Quaint Qumran Bothers the BDSers

In an Al Jazeera piece attacking tourism that, supposedly, brings tourists to visit "an illegal settlement", that is, Qumran, and that "only six mention or imply that one will be outside Israeli territory" and that "Thomas Cook, Collette and On the Go Tours, for example, make stops at the Ahava Visitor Center without telling tourists they are leaving Israel", you can read this:

For the unsuspecting visitor, it is not easy to tell that one is no longer within the internationally recognised borders of Israel, but in the occupied West Bank, in an Israeli settlement, illegal under international law.

The same goes for nearby Qumran, a popular tourist attraction where a Bedouin shepherd once found the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.

Notwithstanding it being situated in the West Bank, Israel now controls the site,

And someone really wants to threaten these tourists:

According to John Dugard, professor of international law and former UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, the travel agencies' customers are unknowingly "aiding and abetting" the crime of establishing illegal settlements.

"In theory, this exposes tourists to prosecution for having purchased illegal goods," said Dugard, who added that although holidaymakers are not going to be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court for such an offence, travel agencies should be warning tourists that they are about to commit a crime.

"The tourists ought to have a cause of action against the tour companies and claim compensation for having been fraudulently misled and exposed to criminal activity," Dugard said.

Dugard is a long-time opponent of Israel's rights to its historic national homeland. And some international law he gets wrong. And he's been called a 'racist'.

Let's start with "internationally recognised borders".

Israel had none.

Today, its borders with Egypt and Jordan are and, to a great extent also Lebanon, through UN agreements, are "internationally recognized".  But not so as regards the areas of Judea and Samaria, and Gaza for that matter.

They were defined by armistice lines, cease-fire boundaries, etc. which would not "in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either Party hereto in the ultimate peaceful settlement of the Palestine question". No peace treaty or any final settlement arrangement exists as regards that territory.

But more to the issue, Qumran had nothing to do with Palestine if what is meant is an Arab entity. It is a Jewish site.

As we all should know, 

The Hellenistic period settlement [!] was constructed during the reign of John Hyrcanus (134–104 BCE) or somewhat later, and was occupied most of the time until it was destroyed by the Romans in 68 CE or shortly after. It is best known as the settlement nearest to the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden

The Dead Sea Scrolls are Jewish documents. The residents were Jewish. No Arabs lived there although some nearby Bedouins stole some of the Dead Sea scrolls created at Qumran in the 1940s.

If not for Israel's archaeological units, little of Arab remains would be preserved.

Of course, Israel could simply term the area the "Holy Land" and avoid the whole concern of these BDSers:

^

What Is Hidden

The NYTimes interspaces this in its report on Gaza today:-

A United Nations official in Geneva on Saturday condemned Israel’s actions, particularly the bombing on Friday of an empty Hamas Interior Ministry building in a Gaza City neighborhood. Shrapnel from the missile strike killed a woman and wounded up to 46 people, some of them children, who were celebrating at a wedding party next door.

The official, John Dugard, who works on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Israelis who were responsible “for such cowardly action” resulting in civilian casualties “are guilty of serious war crimes and should be prosecuted and punished for their crimes.” He said that the attack on the building “near a wedding party venue” was carried out “with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to many civilians.”

John Dugrad, eh? "Cowardly"? "Serious"? "Forseen"?

These are words of judgment not fact. Sujective not objective.

But let's get back to Dugard.

John Dugard, born in 1936 in Fort Beaufort, is a South African professor of international law. John Dugard was appointed as Chairman of a UN Commission on Human Rights inquiry commission on the situation of human rights there in 2000. In 2001, he was appointed as Special Rapporteur to the Commission and has submitted annual reports and recommendations to the UN concerning the situation of international human rights and humanitarian law.

In his report to the 4th session of the Human Rights Council, Dugard stated, "Discrimination against Palestinians occurs in many fields. Moreover, the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid appears to be violated by many practices, particularly those denying freedom of movement to Palestinians."

In a report released in February 2007, Dugard ”announced that Israel's policies resemble those of apartheid."..."It is difficult to resist the conclusion that many of Israel's laws and practices violate the 1966 Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination," says the report.

Referring to Israel's actions in the occupied West Bank, he wrote, "Can it seriously be denied that the purpose [...] is to establish and maintain domination by one racial group (Jews) over another racial group (Palestinians) and systematically oppressing them? Israel denies that this is its intention or purpose. But such an intention or purpose may be inferred from the actions described in this report."

Dugard has been criticized.

Consider the following five facts about our newly named fact-finder:

1. The mandate of special rapporteur on Palestine -- created in 1993 by the discredited and now defunct UN Commission on Human Rights -- is to investigate only violations by Israel, a one-sided duty John Dugard has zealously embraced since his appointment to the post in 2001. His reports stand out, even by UN standards, for their virulently anti-Israel prejudice. Not only does Dugard systematically ignore Palestinian acts of terror and their victims, but he has gone so far as to laud Palestinian "militarized groups armed with rifles, mortars, and Kassam-2 rockets [who] confront the [Israeli army] with new determination, daring, and success."

2. ...Mr. Dugard has the dubious distinction of being the only appointee of the UN who regularly rails against the UN-sponsored Quartet and its Road Map for Middle East Peace. Last summer, he even managed to convince seven other UN experts to join him in this bizarre line of attack.

3. Mr. Dugard's presentation on Wednesday at the Special Session dutifully lambasted the Quartet several times, suggesting that the UN's membership in the grouping rendered it pro-Israel. (Yes, and Al Qaeda is too pro-American.) "Whether [the EU and the UN] can act as 'honest brokers' while remaining members of the Quartet is, however, questionable."...

4. Much worse, though, was the opening of his Wednesday presentation. "At the outset I wish to make it clear that I have every sympathy for Corporal Gilad Shalit; and indeed for all Israel's young soldiers compelled to serve in the army of an occupying power." (emphasis added) In other words, Professor Dugard could not bring himself to express sympathy for the captured soldier without wrapping it in a sharp stab, drenched with cynicism, at Israel's morality...

5. In his August 2005 report, Dugard for the first time broke instructions and explained that he felt compelled to address Palestinian violations as well. Would Dugard finally say a few words about Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism? No. What caused him to break his instructions was an issue of Palestinian victims -- those who suffer from the Palestinian Authority death penalty. "The Special Rapporteur's mandate," Dugard acknowledged, "does not extend to human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority. It would, however, be irresponsible for a human rights special rapporteur to allow the execution of Palestinian prisoners to go unnoticed. . . The Special Rapporteur expresses the hope that these executions were aberrations and that the Palestinian Authority will in future refrain from this form of punishment." (August 2005 report.)

Nothing wrong with protesting a justice system whose methods make IRA "knee-capping" look tame by comparison. What is shocking, though, is that Dugard for the first time demonstrated that he is perfectly free in his reports to reference the terror faced daily by Israeli civilians -- more than 140 separate suicide attacks, and 13,730 shooting attacks, over the past four years -- and free to mention the attempted mega-terror attacks against Israeli skyscrapers, ports and fuel depots, which could easily have taken the lives of thousands more. All of this, Dugard has shown, he is free to mention. He simply chooses not to. To paraphrase Dugard's moral justification of his mandate as quoted above, it is, apparently, perfectly responsible for a human rights special rapporteur to allow the killing of Israelis to go unnoticed.

And check here, too.

So, good ol' NYTimes. When youcan include a quite biased opinion against Israel, then by all means do so, without balance, of course.