, because they felt the resolution lacked balance – it gave only brief mention to rocket attacks. Neither Israel nor the United States are in the 47-member council.

The HRC has been an ongoing anti-Semitic joke for a generation.  Its previous incarnation, the Human Rights Commission, which was so blatantly anti-Israel that even Kofi Annan knew it had to be disbanded.  Unfortunately, the new panel picked up where the old panel left off, voting to make reviews of Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank a permanent agenda item without even offering a single review of Palestinian terrorism.  Iran pushed that through the new HRC in 2006, and it hasn’t looked back from its laughable mandate ever since.

How bad has it gotten?  Human Rights Watch accused the revamped HRC of a “one-sided approach” to Israel in September 2006, and HRW is not exactly a lackey of Western nations.  They haven’t exactly cut Israel much slack over the years, but even they recognize how anti-Israel the UN has become.

This latest vote is just another example of how badly the UN has fallen under the sway of terror-supporting states and their lackeys.  Canada and Harper had the guts to call them on it.  The dozen or so abstaining nations apparently did not.  Three cheers for Ottawa, the Canadians, and Harper … and three raspberries for the other 46 nations on the Human Rights Council.