Robinson named as Medal of Freedom choice by White House ... Read more

ADL's Foxman says selection of Robinson for medal 'ill-advised' ... Read more

ZOA protests awards to Robinson as well as to Desmond Tutu ... Read more

NJDC's Forman: More critical issues to focus on ... Read more

AIPAC expresses disappointment over Robinson's selection ... Read more

Republican Jewish Coalition criticizes Robinson selection ... Read more

Robinson being honored as women's rights crusader—Gibbs ... Read more

Rep. Eliot Engel says Robinson should not have been given award ... Read more

Robinson named as Medal of Freedom choice by White House

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Press Release)—The White House announced the names of 16 individual who will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Among them was Mary Robinson, described as follows in the announcement:

Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland (1990 – 1997) and a former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997 – 2002), a post that required her to end her presidency four months early. Robinson served as a prominent member of the Irish Senate prior to her election as President. She continues to bring attention to international issues as Honorary President of Oxfam International, and Chairs the Board of Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI Alliance). Since 2002 she has been President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, based in New York, which is an organization she founded to make human rights the compass which charts a course for globalization that is fair, just and benefits all.

Mary Robinson’s record on Israel:

•Robinson was the driving force behind the ‘World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance’ (the Durban I Conference) in September 2001 that was in fact an anti-Semitic hate carnival. “She said nothing when the preliminary Asian Regional Conference in Tehran (from which Israel was excluded) inserted blatantly racist statements into the conference agenda. She failed to speak out when, on the grounds of the U.N. conference itself, the Arab Lawyers Union distributed pamphlets depicting hook-nosed Jews as Nazis spearing Palestinian children. In the same tent where nongovernmental organizations depicted Israel as a "racist, apartheid state," were distributed fliers entitled, "What if Hitler had won?" The answer: "There would be no Israel, and no Palestinian bloodshed.”  Nor did she protest when the South African hosts denied visas to European anti-slavery activists critical of human rights in Sudan and other Muslim states (Michael Rubin, ‘Mary Robinson: War Criminal?’ National Review Online, May 20, 2002).

•In April 2002, Robinson’s Human Rights Commission voted on a decision that condoned suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood after Robinson initiated a drive to become a fact finder to investigate the now-famous fictitious massacre in Jenin.

•In June 1999, when the Geneva Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, a body that had never been convened in its history gathered to condemn the Israeli construction of apartment blocks on empty, Jewish-owned land in eastern Jerusalem, Robinson insisted that the Fourth Geneva convention applies to the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and that “legal and diplomatic mechanisms under the United Nations Charter” and the Convention “remain an option for serious consideration” against Israel. These options include trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. So extreme were Robinson’s words at this conference (which was curtailed when its Convener, Switzerland’s Walter Gyger, counseled restraint and adherence to non-politicized terms of reference) that she was censured for them.

•During the so-called Naqba riots in May 1998, when Jews were assaulted at prayer by rioting Palestinians, Robinson spoke only of the rioters who were killed and injured by Israeli police as victims and called upon Israel to “respect the right of peaceful assembly, to avoid the excessive use of force.”

•In November 2000, when she visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA)-controlled areas, Robinson said she came to “hear” the Palestinians but to “put points to [the Israelis],” indicating she was taking the Palestinian side even before arrival. She subsequently surrendered to PA demands that she cancel meetings with Israel’s democratically-elected opposition figures. Acting Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami (Labor) saw this as so blatantly biased that he declined to meet with her. Her subsequent report on her visit consisted largely of regurgitating Palestinian claims, no matter how subjective, including anger at those who had dared to (correctly) allege that Palestinian children were deliberately dispatched to scenes of violence. The stoning of Jewish worshippers at Jerusalem’s Western Wall and the destruction of Joseph’s Tomb and a Jericho Synagogue received barely a reference, but after meeting with Muslim and Christian clerics, she called on Israel to respect and protect religious sites.

