Tuesday, March 17, 2009

GA President Brockmann: ICC is "racist" and Israel is an "Apartheid" regime but Jews are cool

General Assembly President (Father) Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister under the Sandinistas and thorn in the side of America and Israel, had an entertaining press conference today after concluding his global tour that included Tehran and Damascus. On that trip, he made controversy for calling Israel an Apartheid regime and purportedly calling for a boycott of Israel. At today's press conference, he denied calling for the boycott ("I've read in the press that I've called for a campaign to boycott Israel. I don't remember doing it," he said) and addressed the Apartheid controversy. Brockmann:

I read that I compared or mentioned Apartheid. And that is true. I speak very frankly and I said the more I contemplate the style of life that is imposed on the Palestinians, the more I tended to think about Apartheid. And so that caused a huge scandal because I said Apartheid. And yet there's a book by President Carter, who nobody thinks of as a radical, and he put Apartheid in his title. ... And then I heard that Desmond Tutu used the word, and Nelson Mandela. I didn't see any huge campaign to say that these people hated Israel.


Added Brockmann:

Of course I don't hate Israel, much less do I hate the Jewish people. They are very high on my list of people.


Sadly, no one asked who was low on his list. It would have been pretty awesome to hear Brockmann rant about, say, Canadians, or Mongols.

The GA President went on to slam the West for the ICC indictment of Omar Hassan al-Bashir:

I think first of all it was unfortunate and I think it does a disservice to the peoples' perception of international justice. It helps the deepening perception that international justice is racist. ... But to me the thing that makes it most lamentable is the fact that about 2 weeks, no more than 3 weeks before that announcement, we received here in the UN a delegation from the AU, jointly with the Arab League. They were explaining to us that President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had initiated conversations with the leader of the most important rebel group in Darfur. ... We in the west are notorious for getting involved in things we don't understand, and worse, we think we're the ones who understand, and we shoot first and then find out. ... We don't know if it's a person or if it's a deer. Shoot and find out. Western arrogance, traditional attitude.


He went on to liken George W. Bush to Al Capone. Remind me how this guy's a diplomat again?

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