By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 19 -- As the Security Council met behind closed doors Friday about the attacks in southern Israel, sources in the meeting told Inner City Press of a move to remove from the US introduced draft Press Statement the characterization as "terrorist" the shooting at a bus with Israeli soldiers on it.
"It's going to be a long meeting," one of the sources said. Beyond the move to strip out the word "terrorist," there's a proposal to condemn Israel's actions after the attack. Palestinian Observer Riyad Mansour told the Press that Israel has killed eight civilians in the Gaza Strip, including two children.
Asked if he thought the briefing by UN Assistant Secretary General Oscar Fernandez Taranco was even handed, Mansour responded with a question: do you think it might not be fair?
That was the implication of Syrian Permanent Representative Bashar Ja'afari on August 18, when he told the Press that while he had given information about developments in his country to the UN Secretariat, some did not pass it on to the Security Council.
Another source inside the Council meeting derived Taranco's briefing as being based only on "open source" information, meaning surfing the Internet. We shouldn't be making decision on this scanty information, the Council source said. But so it goes at the UN. Watch this site.
