U.S. Abstains In UN Vote On Israeli Settlements, Fox News via YouTube, December 23, 2016
Archive for December 23, 2016
U.S. Abstains In UN Vote On Israeli Settlements
December 23, 2016Trump was Right to Stop Obama from Tying his Hands on Israel
December 23, 2016Trump was Right to Stop Obama from Tying his Hands on Israel, Gatestone Institute, Alan M. Dershowitz, December 23, 2016
(This was published just a couple of hours before the UN Security Council voted unanimously to pass the resolution, Obama’s America abstaining. — DM)
The Egyptian decision to withdraw the one-sided anti-Israel Security Council resolution should not mask the sad reality that it is the Obama administration that has been pushing for the resolution to be enacted. The United States was trying to hide its active ‘behind the scenes’ roll by preparing to abstain rather than voting for the resolution. But in the context of the Security Council where only an American veto can prevent anti-Israel resolutions from automatically passing, an abstention is a vote for the resolution. And because of this automatic majority, an anti-Israel resolution like this one cannot be reversed by a future American president. A veto once cast cannot be cast retroactively.
The effect, therefore of the Obama decision to push for, and abstain from, a vote on this resolution is to deliberately tie the hands of President Obama’s successors, most particularly President elect Trump. That is why Trump did the right thing in reaction to Obama’s provocation. Had the lame duck president not tried to tie the incoming president’s hands, Trump would not have intervened at this time. But if he had not urged the Egyptians to withdraw the resolution, he would have made it far more difficult for himself to try to bring about a negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The reason for this is that a Security Council resolution declaring the 1967 border to be sacrosanct and any building behind those boarders to be illegal would make it impossible for Palestinian leaders to accept less in a negotiation. Moreover, the passage of such a resolution would disincentivize the Palestinians from accepting Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu’s invitation to sit down and negotiate with no preconditions. Any such negotiations would require painful sacrifices on both sides if a resolution were to be reached. And a Security Council resolution siding with the Palestinians would give the Palestinians the false hope that they could get a state through the United Nations without having to make painful sacrifices.
President Obama’s lame duck attempt to tie the hands of his successor is both counterproductive to peace and undemocratic in nature. The lame duck period of an outgoing president is a time when our system of checks and balances is effectively suspended. The outgoing president does not have to listen to Congress or the people. He can selfishly try to burnish his personal legacy at the expense of our national and international interests. He can try to even personal scores and act on pique. That is what seems to be happening here. Congress does not support this resolution; the American people do not support this resolution; no Israeli leader – from the left, to the center, to the right – supports this resolution. Even some members of Obama’s own administration do not support this resolution. But Obama is determined – after 8 years of frustration and failure in bringing together the Israelis and Palestinians – to leave his mark on the mid-East peace process. But if he manages to push this resolution through, his mark may well be the end of any realistic prospect for a negotiated peace.
One would think that Obama would have learned from his past mistakes in the mid-East. He has alienated the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Emirates and other allies by his actions and inactions with regard to Iran, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. Everything he has touched has turned to sand.
Now, in his waning days, he wants to make trouble for his successor. He should be stopped in the name of peace, democracy and basic decency.
But it now appears that Obama will not be stopped. Four temporary Security Council members have decided to push the resolution to a vote now. It is difficult to believe that they would have done so without the implicit support of the United States. Stay tuned.
U.S. declines to veto U.N. Security Council resolution for Israel to stop Jewish settlement activity
December 23, 2016U.S. declines to veto U.N. Security Council resolution for Israel to stop Jewish settlement activity, Washington Post, Carol Morello, December 23, 2016
The U.N. Security Council on Friday passed a resolution demanding Israel cease Jewish settlement activity on Palestinian territory in a unanimous vote that passed with the United States abstaining rather than using its veto as it has reliably done in the past.
The resolution said settlements are threatening the viability of the two-state solution, and urged Israelis and Palestinians to return to negotiations that lead to two independent nations.
This marked the first time in more than 36 years that the Security Council passed a resolution critical of settlements.
