Who's behind the UN's Responsibility to Protect doctrine?

The other day in a long-winded post, I speculated that because the UN’s Responsibility to Protect doctrine is so broad, it may end up being used in ways Americans will not like. I wondered:

Might the time come when Israel faces a UN R2P action for taking out terrorist bases in the Palestinian territories or southern Lebanon?

Well, it’s worth a little digging around to find out who’s actually behind the R2P project. It’s fairly new and has not generated a great deal of public debate, even amongst folks like me who closely watch foreign policy trends. Turns out there’s a UN commission on the subject, with members listed here. Most of the names are unfamiliar, but one does jump out.

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi — former Cabinet Minister of the Palestinian National Authority

Dr. Asrawi is more than just a former government official in the PA. Her father founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization. That group projects a more moderate image these days (compared to Hamas), but at its founding it was a violent terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. According to its charter, the PLO is still dedicated to that goal. As for Ashrawi, daughter of a PLO founder:

During the First Palestinian Intifada in 1988, Ashrawi joined the Intifada Political Committee and served there until 1993. In 1991 Yasser Arafat appointed her as Official Spokesperson of the Palestinian Delegation to the “Middle East Peace Process.” She also served as the PLO’s Minister of Higher Education and Research, and for one year she was the head of its Political Committee.

Ashrawi has long defended Hamas as a legitimate component of the Palestinian “political spectrum.” She unequivocally does not “think of Hamas as a terrorist group.” “We coordinate [with Hamas] politically,” she said in April 1993, “… the people we know and talk to are not terrorists.”

Also in 1993, Ashrawi justified the PLO’s practice of murdering Palestinians whom it suspected of “collaboration” with Israel.

Asrawi is also, according to Discover the Networks, a Holocaust denier. A woman with innocent blood on her hands who denies the truth of one of the most monstrous crimes in human history is accepted among the group formulating the policy that has led us to an escalating war in Libya.