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Reprinted from AlterNet
"We need to deter the Palestinians in any way we can." --Samantha Power, July 17, 2013
A new documentary called "Watchers of the Sky" tells the moving story of Raphael Lemkin, Polish lawyer and resistance fighter who spent his final years seeking to secure legislation against the crime of genocide at the United Nations. Lemkin's struggle to guarantee a legal order capable of preventing the slaughter of civilians is brought to life through the narration of Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and famed diplomat who earned renown with her 2002 book, "A Problem From Hell," documenting the international community's failure to stop genocide in Rwanda.
Power emerges during the film not only as Lemkin's biographer, but as his natural successor. She appears as a towering crusader for human rights using her influence as the US Ambassador to the UN to ensure that the phrase, "Never again," is not just an empty slogan. A tireless advocate for the oppressed described by journalist Tara McKelvey as the "femme fatale of the humanitarian-assistance world," her quest to keep Lemkin's legacy alive seems to transcend American foreign policy objectives.
"The hardest part about my position is having great visibility into a lot of the pain that's out there," Power declares in a voice trembling with emotion. "It's not someone else's responsibility or the fodder for an article. It's the fodder for what we can do about it."
In her five years in government, however, Power has done nothing of substance to prevent atrocities. In fact, her most notable accomplishment might be her enabling of their most ruthless perpetrators, primarily through her protection of Israel, a serial human rights abuser and the world's only active settler-colonial state. In Syria, meanwhile, where one of the greatest atrocities of modern times continues to devour civilian lives, Power's high-profile initiatives have done little more than generate publicity for herself. And in Libya, where Power's demand for military intervention influenced President Barack Obama's decision to authorize force, the US has thrown open the floodgates of chaos, transforming a repressive but functional state into a destabilized battleground for local warlords and jihadists.