The United States’ abstention Friday reflected mounting frustration in the Obama administration over settlement growth that the United States considers an obstacle to peace.
The resolution came one day after a scheduled vote was postponed when the sponsor, Egypt, withdrew it after the Egyptian president spoke by phone with President-elect Donald Trump. Friday’s resolution was sponsored by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal.
Shortly before the vote, several U.S. senators said that if it passed they would introduce legislation to cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations and to any states that voted in favor of it.
US pushes back against Israeli claims of collusion with Palestinians over UN vote
December 23, 2016US pushes back against Israeli claims of collusion with Palestinians over UN vote, Jerusalem Post, Michael Wilner, December 23, 2015
(Please see also, Israel Official: Obama Administration Secretly Worked With Palestinians to Craft ‘Shameful’ UN Resolution. — DM)
US President Barack Obama speaks at the Righteous Among the Nations Award Ceremony, organised by Yad Vashem, at Israel’s Embassy in Washington January 27, 2016. (photo credit:REUTERS)
WASHINGTON – The White House has not been behind a push for a resolution at the UN Security Council condemning Israel’s settlement enterprise, a senior Obama administration told The Jerusalem Post on Friday, insisting that claims to the contrary are baseless.
Reports that the administration will allow the resolution to pass are “premature,” the official added.
The administration is pushing back against a furious Israeli government that has determined US President Barack Obama intends to abstain from the vote, allowing a resolution harshly critical of its actions to pass. Furthermore, Israeli officials are claiming that Obama orchestrated the effort with their Palestinian counterparts.
“To be clear: from the start, this was an Egyptian resolution,” a senior official told the Post. “The Egyptians authored it, circulated it, and submitted it for a vote on Wednesday evening before asking for a delay and subsequently removing their sponsorship. A group of other Security Council members, not including the United States, is now moving forward the Egyptian text.”
“Contrary to some claims, the administration was not involved in formulating the resolution nor have we promoted it,” the official added. “We have not communicated to any UN Security Council members how the United States would vote if the resolution comes before the UN Security Council.”
After Egypt pulled its resolution last minute— prompted by pressure from both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President-elect Donald Trump— New Zealand took up the cause this morning, adopting their published text.
The resolution tracks with longstanding US policy that Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank is illegal, and damages the peace process.
Once Israel came to the conclusion that Obama was likely to abstain, officials from the government at a “high level” contacted the incoming president’s team to intervene. The Israelis gave the White House warning it would do so, they said.
A senior Israeli official said on Friday that President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry pushed a “shameful” draft anti-settlement resolution at the UN Security Council.
“The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts,” the official said.
The official added that “President Obama could declare his willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it. This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the prospects of working with the next administration of advancing peace.”
Is National Guilt Making Germany More Vulnerable To Terrorism?
December 23, 2016Is National Guilt Making Germany More Vulnerable To Terrorism? Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, December 23, 2016
(Due to its entirely appropriate feelings of guilt for Hitler’s Holocaust — the imprisonment, torture and murder of six million Jews — Germany resolved to import Islamists who share Hitler’s views about Jews and desire to finish his work in the name of Allah. Does their desire to murder Christians as well help to assuage their guilt? — DM)
“All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilization that was the Holocaust,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said last year. “This is taught in German schools for good reason, it must never be forgotten. …. We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.”
**********************
From the moment it became clear that the mass killings at Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz Christmas market on Monday were the actions of a Muslim terrorist, accusing fingers have pointed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And not without good reason. Beyond Merkel’s “open door” to Syrian refugees has been the government’s general sloppiness when it comes to counter-terrorism.
Germany has seen several small-scale attacks in recent years. Other plots have failed, not because the authorities were so effective, but largely because the perpetrators were so incompetent. In one case, an attack was stopped only because one plotter thought better of the idea and turned himself in.
But the issue is bigger than Merkel. It encompasses the entire spirit of Germany after World War II, and the shadows of its guilt. This has never been clearer than it is now – after the Berlin attack – because unlike terrorist attacks in Brussels and in Paris, this one was entirely predictable and even more preventable. It simply should not have happened.