•In 2000, when the Iranian government arrested and convicted a number of Jews on trumped-up charges of espionage for Israel in an in camera trial, utilizing forced confessions as evidence, Robinson accepted the Iranian position that it was an internal Iranian matter and did not send observers to the appeal trial.

•In 2000, Robinson appointed Mona Rishmawi to a senior position within her Commissariat. Rishmawi has likened Israeli practices in the territories to those of Nazis and is a long time activist of al-Haq, the Palestinian advocacy organization promoting a Palestinian agenda couched in terms of human rights.

•As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Robinson took a discriminatory line against Israel as soon as she took that post. She discontinued the practice of her predecessor, Ecuador’s José Ayala-Lasso, of meeting with both the UN regional groups and the Israeli ambassador to discuss human rights matters. (As the only member-state not a member of any regional group, Israelis could only obtain information from the HCHR on this basis). Only later did she reluctantly resume the practice of inviting the Israeli ambassador.

•During the last four years of Robinson’s term as Irish president and at a time that Ireland held the EU presidency (second half of 1996), EU aid money to Yasser Arafat went to terrorism. PA documents seized by Israel in 2002 from Arafat’s Muqata compound in Ramallah show that the PA spent approximately $9 million of EU aid monthly on the salaries of those organizing terror attacks against civilians. “While European officials like Robinson looked the other way, the Palestinian Authority regularly converted millions of dollars of aid money into shekels at rates about 20 percent below normal, allowing the Palestinian chairman to divert millions of dollars worth of aid into his personal slush fund  ... European funds enabled Arafat to purchase $50 million worth of sophisticated Iranian weaponry for use against civilians” (Michael Rubin, ‘Mary Robinson: War Criminal?’ National Review Online, May 20, 2002).

Desmond Tutu’s record on Israel:

•Smears Zionism as being racist: Tutu has claimed that Zionism has “very many parallels with racism.” (American Jewish Year Book, 1988, p.50).

·Refuses to call Israel by name: In conversations during the 1980s with the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Eliahu Lankin, Tutu “refused to call Israel by its name, he kept referring to it as Palestine.” (Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Response magazine, January 1990).

·In November 2006, Tutu was appointed by the same UN Human Rights Commission previously headed by Mary Robinson to head its “investigative commission” to the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun to investigate “human rights violations” by Israel” which Tutu had already condemned as “an outrage that cries out to heaven and we must condemn it unequivocally.” The commission never investigated Sudan, or other scenes of genuine, massive human rights abuses.

*Falsely claims Jews create refugees: Asked about the Zionism-is-racism resolution, Tutu complained that “the Jewish people
with their traditions, religion and long history of persecution sometimes appear to have caused a refugee problem among others.” (South African Zionist Record, July 26, 1985).

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·Urged Jews to forgive Nazis: During his 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu “urged Israelis to forgive the Nazis for the Holocaust” (Jerusalem Post, December 31, 1989), a statement which the Simon Wiesenthal Center called “a gratuitous insult to Jews and victims of Nazism everywhere” (Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Response magazine, January 1990).

·Claims Jews monopolize victimhood: Jewish Monopoly of the Holocaust: Tutu complained about “the Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.” (Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1985).

·Depicts the Jewish lobby as malignly powerful: “People are scared in this country [the U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful--very powerful.”

·Claims critics of Israel are smeared: “You know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.] and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if Palestinians were not Semitic.”

·During the 1989 visit to Israel, Tutu remarked “If I’m accused of being anti-Semitic, tough luck,” and in response to questions about his anti-Jewish bias, Tutu replied, “My dentist’s name is Dr. Cohen.” (Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Response magazine, January 1990)

·Claims Judaism tries to monopolize G-d: Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.” In the same speech, he compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa. (Hartford Courant, October 29, 1984).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “It is deplorable that President Obama should have honored two such utterly partisan, vociferously anti-Israel figures like Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu.

“Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu’s records of defaming Israel, as we have shown above, stand for themselves. Both figures have shown a propensity to pervert and disserve the cause of human rights in the course of heading committees and organizations designed to defend them. That tells us something about the state of human rights organizations and their internal perversion by anti-Israel activists and the repressive and corrupt regimes which tend to control these bodies. But it also tells us something about Robinson and Tutu. Neither Robinson nor Tutu ever resigned in protest at the direction these bodies have taken, or took anything that could be called a courageous stand in favor of truth. Rather, both have lent their reputations to travesties of the truth and given the bodies on which they served an aura of undeserved legitimacy. By awarding them the Medal of Freedom, President Obama compounds their offense by lending them further underserved legitimacy.

“We are aware that, while other Jewish organizations have criticized the award to Mary Robinson, none appear to have taken issue with the same award being made to Desmond Tutu. It would appear that there is reluctance to criticize an African figure who had some prominence in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Yet participation in a just cause does not, and should not, provide immunity from criticism for other words and deeds defaming Zionism and Israel while aiding the eliminationist Palestinian cause.

“We also note that President Obama recently met with Jewish leaders to reassure them about his policies to Israel, something words alone cannot do when so much else in the words and deeds of the Obama Administration gives genuine cause for concern. At a time when President Obama is being severely criticized by Jewish leaders for bias against Israel and in favor of Arabs, and has only 6% of Israelis call him pro-Israel, one would have expected him to be especially careful not to offend pro-Israel sensibilities by honoring two of Israel’s most severe critics. How little President Obama seems to regard Jewish sensitivities can be seen by these awards to Robinson and Tutu only weeks after that meeting.”

Preceding provided by Zionist Organization of America


NJDC's Forman: More
critical issues to focus on

WASHINGTON, D.C —Ased to comment on the gathering controversy over President Obama's choice of Mary Robinson for a Presidential Medal of Freedom, Ira Forman, CEO of the National Jewish Democratic Council, responded to reporters:

"With a major battle to ensure every American has access to healthcare, delicate negotiations to further the peace process in the MiddleEast and the battle to deny Iran a nuclear capacity, don't we as acommunity have more critical issues to focus on?"

Preceding provided by NJDC


Tuesday, August 4, 2009

AIPAC expresses disappointment over Robinson's selection

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Press Release)—AIPAC is deeply disappointed by the Obama administration’s choice to award a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson. AIPAC respectfully calls on the administration to firmly, fully and publicly repudiate her views on Israel and her long public record of hostility and one-sided bias against the Jewish state.

Robinson is widely known for the high-profile role she played in leading the deeply flawed U.N. Human Rights Commission and for presiding over the U.N.’s Durban Conference on Racism, which the United States boycotted for its unprecedented hostility to Israel and its final outcome document that equated Zionism with racism.

In a BBC interview following the passage of the “Zionism = Racism” Durban text, Robinson described the outcome as “remarkably good, including on the issues of the Middle East.”
As one of America’s greatest statesman, the late Tom Lantos – a former Congressman, Holocaust survivor, global champion of human rights and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee – observed, “Much of the responsibility for the debacle [at Durban] rests on the shoulders of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.”

In his extensive report about the Durban Conference, and about the years of effort on the part of Congress and both Clinton and Bush administrations to support the Conference and its goal of promoting human rights and ending racism and intolerance, Congressman Lantos continues:

Mrs. Robinson’s conduct “left our delegation deeply shocked and saddened. In her remarks, she advocated precisely the opposite course to the one Secretary Powell and I had urged her to take. Namely, she refused to reject the twisted notion that the wrong done to the Jews in the Holocaust was equivalent to the pain suffered by the Palestinians in the Middle East…Instead of condemning the attempt to usurp the conference, she legitimized it.”

