by Chris Cook
United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Canadian Supreme
Court Justice, Louise Arbour received a barrage of criticism in Israel
a day after her comments regarding Israel's continuing atrocities
commited against the civilian population of Palestine.
 Yesterday, Louise Arbour toured the battered town of Beit Hanoun.
Residents took the U.N. High Commissioner through houses destroyed by
Israeli artillary fire; fire that has claimed the lives of at least 19,
wounding more than fifty others. It was for Arbour the beginning of a
five day visit to the area,planned to culminate in an audience with
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Omert.
After hearing survivor's stories, and walking through the rubble of
destroyed houses, Arbour decried the attacks, saying; "The call for
protection [of civilians] has to be answered. We cannot see civilians,
who are not the authors of their own misfortune, suffer to the extent
of what I see here."
Just what extent of suffering would beacceptable to Arbour is not
mentioned, but clearly her mild rebuke of Israel's military solution to
the Palestinian problem went too far for some Israeli's in the border
town of Sderot, the next stop on her tour, where her car was stoned, and at one point the motorcade mobbed, and Arbour's car rocked.
As if to underscore repeated complaints of Palestinian Kassam rocket attacks agianst border towns like Sderot, a rocket landed within
a few hundred metres of Arbour's entourage while she toured alocal
factory, killing a worker. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) claim more
than a thousand Kassams have landed in and near Sderotthis year,
killing at least one previoius to today's fatality, though the IDF
numbers are in dispute.
While Arbour toured Sderot, the IDF launched another "incursion" into Gaza at Zeitun and Beit Lahiya. Russia's ITAR-TASS
news agency says a column of thirty tanks and armoured cars entered
Zeitun, while an unspecified number of soldiers moved into Beit Lahiya
on "point liquidation," or assassination missions against those the
Israeli military believe are involved in firing rockets into Israeli
[sic] territory.
Though Arbour denounced those firing rockets into Israel, the press
there has been highly critical of the ommissioner and the United
Nations of being biased against Israel. The families of three Israeli soldiers kidnapped
by Palestinians added their objections to Arbour for her refusal to
meet with them. The three soldiers were,according to the IDF, the
reason for numerous invasion campaigns since launched into Gaza and the
occupied territories last Spring, and the Summer's invasion of Lebanon.
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