Throughout the European Union, guilt about the Holocaust has colored government approaches to Muslim immigrants since the rush of guest workers arrived in the 1970s. Concern about “tolerance” and religious rights have repeatedly led to oversensitivity among lawmakers and to a tendency for Europe’s leaders and many of its people to simply look away.
Honor violence was ignored for decades until former Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali forced it into the limelight in the years just after 9/11. So were anti-Western sermons given by Arab-funded imams in Europe’s mosques. But nowhere, rightfully, has the guilt been quite as heavy on a country’s soul as it has been in Germany.
Which may explain what the Wall Street Journal describes as “a cascade of mishaps before and since the [Christmas market] attack” that “suggest Germany isn’t geared up for countering the terrorist threat.”
Everything that needed to be known about Anis Amri, the Tunisian-born suspect in the attack was known well before he plowed his truck into the outdoor festivities on Dec. 19, killing 12 people and injuring 48. Authorities watched him for months, though the Daily Beast reports he “managed to slip off their radar” sometime around September. He served time in Italy for arson. He had a history of drug trafficking. He had been convicted in absentia of robbery in his home country of Tunisia. He had known connections to an extremist imam. Germany even rejected his asylum claim, though he managed to escape deportation.
And yet he was still free, roaming the streets of Germany.
Then there was the target of his attack. The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Europe last month, warning of possible terrorist attacks at “holiday festival, events, and outdoor markets.” And a child is suspected of attempting to bomb another German Christmas market two weeks prior to the Berlin attack. Yet no barriers were erected to protect the market. There appear to have been no checkpoints, and no heightened security at the event.
For the right person, it was the right place. Amri, shot and killed by police in Milan, Italy early Friday, was the right person.
This isn’t just a “cascade of mishaps.” Much of Germany’s failure to quash Muslim youth radicalization and to defend against terrorist attacks comes from its approach to national security and surveillance. Post-Holocaust Germany has placed tight restrictions on intelligence-gathering, particularly when it comes to privacy concerns.
“Skepticism towards surveillance runs deep in Germany because of the excesses of the Nazi Gestapo and East German Stasi secret police,” Reuters reports. In addition, a Law Library of Congress analysis notes that, “intelligence agencies are not authorized to use force or other types of police powers to gather information.”
And yet, says Reuters, “Intelligence agencies say there are signs that Islamic State may have planted fighters among the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrived in the country in uncontrolled fashion last year.”
In June, however, Germany announced long-overdue plans to loosen some of those limitations, making it easier for officials to track radicalized teens – a move that followed a series of attacks by 15- and 16-year-olds.
Germany’s past also shapes its migrant policy today. Merkel and her supporters point to the fact that many Germans were migrants after the war, and they speak of the lessons learned during the Shoah.
“All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilization that was the Holocaust,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said last year. “This is taught in German schools for good reason, it must never be forgotten. …. We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German and very much our own.”
Opening the doors to religious minorities escaping war and autocracy is a form of repentance. So, too, is a hands-off approach to religious figures who preach violent or misogynistic doctrines that violate our own. Such approaches may ease German consciences, but they too often go awry. What, after all, are jihadist attacks like the one at the Breitscheidplatz market if not “crimes against humanity”? Germany is right not to forget its past. But in trying to set it right, the country has just gone tragically very wrong.
Israel Official: Obama Administration Secretly Worked With Palestinians to Craft ‘Shameful’ UN Resolution
December 23, 2016Israel Official: Obama Administration Secretly Worked With Palestinians to Craft ‘Shameful’ UN Resolution, Breitbart, Aaron Klein, December 23, 2016
Mark Wilson/Getty
TEL AVIV — The Obama administration secretly worked with the Palestinian Authority to craft a “shameful” United Nations resolution behind Israel’s back, an Israeli official told reporters on Friday.
The official told Breitbart Jerusalem by email:
“President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the UN. The US administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory. President Obama could declare his willingness to veto this resolution in an instant but instead is pushing it. This is an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN and undermines the prospects of working with the next administration of advancing peace.”
