A bizarre juxtaposition, or the Chutzpah of it all

At the UN today, the “Arab Group” made its ad hoc contribution to the Draft International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. To the existing preamble paragraph, they proposed including this language to describe what they perceive as an existing problem:

“Concerned that situations of armed conflict, foreign occupation and the occurrence of natural disasters have considerably increased the experience of disability in war-stricken and disaster-prone countries, as well as having especially devastating consequences for the human rights of persons with disabilities” [Emphasis in original]

The proposal for addressing this concern?

“States parties shall take, in accordance with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, all necessary measures to ensure the safety and protection of persons with disabilities under foreign occupation, and that institutions which provide them with care and rehabilitation are not targeted or placed in danger”.

So, there’s your principle: the “Arab group” is terribly worried that foreign invaders will injure the local population’s disabled citizens. They want to correct that situation by making sure that the handicapped “are not targeted or placed in danger.” I don’t think I’m stretching too much to imagine that this humanitarian sounding paragraph, coming as it does from the “Arab Group,” is intended to match up with the propaganda that emerged from Lebanon about Israeli assaults against innocent civilians.

Have you got this concept firmly in mind? Good. Now cast your mind back to a story that emerged from Lebanon — from Lebanese in Lebanon — two weeks ago:

A French language Lebanese publication, citing an unnamed source in Hezbollah, has claimed that the organization placed a rocket launcher on the roof of the notorious building in Qana to provoke an Israeli attack and brought invalid children inside to serve as victims and blacken Israel’s name.

The Lebanese magazine LIBANOSCOPIE, associated with Christian elements which support the anti-Syrian movement called the “March 14 Forces,” report that Hizbullah masterminded a plan that would result in the killing of innocents in Qana, in an attempt to foil Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s “Seven Points Plan” calling for deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming of Hizbullah. The magazine reported:

“We have it from a credible source that Hezbollah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations…. Hezbollah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the diplomatic initiative,”

the site stated.

So far as I know — and I’m happy to be corrected — no one has stepped forward to discredit this story. I am reminded inexorably of what happens when a man who used to take every woman’s “no” to mean “yes” becomes father to a girl: he’s the strictest father on earth, because he knows the evil that lurks in some men’s hearts.

UPDATE:  Confederate Yankee reminds us that Arab Islamists have, on at least one occasion, found it useful to a handicapped child as a suicide bomber.

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