Posted by
KsReaganite on Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:59:28 PM
Whether nation’s highest civilian award was meant to be given to ‘agents of change’ is debatable, but given this administration’s key buzzword in last fall’s campaign, perhaps it is to be expected. In reviewing the (rather large) list of this year’s honorees for the Medal of Freedom, I was delighted to see Nobel Laureate Dr.Yunus who has shown the world that entrepreneurship, capitalism, and micro-business are the surest ways out of grinding poverty.
That delight was quickly dissipated upon finding former Irish President and erstwhile UN Human Rights boss Mary Robinson’s name on the list. An accomplished lawyer, scholar, and politician, Mrs. Robinson’s legacy is, unfortunately, tinged with anti-Semitism. During her tenure as the HR chief for the United Nations, she routinely used her pulpit to condemn Israel and draw moral equivalence between Israel and its terrorist enemies. I certainly don’t begrudge a human rights advocate speaking on behalf of innocent civilians caught in the midst of a brutal conflict; in fact that is the job of a human rights leader and activist. I find it deeply offensive, however, that the human rights forums of the United Nations were used as a platform to attack Israel and thus give comfort to the terrorists who wish to obliterate it from the face of the planet. That we should not have expected any different from a left-liberal ideologue like Mary Robinson is perhaps a truism. After all, even as President of Ireland, she had broken precedent by meeting with terrorist IRA leader Gerry Adams. Nor should we be surprised that an administration with such a lukewarm attitude towards Israel has chosen Mrs. Robinson to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Even with its obvious ideological agenda and preferences, could the Obama administration not have found some left-liberal luminary without the baggage of anti-Semitic tendencies?