The official sent the same quotes to major news agencies, including Reuters and the Associated Press. He spoke as four UN Security Council members met on Friday to discuss how to advance the anti-Israel resolution despite Egypt’s decision to delay the vote on the draft that it introduced. The draft was originally scheduled for vote yesterday, but was delayed following criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President-elect Donald Trump.
After the meeting, diplomats said the UN will move forward with the vote, which is expected to take place Friday at about 3 p.m. Eastern (10 p.m. in Jerusalem).
The text of the resolution repeatedly and wrongly refers to the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem as “Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.” In actuality, the Palestinians never had a state in either the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem and they are not legally recognized as the undisputed authority in those areas.
Jordan occupied and annexed the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem from 1948 until Israel captured the lands in a defensive war in 1967 after Arab countries used the territories to launch attacks against the Jewish state. In 1988 Jordan officially renounced its claims to the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem.
The text of the resolution declares that the Israeli settlement enterprise has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”
It calls for Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
As the Committee for Accuracy for Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) pointed out in an email blast, international law does not make Israeli settlements illegal.
CAMERA notes:
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which is relied upon by those who claim the settlements are illegal, does not apply in the case of the West Bank. This is because the West Bank was never under self-rule by a nation that was a party to the Convention, and therefore there is no “partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party,” as Article 2 of the Convention specifies. Moreover, even if it did apply, by its plain terms, it applies only to forcible transfers and not to voluntary movement. Therefore, it can’t prohibit Jews from choosing to move to areas of great historical and religious significance to them.
If the resolution is brought to a vote in its current form and Obama fails to veto, the resolution would contradict a Bush administration commitment to allowing some existing Jewish settlements to remain under a future Israeli-Palestinian deal.
That U.S. commitment, which the Obama administration has repeatedly violated by condemning settlement activity, was reportedly a key element in Israel’s decision to unilaterally evacuate the Gaza Strip in 2005.
The UN draft resolution text states that “cessation of all Israeli settlement activities is essential for salvaging the two-State solution,” and it “calls for affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground that are imperiling the two-State solution.”
In 2004, just prior to the Gaza evacuation, President Bush issued a declarative letter stating that it is unrealistic to expect that Israel will not retain some Jewish settlements in a final-status deal with the Palestinians.
The letter stated:
In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.
Elliott Abrams, the Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy during Bush’s second term, was instrumental in brokering understandings between the U.S. and Israel on settlements. In a June 2009 piece published by the Wall Street Journal, Abrams accused the Obama administration of “abandoning” those U.S.-Israel understandings by taking positions critical of all settlement activity.
Abrams wrote:
There were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank … principles that would permit some continuing growth. … They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003. … The prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation – the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. … For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.
France: Jewish scholar prosecuted for hate speech for criticizing Islamic anti-Semitism
December 23, 2016France: Jewish scholar prosecuted for hate speech for criticizing Islamic anti-Semitism, Jihad Watch,
(“Multiculturalism” in its truest form, penalizing non-Muslims for speaking truthfully about Islam. When will Islamist nations become “multicultural” and penalize Muslims for “hate speech” about Jews, Christians and non-Muslims in general?– DM)
Is truth a defense? The Qur’an depicts the Jews as fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); claiming that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); loving to listen to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah and never observing his commands (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more.
“Leading Jewish Scholar Prosecuted in France for Alleged anti-Muslim Remarks,” JTA, December 20, 2016:
One of the world’s leading historians on the Jewish communities in Arab countries is being prosecuted in France for alleged hate speech against Muslims.
The Morocco-born French-Jewish scholar Georges Bensoussan, 64, is due to appear next month before a Paris criminal court over a complaint filed against him for incitement to racial hatred by the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, the group recently announced on its website.
The complaint, which leading French scholars dismissed as attempt at “intimidation” in a statement Friday, was over remarks about anti-Semitism by Muslims that Bensoussan, author of a definitive 2012 work entitled “Jews in Arab Lands,” made last year during an interview aired by the France Culture radio station, the Collective said.