In addition to Robinson’s dishonorable role in the Durban debacle, her tenure on the UNHRC was deeply flawed, and her conduct marred by extreme, one-sided anti-Israel
sentiment. Among the many outrages was a 2002 vote by the commission under her leadership that sought to condone Palestinian suicide bombings and terrorism as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood. Explaining his nation’s vote against the measure, the German ambassador to the commission noted, “The text contains formulations that might be interpreted as an endorsement of violence [and] no condemnation whatsoever of terrorism."

Preceding provided by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)



Republican Jewish Coalition criticizes Robinson selection

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Press Release)-- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) on Tuesday spoke out strongly against President Obama's decision to award Mary Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The President will honor 16 people with the Medal of Freedom on August 12.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said, "Mary Robinson, who was one of the people responsible for the 2001 Durban conference against racism descending into an anti-Israel propaganda forum, is not an appropriate recipient for one of our nation's highest honors. In fact, awarding the Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson does great dishonor to the many outstanding men and women who have received it in the past."

RJC responded to the late Friday afternoon statement by the White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, who said, "Mary Robinson has dedicated her career to human rights... As with any public figure, we don't necessarily agree with every statement she has ever made, but it's clear that she has been an agent of change and a fighter for good."

Yet the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a member of the U.S. delegation to the Durban conference (later withdrawn when the U.S. boycotted the event), described Mary Robinson this way: "To many of us present at the events at Durban, it is clear that much of the responsibility for the debacle rests on the shoulders of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who, in her role as secretary-general of the conference, failed to provide the leadership needed to keep the conference on track."

Brooks said, "We're troubled that the White House chooses to minimize the very real controversy about Mary Robinson. It's wrong for the United States to honor someone who led a meeting that our nation boycotted. She had the opportunity to fight for good - by resisting the effort to turn the Durban conference into a swamp of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda. She not only failed to resist it, she facilitated it. That President Obama wishes to honor Mary Robinson in this way is profoundly disturbing."

Among the past recipients of the Medal of Freedom are people who personify some of America's greatest ideals. They include men and women who have fought for freedom, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Natan Sharansky, Rosa Parks, and Jeane Kirkpatrick; advocates of human rights such as Elie Wiesel, Mother Teresa, and Simon Wiesenthal; and foreign leaders whose courage and leadership have contributed to world peace and security, such as John Howard, Tony Blair, Vaclav Havel, and Margaret Thatcher.

Brooks continued, "The choice of Mary Robinson for this award calls into serious question the White House vetting process, given Robinson's well-known record, particularly with regard to the 2001 Durban conference. The U.S. boycotted the conference and it was the subject of intense public discussion. If the White House staff passed on Robinson's name knowing how controversial and troubling the choice would be, that's wrong in and of itself. If Robinson's name made it onto the Medal of Freedom list because the White House staff was unaware of how controversial she was, that's even worse."

Preceding provided by Republican Jewish Coalition


Robinson being honored as women's rights crusader—Gibbs

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Press Release)—Following is an excerpt from a press briefing conducted Tuesday by Robert Gibbs, White House spokesman, on the Mary Robinson controversy.

Q    And AIPAC just issued a statement saying they're deeply disappointed by the Obama administration's choice to award a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, and they respectfully call on the administration to firmly, fully, and publicly repudiate her views on Israel and her long-public record of hostility and one-sided bias against the Jewish state.  Do you guys have any comment about that or any other protest you've heard from Jewish groups?

MR. GIBBS:  Look, Mary Robinson was the first female President of Ireland, and she is somebody whom we are honoring as a prominent crusader of women's rights in Ireland and throughout the world.  There are statements that obviously she has made that the President doesn't agree with and that's probably true for a number of the people that the President is recognizing for their lifetime contributions.

Rep. Eliot Engel says Robinson
should not have been given award

NEW YORK—Democratic U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel of New York has told reporter Jennifer Rubin of Commentary magazine that Mary Robinson should not have been given any kind of award by the Obama administration. Here is a link to Rubin's story appearing on line on Tuesday.