The Collective based its complaint on two remarks by Bensoussan.
“Today, we are witnessing a different people in the midst of the French nation, who are effecting a return on a certain number of democratic values to which we adhere,” read the first quote flagged.
The second quote cited read: “This visceral anti-Semitism proven by the Fondapol survey by Dominique Reynié last year cannot remain under a cover of silence.” Conducted in 2014 among 1,580 French respondents, of whom one third were Muslim, the survey found that they were two times and even three times more anti-Jewish than French people as a whole.
“Besides, with the animosity toward the French nation, there will be no integration as long as we will not be rid of this ancestral anti-Semitism that is kept secret (…) as an Algerian sociologist, Smain Laacher, very bravely said in a film that will be aired on France 3, ‘it’s disgraceful to keep in place this taboo, knowing that in Arab families in France and beyond everybody knows but will not say that anti-Semitism is transmitted with mother’s milk,” the quote continued.
At least 12 people have been murdered in three attacks by suspected jihadists from France on Jewish targets in that country and in Belgium since 2012.
The anti-Islamophobia collective called Bensoussan’s statements “dangerous and in line with far-right rhetoric” targeting Muslims.
But three prominent French writers and historians — Jacques Tarnero, Yves Ternon and Michel Zaoui – disputed the allegations, calling the complaint against Bensoussan “scandalous.”
The cautions taken against Bensoussan “are part of a strategy of intimidation intended to censure any lucid statement, any form of criticism,” they wrote in a statement they published online last week….
Dutch town cancels Christmas celebrations for fear of Berlin-style jihad massacre
December 23, 2016Dutch town cancels Christmas celebrations for fear of Berlin-style jihad massacre, Jihad Watch,
(Please see also, To Islamists, the Germans are a bunch of cowards. Dutch too? — DM)
“Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemies of Allah and your enemies…” (Qur’an 8:60)
And it works: jihadis have struck terror in Europeans. Are European authorities going to continue to exacerbate the problem with their immigration policies?
“Christmas celebrations in Meppel canceled due to ‘Berlin,’” De Telegraaf (Google Translate), December 21, 2016:
A Christmas celebration with more than two thousand children in the town of Meppel is canceled tomorrow. The eight elementary schools and the town of Meppel concerned decided Wednesday to pull the plug out of the event because they fear for the safety of those present.
School Director and organizer Herman Langhorst says he does not want to risk something happening on a busy square full of young children.
All parents Wednesday received a letter of explanation. “Obviously events and current developments in the world played a role in our decision,” it said. It would have been the first time that there would be a Christmas celebration on such a large scale in Meppel.
According Langhorst saw the municipality no objection to the cancellation of the event, but it was the schools themselves who do not want the risk. “Everyone’s a little tense because of recent events. You do not want a panic when someone shoots off a firecracker or other fireworks. ”
The Christmas celebration for primary school pupils are now celebrated on the schools themselves. Furthermore, there is a program for groups of seven and eight in the Cross Church in Meppel.
Security Council likely to vote on settlements Friday despite Egyptian reversal
December 23, 2016Security Council likely to vote on settlements Friday despite Egyptian reversal, Times of Israel, December 23, 2016
A UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli settlements will likely go up for a vote Friday despite original sponsor Egypt pulling its support, after four countries agreed to present a draft resolution, diplomats said.
New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela stepped in after Egypt, under pressure from US President-elect Donald Trump, withdrew the measure.
“Most likely, we will have a vote soon,” French Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters.
“The key goal that we have here is to preserve and reaffirm the two state-solution,” said Delattre. “The text that we have does not exclusively focus on settlements. It also condemns the violence and terrorism. It also calls to prevent all incitement from the Palestinian side so this is a balanced text.”
Diplomats said the same draft resolution would be submitted to a vote, at the request of the four countries.
The draft resolution demands that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
It states that Israeli settlements have “no legal validity” and are “dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution” that would see an independent Palestine co-exist alongside Israel.
The four member states had warned earlier that they would push ahead with the resolution if Cairo stood by its decision to delay.
“In the event that Egypt decides that it cannot proceed to call for vote on 23 December or does not provide a response by the deadline, those delegations reserve the right to table the draft … and proceed to put it to vote ASAP,” wrote New Zealand, Venezuela, Malaysia and Senegal in a note they presented to Egyptian officials, according to Reuters.
Egypt had said earlier its president received a call from Trump in which they both agreed to give the incoming US administration a chance to try and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The call came hours after Egypt indefinitely postponed the UN vote on its resolution, following pressure from Israel and Trump, who had called on members to veto it.
A statement from the Egyptian presidency said the two men spoke by phone early Friday and agreed on “the importance of giving a chance for the new American administration to deal in a comprehensive way with the different aspects of the Palestinian issue with the aim of achieving a comprehensive and a final resolution” to the decades-old conflict.
Egypt requested Thursday that its resolution demanding Israel halt settlements be postponed after Jerusalem launched a frantic lobbying effort.
An official in Jerusalem later Thursday accused the Obama administration of attempting a diplomatic “hit” against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the settlements by planning to let the resolution pass, and a second Israeli source said the administration, in its final days, was violating a “core commitment” to defend Israel at the UN.
“After becoming aware that the (US administration) would not veto the anti-Israel resolution, Israeli officials reached out to Trump’s transition team to ask for the president-elect’s help to avert the resolution,” an Israeli official told AFP on Friday.
“The [Trump] phone call touched on the draft resolution before the United Nations Security Council on Israeli settlements,” a statement from Sissi’s office said.
Trump, who had campaigned on a promise to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, bluntly said Washington should use its veto to block the resolution.
“The resolution being considered at the United Nations Security Council regarding Israel should be vetoed,” he said in a statement.
The Saudis at the UN Human Rights Council
December 23, 2016The Saudis at the UN Human Rights Council, Gatestone Institute, Giulio Meotti, December 23, 2016
(Isn’t it time to give humanitarian Iran a seat? Perhaps instead of re-electing Saudi Arabia next time it should be Iran’s turn. Or perhaps North Korea’s. — DM)
While the medieval Saudi system of justice was flogging the gentle blogger Raif Badawi 50 out of the stipulated 1000 lashes, a delegation of UN bureaucrats landed in Jeddah to promote an international conference on religious freedom.
The Saudis use these international seats to advance their oppressive agenda, and to press the Western democracies to punish criticism of Islam.
Through the shameful trial of Geert Wilders, Dutch authorities sent a message of surrender to the Saudis and other rogue Islamic regimes that punish dissent.
Did the Dutch prosecute Wilders on behalf of the Saudis, who threatened to impose sanctions on the Netherlands?
The UN and the Western democracies are putting the defense of human rights and freedom in the hands of one the world’s worst violators of religious and intellectual freedom.
Sharia courts are already fully operating in the Netherlands. They know something about “human rights”: stoning, flogging and chopping off heads.
Who will rescue our right to speak?
“My husband has been languishing in a Saudi prison since June 17th, 2012. Our children live with me in the city of Sherbrooke, Québec in Canada. They have not seen their father for five years now… On January 9, 2015, Raif received the first 50 lashes… Will members of the United Nations Human Rights Council join the European Parliament and ask for Raif’s release?”
Unfortunately, the UN members did not respond to this appeal by Ensaf Haidar, the fearless wife of the most famous blogger of the Arab world, the gentle Raif Badawi, imprisoned and flogged by the Saudis for his secular ideas. A few days after Ensaf’s appeal, the United Nations welcomed Badawi’s executioners, the Saudis, at the UN Human Rights Council. The Saudi representative, Abdulaziz Alwasil, will be decisive on three major issues at the UN Palace of Nations in Geneva: women, religious freedom and the system of justice.
What a great achievement for Saudi Arabia: The country flogs poets and bloggers, and its sheikhs have no other concern than filling their sumptuous palaces with wives and concubines, and then stoning them to death if they become “adulterous“. Saudi Arabia is where a Shiite cleric was publicly beheaded and where a Christian cannot wear a tunic or a cross.
The British government supported the Saudi bid to be re-elected at the Human Rights Council (British Prime Minister Theresa May was urged in vain to oppose the Saudi election to the Geneva body). The Obama Administration did the same: Samantha Powers, the U.S. ambassador at the UN, called the Saudi bid at the UN a “procedural position“.
Hillel Neuer, the director of UN Watch, captured the difference between realpolitik and the betrayal of Western values when he said: “Making an alliance with Stalin to stop Hitler is one thing; it’s quite another to say Stalin is a champion of human rights”.
A few days after the Saudi bid at the UN Human Rights Council, the Kingdom and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights held a two-day workshop in the Saudi capital to discuss the “evolution of the concept of human rights in the framework of international and regional human rights systems”. Evolution of the concept human rights? Ask Raif Badawi, he knows better than the UN bureaucrats.
Raif Badawi and his children, before he was jailed.
The Saudis use these international seats to advance their oppressive agenda, and to press the Western democracies to punish criticism of Islam. The Saudis, in fact, considered curbing trade with the Netherlands over Geert Wilders, who has just been found guilty in a court in The Hague for “inciting discrimination and insulting a minority group”. By asking at a public rally if people wanted “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands, Wilders was publicly declaring his alarm over the exploding crime rate by Moroccan Muslims in the country.
Through this shameful trial, the Dutch authorities sent a message of surrender to the Saudis and other rogue Islamic regimes which punish dissent. Did the Dutch prosecute Wilders on behalf of the Saudis, who threatened to impose sanctions on the Netherlands? It was reported that the Council of Saudi Chambers received a letter from higher Saudi authorities urging it not to involve Dutch companies in local projects either directly or indirectly.
The Saudis, through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), have been pivotal in advancing the non-binding U.N. Resolution 62/154, “Combating defamation of religions”, which extends protection to opinions and to ideas, and grants people immunity from being “offended”.
This is exactly what happened with Wilders: he was on trial for stating his opinion, that there should be “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands. Some people said they were offended by that. Oddly, however, no one appears to have been offended by much worse remarks, said by politicians from the “Left”:
- “We also have sh*t Moroccans over here.” Rob Oudkerk, Dutch Labour Party (PvDA) politician.
- “We must humiliate Moroccans.” Hans Spekman, PvDA politician.
- “Moroccans have the ethnic monopoly on trouble-making.” Diederik Samsom, PvDA politician.
The United Nations and the Western democracies are putting the defense of human rights and freedom in the hands of one the world’s worst violators of religious and intellectual freedom. Middle East expert Paul Marshall blasted the “ongoing campaign by the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference which has given the anti-blasphemy movement weight and traction”.
While the medieval Saudi system of justice was flogging the gentle blogger Raif Badawi 50 out of 1000 lashes, a delegation of UN bureaucrats landed in Jeddah to promote an international conference on religious freedom. No, it is not a joke. Joachim Rücker, President of the UN Human Rights Council, was photographed smiling side by side with the Wahhabi Islamic guardians. The Obama Administration sent two envoys to the Saudi conference, the ambassador for religious freedom, David Saperstein, and Arsalan Suleman, an envoy at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Also attending was Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN special envoy for religious freedom, a noted scholar of Immanuel Kant (how did the Enlightenment collapse so far, so fast?).
Women, Christians, secular bloggers, Western “blasphemers”, brave Dutch MPs: be warned! The muttawayyin, the Saudi religious police patrolling the Kingdom’s streets to ensure respect for the Koran, are already in Europe’s streets. Just ask France’s satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
A few days after 12 people were butchered at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, as well as four Jews at a grocery store, Saudi officials were allowed to march in Paris along with the terrorists’ victims and world leaders. And the Saudis had just flogged a blogger for “blasphemy”. Will Geert Wilders be next? Sharia courts are already fully operating in the Netherlands. They know something about “human rights”: stoning, flogging and chopping off heads.
But who will rescue our right to speak?
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